Stuart Adamson

William Stuart Adamson - who was born on April 11th, 1958 - was an English-born Scottish rock guitarist and singer, most-famous as the the frontman of the pop-rock band, Big Country.  Born in Manchester, England, to Scottish parents William and Anne (nee Muir), at the age of four Adamson's family relocated to the small mining town of Crossgates (about a mile east of Dunfermline) in Fife, Scotland.  Educated at Beath High School in Cowdenbeath, Adamson formed the Dunfermline band Tattoo in 1976, before creating Skids, who performed in the Edinburgh area, in 1977.  Skids' biggest success was the song Into The Valley which reached number 10 in the U.K. singles chart in March of 1979.  After four charting singles that year, Adamson quit the band in 1980, forming Big Country the following year.  The band's first hit, Fields of Fire, reached number 10 on the U.K. singles chart in 1983, and was also a success in New Zealand and the U.S.  The subsequent album, The Crossing, powered by the single In a Big Country, reached at least the top-20 in North America as well as New Zealand and the U.K.  Big Country's following three albums all reached the top ten in the U.K., although were less-successful abroad.  The band continued recording studio albums and touring until 1999, although with gradually-decreasing record sales.  In November of 1999, Adamson went missing for a time, causing Big Country to have to cancel stadium gigs supporting Bryan Adams on a tour of Scotland.  With his first wife Sandra, Adamson had two children - Callum (born: 1982) and Kirsten (born: 1985) - who both became musicians.  Adamson had struggled with alcoholism in his earlier years, but became sober around 1990.  In 1996, he split with his first wife and moved to Nashville, U.S.A., where, in 1999, he married Melanie Shelley, a hairdresser.  Whilst in the U.S., Adamson founded his final band: an alternative-country duo called The Raphaels with Nashville songwriter Marcus Hummon.  Adamson's alcoholism began returning in the early 2000s, and he had been due to face drink-driving charges in March of 2002, and had been ordered to attend Alcoholics Anonymous.  On November 26th, 2001, Adamson's second wife reported him missing; the pair had been estranged for six weeks at the time, and his wife had filed for divorce on the day he disappeared.  Adamson disappeared after leaving a note for his son Callum on Wednesday, November 7th, saying, "Back by noon, Sunday."  Appeals were put out for his whereabouts, including by his former Big Country bandmate, Bruce Watson.  The last clue to his location was a credit card transaction record, showing that he had checked out of the Best Western Hotel on Music Row, Nashville, on December 3rd.  On December 16th, 2001, Adamson's dead body was found in a room he had booked into in the Best Western Plaza Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii.  According to a local police report, he had committed suicide by hanging himself with an electrical cord from a pole in a wardrobe.  A subsequent Coroner's Office report found that he had consumed a "very strong" amount of alcohol around the time of his death.  Stuart Adamson was 43 years old.