Stuart Adamson

Born in Manchester, England, this true-life working class hero grew up in Dunfermline, Scotland, a town not far north of Edinburgh across the Firth of Forth. There, among the Scottish working class, he developed the values that would later help to attract many loyal fans. His father was an engineer on deep-sea trawlers that would sail to the Canadian East Coast to fish for cod. As he developed a love of the sea and a fondness for the common working man struggling to raise his family, young Adamson increasingly detested the British class system. His father urged him to read and to learn about the outside world, which would manifest itself years later as literary and political references in the lyrics of songs by his internationally acclaimed band Big Country. He learned to love music as a young boy as he listened to his parents and other working-class Scots express themselves in song. Adamson said he was inspired to get a guitar after he caught Led Zeppelin live at age 12. First coming to prominence with the Dunfermline punk-art rock quartet Skids, the boyish-looking guitarist was the heart of the band, defining its sound with his fierce six-string attack. He and bombastic singer Richard Jobson were the band's only constants. Adamson left after the 1980 release The Absolute Game, the band's biggest seller. Six years later, he would reveal he had suffered a nervous breakdown.

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