Final Years
Adamson was married twice. He also had two children, born to his first wife Sandra in 1982 and 1985. In 1996, Adamson split with Sandra and moved to Nashville. There he remarried, and founded his final band, the alternative country band The Raphaels, a duo of Adamson and Nashville songwriter Marcus Hummon.
On 16 December 2001 he was found dead on the floor of a closet in his room at the Best Western Plaza Hotel in Honolulu, Hawaii after committing suicide by hanging. At the time of death he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.279%.
U2's The Edge delivered the eulogy at Adamson's funeral which was held at Carnegie Hall, Dunfermline. He told the mourners that Big Country wrote the songs that he wished U2 could write.
In 2006, Adamson's music achieved an unexpected success when U2 and Green Day covered "The Saints are Coming" as a charity single. The Edge paid tribute to the guitarist by exactly replicating his original solo for the single. The single led to a revival of interest in Adamson's earlier material. Richard Jobson, in an interview with the Sunday Post, said that he was upset Adamson had not been alive to see it.
Read more about this topic: Stuart Adamson
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“In the course of a life devoted less to living than to reading, I have verified many times that literary intentions and theories are nothing more than stimuli and that the final work usually ignores or even contradicts them.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“It’s no go the picture palace, it’s no go the stadium,
It’s no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums.
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Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.”
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