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:
“And this is the final meaning of work: the extension of human consciousness. The lesser meaning of work is the achieving of self-preservation.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Flood-tide below me! I see you face to face!
Clouds of the west—sun there half an hour
high—I see you also face to face.
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes, how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning
home, are more curious to me than you suppose,
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)