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Stuart Adamson, lead singer of Scottish rock quartet
Big Country, was found dead in a Honolulu Hotel on Sunday
according to a statement from manager Ian Grant on Monday.
The police are treating the case as a suicide.
Big Country earned critical acclaim and commercial success
upon the release of their Gold-selling 1983 debut The
Crossing, including a Grammy nomination for Best New
Artist at the following year's awards. The band continued
to record, most recently releasing a set of cover songs
in the spring of this year, and notched more than two
dozen hits in the UK, but their US success was limited
to their initial Top Twenty single "In A Big Country,"
whose distinctive, bagpipe-like guitars proved to saddle
them with them with novelty and, ultimately, one-hit
wonder status.
Adamson, 43, had spent much of his time during the past
five years living in Nashville, Tennessee, where he
was co-owner of a successful hair salon, Trim, with
stylist Melanie Shelley, his recently estranged wife.
According to The Tennessean, the pair had separated
earlier last month and it was she who had reported the
musician missing on November 26, telling police that
he had been struggling with alcohol abuse. The newspaper
also reported that Adamson had been arrested for drunken
driving on October 2.
Despite his band's low commercial profile in the States,
Adamson had maintained a presence on the Nashville music
scene, performing acoustic sets at local clubs and frequently
collaborating with singer-songwriter Marcus Hummons.
It was Hummons' wife, a preacher, that had married Adamson
and Shelley in early 2000 and it was with Hummons (under
the moniker The Raphaels) that Adamson released his
last album of original material in May.
Report by Tom Demalon for Crud Magazine©2001
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