JIM VALLANCE: Maple Leaf Musician

Creativity in Captivity

With an unprecedented four Juno awards for songwriter of the year, Jim Vallance is one of Canada’s pre-eminent songwriters and the creative force behind top tracks for artists like Bryan Adams, Aerosmith, Joe Cocker and Glass Tiger. He played drums with the Vancouver band Prism, and wrote their first single, Spaceship Superstar (which was played on the Discovery Space Shuttle). After touring with Prism, he became a session musician before a chance meeting with 18-year-old Bryan Adams determined his songwriting career direction. The two began a fruitful decades-long songwriting collaboration. Adams’s album, Cuts Like a Knife, yielded three hit singles co-written with Vallance, and reached platinum. The follow-up album Reckless cemented the Vallance-Adams writing partnership in the annals of rock music. No. 1 on the Canadian and U.S. album charts, it sold five times platinum, with six Vallance co-writes in the Top 15, including the duo’s first Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single, Heaven; and the No. 1 Mainstream Rock tracks Run To You and Somebody. Vallance concentrated on songwriting, penning a non-stop stream of hit rock ballads, including the now-famous chart-topping charity single Tears Are Not Enough, a collaboration with Adams and fellow Canadian producer David Foster. Jim’s creative talent has benefitted top international acts like Pat Benatar, Roger Daltry, Neil Diamond, Bonnie Raitt, Carly Simon, Joan Jett, The Go-Go’s, Rick Springfield, Tina Turner, Rod Stewart, Anne Murray, Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Chilliwack, Loverboy, Toronto, Ozzy Osbourne, Alice Cooper, KISS and The Scorpions. Vallance went on to collaborate with Adams on songs for the Broadway show Pretty Woman: The Musical. He has served on the boards of SOCAN, the Songwriters Association of Canada, and FACTOR, is a member of the Order of Canada, and boasts 22 SOCAN Classic awards and the Lifetime Achievement Award.