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Bryan Adams

I got my first real six-string/Bought it at the five-and-dime/Played 'til my fingers bled/It was summer of '69

Me and some guys from school/Had a band and we tried real hard/Jimmy quit and Jody got married/I shoulda known we'd never get far

Oh when I look back now/The summer seemed to last forever/And if I had the choice/Ya - I'd always wanna be there/Those were the best days of my life

He has famously sung about the "Summer of '69" for years.

That said, Bryan Adams was merely 10-years-old back in '69, but already the Canadian born singer/songwriter was playing in a garage band. In fact, a few years later, a 15-year-old Adams quit school in an effort to focus on a career in music.

He played with a pair of bands in the Ontario area until he signed a demo deal with A&M Records in 1978, but it would be another two years before he released his self-titled debut.

In the years since he's released 14 albums and sold more than 65 million albums worldwide.

Ain't no use in complainin'/When you got a job to do/Spent my evenin's down at the drive-in/And that's when I met you

Standin on a mama's porch/You told me that you'd wait forever/Oh and when you held my hand/I knew that it was now or never/Those were the best days of my life

It wasn't until Adams was three albums into his career — "Cuts Like a Knife" was the album he released at that time — that he emerged as one of the most commercially successful solo artists of the '80s.

Although the album was panned by "Rolling Stone" magazine and others, "Cuts Like a Knife" featured four hit singles and set up the success of his next album and arguably the most recognizable song ("Summer of '69") of his career.

For much of the '80s and into the '90s, Adams released a series of successful albums, including "Cuts Like a Knife" and "Reckless" as well as "Into the Fire" and "Waking Up the Neighbors."

Man we were killin' time/We were young and restless/We needed to unwind/I guess nothin' can last forever, no

And now the times are changin'/Look at everything that's come and gone/Sometimes when I play that old six-string /I think about ya wonder what went wrong

Standin' on a mama's porch/You told me it would last forever/Oh the way you held my hand/I knew that it was now or never/Those were the best days of my life

In the later years of his career Adams has remained somewhat active by continuing to release albums every four or five years. Most recently he released "11," which is just one of the albums he'll be drawing from when he brings an acoustic show to the Charleston Music Hall on Monday.

The 48-year-old musician has already been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and it would seem it's only a matter of time before he's a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as well.

Keith Ryan Cartwright is a Colorado-based freelance entertainment journalist.