Jim Vallance

After touring with Prism, the soft-spoken Vallance worked as a session musician before a chance meeting in 1978 with 18-year-old Bryan Adams confirmed his career direction. The two began a fruitful decades-long songwriting collaboration. Vallance recounted, “We clicked right from the start.” Adams confirmed, “It was an incredible ascension from absolutely nothing to having hit songs. In the beginning, we used to spend hours and hours in Jim’s basement toying with ideas.” 

Vallance remembered their hesitancy: “Never did we think, ‘Bingo, this’ll sell a million.’”

But Adams’s album, “Cuts Like a Knife,” released in January 1983, 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 then 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 and renowned producer David Foster.

Vallance’s creative abilities have 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, and Rod Stewart. He has also written for such top Canadian acts as Anne Murray (Now and Forever, sharing the Canadian Country Music Association’s songwriter of 1986 award with Foster); Bachman-Turner Overdrive (Jamaica); Chilliwack (Who’s Winnin’); Loverboy (Jump); his old band Prism (Open Soul Surgery and Don’t Let Him Know, a Billboard No. 1 Mainstream Rock hit); and Toronto (What About Love, a Top 5 hit as covered by Heart).