This is the biography Adam Clayton was born on March 13, 1960 in Chinnor (Oxfordshire). His father Brian, a pilot in the Royal Air Force, and his mother Jo, moved to Malahide near Dublin, when Adam was only five years old. Here his sister Sarah and brother Sebastian are born. Adam grows up in a wealthy family and immediately shows a sense of restlessness and rebellion, which will lead him to take on an unusual look to oppose the strict school uniforms of those years.
Adam Clayton is expelled from various private schools because of his nonconformist character; he arrives at Mount Temple High School where he responds to an ad by a boy, Larry Mullen Jr., who would like to form a rock band. Adam then becomes the bass player of U2, but also the first manager of the band (he will then hand over the task to Paul McGuinness); initially he is in charge of distributing the demos of the band to all the people in Ireland.
The understanding with the members of the band is excellent: in the early years Adam is perhaps the one who binds more with the restless Bono, so much so that these will choose him as their best man. Adam is strongly influenced musically by the ’70s. Within U2 he stands out as the most “picturesque” element, so much so that the color of his hair changes with the seasons. The look always in search of extravagance underlines the personality of the bassist.
On the cover of the album “Achtung Baby”, Adam Clayton appears completely naked. Engaged for some time with top model Naomi Campbell, Adam is the only member of U2 to have been involved in the past in drug episodes: in 1989 he was arrested in a pub for possession of marijuana. He avoids the sentence with a substantial donation to charity. After the “ZooTv” tour he also had problems with alcohol that forced him to skip some dates of the tour, in order to detoxify in a clinic in New York.
It was a period characterized by a personal depression, overcome also thanks to the help of his friend Larry, who moved with Adam to New York. Unusual musical appearances compared to his role as bassist in the group of U2 include: a performance as a singer in the song “Endless Deep” (b-side of the single “Sunday Bloody Sunday”); participation in “Band Aid” together with Bono in 1984 for the song “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” (Adam Clayton plays bass); participation as bassist on Robbie Robertson’s album of the same name (1987); recording with Larry Mullen Jr. on the soundtrack for the film “Mission:Impossible” (1996).
Discography with U2
Boy (1980)
October (1981)
War (1983)
The Unforgettable Fire (1984)
The Joshua Tree (1987)
Rattle and Hum (1988)
Achtung Baby (1991)
Zooropa (1993)
Pop (1997)
All That You Can’t Leave Behind (2000)
How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004)
No Line on the Horizon (2009)
Songs of Innocence (2014)
Songs of Experience (2017)
