Stealing Deep Purple

While writing Stealing Deep Purple, I reached out to a few rock musicians who had played the same venues and same circuits as The New Deep Purple. I wanted to get a feel for the environment from their point of view, the horse’s mouth as it were.

Charlie Farren was notably the singer on the second Joe Perry Project album and toured with the band from 1980 until the end of 1981.

He went on to be in the group FarrenHeit with his Joe Perry Project alumni, David Hull. They famously opened the 1987 Texxas Jam festival to 70,000 and were on rotation on MTV.

Charlie very kindly filled me in with info about the Boston music scene and venues in the late 1970s. Presented here is some excerpts from the interview about his life and career.

(I’ve Got the Rock’n’Rolls Again; Front and rear cover plus inner sleeve of the Joe Perry Project album)

Steve: Hello Charlie, thanks for agreeing to speak to me. Before we get into the Boston / MA stuff, please tell me a little bit about your early life as a musician.

By 72 / 73 I was full time in music and focused about what I was trying to get done. I graduated high school and did my first year in college and I relisted I don’t want to learn this I want to learn how to be a rock star and there was nobody teaching that. I thought I’ll go to the best school in the world…. and it’s called the world. 

Steve: I’m particularly interested in the venue Mr C’s, that you played there a few times…

New England have a lot of these former ballrooms that have become a bit run down now and they turned them into rock rooms. Converted ballrooms into concert halls, they got big names.  The Commodore Ballroom (Mr C’s) held 1000 people and had a big stage. Bands like the Yardbirds played there and Mitch Ryder. They had a big concert PA… Back then they had the kind of PA that stacked up on both sides of the stage. A nice sound system in a good big old fashioned concert hall.  I played there in the late 70s with my band Balloon. We played there with the likes Steppenwolf and Leslie West. 

Steve: That’s a pretty big deal….

I couldn’t believe I was there opening for Leslie West.  Prior the 79 you had to be pretty big and pretty good to play a room like that. By 79 we (Balloon) were playing regionally around the big rooms in New England.  You had to be pretty big and popular to play a room like that. 

(Charlie Farren, 2^nd left with Balloon)

Steve: After Balloon, you joined Joe Perry….  

I played shows with Joe in 80 and 81. Probably for a year and half. But the first part of that was getting things signed up, rehearsing. But we probably didn’t get out on the road until the fall. We did a lot of big clubs, like the Commodore. Most of the shows we did was hopping on tours. We toured with Ozzy (Osbourne) Rush, Foghat, ZZ Top the Scorpions… Those kinds of tours, arenas. I don’t remember all the places.

(Advert for Ozzy with The Joe Perry Project and Motorhead… What a line-up!)

Steve: You replaced Ralph Mormon as the permanent vocalist in The Joe Perry Project. How did that come about?

Joe’s a Boston guy and he was being managed at the time by Don law. Don was really the top New England, maybe even north east concert promoter. He had a big organisation, very professional. I think Joe had trouble with some of his singers. Joe was trying to make his second record with himself as the singer, and I think the label kept saying  ‘You gotta get a singer’. I heard they were looking and I sent them in a tape to Don’s office and they called me and I auditioned.

(Charlie on stage with Joe. From the New England Hall of Fame)

I think being a Bostonian worked in my favour, we (balloon) were really popular, in the top handful of bands (in the area). I was also talking to Atlantic at the time.  I ended up signing with Atlantic as a solo writer after I left the JPP. We (Balloon) were selling out rooms like the Commodore and we had those songs on the radio so I know Joe had heard them, so I auditioned and got it. That was a big time.

(The Morning Call 27 July 1981 – Tough day to be an Iron Maiden fan)

Steve: Did your song writing help you get the gig; you’re credited on six songs? 

I wrote 2 and I co-wrote four with joe. He was really generous with the writing credits. I was surprised to learn he was just really open to that he wasn’t possessive about the writing credit. 

(The Republican Newspaper May 5 1981)

Steve: Do you still have a relationship with Joe?

I still do shows with him.  he’s playing around. He’s as good as he’s ever been. Gary Cherone is singing with them he’s also touring like crazy with Extreme.  I did a handful of shows with them over the last five years. I will open the show with a five or six song set then they’d come out and play and I’d come out later and do two or three songs with them.  He has different players in his groups. Gary is the singer and then there’s guests. Brad was doing some of those shows, Dizzy Reed (Guns ‘n’ Roses), Jason Southern from Smash Mouth. That kind of band. It’s cool and fun. Gary and I are from the same town, he’s about 10 years younger than me. Him and his brothers are all musicians.  They (Extreme) have experienced a nice surge right now, they are really good in that style. You can’t get much better in that style than them.  They’re good guys. 

(A recent shot of Charlie and Joe from CharlieFarren.com)

Steve: A couple of Balloon songs had been regional hits…

Both of those songs went on to the second Joe Perry record. The Balloon versions of those songs were quite a bit different to how Joe did them. You’d recognise them but it was a different approach. Joe wanted that record to be a punk-rock record. That’s what he was trying to get. That was the sound that was happening on FM radio at the time, and he wanted to go with a kind of loosey-goosey noisy sound. 

Listen to the original Balloon version of East Coast / West Coast here – The Joe Perry Project would re-record it with Charlie on the album “I’ve Got The Rock’n’Rolls Again

Steve: Afterward you went on to have a band with your Joe Perry bandmate David Hull called FarrenHeit. Tell me about opening the Texxas Jamm concert to 70,000 people. 

That was an annual show, the radio station down there did. There was a fella called Jimmy Redbeard, he had a great big, long red beard, he was the hot ticket DJ, his radio station put it on. I think it went on for ten years. Almost every band that played the Texxas Jamm went on to be really successful. We did it that year with Whitesnake, Tesla, Poision, Aerosmith and Boston. We got it because we were on the Boston tour. There was maybe 80,000 people there but we went on first so there was only 70,000 people there.  it was 114 degrees and they just had fire hoses, and they wet down the audience. 

(Charlie on stage at the Texxas Jam from CharlieFarren.com)

(TEXXAS JAM 1987 – RockingHouston.com)

Steve: What’s one of your most prominent memories of the event? 

Ronnie James Dio – He didn’t perform at the Texxas Jam. The gig is one day but you get there for three of four days and they have all of these promo activities and one of the things they did was a celebrity softball game against the radio station. The radio station had all of these ringers from the Texas Rangers and the Houston Astros. The rock bands were the other team. Ronnie was on my team, and I think maybe Paul Stanley. So the Texxas jam back stage it was actresses and actors, sports stars and rock stars. Back stage was buzzing with this one and that one form movies and politicians and ball players. Yeah, it was a real blast. 

I remember Ronnie, he was funny and he was tiny. He was funny about it, he’d put on a baseball cap that was way too big for his hit, and he had a bat that was giant he looked like a little kid, and he was just playing it up. I liked that guy. 

Steve: You spent some time in the corporate sector as an international executive for HP how did that affect your music career 

That’s when I started honing my solo guitar and voice. Because I couldn’t manage to keep a band together but I still wanted to perform. I had an international job at HP so it was still possible to do two or three solo gigs so that’s how I got my solo performance chops together so when I retired from HP I started perfuming mostly solo and that caught on. I did lots of dates that way and I came to prefer it as it’s east to do. It gets harder to keep a band together as you get older. I actually prefer that way. I got a chance to perform with bands like Cheap Trick, REO Speed Wagon and ZZ Top, things like that. 

(Charlie on stage in 2013 from The Boston Globe, April 5 2013)

Steve: And that led to the show you do now, right? America’s special guest? 

One of the first dates I did with REO, I’ve known the lead guitar player, Dave (Amato, REO Guitarist) for 40 years because he’s from around Boston. He had mentioned to Kevin (Cronin, REO Singer) who I was and that I’d toured with Joe Perry. He came into the dressing room and introduced himself and said ‘I’ve heard so much about you and thank you for opening for us during the tour’ and I just jokingly said I’m too old to be an opener so I consider myself more of a special guest and he thought that was great and he introduced me he said ‘America’s special guest, tonight’ and then that caught on. ZZ put up a projection saying ‘America’s Special Guest’ and Cheap Trick did it and Pat Benetar did it. You know so it just kinda caught on and I thought it was kinda funny.

(America’s special guest!)

I’d like to thank Charlie for his time and salute his exceptional career. Here’s a video taken from the stage at Texxas Jam 1987. The sound is a bit fuzzy, but it gives you an idea of the size of the show. 

Here’s a FarrenHeit promo video in all of their MTV rotation glory! 

And finally, here’s Charlie fronting the JPP singing his song East Coast, West Coast