Nazareth to perform in Pocatello

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POCATELLO -- Scottish rock band Nazareth made it big with the 1975 album "Hair of the Dog" which featured the hit songs "Hair of the Dog" and "Love Hurts." Although Nazareth disbanded in 1990, founding member Manny Charlton has put together a new incarnation on the band and has embarked on his first tour in 18 years.

Nazareth's original drummer, Darrel Sweet, died of a heart attack in 1999, while the other two original members, vocalist Dan McCafferty and bass player Pete Agnew, continued to tour as Nazareth in Scotland.

Nazareth with Manny Charlton will be performing Friday night in Pocatello as part of the POW*MIA Awareness Rally and Motorcycle Rodeo. The show will begin at 7 p.m. with opening act Monrovia. Tickets are $20 in advance and can be purchased at www.smithstix.com or $25 at the door. For more information go to www.powmiarodeo.org.

I had a chance to interview Manny Charlton by telephone. Here is the text of that interview:

ISJ: You and the original lineup broke up in 1990, and then they continued to tour under the name?

Manny Charlton: Yeah, and I didn't make any objections.

ISJ: You have this statement on your page, "It's time to set the bloody record straight and play 'em like they should be played, raw and rockin!" Explain what you meant by that?

MC: Well, it's my music. I wrote the songs and I arranged them and I produced them and I played guitar in them, you know? Basically all I want to do is go out there and play my music to my fans. If they go and see the current lineup, fine, they can go see that lineup and they'll hear somebody else playing it, some other guys. They've got two original members and two new boys and I have one original member and three new boys and we're playing the same music. But I think I'm playing it a lot closer to the original spirit of the music. I'd like to go out and earn some money playing my music just like they are.

ISJ: How did the lineup that you have now come to be?

MC: My manager knew them. They had a band called Brand New Machine up in Michigan, and they weren't doing too much. They were just playing locally and in the bars and my manager recommended them. He said, 'Look, there's a band here that will do the job, they'll all quite happily play the Nazareth songs and make a damn good job of them.' And we've been working together for six months and it's been great -- they're really, really good. And we're doing all the old hits, the stuff from "Hair of the Dog" and "Love Hurts" and "Holiday" and some other Nazareth favorites and a couple of originals I've written since I left the band. It's been going really, really good-- we've played quite a few gigs over here in the States. We've played a couple overseas in Sweden and it went fantastic...the audiences have been great. They just loved it. And nobody's asking for the other two guys -- they're not saying, 'Where's Peter?' or 'Where's Dan?' They just accept that it's Nazareth music with Manny Charlton.

ISJ: One of the questions I was going to ask is what the fan response has been like on this tour.

MC: Oh, it's been great, it's been absolutely fantastic. I couldn't ask for a better response. And we were down in Elko City at the biker rally, and it was fantastic, there was 15,000 people there. And the lady that organized the show said that she had a couple of inquiries and a couple of complaints about people saying it wasn't the original band, but she said, 'Two or three complaints out of 15,000 people; I can live with that.'

ISJ: Yeah, that's not too bad. During the 18 years or so after the breakup I read that you were in some other bands and did some other projects.

MC: Yeah, I had some other projects and I did some production work. I had a band in Scotland, and I had a couple of lineups that worked in Dallas for a while. It was kind of hard...Nobody really knows my name on its own, I've got to reference it with Nazareth and then they say, 'I remember that guy.' But there's not an awful lot of work in Dallas clubs and bars, and a lot of bands playing around here, you know, nobody gets paid. Some of the bands were paying to play. I'm too old for that stuff.

ISJ: How does it feel to get back out on the road?

MC: Oh, it's great. The thing that I really missed after leaving Nazareth was the fans. I had a lot of friends and fans all around the world and I really missed them. I really miss speaking to them and meeting with them and having a beer with them. So it's been great to get back on the road and try and meet some of the old fans.

ISJ: What are your plans for the future?

MC: Well, we just intend to keep playing as a band and possibly do a new album, possibly record some stuff. We've done a DVD which is called "Live in Kalamazoo." We're still working on the audio for that, but it was recorded in high definition so it looked great.

ISJ: Do you do a meet-and-greet after the show?

MC: Yeah, we usually sign album sleeves and T-shirts and stuff.

ISJ: When you come home from a tour do you look back and remember certain shows or is it all kind of a blur because you are playing almost every night?

MC: I remember most of them, I usually take my camera to take pictures to remind me where I've been, you know? If you're talking the original band when it was out in the '70s when we were doing all these stadiums and stuff, I remember a lot of shows played in Canada...we did great stuff in Canada, we toured quite extensively in Canada, Canada's always been really good to Nazareth. We played with Alice Cooper in Anaheim Stadium, that was good, that was about 80,000 people, that was probably one of the biggest shows I've ever played. I couldn't see them, it was huge.

ISJ: You have inspired many people, but who inspired you?

MC: The Beatles, the Stones, Zeppelin, and first generation rockers like Buddy Holly and Elvis. That's what made me take up the guitar. I just loved the music and I loved the sound of the guitar. I didn't know much about guitars when I started but I thought, 'That's what's making that noise!" My mother bought me one for my birthday and I was hooked.

ISJ: Do you have anything you want to add?

MC: Just hope to see everybody at the show and hope it's a good day and we'll all have some fun.

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