The group’s 1970s catalog was just re-released on vinyl and CD, with the Light in the Attic specialty catalog label distributing.Īfter the All Saved Freak Band split up, Schwartz returned to playing Cleveland clubs, where he would preach between songs, as he did even in the couple of gigs he shared with Auerbach and Walsh. with Pacific Gas & Electric, which in 1970 had a top 20 hit with “Are You Ready?” He soon left secular music behind, with his evangelical zeal leading him to form one of the seminal Christian rock groups, the All Saved Freak Band - a group that appealed to young religious devotees looking for heavy guitar music in the mid-’70s, but obscure now even to most students of religious pop. It was around that same time the three of them went into a recording studio, the results of which will finally be heard next year.Īfter leaving the James Gang, Schwartz hooked up in L.A. The three of them played a gig together at a Nashville honky-tonk in 2016, then followed it with a jam at the Coachella Festival during an appearance there by Auerbach’s other band, the Arcs. Variety can exclusive reveal that an album Auerbach, Walsh and Schwartz recorded together back in 2016 will finally be coming out in 2020, on Auerbach’s Easy Eye Sound label.Īuerbach befriended the late cofounder of the James Gang - and his successor, Walsh, re-friended him - before Schwartz died in November of 2018 at age 78. So in honor of our good friend Glenn Schwartz, we’re gonna play one of his songs, all right?” Little did I know, when Joe was at an impressionable age, he walked into a bar and he saw Glenn Schwartz and it blew his mind and it made him want to play rock ‘n’ roll music, just like it made me. And this was Glenn’s guitar right here, and this was the guitar he was playing that night. Telling the Forum audience about first encountering Schwartz at a Cleveland club show when he was a teenager, Auerbach said, “You guys may not know him, but he was really important to me, and he blew my f-ing mind when I was 16.
Glenn Schwartz died on November 2, 2018, at the age of 78.Auerbach is a megafan. Glenn also played during several of our “Collinwood Day” events at the Thompson Raceway in Thompson, Ohio. In 2016, Schwartz brought his guitar playing, and preacher-style stage presence, back to Cleveland bars, regularly in the flats and later to the Beachland in Collinwood. It was an impromptu jam with Joe Walsh and The Arcs, featuring Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. Increasing health issues kept him from playing live music for a few years after 2010, but Schwartz returned to the stage for a 75th birthday show. Through the 1990s and 2000s, Schwartz played weekly blues gigs every Thursday at Major Hooples just outside Cleveland’s Flats neighborhood, often with his brother Gene playing bass. Schwartz’s life in this cult with Reverend Hill is explored in the book, Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult by Jeff Stevenson. The band was the musical evangelistic arm of an Ohio religious group, the Church of the Risen Christ, headed by Reverend Larry Hill. Tired of the rock and roll lifestyle Glenn joined a pioneering gospel rock group, All Saved Freak Band. Glenn left them in December of 1967 and later joined the Los Angeles based blues band Pacific Gas & Electric and in 1970, scored a national top 20 hit with the song “Are You Ready?”. But Janis was rude and nasty to them, and I know they didn’t like Janis or her music.” They did not mind I talked about Jesus because they liked the music. At the time, the bikers really liked my music and style of guitar playing because it was so out of control like they were. We put some on Janis Joplin but she did not like it and took them off. Glenn Schwartz first came to the attention of rock music audiences as the original guitarist for The James Gang, based in Cleveland. Later he professed conversion to Christianity, saying “I was finally blessed by mercy for I heard the Gospel of Christ.” Following his conversion, his new-found faith was not well accepted by the band, his family, or his friends.Īs per author Jeff Stevenson, Schwartz said: “I had some Christian friends who had some round stickers that read ‘Real Peace Is In Jesus’ and we stuck those all over our clothes. While in Los Angeles on tour in 1967, Schwartz strolled onto Sunset Strip and listened to a street preacher, Arthur Blessitt. He was a member of the original James Gang when he moved to California. He was a truly legendary guitar virtuoso who was admired by the likes of the great Jimi Hendrix, once being invited to play at one of Jimi’s private parties. Glenn Schwartz grew up in Cleveland’s East 185th neighborhood and attended Collinwood High School until the 11th grade. back to those days when Carney worshipped the Stooges, and Auerbach was enamored with Link Wray and the original James Gang guitarist Glenn Schwartz.
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