New England will be performing a reunion concert the Regent Theatre in Arlington, MA on August 15th. This is the first time all four original members have performed together since 1983. Tickets for this event can be purchased here.
New England is a four-piece rock and roll band hailing from Boston, MA. John Fannon (guitar & vocals), Hirsh Gardner (drums and vocals), Jimmy Waldo (keyboards and vocals) and Gary Shea (bass) broke out of the local scene with the release of their self-titled album on Infinity/MCA in 1979. The first single, Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya (see video below), became an AOR smash and even cracked the Top 40. The album was produced by Mike Stone and Paul Stanley of Kiss, with whom New England toured for much of 1979 and 1980.
For their sophomore effort, entitled Explorer Suite, the foursome once again called upon veteran knob-twirler Mike Stone. Highlights from this album are the orchestral title track, It’s Never Too Late, and Conversation, which features New England’s trademark lush background vocals. The touring never let up for the boys from Boston as they split their time on the Explorer Suite tour between headlining large clubs and sharing arena billing with Journey, AC/DC, Cheap Trick, and Kiss among others.
For the third album, Walking Wild, the legendary Todd Rundgren was at the helm. The results of these sessions were hard-driving anthemic tunes such as Don’t Ever Let Me Go, L-5 (co-written by Fannon, Waldo & Rundgren) and the kick-ass rocker Holdin’ Out On Me, which features Hirsh Gardner on lead vocals. The frustration over the lack of label support grew and the band parted ways. While Fannon & Gardner went on to successful careers as producers and Shea & Waldo formed Alcatrazz with Graham Bonnet
& Yngwie Malmsteen, nothing seemed to match the excitement of New England. The real strength of New England was the combination of four strong & diverse individuals: Fannon’s lead vocals & songwriting, Waldo’s whirling keyboards, Gardner’s driving skin-pounding and high-pitched vocals and Shea’s thunderous bass lines.
While the records speak for themselves, the fans are the reason New England lives: Waldo explains,“I would tour all over the world with Alcatrazz and every country we’d go to people would have New England albums for me to sign. It really shows you the power of music. We have fans all over Europe & Japan, places we never even toured. It’s amazing.”
Watch the video for Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya below.
Listen to their self titled debut album below.
47 Responses
Music News: New England gonna reunite. Music News not reported on Eddie Trunk: Kiss doing massive numbers and kicking ass.
I apologize at the risk of sounding curt, but give it a rest Lee.
Firstly, Eddie asked me to post this story.
Secondly, I was posting stories about KISS on here for weeks on end and dealing with hundreds of comments a day. Sorry, if all that time devoted to the band wasn’t enough for you. Last time I checked, the name of this site was EddieTrunk.com, not Kissonline.com.
Dana from EddieTrunk.com
I will never understand why people act the way they do. Lee must of on mars when the whole R&R stuff was going down over the past few months. It’s kinda hard to learn about what others bands are doing if all Dana posted was kiss stuff! There are bands out there that are putting great music out! All kiss is doing is touring. Ace is where all the kiss focus should be! He’s got new music out that is damn good. Ace’s last CD sold more copies than both of kiss’ last 2 albums combined. Let other more important bands get the spot light for once. Peace out metal fans
Thank you, Brian.
Dana 🙂
If I’m not mistaken the song in video you put up was written by Paul Stanley I thinks so you are in a was supporting!
Paul co-produced 1st album, did not write anything
I love Ace, Ace’s last cd did not outsell either one of the last 2 KISS cd’s singularly. Lets not kid ourselves. Barely outsold Paul’s Live to Win.
Brian…lets be clear hear, Sonic Boom and Monster’s total sales combined were about 450k. Boom having sold the most at around 300k. Frehley’s Anomaly sold around 55K. So, not sure where you are getting that Ace outsold Kiss. Btw, the numbers are out there via Soundscan if you want to dig them up. Further…as Ed stated, Paul only co-produced the 1st New England album and sang backup on Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya. He did not write anything.
Or the fact that KISS sucks.
dont’ ever want to lose ya is still one of my favorite songs! hope they come to the Midwest would love to see them!
does anyone know what happened to a band called ” teaze” they had a very cool song called heartless world, they were around in 78 & 79, kind of similar in style to new England
Never heard of these guy and I’m a CT man! Going to youtube them and see what there about. Dana you put up a video of them cause a lot of people are wondering the same. Lol
Brian,
I am embarrassed to admit that I had never heard of them either. I will see what I can find at youtube and embed into the story.
Cheers,
Dana from ET.com 🙂
They remind me of the bay city rollers
Suuuuuuper slow news day, huh? 🙂 This is Eddie’s payback to those who made fun of his hair the other day.