Founding NAZARETH guitarist Manny Charlton has died at the age of 80.
Charlton’s death was confirmed on social media by his grandson Jamie Charlton, who captioned the photo, “RIP Grandad”. You can see the post below.
Charlton played on, produced and wrote most of NAZARETH’s biggest hits, including “Broken Down Angel“, “Bad Bad Boy“, “Hair Of The Dog” and countless others, not to mention producing the iconic rock ballad “Love Hurts“.
Back in 2012, Charlton said in an interview about “Hair Of The Dog”: “What that album did was set the band up for American success forever. Looking back, I’m still trying to understand why it was so successful. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s all about the attitude of the songs, performances and the rawness of the production. This was the first album that I produced for the band. Beginner’s luck, you might say.”
Back in 1986, Manny was brought in to produce the debut album from GUNS N’ ROSES, “Appetite For Destruction“. Charlton ended up working on GUNS N’ ROSES’ 1986 Sound City demos that eventually saw the light of day on the 2018 “Appetite For Destruction” box set. As Manny told Legendary Rock Interviews a decade ago: “Axl’s [Rose] favorite singer is [NAZARETH frontman] Dan McCafferty. He said to his label, ‘Get me the guy who produced ‘Hair Of The Dog‘ by NAZARETH.’ What Axl wants, Axl gets.
“We left it saying, ‘If we could get our respective schedules together, then great,'” he continued. “I was in the middle of recording ‘Cinema’ with NAZARETH and it didn’t happen.”