guitarist, singer (James Gang, Pacific Gas & Electric)
20.03.1941 - 02.11.2018
Glenn Schwartz was the American original guitarist for The James Gang, based in Cleveland, Ohio, United States. The band did not have a recording contract, nor did the group gain any attention until Joe Walsh joined the band.
Schwartz left the James Gang in late December 1967 when he moved to California. He later joined the Los Angeles based blues band Pacific Gas & Electric where he first came to the attention of rock audiences, and, in 1970, scored a national top 20 hit with the song "Are You Ready?".
Tired of the rock and roll life, he left PG&E to join a pioneering Gospel rock group All Saved Freak Band, which was the musical evangelistic arm of an Ohio religious group-turned-cult, the Church of the Risen Christ, headed by Larry Hill. Schwartz's life in this cult with Rev. Larry Hill is explored in the book, Fortney Road: Life, Death, and Deception in a Christian Cult by Jeff C. Stevenson (2015). All told, Schwartz recorded four albums with the Freak Band before leaving it in 1980.
Through the 1990s and 2000s, Schwartz played weekly blues gigs at bars in Cleveland's The Flats neighborhood, often with his brother, Gene. Changes at venues and health issues kept him from playing live for a few years, but Schwartz returned to the stage for a 75th birthday show and an impromptu jam at Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with Joe Walsh and The Arcs, featuring Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys. As of 2016, Schwartz has brought his celebrated guitar playing — and preacher-style stage presence — back to Cleveland bars regularly and has gone back into a Nashville studio with Auerbach.
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