New England released one of the greatest AOR albums ever: Their career was derailed by the Pope

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When John Fannon thinks back to the heady days of 1979, when his band New England looked poised to become the next big thing in American rock, he remembers the precise moment when he believed that the dream would become a reality.

It happened as the band were travelling from their home town of Boston, Massachusetts to a gig in Denver, Colorado. Their debut single, Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya, a melodic rock anthem with a sky-scraping chorus, had just been released. It was a track made for radio, and DJs in Boston were playing the shit out of it. But for them to hear their song ringing out on an FM station near Denver, so far from home - that was something else.

“When those power chords came blasting through, it was a special moment,” Fannon recalls. “We knew we were getting airplay all over the country, but this was our first experience of hearing it outside of Boston. We all pulled off the road - our caravan, cars, tour bus and truck - and were dancing and cheering on the side of the highway. I will never forget that feeling of joy, excitement, happiness. On top of the world!”

In that moment, New England had so much going for them. Fannon, the guitarist and lead singer, was a brilliant songwriter whose love for The Beatles was evident in a sound akin to a hard-rocking Electric Light Orchestra. On the band’s self-titled debut album, Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya was one of many songs with genuine hit potential. And on a business level, the band had a powerful connection to one of America’s biggest rock acts – they were managed by Bill Aucoin, the savvy tactician who had guided Kiss to superstardom.

Kiss guitarist and vocalist Paul Stanley co-produced New England’s album alongside Mike Stone, famed for his work with Queen. And for their first nationwide US tour, following that headline show in Denver, the young band would play to thousands every night, opening for Kiss in arenas. As Paul Stanley tells Classic Rock now, all these years later: “New England was a terrific band, and Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya was a real tour de force, a great, great song.”

But for John Fannon and the other three guys in New England, the joy they experienced as they danced on the side of the freeway near Denver would be short-lived. Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya would climb to No.40 on the US Billboard chart, but no higher. The album would peak at No.50. And at a critical stage, their career would be derailed in the most unlucky and unlikely of scenarios - when their record company went bust after gambling on an album by, of all people, the Pope.

No matter how great New England were, and how well-connected, the band failed to make it big. “The book on New England is bittersweet,” Fannon says. “‘They should have been huge’ is a mantra I have heard for forty years. But it’s not a bad way to be remembered.”

It was in 1976 that Fannon put the band together with three other musicians he’d known for years on the Boston music scene: keyboard player Jimmy Waldo, bassist Gary Shea and drummer Hirsh Gardner.

The name of the band was not simply a reference to the region of the US they were from. It also signified where they were coming from - as Anglophiles inspired by The Beatles, Queen, Deep Purple, The Moody Blues and Procol Harum. “For us,” Fannon says, “the name New England was not only geographical, like Boston, Chicago, Kansas. It was defining us as a new breed of English music, and we liked that!”

In common with so many American musicians of his generation, Fannon had “an epiphany” as a teenager when he saw The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Two of The Beatles’ albums had a profound effect on him. “Rubber Soul began my appreciation of songwriting,” he says, “and Magical Mystery Tour was an awakening for me - creativity off the charts! The use of orchestral instruments and storytelling lyrics had a big impact on me."

In 1971, another key influence for Fannon came with the self-titled debut album by ELO. “That album was the final motivation I needed to aspire to be as good a songwriter as I could be,” he says. “New England definitely had a heavier side, but I always loved what orchestration could do to a song and a melody.”

Fannon honed his craft for another seven years before New England signed with Bill Aucoin on the recommendation of his VP Ric Aliberte. “Ric loved the band,” Fannon says. “He believed in us.” And when Aliberte took Paul Stanley to a band rehearsal, the Kiss star loved what he heard - an echo of the great British music that had resonated so powerfully in his own band.

“England was the holy land,” Stanley says. “The home of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who… so many great bands. And with New England it was clearly an Anglophile type of band. John was rooted in The Beatles, and being the writer and the singer that came across very strongly. You could also hear in New England the bands that The Beatles had influenced - it was like The Beatles filtered through ELO.”

As co-producer for New England, Stanley’s role model was Bob Ezrin, who had worked with Kiss on their 1976 album Destroyer, a big-production blockbuster that raised Kiss’s music to a whole new level. “Bob was a real producer,” Stanley says, “not just the guy turning the knobs. He was constructing the songs.”

“Paul and Mike Stone made a good team,” says Fannon, “a good balance of technical and musical input. Mike was an extraordinary engineer who captured the energy and power of the band, and Paul brought superstar energy. He gave us a lot of confidence.”

The bulk of the New England album was recorded in Los Angeles, where the band gained another famous admirer. Journey were recording in an adjacent room, and their singer Steve Perry would listen in to what New England were creating. “Steve told us he loved our sound,” Fannon says.

The band’s material had a broad range. The album’s opening track, Hello, Hello, Hello, was a glorious power-pop song so close to peak-era Jeff Lynne that they could have called it ELO, ELO, ELO. At the heavier end of the spectrum there was the fast-paced P.U.N.K. (Puny Undernourished Kid), of which Fannon says: “I wanted a song that was punkish musically, and thought it might be cool to do a lyric that was kind of a tongue-in-cheek message with some truth around the edges.”

The most important song - for the band, and for Fannon personally - was Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya. As he recalls of the night it was written: “A special person in my life was out in a very bad rain storm, and the song just came to me. The fears one has when you are worried about a loved one inspired the lyrics.”

As a result, Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya had an extraordinary depth of emotion, comparable to Boston’s worldwide smash More Than A Feeling. There was power in its heavy riff, there was melodic sophistication with rich vocal harmonies and the quivering sound of a Mellotron. But the track needed something more to make it perfect. And it was Paul Stanley who called it.

“Originally there was no guitar solo,” Fannon says, “because I was concerned the song was too long for radio. But Paul said: ‘It’s a rock song! You gotta have a guitar solo!’” When Fannon eventually nailed the solo, New England were in the old England - mixing the album at Trident Studios in London, on Paul Stanley’s orders. “My only prerequisite for doing the album,” Stanley says, “was that we mixed in London - a totally selfish decision because I loved that city so much.” And he laughs when he recalls how he ended up singing a harmony part in Don’t Ever Wanna Lose Ya, following a lighthearted spat with drummer Hirsh Gardner.

“Hirsh was a funny guy. But this one time, when he was singing backgrounds, I kept saying: ‘Hirsh, that’s not quite right.’ He was doing it over and over, until he finally he said: ‘Well why don’t you do it?’ And one take later it was done. So that shut him up in the nicest possible way.”

Touring with Kiss provided Fannon with more wonderful memories - playing to an audience of 60,000 at the Pontiac Silver Dome in Michigan, and thousands more over two nights at Madison Square Garden in New York. “That was the brightest highlight of our performing career,” he says. “The response we got from Kiss fans was incredible.”

But then came the fall, as sudden as it was inexplicable. First there was frustration. “We were puzzled,” Fannon says, “when our management and record label pulled us off the road to do a new album when we were killing it everywhere and Lose Ya was still going strong.” Then, some months later there was outright disaster. “The band’s record label, Infinity, had invested an astronomical sum in an album of speeches and songs in Polish by Pope John Paul II. When that album bombed, with returns approximated at one million, the label was bankrupted.

“We were in shock,” Fannon recalls. “The wheels were beginning to come off that express we had been on.” New England signed to Elektra Records for the release of a second album, Explorer Suite, in 1980. But the deal with Elektra quickly turned sour, and Explorer Suite got lost in the shuffle. As Fannon admits: “Going with Elektra was another huge mistake. There was a lengthy delay on the album release and the band lost momentum.”

A third album, Walking Wild, was recorded in just two weeks in 1981 with the renowned studio genius Todd Rundgren (Bat Out Of Hell et al) producing. Rundgren told Fannon: “This is a great record. Don’t let them screw it up!” But as Fannon recalls it: “Elektra had a lot of artists already at superstar status that didn’t require much effort. Unfortunately, bands still breaking did need some effort! But once again there was very little promotion for us.”

In 1982, a disillusioned Fannon pulled the plug on New England. “I felt the band was beginning to lose its chemistry. All the missteps and bad decisions had worn us down. It wasn’t fun any more.”

Following the split, Jimmy Waldo and Gary Shea formed Alcatrazz with guitar virtuoso Yngwie Malmsteen and ex-Rainbow singer Graham Bonnet. Fannon chose a different path, beginning as a writer of jingles for TV ads.

In all the years since the demise of New England, he has continued to work in various capacities. “Composer, sound designer and producer.” He now considers himself “semi-retired”. But in recent years the four original members of New England have reunited to perform live again, in Japan in 2016 and in the US in 2019. Fannon believes there is more to come.

“To this day we are still the best of friends,” he says. “So there’s a good chance we will do more shows. And I’ve been saying for years we may do some new music. That is still a possibility.”

The summer of 2023 brought an unexpected twist, when the intro of the title track from Explorer Suite was sampled in superstar rapper Travis Scott’s hit single Sirens. “It would be awesome if this gave New England exposure to a new generation,” Fannon says.

And whatever the future holds, he can be proud of what his band created in the past. That first New England record is a masterpiece, one of the greatest AOR albums of all time.

“If it wasn’t for a perfect storm of obstacles and misfortunes, we may have got to the top,” Fannon says. “We dedicated much of our youth to trying to make some great, timeless music… and we achieved that."

New England’s reissued self-titled debut album is out now via Rock Candy.