Ed Hale (born October 20, 1974) is an American writer, singer-songwriter-recording artist. His hit singles include "I Walk Alone", "New Orleans Dreams" and "Scene in San Francisco", which all landed in the Billboard Top 40 Charts in the Adult Contemporary radio format.
Hale was formerly known as Eddie Darling throughout the early 1990s, and is the lead singer of the American modern rock musical group Ed Hale and The Transcendence, formerly called Transcendence. He also performs, records and releases solo albums. He is currently signed to the Dying Van Gogh record label and the BMG subsidiary label Fieldhouse Music. Hale is frequently referred to as "The Ambassador" by fans and the press due to Hale's penchant for global volunteer and diplomatic travel, exploring other cultures, and for singing in and speaking multiple languages. Along with his native English, Hale speaks Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Hebrew and Persian.
Early life
Hale is a second generation American who is half English and half Italian. He was born in Paris, France, while his father was serving in the military. Hale started playing piano on his own at age four, allegedly inspired by seeing the film Sound of Music. Hale comes from a long line of musicians including his great uncle, the Sands Hotel bandleader, producer and arranger Antonio Morelli. However, it has been reported that Hale got his start in music after his mother spoke with psychic Micki Dahne who recommended that she buy her creative yet troubled son a guitar in order to "keep him out of trouble, out of jail, and alive long enough to see his eighteenth birthday".
Music career
Hale released his first album, Eddie, at the age of 17 on the Alarming Talent record label under the moniker Eddie Darling. He was discovered while still in high school by author and talent agent Murray Silver who penned the book Great Balls of Fire – The Jerry Lee Lewis Story and produced the Eddie album. Hale's first professional live concert performance was opening for the band R.E.M. at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, Georgia in front of 5,000 people. It was after this that Hale formed the band Broken Spectacles.
Broken Spectacles – formed with childhood friend Matthew Sabatella, got their name from the cover of the Yoko Ono album Season of Glass, which featured a photo of the shattered and blood-stained glasses of slain Beatle's singer John Lennon. The band's debut album was engineered and produced by audio engineer and producer Brendan O'Brien. A failed attempt by Peter Gabriel drummer Jerry Marotta to produce the band's second album produced mixed results and was never completed, though Hale has stated that working with Marotta was one of the most important and influential experiences in his musical career.
After the breakup of Broken Spectacles, Hale toured the East Coast as a solo artist and ended up moving to New York City. While there he recorded 12 demos for Sony Records which were never officially released by the record label. Ten of those demos were eventually remixed and digitally remastered and released on the Acoustic in New York album in 2000. It was also at this time that Hale began to discover World Music, especially the MPB and Tropicalismo music of Brazil and went to live in Brazil to study the language of Portuguese and learn how to play Bossa Nova, doing several live performances and appearing on Brazilian television.
The original name for Ed Hale's second group was Ed Hale and The Troubadours of Transcendence. The name was shortened to Ed Hale and Transcendence for the band's debut album Rise and Shine released in 2002, and eventually shortened to simply Transcendence by the band's second album release Sleep With You. The group originally had eleven members and was meant to be performing and recording what Hale was then calling "Planet Music."
Ed Hale and Transcendence first caught national attention by combining World Music themes with an eccentric modern rock that they called "planet music." Hale's consciousness raising lyrics and the fact that he sang in no less than five languages on the band's debut album Rise and Shine – sometimes within the same song – also added to the group's unique appeal. The song Better Luck Next Time from that album is still played on college and rock radio in the United States and Europe.