Charlie Colin, a founding member of the band Train, has died at the age of 58. According to the New York Post, Colin passed away after slipping and falling in the shower while house-sitting for a friend in Brussels. His friends discovered him when they returned home from their trip, as reported by his mother.
Colin was in Belgium to teach a master class at a conservatory and was also involved in making a film, his mother shared with the new outlet.
Train is famous for hit songs like “Drops of Jupiter” and “Hey, Soul Sister.” Colin was the bass player who co-founded the band in the 1990s along with Pat Monahan, Rob Hotchkiss, Jimmy Stafford, and Scott Underwood. Their breakout album was released in 1998 and was simply titled “Train.”
Originally from Newport Beach, California, Colin met Hotchkiss in seventh grade. They both attended Berklee College of Music before returning to the West Coast and forming Train. In an interview on Dan Clark’s podcast in April 2022, Colin talked about his early training and the band’s rise to fame in the late 1990s.
“In essence, I was trained since I was a child. We rebranded and in 1996, we got things going well. By the end of that decade, we had hits, the Grammys, stadiums and all that stuff,” Colin said.
Colin reflected on his life and career, saying, “On the one hand, I was more experienced and worldly than a lot of my friends, but on the other hand, I never had to go out there and figure it out the hard way, because I always had something that I was good enough at that led the way.”
He left Train in 2003, after the band won two Grammy Awards in 2002. His departure was reportedly due to substance abuse issues. Pat Monahan, the lead singer of Train, mentioned at the time, “Charlie is one incredible bass player, but he was in a lot of pain, and the way he was dealing with it was very painful for everyone else around him.”
Colin later discussed the reasons for his departure in an interview with “Delphine’s Circle,” explaining how the nonstop schedule and pressures of band life contributed to his decision to leave.
We never took a break. We drove our tour bus into the parking lot of the recording studio for our second and third record. In Philadelphia, we made our one-and-a-half record … We just never stopped. It’s kind of one those things where you feel like this is too good to be true. Most bands have a lifespan of a few years,” he said.
After leaving Train, Colin continued his music career by playing with bands like Slipknot and Puddle of Mudd. He reunited with Rob Hotchkiss in 2015 to form the band Painbirds and later formed another band, Side Deal, in 2017 with Stan Frazier of Sugar Ray and Joel and Scott Owen of PawnShop Kings.
“When I left Train, I went out because my ego and my identity were all at stake and I was thinking about that too much. I went out and played with all these hard rock bands. I went on a tour with Slipknot. You can imagine the guys wearing masks and stuff. These are the hardest rock bands in the world,” the bassist said.
“I played with all these different groups … If I … put myself into it, and find something within me to connect with the people I’m playing with and be of use, add value to it in any way I could, I don’t care what I’m playing. I swear. I don’t mind if I’m singing, playing guitar, piano, bass, whatever.”
Colin’s final Instagram post was a tribute to his mother on Mother’s Day, where he described her as “a true artist” and “the loveliest most intelligent woman.”
