Although Dare’s sound stabilised at the end of the 90s, the Oldham-based band spent the first few years of their career building expectations, only to then go and knock them down again. Following leader, frontman and keyboard player Darren Wharton’s two-year spell as a member of Thin Lizzy, in 1988 Dare emerged with their debut Out Of The Silence – still talked of in hushed tones within AOR circles – only to then reinvent themselves as an altogether harderrocking beast with follow-up Blood From Stone. It was 1991, and the band’s label, A&M, craved their own equivalent of Guns N’ Roses or Whitesnake. This enforced change in direction would ultimately sink the first incarnation of Dare, although Wharton maintains that they never broke up. Then with their third album they took another sharp left turn. With Wharton surrounded by a new set of faces, 1998’s Calm Before The Storm was full of the music that really moved him: atmospheric, Celtic-infused melodies, delivered in emotional tones.
Talking to Classic Rock for our very first issue, in 1998, Wharton insisted: “When I go into HMV I don’t want to be filed under ‘heavy metal’ any more. I want to be in with Pink Floyd and Genesis.”
Nearly a quarter of a century later, with their
