American rock singer Marcie Michelle Free (born Mark Edward Free) has passed away at the age of 71. With her phenomenal voice, she stood right at the top of the AOR scene! Marcie was best known for her work with King Kobra, Signal and Unruly Child.
Free started singing professionally at 19, while living in Flint (Michigan). In 1975 she moved to Las Vegas, and in 1979 her path led her on to Los Angeles.
In 1983 she met drummer Carmine Appice, shortly after Appice got the boot from Ozzy’s backing band. He was already cooking up his own project, King Kobra, and offered Marcie the job of full-time singer. Even though King Kobra started out as a standalone project, Appice decided to turn it into a proper band. So in 1984 King Kobra signed a deal with Capitol Records. With King Kobra, Free recorded two albums, “Ready to Strike” and “Thrill of a Lifetime”, and in November 1986 she decided to leave the band to chase other musical interests.
In 1987 producer Peter McIan, with the help of Erik Scott (keyboardist, bassist and producer) and Mark Baker (songwriter), started shaping a solo project called The Fugitive Kind. The band also brought in drummer Jan Uvena. Free joined later, and then Ron Fair, at the time EMI Records’ new senior A&R rep, renamed the band Signal. Before the name Signal stuck, Free had unsuccessfully pitched several alternative names, among them Unruly Child, which she later used for another band. In 1989 Signal released one album on EMI, “Loud and Clear”. The record featured a number of outside songwriters, and Free wasn’t heavily involved in writing the songs for Loud and Clear. Signal was short-lived: soon after the release of their only album, EMI’s top brass cut Signal loose from the label and spent no money on promoting the record. Free left Signal in October 1990, and the band broke up shortly afterwards.
In 1987 producer Peter McIan teamed up with bassist, keyboardist and composer Mark Baker and began laying the groundwork for a solo project called The Fugitive Kind. Drummer Jan Uvena joined them. Free came in as the final piece of the puzzle. Ron Fair, A&R man at EMI Records, made the last call and renamed the band Signal. Before that move, Free had already pitched Unruly Child, among other names, to Fair. In 1989 Signal put out a single, solitary album on EMI, titled “Loud and Clear”. The record featured a number of outside songwriters, so Free didn’t leave any particular songwriting stamp on it. It was a short-lived fling with the label, which dropped the band soon after the album came out, and didn’t put in nearly enough money to actually promote the record. Free left Signal in October 1990, and the band broke up shortly afterwards. Still, “Loud And Clear” is considered one of the finest albums in the AOR genre.
Anyway, back in 1990 Free teamed up with guitarist Bruce Gowdy and keyboardist Guy Allison and co-founded Unruly Child. In 1991 Unruly Child signed with Atlantic/Interscope Records and in 1992 released their self-titled debut album. In 1993 Free contributed vocals to the lead track for the action flick “Best of the Best II”, a song called (To Be) The Best of the Best. Also in 1993, a solo album came out on the independent British label Now & Then Records. It was reissued in 1998 under the title “Long Way From Home” by the Italian label Frontiers Music Srl.
Unruly Child, who lost their Atlantic/Interscope deal that year, decided to rename themselves Twelve Pound Sledge. They wrote new material in the hope of landing a deal with another American label. That never happened, although songs from those sessions were later released in 1995 as Marcie Free’s second solo album, “Tormented”, which came out on independent labels in Germany and Japan.
In September 2009 Free, Gowdy and Allison reunited as Unruly Child and signed a recording deal with Frontiers Records. In 2010 they released the album “Worlds Collide”. It was followed in 2014 by “Down The Rabbit Hole”, which came out on their own label, Unruly Records. Three more albums followed: “Can’t Go Home” (2017), “Big Blue World” (2019) and “Our Glass Home” (2020).
Free liked to cite Aretha Franklin as one of her biggest inspirations. She was also strongly influenced by artists such as The Four Seasons, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, Grand Funk Railroad, Three Dog Night, Smokey Robinson and Led Zeppelin.
Marcie Free’s voice was highly respected not only in the rock world but in pop rock too. Among others, she lent her vocals to albums by David Cassidy, Desmond Child, Julio Iglesias, Bobby Kimball and Venus & Mars.
