Charlie Colin Dead at 58: American bassist, Guitarist and Founding member of Train Dies After falling in shower

Charlie Colin, 58, was an American musician. He was the bassist for the rock band Train. He also played guitar and provided background vocals for many other bands after his departure from the group in 2003. Colin began playing guitar at about eight when he lived in Virginia. Later, his family moved to Newport Beach, California. At Newport Harbor High School surfing, playing water polo, and the guitar became his constant companions

Colin attended University of Southern California to explore his artistic gifts; then he transferred halfway to focus primarily on his musical gifts at Berklee College of Music in Boston. Attending Berklee got Colin fully immersed in music. He started playing with seniors for lessons and so he could learn more. Pat Metheny was quite a discovery, as well as other kinds of music discovered during Berklee. Shortly afterwards, Colin got an offer from some friends to go to Singapore to write and play jingles.

Colin was one of the original members of Train, which initially consisted of Pat Monahan, Rob Hotchkiss, Scott Underwood and Jimmy Stafford. Charlie Colin, a founding member of the group, Charlie slipped and fell in the shower while house-sitting for a friend in Brussels, Belgium. He was 58. While circumstances around his death are scarce, sources told TMZ that no one found Colin until his friends returned home from their trip five days ago. His sister confirmed his passing to Variety.

As bassist for the band, Colin contributed to the group’s first three albums: 1999’s eponymous debut, 2001’s “Drops of Jupiter” and “My Private Nation.” He and the band had breakthrough success as a quintet with the 2001 hit “Drops of Jupiter (Tell Me),” which hit No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy for best rock song and best instrumental arrangement accompanying vocalist(s). Originally from Newport Beach, CA, the musician initially met fellow Train founding member Hotchkiss when he was in the seventh grade, and the two separately went on to attend Berklee School of Music where Colin studied jazz composition guitar. After moving to Los Angeles, Hotchkiss extended an invitation to Colin to join one of his bands, which had signed a deal with PolyGram Records.

Colin, Hotchkiss and Stafford formed the group Apostles before breaking up. After traveling the world, Colin returned Stateside and joined the newly formed Train around 1996. Alongside Train, he toured the world and had mainstream success before leaving the band in 2003 due to substance abuse. “There was a lot of things that led to me leaving, but it really escalated into it,” Colin said in a 2023 interview with Delphine’s Circle. “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.”

In the time since, Colin played with hard rock bands including Slipknot and Puddle of Mudd, and reunited with Hotchkiss in 2015 to form the band Painbirds alongside Tom Luce. In 2017, Colin formed the Side Deal with Sugar Ray’s Stan Frazier and the PawnShop Kings’ Joel and Scott Owen. At the time of his death, he served as musical director for the Newport Beach Film Festival per his social media profiles.