The Charlatans are an English rock band formed in the West Midlands in 1988. The current line-up comprises lead vocalist Tim Burgess, guitarist Mark Collins, bassist Martin Blunt and keyboardist Tony Rogers.

All the band’s thirteen studio albums have charted in the top 40 of the UK Albums Chart, three of them being number ones. They have also had twenty-two top 40 singles and four top 10 entries in the UK Singles Chart, including the hits “The Only One I Know” and “One to Another”.

he band were formed in the West Midlands by bassist Martin Blunt, who recruited fellow West Midlanders Rob Collins (keyboards), Jon Brookes (drums), Jon Day (Jonathan Baker) (guitar) and singer-guitarist Baz Ketley. Ketley left the band and was replaced by singer Tim Burgess.

Although the Charlatans would later become popularly associated with the Madchester scene, the band’s early demos recorded in 1988 in Birmingham and Dudley already evidenced the sound that the band ultimately became famous for, dominated by Collins’s Hammond organ but underpinned by the driving rhythm section of Blunt’s powerful running bass and Brookes’s drumming. With their sound – fusing 1960s soul, R&B and garage rock – inherited from Blunt’s earlier 1982 band Makin’ Time, the band saw themselves firmly in the West Midlands tradition of hard-edged soul and R&B that included Birmingham bands The Spencer Davis Group and early Dexys Midnight Runners.

Although the name The Charlatans was already being used when the original members of the band were still located in the West Midlands, many sources state that they formed in Northwich, Cheshire. This is because the band relocated to the home town of new lead singer Tim Burgess (who was born in Salford, but lived in Northwich from an early age) before the 1990 release of The Charlatans’ debut single “Indian Rope”, on the band’s own Dead Dead Good Records label. Thus based on the definition of hometown used by Guinness World Records the band was formed in Northwich, and consequently Northwich is recorded as their home town in such publications as British Hit Singles & Albums. One of the band’s earliest known live performances was supporting The Stone Roses at the London School of Economics on 2 December 1988.