In court he plays it straight....

It’s chatty and informal inside Glendale Municipal Court Division Five as Judge Charles E. Horan interviews prospective jurors. About midway through the afternoon hearing, Horan asks a young man who has served on a number of other juries whether anything in those past experiences would turn him off from serving again.

“It was boring,” the juror responds.

“Boring?” Horan says with mock incredulity while eyeing appreciatively the other panelists who had broken into quiet giggles. “I notice you brought your Walkman.”

“Yeah,” the man responds. “I listen to Ozzie.”

“Ozzie! Ozzie Osborne? There’s the door,” Horan quips. Later, he welcomes the man to serve “just as long as you don’t listen to Ozzie during the trial.”

Horan himself promises to refrain from indulging his own love for rock ‘n’ roll while on the bench. After hours, the ban is lifted as he practices and performs lead guitar with his rock group, Use a Guitar, Go to Prison.

Horan, who prefers the name “Chuck” outside chambers, said he knows of no other rock ‘n’ roll judge, let alone one enamored of Rolling Stone bad boy Mick Jagger.

“There was a time when I was between 13 and 20 that I wanted to be just like him,” Horan, 38, admits with a laugh. “I would have traded places with him in a second.”

Things have changed since then. Marriage, parenthood and an appointment 14 months ago to the Glendale Municipal Court have shifted his priorities a bit. Still, he said, he thoroughly enjoys live stage performances.

Horan took up guitar in 1975 during law school at USC. Six years later, he formed Use a Guitar, Go to Prison with Los Angeles attorneys Don Randall and Mike Yamamoto, Santa Monica legal secretary Sandy Koplof, Santa Monica landscaper Jeff Wells, Woodland Hills stereo consultant Rich Lamonico and Horan’s wife, Deb, who is on a few months musical hiatus until the birth of the couple’s second child. Pete Servent, a Hollywood computer programmer, recently joined the group. Every band member sings except Horan.

“Once, Chuck sang ‘Louie, Louie’ at an art opening, and we all still remember that night,” Randall said with a laugh. Horan nods his head knowingly.

The band members practice monthly at Horan’s Glendale home, where he has set up a recording studio in what was once his living room. They perform every four to six weeks.

Their favorite haunt is Milly O’Mally’s in Santa Monica, an informal, neighborhood-style bar with a dance floor, pool table and large stage. On a recent Saturday night, Horan and his colleagues played their traditional repertoire of about 50 ‘60s and ‘70s classics at Milly O’Mally’s. Outfitted in casual stage attire--jeans, a black sweat shirt, white tennis shoes and an ever-present Camel Light cigarette dangling form his lips--Horan easily passed musical muster before a jury of his peers. Rousing renditions of “Johnny Be Good,” Stand By Me” and Horan’s favorite, the Stones’ “Brown Sugar” won kudos from dozens of attorneys and judges who packed the bar for a retirement party.

“They are a terrific band, and Chuck Horan is a great guitar player,” said Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael A. Tynan, who’s presiding over the Night Stalker murder trial. Tynan said while it is an anomaly for a judge to moonlight as a rock musician, he considers it in no way improper.

“He’s got a whale of a job, a great band and he should be doing it,” Tynan said simply. His only complaint: “Horan smokes too much.”

Milly O’Mally, owner of the bar, ranks Use A Guitar, Go To Prison among her favorites. In fact, she wishes they would play for her every night instead of about once every six weeks.

“These guys have lots of personality and people love them,” she said. “They have fun on stage and they talk to people.”

O’Mally said few patrons are aware of the group’s legal bent. And next to no one knows that the lead guitarist is a judge. Unsuspecting patrons greet that information with a universal reaction: raised eyebrows and a laugh.

“Really? Naw. Really?” said one visitor from Ireland.

“I think he’s really cute,” said a female patron. “I can’t believe he’s a judge.”

Hard to Believe

Courtroom visitors, by contrast, find it hard to believe that the judge is a rock ‘n’ roll aficionado.

Bob Tohey, 19, of Tujunga was waiting, somewhat nervously, outside Horan’s court recently where he was to appear for a traffic violation. When told that Horan plays lead guitar in a rock group, Tohey broke into a relieved smile.

“This guy? Does he really?” he asked. “I guess that makes me feel a little better about going into court. I don’t know why, but it does.”

Horan seems genuinely surprised by such reactions. Only when pressed does he concede that his after-hours pastime is a touch out of the ordinary, but he shrugs it off with a simple explanation.

“What makes it strange is that it’s statistically unusual,” he said.

Horan admits that he was concerned those stats would turn against him in November, 1987.

That was when he was under consideration for his present seat on the Glendale Municipal Court. The Governor’s Judicial Review Panel is a conservative lot, and there was no telling what preconceptions they’d have about a prosecuting attorney from Los Angeles who picks a mean rendition of “Honky Tonk Woman.” So there was only one thing for Horan to do, he said, and that was to play it straight.

No Problem

“When I went to the interviews, I laid it out right in front and nobody had a problem with it,” Horan said. Then, without missing a beat, he added jokingly, “I just asked them how they’d feel if I shaved my head and wore a safety pin in my nose.”

Off stage Horan bears no resemblance to a punk rocker or, for that matter, a rocker of any kind. He’s clean-shaven and wears his dark hair clipped neatly several inches above his collar.

“I used to have long hair in college,” he said, “but like it better this way.”

These days, the closest he gets to long locks is a white powder wig that dangles from a coatrack in his chambers. Sharply contrasting with that old-world judicial headgear is an electric guitar propped against a nearby wall. Horan said he rarely gets a spare moment to pluck a tune. Still, the guitar fulfills for him a more important symbolic purpose--that of keeping his life in perspective.

“I’ve been dragging that thing around for years as a reminder of other things,” he said.

In his first year as a judge, Horan has won approval from his Glendale colleagues. They describe him as a fair-minded, tough jurist who, despite his often unconventional, lighthearted approach, maintains order in the court.

Horan, meanwhile, said he’ll keep doing what he’s doing and will hope for just one thing more from colleagues and the governor’s appointment officials: “That they still have their sense of humor when I apply for Superior Court.”