Grand Funk Railroad...?

spantini

COO of me, inc.
I got a little excited when I heard Grand Funk Railroad was doing a 50th anniversary tour, then I see it's their current funky railroad lineup without Mark Farner and with 3 other dudes. The comments at the end of the Yahoo! article are brutal. I'm afraid I'll have to consider them a tribute band also.



Interview

Interview
 
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I saw GFR in late '70, GAWD DANG they were loud! The opening act was Bloodrock, and I thought they blew GFR off the stage. Its not that Grand Funk wasn't good, but Bloodrock was more interesting to me.

Many years later I saw GFR at a casino. Brewer was a wild man, hoppng all over the stage. For a guy in his late 50s, it was crazy to watch. Bruce Klulik was on guitar and he was rock solid. I can't remember who was singing with them then, but it was a pretty good show.

I think the problem is more with Farner than the Don and Mel. I don't know if it's just ego, if he's a control freak or what, but he's been down a few different roads in his career. He's rejoined GFR a couple of times, but didn't stick around. Now he's got Mark Farners American Band. It's his band, he doesn't have to share with the other guys.
 
GFR isn't GFR without Farner since he was the lead singer, guitarist and principal song writer for GFR. Farner stupidly agreed to the band becoming a corporation suggested by Mel the bass player and then Mel and the drummer voted Farner out of the band. That was a dick move. I know someone that knows Farner and worked with him and has never said a negative word about him.

the good news for me is that Farner is from Michigan and will be playing near me this month.
 
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I watched a Mark Farner interview on that classic rock heroes or whatever it's called. I don't know that much about them, GFR, but it was a pretty good interview. Yeah, I don't think them boys play well together anymore, suits over band name, bad blood, typical stuff. We did used to do American Band in a band I was in years and years ago.

Boring story alert :facepalm: ....

A night off we weren't gigging, me, the other guitar player, and vocalist went to see a band kind of way out from our central location, not too terribly far. We were what you might call wide open balls to the wall at the time, so stopped off at the liquor store to pick up a little primer, for the drive. Pint bottles for me and the guitar player, brown liquor for me, tequila for him, and the lead singer got a 5th(!) of Vodka, mixing screwdrivers. Other guitar player was a really young guy. There at the bar was this firey hot redhead older chick than he who had set sights on him. She had a friend. So we all dapped out to the car a couple of times during the evening, get high and polish off our pints, do a little touchy feely. After show, the nights young, come on out to my crib! They agreed they would follow us. We were in the guitar players car, a real piece of shit hoopty. He was drunker than snot, so I volunteered to drive...being, ahem, more sober. So we're heading down the highway and I'm noticing there are no dash lights. It wouldn't have mattered anyway because the speed ammeter didn't work. So I'm checking the rearview every once in a while figuring if they're still behind me I'm not going too fast. I was wrong. Then I see the overhead blue lights, "I'm goin' down boys, it's the law". State trooper. Lead singer dumps a big gulp sized screwdriver right onto the floorboard, get rid of the evidence, you see. There was no hiding it, I was drunker than snot, no need to insult the guy by trying to weasel out or lie. "Sir, I am too drunk to drive. Is there any way I can leave this vehicle right here and we go up to that hotel there and get us a room?" Another trooper steps up, apparently 2 had been following us...for a while. "I can smell the liquor all the way over here. Is he going to be charged with alluding?" Ouch. The older first trooper told the younger guy I got it, and the other trooper left. I go into the whole story, not my car, dash lights out, gauging my speed by the girls following us, drunk and shouldn't be driving, can we get a hotel room. Totally honest. He acknowledges he saw the girls turn off some time back, other than that he's strictly business. We sit in the patrol car, me blowing one of those old fashioned breath tests. "Ooo, that's getting hot, how does that thing work?", I says. He says, "Well it's a chemical reaction, see how it's changing color there, that means the person blowing in it is above the legal limit to operate a motor vehicle." "Oh, that's pretty interesting. Sir, I know I'm too drunk to drive, can we just go up the hill there and get us a hotel room for the night?" Heck, we was almost pals at that point, the kind of pals that don't lie to each other. "Listen", he says, "I'm gonna write you up for the 2 bald tires you got on that vehicle, but you boys go up there and get you a room, call somebody. Whatever you do, if I see that car moved tonight, I'm comin' for you." Yes sir, yes sir."

So we climb the hill to get off the highway, and start heading through a bad part of town. Walking, trying to corral the leader to go in the same direction, all drunker than hell. Guitar player begins to sing...

"We're an American Band. We're an American Band. We got 2 bald tires but at least we're not behind bires, we're an American Band."

See what he did there? Long way around to get there, but I thought it was a fairly clever line. I'm a sharer.
 
I suppose I could look it up...

Whats the rundown? Mark Farner is/was sort of the face of the band, guitar player, sang lead, but the drummer had a strong voice if not stronger? Is the drummer still in the group now?
 
I suppose I could look it up...

Whats the rundown? Mark Farner is/was sort of the face of the band, guitar player, sang lead, but the drummer had a strong voice if not stronger? Is the drummer still in the group now?

LoL @ everyone has me on ignore.

Fair okay, I reckon.
 
Sorry man, I'm not playing it off, I'll check it out sometime.

I mean from a fans perspective, a bit of a rundown. I've never been that exposed to GFR. I seem to recall some vids where who I thought was singing the song, front man and in my mind viewed as the face of GFR, it was actually the drummer singing? The guy has a strong voice, if I recall correctly. I mean, is it incorrect to assume it was Farner's band, he was the guy? Let's just take "Some kind of Wonderful", is that the drummer or Farner?
 
Okay, then. Sheesh, I wonder that those guy's hearing is like these days? I guess to be fair, no doubt there's quite a few old mofos shuffling around goin', "huh?", "waht?", "pardon?" :)
 
Didn't they also at some point go from Grand Funk Railroad to just Grand Funk? What's up with that?
It was just easier to say Grand Funk. The real name of the band was always Grand Funk Railroad. The second album was just named Grand Funk. It's not like Chicago, where the real Chicago Transit Authority bitched about the band's name, so they just changed it to Chicago, since they all grew up there.

I've gone back and watched a few of the interviews with Farner and Brewer about the breakup. I'm sure there's plenty of blame to go around. I remember when Farner decided to go the Christian Contemporary route, and figured that was the root of the breakup. Farner says Brewer quit first, but I think that was the second go-round. There had to be something going on between the guys to just walk away from a very successful (money making) band. I wonder if Farner kept the publishing rights to his songs, or if those went to the "corporation". That would be a dick move to put the rights in a 3 person entity, then vote out the guy who wrote all the songs and take the rights from him.

It reminded me a bit of when Kerry Livgren left Kansas to move to a more religious area, but I don't remember there being bad feelings amongst the members. In fact, quite a few members of the band played on Kerry's solo album.
 
Okay, then. Sheesh, I wonder that those guy's hearing is like these days? I guess to be fair, no doubt there's quite a few old mofos shuffling around goin', "huh?", "waht?", "pardon?" :)
Funny story, at the 1970 concert, my cousin sat right by the mixing board. He was talking to the person working the board. The guy said that when he could feel the cloth on his shirt vibrating, he knew is was "loud enough". Nobody back then carried a dB meter around. We were in a basketball arena that seats 20,000, and it was LOUD!

By the same token, 50 years ago, I don't remember any factories requiring hearing protection. Lots of factory workers worked in 90-100dB environments for 40 hours a week. When I started doing health/safety stuff, that was one of the things that was checked. We had ear plug dispensers by the door. We had to do hearing check every couple of years. You BETTER have in ear plugs if you walked out on the shop floor, even if it was only for 2 minutes!
 
Trivia question... (no fair going to Wiki for the answer)

Before GFR, in what band did bassist Mel Schacher play?
 
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