Funk, fame and fortune

As he's not only a dad but a grand(funk)dad, singer-songwriter-guitarist Mark Farner kicks off our interview with an age joke-pun: "I’m doing but not mildewing."

At 69, turning 70 in September, father to five sons with Leisa, his wife of four decades, Farner's probably not your average Midwestern dude: He wears a shirt more often now, on stage, but his hair's still long and guitars still loud. Mark Farner's American Band, leaning heavily on Grand Funk Railroad years plays  Saturday at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre.

Though he and original trio partners Mel Schacher and Don Brewer split the rails in the late '70s -- GFR reunited briefly in the early '80s and late '90s -- Farner knows what fans want, and delivers with the American Band: Lots of the old melodic but riff-heavy foot-stompin' music like, well "Footstompin' Music," "Are You Ready," "Rock and Roll Soul," "Mean Mistreater," "Aimless Lady," "We're An American Band," "Bad Time," "Some Kind of Wonderful," "The Loco-Motion" and more. Some of those date back to the late '60s when the power trio from Flint, Michigan, broke through with raucous live shows, especially at the seminal 1969 Atlanta Pop Festival, which helped them sign with Capitol Records. The double-platinum double-disc "Grand Funk Live Album" from 1970 paved the way for the band to sell out Shea Stadium, faster than the Beatles did. The group's first nine studio albums sold gold or platinum; by '72 GFR already had a compilation album, "Mark, Don & Mel: 1969-1971," another gold.

Critics didn't love their earnest, direct, fun-loving style as much as fans did. Though Rolling Stone critic David Fricke once wrote "You cannot talk about rock in the 1970s without talking about Grand Funk Railroad," the hippest, and hippiest, publications sneered at or tried to ignore GFR's raw, rootsy popularity. 

But with images honed first by svengali manager Terry Knight -- Farner and Brewer met while playing for Terry Knight and the Pack -- and enhanced by album covers prominently featuring their faces, Farner's framed by hair draping nearly to his usually exposed navel, the boys became pop faces as much as rock stars. Homer J. Simpson proselytizes frequently about his favorite band: "You guys back there know Grand Funk, right?" he says to muttering back-seat kids, as he blasts "Shinin' On" out the car stereo. "Nobody knows the band Grand Funk? The wild, shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drum work of Don Brewer? Oh, man!"

Their best-known, and possibly still best-loved song from those early days, was the elegiac "I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home)," which in album form and style ran closer to two songs, running 10 minutes total, with long instrumental passages and orchestral backing over its closing minutes. The shortened radio version went to No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, but album-oriented rock and progressive rock stations picked up and spun the full track. It's been a classic rock staple since.

Though songs such as "Footstompin' Music" and "Rock n' Roll Soul" rose up into the mid-levels, producer Todd Rundgren polished GFR to its first No. 1 single, "We're an American Band." Never shy about mixing in beloved R&B and blues-rock covers, GFR also scored chart-toppers with its versions of Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "The Loco-Motion," and The Soul Brothers Six's "Some Kind of Wonderful." The group's last Top 10 was Farner's pop-ish "Bad Time," from 1974. Recent Mark Farner's American Band setlists show them playing all the above and more: He polled audiences, got about 2,700 responses, and pulls set lists of 14 or 15 from the 40 or so top choices.

Little to none of it would have happened if Farner hadn't blown out a knee.

"What inspired me (to pick up a guitar) was I couldn’t play football anymore because I had a knee injury, couldn’t run track," he said in a phone interview in July. "And I lived to hear my name called on that loudspeaker: 'Farner, No. 66 on that tackle.' I’d be prancing."

His mom rented an acoustic guitar, which was not the finest instrument known to man.

"It would have been better as a bow and arrow, the strings were so far away from the neck," Farner said, laughing. He took about six lessons, then played all over the house, when anyone would come over. Even when he wasn't plugged in, he sang. And yes, he danced: He and his sister entered and won dance contests, moving to the Motown sounds of nearby Detroit, or the raw three-chord rock perfected by Chuck Berry.

"When I listen to music today, I’ll listen to the old soul and R&B music I used to dance to," he said. "It's got a good message, it's positive, it still moves."

Running with the Pack

Farner sang and played guitar in Knight's band, that later became the Fabulous Pack. Money issues arose with management, as so often happens with young bands, and when the group returned home from promotional gigs, two of the guys' wives were threatening divorce.

"I told Brewer (drummer in the various incarnations of The Pack) 'You know dude, we just need to do a three piece. And we need to get somebody not married,' " he said. While sitting in a Flint musicians' union waiting room, Farner heard a bass player rattling the walls. It turned out to be Schacher, who'd been playing with Question Mark and the Mysterians.

GFR broke through as that power trio, building mostly around Farner's early songs, like "Heartbreaker." When in the studio, Farner would stay behind as the others took a break, headed up to McDonald's for french fries and a malt. By the time the others returned, he'd usually have some riff, or a basic jam.

"The first three or four albums were written like that, writing on the road, in hotel rooms," he said.

With fame, aside from the joy of hearing his name over loudspeakers again, Farner began to ponder the potential inherent in singing for millions.

"I began thinking of what influence the Beatles had on the world, and I wanted to be responsible, make people think about things that were going on," he said. Wary studio execs warned them off songs such as "People Let's Stop the War," second track on 1971's "E Pluribus Funk" -- released in a silver film made to resemble a large coin, with Mark, Don and Mel stamped on its face -- in fear programmers would blacklist the band as too political. Though they didn't name Nixon directly, Farner sang: "If we had a president that did just what he said/The country would be just all right/And no one would be dead/From fighting in a war/that causes big men to get rich./There's money in them war machines...."

"I just sang from my heart, and people loved it," he said. "We can't just take take take take; we've gotta give back."

While vehemently anti-war, Farner remained avidly pro-veteran, performing and singing on their behalf. His father was a tank driver in the Seventh Armored Division, earning four bronze medals. His mother was the first woman in the U.S. to weld on tanks in Flint. He's also been outspoken on behalf of Native Americans; his great-grandmother was full-blooded Cherokee, and Farner's been honored by Lakota and Cherokee nations for his work.

"My heart goes out to every indigenous person that had the roots of their tribe here first," he said. "The white man brought his firewater with him; after the first drink, your judgment just bounced."

The last track on "We're an American Band" was Farner's "Loneliest Rider": "None of the stories in the schoolbooks said it/the truth is gone and they're tryin' to forget it./The history books are all one-sided/the truth is gone and they're trying to hide it./Who had the land 'till we came around?/The Indian made his life from the ground./And what about the boy that this story's about?/Where his tee-pee once stood there now is a town."

A song that reaches hearts

Message songs mingled with the party-down rock and lovesick blues, but "Closer to Home (I'm Your Captain)" became something else entirely.

"I went to bed praying, the prayer my mother taught us six kids," he said. "We always put a PS on the end, praying for kinfolks, cousins. ... That one night I added the PS, 'God, will you just give me a song that will reach people's hearts?'"

He woke at 3 a.m., scribbling words down on a pad he kept next to his bed, in that suspended state between awake and asleep. As he wrote, the words didn't mean anything to him; at first, he didn't even know it was a song.

"When I got up the following morning, I grabbed my George Washburn guitar, the best-sounding guitar I ever had, and just kind of let my hands do what they were doing. I took it to rehearsal that day, and both Don and Mel looked at me and said 'Farner, this song's a hit,' " he said.

Arranger and trumpeter Tommy Baker suggested strings and horns for the ending. When the boys in the band played it in the studio, they repeated the refrain over and over. Baker layered in the Cleveland Orchestra.

"Tommy Baker, this genius, gave us a wonderful gift," Farner said. "All those parts make the lyrical content much more expansive."

It evolved into a kind of story-song about what mutiny aboard ship. The endangered captain just wants to get home so he can kiss Mother Earth. A number of metaphors have been suggested, but Farner prefers to leave meaning open to each listener.

"This is before videos; everyone had their own video running in their heads," he said. "I think everybody that heard 'I'm Your Captain' had their own film running, whether it was a Vietnam veteran down in the hooch, covering up from grenades coming in on them ... whoever heard it, it conveyed an emotion. I've got so many people who have told me stories about that song; wish I could share them all. A lot of soldiers, told me 'Brother Mark, that song got me home.'

"It is still my favorite song. It is the one I thank God for, though I thank God for all of it," he said. "It sure does put a feather in your cap.

"For me, I chose to use it as motivation to write more songs that reach the heart. When we played Shea Stadium, when we sang 'I’m Your Captain,' the audience was actually singing so loud, they drowned us out."

That expanded sound hit the other guys differently. They wanted to add a fourth player, for more sonic possibilities. Farner disagreed, but was outvoted, so keyboard player Craig Frost joined Grand Funk -- the band temporarily dropped the "Railroad" -- for its 1972 album "Phoenix." They almost signed guitarist Peter Frampton, late of Humble Pie, but Frampton's solo contract kept with A&M Records kept him out of the group.

Although Farner had been the group's staple singer and songwriter, drummer Brewer wanted to step up, sing more, get more songwriting credits.

"It caused friction," Farner said. "It was more than that. It was jealousy because he always wanted to be the front man, wanted to be the one people were looking at."

When the drummer came forward with a proto-song about being an American band, Farner wrote some of the backbeat, some of the music, to Brewer's lyrics and chord structure. But, Farner said, Brewer asked for and got 100 percent writing credit.

"I said go ahead, trying to be a nice guy," Farner said. That's in spite of the fact that the drummer missed a key ingredient.

"When I wrote the drum-lick intro, I said 'This song has got to have a cowbell,'" Farner said. Brewer didn't even own one at the time. "I said, 'Pick six of them up, and we'll pick the best one of the six.'

Producer Rundgren honed their studio sound on the "We're an American Band" album, in a bit of hubristic prediction released with a gold cover, with limited gold vinyl editions, and its follow-up "Shinin' On," which itself was printed in 3-D, with viewing glasses built into the cover. Flair meant more to album design, in those days.

Funk and frictions

Even as hits continued to roll, frictions continued. Returning to the full Grand Funk Railroad name, the band released a couple of contractual-fulfillment discs in the live "Caught in the Act" and 1976's "Born to Die," which should have been a clear message, what with the quartet laid out in coffins on the cover. Revival came from an unlikely corner, as avant-garde Frank Zappa asked to produce a new disc, which became "Good Singin', Good Playin'." Despite crispness missing since the Rundgren days, the disc failed to make a lot of noise, and GFR disbanded formally. Farner went solo; the remaining three formed the band Flint. GFR reunited as a trio, minus Schacher and Frost, adding bass player Dennis Bellinger, in the early '80s. A pair of discs didn't chart well, though Farner's "Queen Bee" soared on the soundtrack to the animated film "Heavy Metal."

Though they reunited again in the '90s, frictions continued, and the band broke up again. Brewer and Schacher tour now as Grand Funk Railroad, with three others in place of Farner and Frost. Farner achieved success in Christian contemporary music, and toured for a couple of years with a pair of Beatles in Ringo's All-Starr Band, alongside Billy Preston (the keyboardist often called the "fifth Beatle"), Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, John Entwistle of the Who, Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals, and Starr's son, Zak Starkey.

Mark Farner's American Band includes Hubert “H-Bomb” Crawford on drums, who's also worked with James Brown, Cyndi Lauper, the Bar-Kays and others. Detroit's Bernie Palo plays keyboards, and Farner's brother Ricky plays bass. Most have played with Farner in one project or another since the '80s. 

Though faith is still large in his life, it's not explicit on stage. "We don't have to preach it; it's just the love that comes from us. ... My legacy is gonna be about love. The more I apply, the closer I get to it."

After all these years, dance is still a grand part of the Mark Farner funk.

"I call it putting on your stage face. By the time I get there, I’m psyched. I've been playing my guitar for an hour, to get in the mood. It's kind of like busting out of a dynamo.

"When the guy on the loudspeaker says, 'And here’s the man you’ve been waiting to see,' holy crap, man. I’d better be good," he said, laughing.