But who knows? Mebbe the guys were America’s answer to the Who, although I’ve never heard anything about it. The lyrics make Grand Funk sound like the Who, which I doubt they were: “Feelin’ good, feelin’ right, it’s Saturday night/The hotel detective, he was outta sight/Now these fine ladies, they had a plan/They was out to meet the boys in the band/They said, “Come on dudes, let’s get it on”/And we proceeded to tear that hotel down.” Dollars to donuts the extent of the band’s destruction was limited to a broken chair, which a visiting Leslie “He ain’t heavy, He’s downright obese” West broke by plopping himself down on it. Throw in a keyboard riff that plays throughout the song, and a cool guitar solo, and what’s not to like? And then there’s that chorus, which everybody knows, including the aging Nazi Rudolf Hess, who dug Grand Funk in Spandau Prison and played it as loud as possible until his death. A classic chronicle of the life of a band on tour, it opens with one of rock’s great cowbells, features one of the most recognizable guitar riffs of all time, and name checks Freddy King. I’m not ashamed to say I love the song, dumb as it is. I like Grand Funk for one reason and one reason only they’re they guys who produced the iconic “We’re an American Band,” which came off the LP of the same name, the band’s seventh.
But lucky for Peter he had other paths to follow. In 1972 they added Mark Frost on keyboards and tried to recruit Peter Frampton. By 1970’s Closer to Home they were bona fide superstars. A glorified garage band, their manager Terry Knight pulled out all the stops-he paid 100,000 for a giant billboard in Times Square, for example-to make them stars, and he succeeded to the extent that Grand Funk beat the Fab Four’s long-standing record by selling out Shea Stadium in 72 hours. Terry Knight and the Pack alumni Mark Farner (guitar, vocals) and Don Brewer (drums, vocals) formed Grand Funk Railroad along with Question Mark & the Mysterians’ Mel Schacher (bass) in 1969. Really, about all they had going for them was their cool logo. But there was always something better around, or your record collection sucked, and big time. You’ll eat it, Grand Spam Railroad, but only if there’s nothing better around. Never having seen Grand Funk-they were well into their precipitous fall from superstardom when I started attending concerts, I can’t say.Īlmost as ham-fisted as their northern brethren in Bachman Turner Overdrive, Grand Funk was a blunt instrument, and rock’s equivalent to a can of Spam. It is possible people really did come to hear the shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? Or were they truly that hard-up for entertainment in the Dark Ages of the early to mid-seventies, when rock had become empty entertainment, with the talk of music changing the world having become passé on one side and the soon-to-come (and equally unsuccessful punk revolution the other. How they managed this feat, given their lackluster body of work, remains a mystery, like what became of Amelia Earhart or how Pittsburgh Pirates’ pitcher Dock Ellis managed to throw a no-hitter while tripping his balls off. That’s right: seven consecutive LPs in the Top Ten.
Of course filling arenas doesn’t prove much, except that it’s impossible to overestimate the ignorance of the American public, but still it’s intriguing-what did all those pothead on reds at all those Grand Funk shows hear that we simply can’t hear in 2014? Did people back then have an extra Grand Funk ear? That closed up around the time of 1976’s Born to Die, which marked the band’s downward slide following seven consecutive LPs in the Top Ten? Their talk of revolution was transparently empty jive, they didn’t have a proto-punk bone in their bodies, and in general all they did was fill arenas-something the far cooler MC5 and the anarchic Stooges never came close to doing-and make the people in those arenas (and their bongs) happy.
I’ve never heard a single rocker cite Grand Funk as an influence, and unlike their Michigan brethren the MC5 and Iggy and the Stooges, Grand Funk scored a big zero when it came to hipness factor. Grand Funk was one of the biggest arena acts of the 1970s, but nowadays you’d be hard pressed to find anyone besides Homer Simpson who will admit to liking them. Where does one even begin? Homer Simpson’s immortal description of the band’s members is as good a place as any: “You kids don’t know Grand Funk? The wild shirtless lyrics of Mark Farner? The bong-rattling bass of Mel Schacher? The competent drumwork of Don Brewer? Oh, man!”
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