You’re just hangin’ out In the local bar And you're wonderin’ who in the hell you are Are you a farmer? Are you a star? You gotta keep on smilin’. . .

Wet Willie

“You know if Grand Funk broke up today, I’d just go back to my farm. That’s why I got into the music business; striving to own my own farm,” Mark Farner said. “I don’t need a lot of money or anything, in fact I’m approaching the point where I’m almost self-sufficient.” He is huddled in a plush pumpkin colored seat on Grand Funk’s chartered plane, not looking much like a superstar, in his plaid flannel lumberjack shirt and snow hat, complete with removable ear flaps. Gone is the luxurious mane that was once considered “the longest hair in rock and roll.” He loped off the lanky locks, not in any concern for cosmetology, but because it was impractical around the homestead. “I work around farm machinery all the time and a lot of the time I’d bend over some equipment and my hair would nearly get pulled into it.”

It sounds very unlike the strutting superstud sex symbol who sets Grand Funk’s audiences aflame. “I’ve never considered myself a sex symbol,” Mark insists. “When I’m up on stage, it’s not to be sexy, but to get a message across to my audience. I’ve got an obligation being in my position to tell them what’s happening. Of course, the guys always try to steer me away from being too political, but they can’t stop me.” Mark’s fellow Funks vetoed some of his songs written for American Hand because they were too political, but undaunted by their disapproval, Farner has made plans to release them in a separate solo album.

One begins to wonder if maybe this guy has some personality problem. One minute he is reveling in back-tonature serenity, the next he’s soap boxing from center stage, punctuating his politics with a brutish body language, basking in the colored lights that slide over his bare torso, gleamed in sweat. Isn’t this perhaps a contradiction?

“It’s not a contradiction. When I come out to play, it’s to party. It’s my make believe world, with make believe people, except the audience. My land is real to me, and it’s my farm that I work for.”

Mark’s 180 acre farm is playground as well as homestead. When he isn’t touring, Mark’s working his land. When he isn’t working, he’s playing with his toys which include a 56 piece collection of firearms, motorcycles, diesel trucks, pick up trucks, fast cars, quarter horses, pigs, cows, an electronic kitchen, and snowmobiles. (We heard that his neighbors complained about the noise from his snowmobiles. “So? They’ll get over it,” was his reply.) When he’s not playing, he’s sleeping, and while sleeping he’s... writing songs??? “1 hear songs in my sleep. I’ll be sound asleep and I’ll hear this song, so I’ve got to get up and grab my ax and figure out the chords before I forget them.”

“Where are you guys from?” asks our cheeky waitress. “Tourists?”

Donnie Brewer nods his oversized afro and smiles, “Yeah, we’re visiting from Michigan.” Intentionally, he neglects to add he’s a member of one of the most renowned rock acts in the world. He is shy, and almost uncomfortable with his stardom, becoming charmingly flustered when recognized. Someone saunters to our table and shoves a picture of the band between our tuna salads, asking for an autograph. Donnie smiles at the fan, and pauses; he twists the ball point in his mouth. Finally, he scribbles his name across his face. “I hate signing autographs. I never can figure out what to say. ‘Regards? Yours till Niagara Falls? Yours temporarily?”’

"Connie? I've done worse things for affection."

Brewer is consciously chic, gorgeously garbed in a knee length calf leather coat and perfectly fitted velvet trousers. Eighteen karat gold charms from Cartier decorate his hairy chest, and he looks more like a high rolling pimp than a rock and roll drummer. Don is responsible for penning the hit single “We’re An American Band,” the song that elevated “sweet, sweet Connie” to national recognition, and garnered her a feature in Cosmopolitan. “You know Connie is really great. She’s pretty, and she’s definitely not dumb. I don’t think it’s sad what she does, I think she does it for the glory. I’ve done worse things for affection than that.” He quickly adds, “Oh, but not sexually, I mean. Did you know Connie is making a rock and roll porno movie? She asked us to be in it. It’s about these two groups playing on the same bill. One band is a big headliner, and the other just a kicker band. The story is that Connie goes backstage into the dressing room, and sucks off the superstars, so they’re too tired to go on. So the warmup band takes their place and go on to be big stars. I wonder which band Connie wanted us to play?” jokes Donnie.

“Hey, we’ve got the same shoes!” remarks Mel Schacher, pointing down at our identical ochre-colored platform feet.

“Uh, yeah...” I reply, suprised at this rare burst of conversation, since I had long since shelved Schacher as fitting the mold of the moody, uncommunicative bass player.

“How much did you pay for yours?” demands the multimillionaire introvert.

“Oh about forty bucks.” I answer.

“Hey, hey!” Mel chortles, quite pleased with himself. “Mine were only $23.95.”

Beaming, he proceeds to show me another of his bargain hunting bonanzas. “Bet you don’t have shoes like these!” he brags, holding up a crimson pair of glittered wingtips that suspiciously resemble the ones that Judy Garland wore in The Wizard of Oz. “Guess how much?”

“Fifty dollars?” I venture.

“Nope. $9.95.1 bought nine pairs of them.”

Craig Frost is the newest addition to Funk, although he racked up some seniority playing with the same guys in the Fabulous Pack, back in unfabulous Flint, Michigan. He is easily the most attractive member, with his slim hips, boyish grin, and ragamuffin ringlets. His constant companion is a Sony portable tape deck which incessantly blares the Average White Band. He looks a lot like that first boyfriend you had in Junior High, the one that got kicked out of the Boy Scouts for smoking cigarettes behind the tent. He’s an overgrown JD, with a “who me?” twinkle in his eyes that must have helped slip him out of many a sticky situation. Craig still lives with his parents in Michigan, and the love of his life is a Pantera and his Leslie-ized organ. After two years with the band, he’s still not used to superstardom and its demands. He admits that his fingers still cramp up like, “twisted noodles” before a show, although he has no reason to worry because his keyboard facility is a welcome addition to the band, having given valuable depth and substance to Grand Funk’s once sparse sound.

"Grand Funk was just a stroke of marketing genius."

Grand Funk as phenomenon was never anything more than a stroke of marketing genius. Until 1970, Mel, Don, Mark, and Craig were four Michigan schmoes who turned to rock and roll as a means to escape the exploding industrial inevitable—the assembly line at the Buick plant. Terry Knight was their guiding light, an ex-band member who had forsaken performing to become the brains behind the band, who cooked up a plan to make his guys the next big thing.

“There never has been a super group from the States, and there is bound to be one sometime, so it would be nice if it were this group,” Terry Knight said in July, 1969. He realized that the limey supergroups of the sixties were splintering—Cream had crumbled, Beck’s group had disbanded, and Brian Jones was a name on a headstone; so he decided to push the last dregs of psychedelia down the drain, by popularizing a new craze: Heavy Metal Music—played by none other than his Grand Funk Railroad. The seventies were spawning a new batch of enfants terribles, and these emergent teensters embraced a new way of walking, talking, dressing, and doping. Exit the psychedelic pandemonium and acid rock, enter the downer dinosaurs with GFR providing the sociological soundtract—the anthem, almost. It was no accident that their first album was called On Time. Knight had cunningly calculated their conception to coincide with the birth of the seventies. Robert Chrisfgau had even gone so far as to label the band as “the spiritual center of a whole youth culture for a season.”

"The only reality is the beat and the rhythm."

Grand Funk had come on so fast and with such total impact on the public that they shot right past most critics. By media standards, they were the best kept secret until July 10, 1971, when Funk sold out Shea Stadium in only three days, a feat which took the Beatles three weeks^ Traditionally; the critics like to lead, nqt follow, so they retaliated by ignoring, the band in print. The DJ’s did likewise, giving Grand Funk little airplay; Regardless of this mass neglect, they continued to sell out every concert, ahd each of their eleven records has reached platinum status.

Everyone knows that most pop phenomena has no. long term value—look what happened to Flower Power, Silly Putty, and Twiggy. Unexpectedly, Grand Funk, too, was derailed for a time by a massive lawsuit wielded by Terry Knight, when he found out the band no longer required or wanted his services as manager/mentor. The suit he smacked them with was for a cool 5 mil, and recording and touring became impossible without stepping over somebody’s subpoenas. So they had an unwanted hiatus. The kiss of death to any phenomenon, but did that mean the end df Funk?

Hardly. “American Band,” their best single, marked a rejuvenation that has given them success in the two realms that eluded them: radio and qritic. With the further success of “Locomotion,” “Some Kind Of Wonderful,” and “Bad Time,” GFRR is now a bona fide singles band, much to the suprise of those who found the earlier albums too raw for even FM exposure. Part of the credit belongs to new producers with Strong pop sensibilities like Todd Rundgren (“American Band” and Shinin’ On) and Jimmy lenner. But Funk can take credit, as well, for being able to shine up their sound without compromising much of their early energy. ,

Grand Funk’s continued success is also based on the belief that there will always be a new crop of oppressed youth that are coming of age—looking for something to cruise with, something that their parents will scorn. Funk is willing and able to provide them with a good time.

“We take the kids away from their parents and tneir environment, to where the only reality is the beat and the rhythm.”

They never promise more than they can deliver. A Funk concert is like a huge public party and everyone is invited. No one is ever disappointed unless they happen to be looking for things that aren’t there. “We’ve never played a concert where we’ve bummed people out. We always get our fans off.”

As long as there is someone who wants a dose of Funk’s brand of boogie, they’ll be there to give it to them. Like they say, “We’ll help, your party get down/We’re an American band.”