Were you a natural on the guitar, or did you really have to woodshed and work at it to become good? I always liked messing around with volume. He took it way outside the norm, and that really rubbed off on me. I especially liked what he did by cranking up the volume. He was a very solid player lots of energy and well-crafted parts. What about Pete Townshend? I have to think that he rubbed off on you a little. And, of course, I dug the early rock and roll – Bill Haley and “Rock Around the Clock.” That was the stuff that got me going. The strings were so far off the neck, you could use them to shoot an arrow. I was just a young guitar player with my Kay acoustic, and I could barely play that thing. I would listen to those leads and think, How does he do that? Before him, there was James Burton, who played for Ricky Nelson and Elvis. You can put Rick Derringer in there, too. Was there anybody before those guys who made a strong impression on you? You’ve cited Hendrix, Clapton, and Beck as your biggest guitar influences. Pete Townshend took it way outside the norm, and that really rubbed off on me. When we first started playing gigs, I’d look out and see that half the audience was African-American. I was attracted to rhythm, and I think the guys in Cream were too. It wasn’t about playing long solos it was about getting people to dance. That’s what we wanted to do that’s what I wanted to do as a guitarist. We took that British influence, but we weren’t literally trying to be Cream. How did you distill that sound into something of your own? You’ve said the original trio was patterned after Cream. We hit heights nobody could have imagined. It’s sad how things went down, but I’m thankful for all we achieved. I wanted to keep the emphasis on being a guitar band. I voted against getting a keyboard player. “A lot of people didn’t like us being so poppy,” says Farner, who these days performs with Mark Farner’s American Band. When the group couldn’t replicate its chart success, it flamed out following the release of 1976’s Frank Zappa–produced Good Singin’, Good Playin’. While such moves attracted a new legion of fans, the band’s original admirers grew disgruntled. My whole approach was, How can I reach the people in the back row with my guitar?ĭuring the last few years of their ’70s run, Grand Funk Railroad (later known simply as Grand Funk) became a quartet with the addition of keyboardist Craig Frost and defanged their sledgehammer sound, resulting in AM-friendly smashes like “We’re an American Band” and a cover of Little Eva’s “The Loco-Motion,” both produced by Todd Rundgren. I didn’t play nearly as fast as the other guitarists back then. So if it was simple, but it got the point across, that’s what I did.” He thinks, then adds, “That’s what I still try to do now, though I think I’m a little more mature with the notes I pick.” “My whole approach was, How can I reach the people in the back row with my guitar? I wanted to accentuate the visual image of me onstage with what I played. “I didn’t play nearly as fast as the other guitarists back then,” he says. Much of Grand Funk Railroad’s raucous sound was driven by Farner’s unbridled guitar playing, an exuberant mix of tight, power-chord rhythms and fuzzed-out, throat-grabbing leads. That kind of message resounds with people.” It was the Vietnam era, and I was writing songs like ‘People, Let’s Stop the War.’ That song is as relevant today as it was back then. We were honest in how we played, and we were honest in what we sang about. “We sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles, and that was before we had Number One singles on AM radio. “We were the people’s band,” Farner says.
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