(In Flint, if you can’t afford a Buick you’d better buy a Chevrolet.) Mark Farner, the guy with bicep-length blond hair who writes the group’s songs, plays guitar and does most of the vocals, lives on a horse ranch outside of town. “They’re not like the Beatles were.”Īll three are from Flint, a working-man’s town north of Detroit which holds GM’s big Buick and Chevrolet plants. “They’re not on ego trips like other rock musicians are,” says a friend of Mark’s. Yet the boys have remained, we are told, unspoiled. Two years ago Grand Funk was wobbling through the heat to the Atlanta Pop Festival in a rented Volkswagen bus, and now they fly all over the world to play for the Brothers and Sisters and rap about the revolution. As the Grand Funk people write in their distinctive prose: “The Shea Stadium appearance … comes as no surprise to many who, after following the group’s phenomenal rise to become the undisputed Kings of the Rock pile, agree that this was only the next logical step in their now-famous not so logical nose-thumb to the media critics who have been consistently relentless in their outrage at the group’s soaring popularity and record sales success.” Certainly not music critics, who almost without exception have treated the arrival of each new Grand Funk album like a kick in the shin. As they jumped around the stage July 9th they were earning $304,000 or as Funk press release noted, “exactly $5010 per minute.” The only other group to fill Shea stadium for a non-athletic exhibition was the Beatles, in 1965.
#GRAND FUNK RAILROAD ALBUMS SERIES#
Apparently they could sell out the crater Copernicus: They sold every seat in Madison Square Garden for two consecutive nights, played for an audience of 40,000 July 17th at World Series Baseball Stadium in Tokyo, and sold out 55,000 seats at Shea Stadium in 72 hours - with no mail orders and no ticket outlets but the windows at Shea. On their most recent American tour Grand Funk played six concerts a week for seven weeks and took home an average of $50,000 each time they stepped on stage. In less than two years they have made five albums, each of which has sold over a million copies - the last two on the day of their release. Who can dislike a success story? Grand Funk Railroad is the biggest American rock group in history. I reach my seat as the lights go down and - the speakers blast out the opening chords of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra. He’s coming back from the soft drink stand, grinning, with a fresh scrape on his forehead and the jug of wine unsuccessfully concealed under his jacket. On my way to the press box I see Frank for the last time.
#GRAND FUNK RAILROAD ALBUMS FULL#
The stadium itself is a huge crescent full of people, who give out modest cheers when the Scoreboard spells out “Give Peace a Chance,” “Love Conquers All,” and “Get Funked.”ĩ:35 PM. The stage is made of rough wood and covered with little lights and looks like a fort in a road performance of The Pirates of Penzance. Security guards wearing bright red peace-symbol armbands form a double cordon from left field to the stage. I swallowed some wine - Gallo Rose, like thousands of empty bottles scattered outside - and looked out over the brightly lit baseball diamond, and wrote some notes about this “historic event,” as it said on our tickets - Grand Funk’s big Americano concert at Shea Stadium.Ĩ:50 PM. Ha.” He hit Sparky a punch in the shoulder that keeled him halfway into the next seat. Mencken said of Bach’s music is true of Grand Funk’s as well: Alcohol is its natural solvent.įrank’s friend Sparky from Englewood, New Jersey, took a pull on the bottle of sweet wine and passed it over.
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