It seems that we are all going to have to come to terms with Grand Funk. They may well be the most popular band in the world, in spite of the fact that they've been almost universally panned by the rock press and other supposed molders of taste. And the group is apparently so sensitive about that that they now refuse to see writers.
It would be too easy to say that Grand Funk's stupefying ascendence is the direct result of their unacceptability to the elite (or elitists), but it's clear that the band does have a very special relationship with its audience, perhaps a new-old type of relationship. People once said that the Rolling Stones were great not only for their music, but
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because they were representative of the initial audience of working-class mods they came from and spoke to and for. Or, as a friend put it at one of their first American concerts, "The Beatles are so Olympian, but you could really imagine sitting down and blowing pot with the Stones." That was never strictly true for them, of course, though it could have been for forebears the likes of Eddie Cochran and Richie Valens, who never forgot his Pachuko roots.
Grand Funk are one of the very few groups rising recently that do reflect the aspirations and attitudes of their audience in the most basic way. And they've achieved that vast consensus not only through hype but because they are that audience, are the rallying point for any sense of mass identity and community in Teenage America circa 1971 (and Black Sabbath that community's freaked out flip side).
In spite of all that (and if there is one thing that would make you yearn to like Grand Funk it is that), the fact remains that their first four albums were almost uniformly awful. It was not just that they were simplistic or unmelodic the sound was plain muddy, and with a few notable exceptions like "I'm Your Captain" it was a real challenge to remember most of the songs even after the third or fourth hearing.
Survival is something else again. All of the songs, visceral urgency aside, are interesting as compositions and performances. The playing and singing is remarkably free of past sloppiness, and even if the pace drags a bit at times, the singing at least has definition and resonance, and the guitar work is a real surprise: clean and clear and even subtle at times.
Another interesting thing about it is that it is the first Grand Funk album to be structured around a sort of theme. Just look at the song titles: "Comfort Me," "I Want Freedom," and even "Gimme Shelter."
That theme in all of its several variations has a great deal to do both with Grand Funk's rejection by the pop culture "establishment" and their sense of unity with their audience. If Black Sabbath's music is about disjuncture and disorientation, Grand Funk's is a direct expression of warmth, reaching for the vast befuddled teen audience and saying: "Look, our confusions and yearnings are the sa
You cannot talk about rock in the 1970s without talking about Grand Funk Railroad. And you cannot talk about Grand Funk without talking about the hate: how critics pissed on them from an arrogant height. I saw Grand Funk very early on, playing for flies in Philadelphia in December 1969, and I heard in their panzer-trio brio what the snobs did not. Born in Flint, Michigan, of the same local, white-R&B lineage as Bob Seger and Mitch Ryder, singer-guitarist Mark Farner, drummer Don Brewer and bassist Mel Schacher were not cheap Cream but a no-frills, hippie-era garage band; factory-town peaceniks who rocked like warlords.
Original producer-manager Terry Knight fought the brickbats by hyping Grand Funk's box-office might as underground revolution. But his static obscured the band's true bared-bone mettle. Grand Funk made their reputation on tour, cutting On Time, Grand Funk and Closer to Home on the run, all between August 1969 and March 1970. The flat, hard production, then a matter of time and economy, pulls the simple pow of the music upfront: Farner's high, clear tenor; the iron-treble tone of his guitar; the elephantine fuzz of Schacher's bass; Brewer's brute, John Bonham-like drive. As the main writer, Farner avoided complexity like a pox. But "Heartbreaker" and "Into the Sun," both from On Time, and the cover of the Animals' "Inside Looking Out," on Grand Funk, are pure electric-Michigan animalism, an all-testosterone blueprint for the White Stripes. Live Album and the previously unissued Live: The 1971 Tour are not as punchy; the crowd noise gets in the way. But the 1971 tracks from the band's Shea Stadium shows that year are honest snapshots of Grand Funk mania at its peak.
Survival, E Pluribus Funk and Phoenix, all from 1971-72, creak with growing pains. It took producer Todd Rundgren, on 1973's We're an American Band, to polish the pop and Motown lurking inside the amp stacks. The title hit, the stampede "Black Licorice" (with its pumping keyboards by recent addition Craig Frost) and "Walk Like a Man," a hard-rock twist on the Four Seasons, are perfect bombs of sweat, sugar and steel. The late albums have their moments, like Farner's keening wail in "Bad Time" on 1974's All the Girls in the World Beware!!! Still, every train runs out of track someday.
For most folks, a hits disc will suffice. But the best of these reissues show that, for a time, Grand Funk were the people's choice. And the people were right.
DAVID FRICKE
(From RS 919, April 3, 2003)
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