The first thing you notice about Grand Funk's new album is the jacket. It bites the royal root. Always in the past Terry Knight's instincts insured that each Grand Funk album (well, except for On Time, but that was the first one after all) had cover art which literally reeked of class, reaching pinnacles in Survival and E Pluribus Funk. Now that they don't have Terry to dick around any more, the boys have fallen prey to Capitol's art department, which has hoist hardier than these three with its own special kind of petard. However, it's all compensated once you rip off the shrink wrap and dig in: The slipcover inside the sleeve has a plastic lining. There's nothing classier
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than that, as Capitol's previous exclusive reservation of this privilege for its classical line makes clear. Not only that, but the label is Deutsche Grammophon yellow.
Some people snorted when Grand Funk announced that they were going to be producing themselves, as if they were only kept afloat in the first place by Terry Knight. That's never been true, of course: What has made Grand Funk a phenomenon is the combination of Knight's promotional acumen and the band's extraordinary relationship with its audience. As a producer, Knight often left a good deal to be desired. The first two Grand Funk albums were notable for a fuzzy quality as if the sound were channeled through wool. Survival, on the other hand, sounded almost too clean, too clear and precise, to the point of virtual sterility. The closest they ever came to achieving a recorded sound commensurate with their name was E Pluribus Funk, and even there they were left in the shade by the overwhelming recorded work of bands like Black Sabbath or Dust.
So you really can't say that the absence of Knight has hurt Grand Funk on wax yet, because this album mostly sounds just about as thin as its predecessors. And the material is for the most part just about as plodding as we've come to expect. Most rock is plodding now, and the real question is whether you can forget all about the adrenaline whoop of Chuck Berry and Little Richard and let yourself get into it on its own terms. If you can, you'll leave Phoenix with the confirmation, the same confirmation made by past songs like "Closer to Home" and "Comfort Me," that Grand Funk have real songwriting talent. That's if you're not already convinced. Unfortunately, though, if you haven't been previously initiated, the good moments on this album won't be strong enough in themselves to keep you coming back to it, and you would do better to pick up Mark, Don & Mel 1969-1971.
Songs: "Flight of the Phoenix" is as close as this band has ever come to their last name, the kind of music heard far more in bars than at pop festivals. It's nice, and Doug Kershaw is of course excellent on fiddle, though hardly employed to the up-front extent of a Papa John in a Jefferson Airplane. Craig Frost's organ dominates, as i
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)
