The hit from On Time, their first album in 1969, took it to another level and brought down the house. “Heartbreaker” had the group singing harmony as Kulik performed the first of many amazing guitar solos. Max Carl is the lead singer/frontman who also intermittently plays rhythm guitar and harmonica along with Tim Cashion on keyboards. Bruce Kulik fills the lead guitar position beautifully with a rich history culminating in a twelve-year stint with KISS when he replaced Ace Frehley as lead guitarist before joining the band twenty years ago. Today the band is a quintet but the core is comprised of Drummer/vocalist Don Brewer and bass guitarist Mel Schacher. The twenty-first-century version of “Grand Funk Railroad” like “Fleetwood Mac” and “Creedence Clearwater Revival” retained its rhythm section while losing its singer/songwriter/lead guitarist/frontmen for entirely different reasons. They used this trio of songs to warm up on and then dove into “Heartbreaker” a hit from On Time their first album in 1969. There was no opening act so Grand Funk Railroad took the stage at 7:30 PM and opened with “Rock & Roll Soul” from 1972’s Phoenix album followed by “Footstompin’ Music” from 1971’s E Pluribus Funk both written by Farner along with Shinin’ On the title song from the 1974 album that Don Brewer penned. On October 14th, “Grand Funk Railroad” was playing at the Elsinore theater just a few miles from my house so I attended the show. Over the decades the band broke up and then reformed going through a number of changes and by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it was completely reconfigured minus Mark Farner. The original band was a power trio made up of frontman/lead guitarist/singer/songwriter Mark Farner, drummer, and vocalist Don Brewer, and bass guitarist Mel Schacher. Their career produced fourteen studio albums and over twenty-five million records sold. A couple of years later, Grand Funk Railroad was selling out Shea Stadium in New York and had a string of hits. However, the venue was sparsely filled and people weren’t paying that much attention to the music that Friday night. They had just played at the Atlanta Pop Festival where their performance earned them a record deal and a place on the bill of the next big festival in August called “Woodstock.” The show that night was at the newly re-opened Eastown theater in Detroit, Michigan and the band was from Flint, Michigan so they were on hometown turf. Some recording artists included in uDiscover Music articles are affiliated with UMG.The first time that I saw Grand Funk Railroad was in July 1969 shortly after they formed. UDiscover Music is operated by Universal Music Group (UMG). Single ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Soul’ included.”įor the latest music news and exclusive features, check out uDiscover Music. Utilization of the wizardry of Doug Kershaw is an unexpected delight. “Disappointing no one and perhaps surprising a few is the musical intelligence is the actual musical intelligence that is apparent on most of this album. Listen to uDiscover Music’s official Grand Funk Railroad Best Of playlist. They have legions of devoted, ready followers at every performance and lining up to buy their every album. ‘Legions of devoted, ready followers’īillboard, reviewing Phoenix in the week before it charted, alongside Humble Pie’s Lost and Found and the Yes album Close To The Edge, observed: “Grand Funk have by now attained an almost permanent place in rock’s hierarchy. The album also marked the debut as a Grand Funk member of keyboard player Craig Frost, who went on to join Bob Seger’s Silver Bullet Band. The new LP featured a guest appearance by Louisiana-born fiddle player Doug Kershaw, who would later play with the Rolling Stones on their Some Girls tour of 1978.
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