IF YOU’VE HEARD the cavernous sounds emanating from the 20-second opener to Mahogany Rush’s 1978 Live record, “Introduction,” then you’ve probably caught the vibe of Frank Marino, a Canadian virtuoso whose influence is only rivaled by the shadows cast by his ever-colossal pedalboards.
Marino, who was born in Montreal in 1954, easily traversed the genres in the Seventies, laying down hard rock licks as effortlessly as he did blues and psych across records like Maxoom (1972) — recorded when he was just 16 — and Mahogany Rush IV (1976), which — despite being critically panned at the time — is seen as a masterstroke on the backside of songs like “Dragonfly,” which Marino says he “put together in about five minutes.” Damn.
Given those accomplishments, it’s hard to believe that when he recorded those records, he’d only been playing guitar for a few years. What’s more, he only picked the hobby up out of boredom during a stay at Montreal Children’s Hospital after an acid trip gone wrong.
The latter is also interesting as Marino went on to be notoriously drug-free, but regardless, after being laid up in the hospital, the guitar stuck. “I had learned how to play on an acoustic because that’s all they had,” Marino tells Guitar World. “There was nothing to do except stay in my room and play acoustic guitar.”
Marino’s stay also triggered a rumor that dogged him throughout the 1970s. The story goes that as the then-14-year-old lay in bed recovering, he was visited by the spirit of Jimi Hendrix. While that’s nice, if not absurd, it didn’t happen.
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