Recently, a proliferation of clips has appeared on YouTube in which young music fans document their reactions to hearing the music of Grand Funk Railroad for the first time. Their faces are braced with stunned, slack-jawed amazement as they listen. When the music stops and the talking begins, their assessments of the band are typically along the lines of: "Damn, those guys can really jam!" and "What did I just hear?!" Asked if he's familiar with the videos, Mark Farner lets out a robust laugh. "Hell yeah, I've seen them!" the former Grand Funk Railroad guitarist exclaims. "My friends send me those clips, and I just love watching them. I think it's so cool seeing these young guys getting off to the music we made fifty years ago. What touched people's hearts back then still moves them today. We were fierce. We were big and loud, like we were busting out of the chute. And I was riding the bull, man. You can't fake that kind of excitement. It's either real or it's not." He chuckles, then adds nostalgically: "It sure was a fun time." For the better part of their career, which lasted from 1969 to 1976, the Flint, Michigan-based Grand Funk Railroad specialised in high-energy, meat-and-potatoes, blues-based hard rock.
Denne historien er fra June 2023-utgaven av Classic Rock.
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Denne historien er fra June 2023-utgaven av Classic Rock.
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Joan Armatrading
The singer-songwriter on her new album, inspirations, being a 'band', what her key was about, meeting Nelson Mandela...
Meat Loaf: I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)
It was the power ballad to end all power ballads, and 30 years later people still ponder what the it’ is that the singer wouldn't do.
Kris Kristofferson: June 22, 1936 - September 28, 2024
Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old.
"I have come a very long way in the last two-and-a-bit years"
Back from the brink: the Thunder vocalist who survived major medical trauma returns.
EVER MEET LEMMY?
He's heard Lemmy's unreleased solo album, had dinner with Chris Holmes, told Paul McCartney to get a round in, been told gangster Reggie Kray wanted to have a word with him... He is Dogs D'Amour frontman Tyla 7 Pallas, and these are some of his stories.
"LET'S NOT FORGET ABOUT HAVING FUN"
With their ninth studio album In Murmuration, Finnish rockers Von Hertzen Brothers have replaced their erstwhile prog epics for a more honest approach to songwriting reflecting their personal lives.
IN THE BEGINNING
With previously unseen photographs from their early days as featured in the new Queen | Collector's Edition, Sir Brian May talks us through sights of the band in the early seventies.
BASS-IC INSTINCT
Plucked from obscurity in 1975 to be in David Bowie's band, then unceremoniously out of the picture five years later, bassist George Murray looks back on his time with the Thin White Duke.
High Rollers
When Ronnie Wood, the Stones and some A-list mates holed up at his house to help with his solo album, it sparked a days-long party, a Rolling Stones hit and the last album by arguably their finest line-up.
THE NAME OF THE GAM
When ABBA-mad Opeth leader Mikael Akerfeldt met one of their singers, he lost it”. She didn’t sing on their new concept album, but some other, perhaps unlikely, big names did.
