GRAND FUNK RAILROAD DRUMMER SERIES

“They’re not on ego trips like other rock musicians are,” says a friend of Mark’s. Yet the boys have remained, we are told, unspoiled. Two years ago Grand Funk was wobbling through the heat to the Atlanta Pop Festival in a rented Volkswagen bus, and now they fly all over the world to play for the Brothers and Sisters and rap about the revolution. As the Grand Funk people write in their distinctive prose: “The Shea Stadium appearance … comes as no surprise to many who, after following the group’s phenomenal rise to become the undisputed Kings of the Rock pile, agree that this was only the next logical step in their now-famous not so logical nose-thumb to the media critics who have been consistently relentless in their outrage at the group’s soaring popularity and record sales success.” Certainly not music critics, who almost without exception have treated the arrival of each new Grand Funk album like a kick in the shin. As they jumped around the stage July 9th they were earning $304,000 or as Funk press release noted, “exactly $5010 per minute.” The only other group to fill Shea stadium for a non-athletic exhibition was the Beatles, in 1965.

GRAND FUNK RAILROAD DRUMMER SERIES

Apparently they could sell out the crater Copernicus: They sold every seat in Madison Square Garden for two consecutive nights, played for an audience of 40,000 July 17th at World Series Baseball Stadium in Tokyo, and sold out 55,000 seats at Shea Stadium in 72 hours - with no mail orders and no ticket outlets but the windows at Shea. On their most recent American tour Grand Funk played six concerts a week for seven weeks and took home an average of $50,000 each time they stepped on stage. In less than two years they have made five albums, each of which has sold over a million copies - the last two on the day of their release. Who can dislike a success story? Grand Funk Railroad is the biggest American rock group in history. I reach my seat as the lights go down and - the speakers blast out the opening chords of Strauss’ Thus Spake Zarathustra. He’s coming back from the soft drink stand, grinning, with a fresh scrape on his forehead and the jug of wine unsuccessfully concealed under his jacket. On my way to the press box I see Frank for the last time.

You can’t see them through the black glass of the car, but they’s in there all right - Mark, Mel and Don, who play the instruments, and producer-manager Terry Knight, the greatest Funker of them all, who plays the whole group though he never takes the stage.ĩ:35 PM. The guards stiffen and look around watchfully, but nobody shows any interest in rushing the boys. The black limousine appears through the outfield gate and rolls toward the stage on its special balloon tires (to protect the grass). The field is separated from the stands by a triple line of wooden police barricades, manned by a continuous rank of uniformed security guards.ĩ:23 PM.

Some of the crowd begins chanting “Grand Funk, Grand Funk” at almost exactly the tempo as the audience on the group’s Live Album.

Grand funk railroad drummer