1 single, 'We're an American Band.' Never shy about mixing in beloved R&B and blues-rock covers, GFR also scored chart-toppers with its versions of Carole King and Gerry Goffin's 'The Loco-Motion,' and The Soul Brothers Six's 'Some Kind of Wonderful.' The group's last Top 10 was Farner's pop-ish 'Bad Time,' from 1974. Though songs such as 'Footstompin' Music' and 'Rock n' Roll Soul' rose up into the mid-levels, producer Todd Rundgren polished GFR to its first No. 22 on the Billboard Hot 100, but album-oriented rock and progressive rock stations picked up and spun the full track. Their best-known, and possibly still best-loved song from those early days, was the elegiac 'I'm Your Captain (Closer to Home),' which in album form and style ran closer to two songs, running 10 minutes total, with long instrumental passages and orchestral backing over its closing minutes. The group's first nine studio albums sold gold or platinum by '72 GFR already had a compilation album, 'Mark, Don & Mel: 1969-1971,' another gold. Some of those date back to the late '60s when the power trio from Flint, Michigan, broke through with raucous live shows, especially at the seminal 1969 Atlanta Pop Festival, which helped them sign with Capitol Records. The double-platinum double-disc 'Grand Funk Live Album' from 1970 paved the way for the band to sell out Shea Stadium, faster than the Beatles did. Though he and original trio partners Mel Schacher and Don Brewer split the rails in the late '70s - GFR reunited briefly in the early '80s and late '90s - Farner knows what fans want, and delivers with the American Band: Lots of the old melodic but riff-heavy foot-stompin' music like, well 'Footstompin' Music,' 'Are You Ready,' 'Rock and Roll Soul,' 'Mean Mistreater,' 'Aimless Lady,' 'We're An American Band,' 'Bad Time,' 'Some Kind of Wonderful,' 'The Loco-Motion' and more.

Mark Farner's American Band, leaning heavily on Grand Funk Railroad years plays Saturday at the Montgomery Performing Arts Centre. As he's not only a dad but a grand(funk)dad, singer-songwriter-guitarist Mark Farner kicks off our interview with an age joke-pun: 'I’m doing but not mildewing.'Īt 69, turning 70 in September, father to five sons with Leisa, his wife of four decades, Farner's probably not your average Midwestern dude: He wears a shirt more often now, on stage, but his hair's still long and guitars still loud.

Mark farner some kind of wonderful