Grand Funk Railroad

There was a band in the seventies that the critics tore apart without mercy. They called them crude, loud, simple-minded, and denied them any merit at all. And while the experts wrote poisonous reviews, that band was selling records by the million and breaking box-office records. Grand Funk Railroad is the story of the divorce between what the critics say and what people want. They understood something simple: they were not playing for the newspapers, they were playing for the audience. And the audience loved them.

Out of America's working-class heart

Grand Funk formed in 1969 in Flint, Michigan, an industrial city of car factories and working people. That origin showed: their music was direct hard rock, no ornament, powerful, made to be felt in the body. The original trio — Mark Farner on guitar and vocals, Mel Schacher on bass and Don Brewer on drums — played loud, sweaty, with no intellectual pretensions. They were not out to impress anyone with sophistication; they wanted you moving and shouting. In 1972 Craig Frost joined on keyboards.

And it worked, brutally. By the early seventies they had become one of the biggest concert machines in the country, able to draw crowds from coast to coast. They were the favourite band of the ordinary American, the one who worked all week and wanted real rock at the weekend.

Seventy-two hours

The fact that sums up what they were has an exact date. For their concert on 9 July 1971 at Shea Stadium in New York, tickets went on sale at the beginning of June: fifty-five thousand seats, at four, five and six dollars. They sold out in seventy-two hours.

What turns that number into legend is the comparison. The Beatles had filled that same stadium in 1965, and it had taken them several weeks. Grand Funk matched the attendance record and beat the box-office one, and did it without a hit on the radio at the time. It is not that they were bigger than the Beatles; it is that they sold that stadium out faster, once, and that was enough for the industry to understand that something was happening with a band no critic would defend.

The anthem that defined them

In 1973 they recorded the song that sums up everything they were: "We're an American Band". The drummer, Don Brewer, wrote it, and Todd Rundgren produced it. It is a pure rock anthem, with an unbeatable riff and a lyric that celebrates life on the road without a trace of shame. It was their first number one in the United States and stands as one of the great seventies rock anthems, the kind that plays in every bar and every stadium. It was pure attitude, with no pretension of being anything other than a great song to raise your fist to.

The following year they repeated the number one with a rocked-up version of "The Loco-Motion", proving they could also take a pop song and turn it into a cannon blast. Then came "Some Kind of Wonderful", which reached number three in early 1975, and "Bad Time", which reached number four a few months later and was, without anyone knowing it then, their last big hit: they never entered the American top forty again. Behind the reputation for brutishness there was melody and craft, and the critics went on not loving them.

The revenge of popular taste

In time, history handed them a quiet revenge. Those songs the experts despised became undisputed classics, playing in films, on radios and in stadiums for decades. "We're an American Band" is today part of the DNA of American rock. It turned out that the direct connection with people, the one the critics did not understand, was exactly what made the songs last.

What to remember

Grand Funk Railroad taught rock a lesson that still holds: that the verdict of the critics and the affection of the public do not always coincide, and that the second usually lasts longer. They were the band of the Michigan factory worker, the one that sold out a stadium in three days while the papers battered them, and they ended up leaving behind anthems that outlived every one of their detractors.

"We're an American Band" still sounds loud, proud and uncomplicated, just as they were. They did not need anyone to validate them: making crowds shake was enough. Sometimes, that is the only review that matters.

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Sources

Grand Funk Railroad is an American hard rock band formed in 1969 in Flint, Michigan, originally made up of Mark Farner (guitar and vocals), Mel Schacher (bass) and Don Brewer (drums); Craig Frost joined on keyboards in 1972. Despite the disdain of much of the critical press, they were one of the most successful live acts in the United States in the early seventies. For their concert on 9 July 1971 at Shea Stadium in New York, the 55,000 seats sold out in 72 hours; the band matched the attendance record the Beatles had set at that stadium in 1965 — they had taken several weeks to sell the capacity — and beat their box-office record. "We're an American Band" (1973), written by Don Brewer and produced by Todd Rundgren, was their first number one in the United States; their version of "The Loco-Motion" (1974), originally by Little Eva, also reached number one. "Some Kind of Wonderful" reached number three in February 1975 and "Bad Time" number four in June of the same year, both from the album "All the Girls in the World Beware!!!" (December 1974); "Bad Time" was their last entry in the American top forty. Profile compiled for Rebobinados with fact-checking; interpretations of the meaning of the work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from uDiscover Music, Billboard, Wikipedia and other coverage.