By Martin Popoff
While the legendary Grand Funk is out touring (Kiss' Bruce Kulick now part of the band), ex-Funkster Mark Farner is out playing and singing with a star-studded Beatles tribute, farming, living a strict religious lifestyle, and talking about a new band bio. Called From Grand Funk To Grace (see www.cgpublishing.com for more info), and done in conjunction with Kristofer Engelhardt (credited as the author), the 312 page book recounts the tale of one of America's biggest - yet somewhat forgotten - hard rock bands, Grand Funk amassing 11 gold and six platinum awards with 25 million records sold, most of 'em bunched up in the early '70s, after the band cranked out five records in a two year period, from '69 to '71.
"It took a little jogging here and there," offers Mark on doing the interviews for the tome. "Other people would say something that would trigger the moment that would take it off and it would come back. And some of it, of course, I recall it exactly the way it was and other people said, no, it was this way. So it's kind of up to conjecture at that point. But it was very interesting, I'll tell you that. It's stirred up some things (laughs)."
It's an amazing tale, Mark coming out the other end sort of like Ted Nugent with a Bible, the living definition of "born again" yet with all sorts of political, environmental and gun lobbying interests as well. Research ran deep, says Mark. "Kris got other stories. He did all of that cross-collateralizing, to make sure that we at least had some opinions down there on specific events. And Joe Gavlick actually compiled a lot of this information. Chris went through his... I don't know how many thousands of pages, but he dug into all the Cashbox's, Billboard, old magazines and all that stuff, and Joe Gavlick actually put about three years of research into this book. We got together in person and did phone interviews as well, but the crux of it was done in person. I think there's more that could be got out of somebody when you are face-to-face. You can probe a little deeper in person. It must have been 40 or 50 hours of talking."
GRAND FUNK - Hits The Books! Page 2