But I went to see them and lost the bet – I thought they were fantastic.” “I hated local bands worse than anything in the world. “A fellow disc jockey had bet me that if I went to see The Jazz Masters, I would like them,” Knight recalled. Playing covers to an audience who demanded all the latest hits, the band found themselves going around in ever-decreasing circles until one night DJ/blagger Terry Knight came across them, in unusual circumstances. The seeds of Grand Funk were sown in the early 60s with The Jazz Masters, an above-average bar band that featured Don Brewer, a drummer with a wild Afro hairdo. Grand Funk played R&B loud and with lashings of feedback, and the people of Flint – a close neighbour of Detroit – loved their local band with a vengeance. Flint was, and remains, violent, downtrodden and resolutely working class. In the mid-60s he managed to blag his way into a job as a DJ on a Michigan radio station by convincing his future employers he was a close friend of The Rolling Stones.Ĭonstantly reinventing himself, Knight was an old-school huckster in the style of Elvis Presley’s mentor, Colonel Tom Parker.ģ. Formerly known as Terence Knapp, Knight was a crass cabaret singer and master bullshitter. The band’s original manager/svengali, Terry Knight. At the start of the 70s the band took over the US chart with a succession of million-selling, classic rock albums: On Time, Grand Funk, Closer To Home, Live, Survival and E Pluribus Funk… which, for me, is where their story ends.Ģ. In their prime, Grand Funk were a bludgeoning riff machine that brought you such subtly titled gems as TNUC (read it backwards), Sin’s A Good Man’s Brother and Inside Looking Out. For the original Grand Funk Railroad, look no further than the above trio, and disregard the watered-down AOR outfit they developed into in later years.
The band, of course: Mark Farner (guitar/vocals), Mel Schacher (bass) and Don Brewer (drums/vocals).
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