Grand Funk Railroad: Live Album (1970)
Somewhere in my teenage years - let's put me at age 15, my dad came into my room, where I was almost certainly blasting metal on my stereo at a volume that was much too high for that 10'x12' space. He brought in a record, and told me I should give it a try as they were "kind of like Metallica". I shrugged it off. He was trying to connect with me. I think I was polite about it but 15-year-old Mark was having none of it. I took the record. It sat in my record crate for years, unplayed by me, until several years later when I moved out and my dad came in and reclaimed everything that was his.
A little over 7 years ago Dad passed away, and all of his old records from the 60s and early 70s found their way to me, including that record I never played as a teenager: Grand Funk Railroad's "Live Album". Today would have been his 71st birthday, so I thought it would be a good time to put that record on the turntable and give it a spin.
I'll be the first to admit that Grand Funk is not a band with whom I'm intimately familiar. I have heard the album oncer or twice over the years, but I've never really sat down with it and actively listened to it until today. I, of course, know the hits that are played over and over on classic rock radio like We’re an American Band (released 3 years after this album), but I’m in no way an expert on the history of this band like I am with some others. I know they're great. I know they're important to the history of rock. From a relative novice's perspective to Grand Funk, here are some impressions:
I wouldn't compare Grand Funk to Metallica like my Dad did, except perhaps in their ability to put on a spectacular live show. You'd do better to compare the band to some of their contemporaries like Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. At times I can hear bits of both of those bands here, though it must be said that Grand Funk was as big or bigger than both of those bands at the time. They hold the fascinating claim to being the band who sold out Shea Stadium faster than the Beatles (Grand Funk’s opener for that show was Humble Pie. What an incredible double bill).
Later live albums of the 1970s like Frampton Comes Alive, KISS Alive!, UFO's Strangers in the Night, and others, were very produced, slick, polished versions of what a live show might be like from those albums. This is different. The music is the star here. It almost sounds like a bootleg with the random voices appearing near the mic between songs, and the rumbling of the crowd throughout. There are moments of inaccuracy. There are moments that are sloppy. There are moments when you can hear the crowd being asked to move back so the show can continue.
After I wrote the previous paragraph, I noticed this on the back of the album cover:
"In order to present a true historical documentation of this group in person, editing of any nature has been avoided. The musical content of all selections has been left totally unchanged from the original tapes. There has been no technical assistance added to this recording such as echo and all events are presented here exactly as they occurred."
I wish more artists would do this. I intend to talk about this a lot more in future content, but inaccuracies, mistakes, spontaneous moments - these are what we go see live shows for. I’ve seen live shows that sound exactly like the studio album. I don’t see the point in that. I love hearing this in a live album.
One more note before getting to the highlights: The version I have of this record, which I presume was a first or second pressing, has a feature that I find annoying in 2021 but was certainly useful in 1970. Sides 1 and 4 share a disc, as do sides 2 and 3. This was so you could put it on your fancy record player that would automatically drop the next record onto the platter when the previous ended, and you could hear half the double album before having to turn them over. Those days are gone now, and we're left with out-of-order sides. I can deal with it, but thought I should make a note.
5 Highlights:
Introduction: The first track of the album mostly consists of the announcer asking people in the aisles to move to their seats, followed by some last-minute setup from the road crew. I kind of like it. I've heard things like this on a number of live albums of this era, but it kind of went out of fashion. Also, later in the album, Mark Farner explains to the audience why the people in the front rows shouldn't stand up so that the people behind can see better. It's an interesting time capsule of what it may have been like to attend a rock festival 50 years ago.
Paranoid: This is a dirty, heavy, fun song with lots of fuzz, wah, and all those other awesome late 60s/early 70s guitar sounds in the hard rock intro, followed by a funky chord progression, cool bass line, and interesting vocal harmonies throughout the rest of the tune. I, of course, thought of the song of the same name by Black Sabbath. I like this tune a little better.
In Need: The closing track to side one features a cool solo that ends the song. It's sloppy. It's imprecise, but it is very cool and has a sound that almost certainly influenced guitarists like Ace Frehley of KISS. I can hear direct references to this solo in Frehley's "Shock Me" solo from Alive II. Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think so.
Inside Looking Out: This is an epic 12 minute cover of the Animals' earlier hit complete with wails, bellows, and screams from Farner that would feel right at home on a The Who or Led Zeppelin record. Apparently they also added drug references that weren’t in the original. Alright.
Into the Sun: This is the encore of the show and the only track on side 4. Frenzied guitar work from Farner throughout highlights this extended track. What a great way to close out the show, and the album.
Happy Birthday, Dad. Yes, I did finally listen to the Grand Funk Live Album. It's a great record that fans of classic rock, and even metal, should own.