Michigan born and bred!

I never would have thought GFR was capable of such melody and twists in their music! The ascending riffs in "Black Licorice" and the slow menacing crawl with an orchestra of "Railroad" are enough to purchase the album. However, the title track is a full-time classic, and "Lonelist Rider" is a darn good song with meaningful lyrics to boot. In short, this is where the harder edge of GFR met with Todd Rundgren's expert hand and together they created an album any Michigan rock fan can be proud of.

Their last good album

The keyboardist Craig Frost became a full-time member of the band, and immediately the sound change became more than obvious. Only traces of Grand Funk's early raw groovy hard-rock with a distinctive blues-base are left on "We're An American Band". Instead, the band's music here is perfectly defined by a term "American arena-rock" with accessible melodies and anthemic songwriting style. Surely, this was a very successful album of the time. It hit #2 at Billboard and the title track even topped the Singles chart. On some tracks Frost's playing is pushed to the front, and it gives the band a completely different sound to what we used to hear earlier. But his addition to the band is a mixed affair, which works well with some songs, and completely destroys the band's spirit in others. There isn't a single improvised studio jamming on the record. Everything is well thought over, put in place, and... dull? Yes, it gets dull in many places.



Some say this album is their best, because the band matured and finally succeeded in composing and playing serious developing tracks. But boy, do I miss the raw power of their debut, listening to this album! I think that Grand Funk's best albums are "Closer to Home" and "Survival". "We're An American Band" is a decent album, but it sounds like another band playing.

They say you can't go back...

...but what happens when you've got it right? I got interested in the Grand Funk of "On Time", "Grand Funk" and "Closer To Home" as a blues metal outfit in the tradition of the Cream and Mountain material I played as a bass player at the time. Neil Young's Crazy Horse albums were later to fit into that niche very nicely. That was the Grand Funk that Pearl Jam fans would be interested in as an antecedent. "Survival" was interesting in terms of a country-blues Creedence Clearwater approach. That was followed by "E Pluribus Funk", which extended Mark Farner's fairly adequate keyboard skills. Then came "Phoenix", when Craig Frost rejoined the group on keys and pretty much reinstated the sound they had when they were The Pack and backed their eventual producer Terry Knight on vocals (see the Elvis-like "I Who Have Nothing" from the mid-1960s). Which meant they were now more like Journey than the Grand Funk that got them noticed by metalheads like me. This album has some points of interest to be sure. "Black Licorice" is a lot more spicy than the Stone's "Brown Sugar" could ever be. Farner actually screams the refrain, becoming Axl Rose's stylistic papa in the process. "Loneliest Rider" is a nod to the Native American dilemma, but the solid relevant lyrics don't carry the sluggishness of the beat, nor does what sounds like Farner's first use of bottleneck guitar. Much is said about the appearance of production by Todd Rundgren to revive a sagging popularity, but (I hate to be a purist here) Rundgren has made them a pop band rather than a rock'n'roll band. Which they remained for the remainder of their studio output. And the existence of bands like G'n'R and AC/DC is proof that the hard rock trio sound they drew my attention with is not and never could be "dated". That wasn't why their popularity was fading, and they didn't have to bail on it. Especially when younger outfits (like Pearl Jam) even today cite them as influences.