Rock and Roll

PINK FLOYD is the premier space rock band. Since the mid-'60s, their music relentlessly tinkered with electronics and all manner of special effects to push pop formats to


their outer limits. At the same time they wrestled with lyrical themes and concepts of such massive scale that their music has taken on almost classical, operatic quality, in both sound and words. Despite their astral image, the group was brought down to earth in the 1980s by decidedly mundane power struggles over leadership and, ultimately, ownership of the band's very name. After that time, they were little more than a dinosaur act, capable of filling stadiums and topping the charts, but offering little more than a spectacular recreation of their most successful formulas. Their latter-day staleness cannot disguise the fact that, for the first decade or so of their existence, they were one of the most innovative groups around, in concert and (especially) in the studio.


While Pink Floyd are mostly known for their grandiose concept albums of the 1970s, they started as a very different sort of psychedelic band. Soon after they first began playing together in the mid-'60s, they fell firmly under the leadership of lead guitarist Syd Barrett, the gifted genius who would write and sing most of their early material. The Cambridge native shared the stage with Roger Waters (bass), Rick Wright (keyboards), and Nick Mason (drums). The name Pink Floyd, seemingly so far-out, was actually derived from the first names of two ancient bluesmen (Pink Anderson and Floyd Council). And at first, Pink Floyd were much more conventional than the act into which they would evolve, concentrating on the rock and R&B material that were so common to the repertoires of mid-'60s British bands.


Pink Floyd quickly began to experiment, however, stretching out songs with wild instrumental freak-out passages incorporating feedback; electronic screeches; and unusual, eerie sounds created by loud amplification, reverb, and such tricks as sliding ball bearings up and down guitar strings. In 1966, they began to pick up a following in the London underground; on-stage, they began to incorporate light shows to add to the psychedelic effect. Most importantly, Syd Barrett began to compose pop-psychedelic gems that combined unusual psychedelic arrangements (particularly in the haunting guitar and celestial organ licks) with catchy melodies and incisive lyrics that viewed the world with a sense of poetic, childlike wonder.


The group landed a recording contract with EMI in early 1967 and made the Top 20 with a brilliant debut single, "Arnold Layne," a sympathetic, comic vignette about a transvestite. The follow-up, the kaleidoscopic "See Emily Play," made the Top Ten. The debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, also released in 1967, may have been the greatest British psychedelic album other than Sgt. Pepper's. Dominated almost wholly by Barrett's songs, the album was a charming fun house of driving, mysterious rockers ("Lucifer Sam"); odd character sketches ("The Gnome"); childhood flashbacks ("Bike," "Matilda Mother"); and freakier pieces with lengthy instrumental passages ("Astronomy Domine," "Interstellar Overdrive," "Pow R Toch") that mapped out their fascination with space travel. The record was not only like no other at the time; it was like no other that Pink Floyd would make, colored as it was by a vision that was far more humorous, pop-friendly, and lighthearted than those of their subsequent epics.


The reason Pink Floyd never made a similar album was that Piper was the only one to be recorded under Barrett's leadership. Around mid-1967, the prodigy began showing increasingly alarming signs of mental instability. Barrett would go catatonic on-stage, playing music that had little to do with the material, or not playing at all. An American tour had to be cut short when he was barely able to function at all, let alone play the pop star game. Dependent upon Barrett for most of their vision and material, the rest of the group was nevertheless finding him impossible to work with, live or in the studio.


Around the beginning of 1968, guitarist Dave Gilmour, a friend of the band who was also from Cambridge, was brought in as a fifth member. The idea was that Gilmour would enable the Floyd to continue as a live outfit; Barrett would still be able to write and contribute to the records. That couldn't work either, and within a few months Barrett was out of the group. Pink Floyd's management, looking at the wreckage of a band that was now without its lead guitarist, lead singer, and primary songwriter, decided to abandon the group and manage Barrett as a solo act.


Such calamities would have proven insurmountable for 99 out of 100 bands in similar predicaments. Incredibly, Pink Floyd would regroup and not only maintain their popularity, but eventually become even more successful. It was early in the game yet, after all; the first album had made the British Top Ten, but the group was still virtually unknown in America, where the loss of Syd Barrett meant nothing to the media. Gilmour was an excellent guitarist, and the band proved capable of writing enough original material to generate further ambitious albums, Waters eventually emerging as the dominant composer. The 1968 follow-up to Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, made the British Top Ten, using Barrett's vision as an obvious blueprint, but taking a more formal, somber, and quasi-classical tone, especially in the long instrumental parts. Barrett, for his part, would go on to make a couple of interesting solo records before his mental problems instigated a retreat into oblivion.


Over the next four years, Pink Floyd would continue to polish their brand of experimental rock, which married psychedelia with ever-grander arrangements on a Wagnerian operatic scale. Hidden underneath the pulsing, reverberant organs and guitars and insistently restated themes were subtle blues and pop influences that kept the material accessible to a wide audience. Abandoning the singles market, they concentrated on album-length works, and built a huge following in the progressive rock underground with constant touring in both Europe and North America. While LPs like Ummagumma (divided into live recordings and experimental outings by each member of the band), Atom Heart Mother (a collaboration with composer Ron Geesin), and More... (a film soundtrack) were erratic, each contained some extremely effective music.


By the early '70s, Syd Barrett was a fading or nonexistent memory for most of Pink Floyd's fans, although the group, one could argue, never did match the brilliance of that somewhat anomalous 1967 debut. Meddle (1971) sharpened the band's sprawling epics into something more accessible, and polished the science fiction ambience that the group had been exploring ever since 1968. Nothing, however, prepared Pink Floyd or their audience for the massive mainstream success of their 1973 album, Dark Side of the Moon, which made their brand of cosmic rock even more approachable with state-of-the-art production; more focused songwriting; an army of well-time stereophonic sound effects; and touches of saxophone and soulful female backup vocals.


Dark Side of the Moon finally broke Pink Floyd as superstars in the United States, where it made number one. More astonishingly, it made them one of the biggest-selling acts of all time. Dark Side of the Moon spent an incomprehensible 741 weeks on the Billboard album chart. Additionally, the primarily instrumental textures of the songs helped make Dark Side of the Moon easily translatable on an international level, and the record became (and still is) one of the most popular rock albums worldwide.


It was also an extremely hard act to follow, although the follow-up, Wish You Were Here (1975), also made number one, highlighted by a tribute of sorts to the long-departed Barrett, "Shine On You Crazy Diamond." Dark Side of the Moon had been dominated by lyrical themes of insecurity, fear, and the cold sterility of modern life; Wish You Were Here and Animals (1977) developed these morose themes even more explicitly. By this time Waters was taking a firm hand over Pink Floyd's lyrical and musical vision, which was consolidated by The Wall (1979).


The bleak, overambitious double concept album concerned itself with the material and emotional walls modern humans build around themselves for survival. The Wall was a huge success (even by Pink Floyd's standards), in part because the music was losing some of its heavy-duty electronic textures in favor of more approachable pop elements. Although Pink Floyd had rarely even released singles since the late '60s, one of the tracks, "Another Brick in the Wall," became a transatlantic number one. The band had been launching increasingly elaborate stage shows throughout the '70s, but the touring production of The Wall, featuring a construction of an actual wall during the band's performance, was the most excessive yet.


In the 1980s, the group began to unravel. Each of the four had done some side and solo projects in the past; more troublingly, Waters was asserting control of the band's musical and lyrical identity. That wouldn't have been such a problem had The Final Cut (1983) been such an unimpressive effort, with little of the electronic innovation so typical of their previous work. Shortly afterward, the band split up -- for a while. In 1986, Waters was suing Gilmour and Mason to dissolve the group's partnership (Wright had lost full membership status entirely); Waters lost, leaving a Roger-less Pink Floyd to get a Top Five album with Momentary Lapse of Reason in 1987. In an irony that was nothing less than cosmic, about 20 years after Pink Floyd shed their original leader to resume their career with great commercial success, they would do the same again to his successor. Waters released ambitious solo albums to nothing more than moderate sales and attention, while he watched his former colleagues (with Wright back in tow) rescale the charts.


Pink Floyd still had a huge fan base, but there's little that's noteworthy about their post-Waters output. They knew their formula, could execute it on a grand scale, and could count on millions of customers -- many of them unborn when Dark Side of the Moon came out, and unaware that Syd Barrett was ever a member -- to buy their records and see their sporadic tours. The Division Bell, their first studio album in seven years, topped the charts in 1994 without making any impact on the current rock scene, except in a marketing sense. Ditto for the live Pulse album, recorded during a typically elaborately staged 1994 tour, which included a concert version of The Dark Side of the Moon in its entirety. Waters' solo career sputtered along, highlighted by a solo recreation of The Wall, performed at the site of the former Berlin Wall in 1990, and released as an album. Syd Barrett continued to be completely removed from the public eye except as a sort of archetype for the fallen genius

The Monkees were the brainchild of television producers Bert Schneider and Bob Rafelson, who decided to emulate the zany, madcap humour of the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night for the small screen. In September 1965, they placed in ad in the show biz trade paper, Variety, for four "folk & rock musicians" to appear in a TV series. Over 400 applied for the job, including Stephen Stills and Harry Nilsson, but as it turned out, only one of the four winners, guitarist and songwriter Michael Nesmith , actually saw the ad. Micky Dolenz (who would play drums), Davy Jones (who would sing), and Peter Tork (bass) found out about the opportunity from other sources. Nesmith and Tork had experience in the folk scene; Dolenz and Jones were primarily actors (although Nesmith and Jones had already made some obscure solo recordings).

From the outset, it was made clear that the Monkees were hired to be television actors first, and musicians a distant second. There would be original material generated for them to sing in the series, mostly by professional songwriters like Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Carole King, Gerry Goffin, and Neil Diamond. There would be records as well, with weekly exposure to promote the tunes, but the group wouldn't do much more than sing, although the series would give the impression that they played their own instruments.

On the other hand, they weren't devoid of musical talent, and at their best, managed to craft some enduring pop/rock hits. "I'm a Believer", "Last Train to Clarksville", "A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You", "Pleasant Valley Sunday", "Stepping Stone", "Valleri" and "Daydream Believer" were all pleasantly jangling, harmony rock numbers with clever hook lines, and all were huge hits in 1966-68. Scorned at their peak by hipsters for not playing on many of their own records, the group gained some belated critical respect for their catchy, good-time brand of pop.

The TV show was a big hit with young audiences between 1966 and 1968, with slapstick comedy, super-fast editing, and thin plots that could be banded together by almost surreal humour. It wasn't A Hard Day's Night, but it was, in its way, innovative relative to the conventions of television at the time. The irony was that, by the time the series debuted in September 1966, the Beatles themselves had just released Revolver, and had evolved way beyond their moptop phase into psychedelia.

Also in September 1966, their debut single "Last Train to Clarksville" became their first big hit, reaching number one, as did the follow-up, "I'm a Believer". They were quickly one of the most popular acts in the business, yet they were not allowed to play anything on most of their first records, only to sing; the instruments would be handled by session players. This was particularly hard for Mike Nesmith, a serious musician and songwriter, to swallow, although he did manage to place a few of his own tunes on their records from the start.

Eventually the Monkees revealed that they didn't play on most of their own records, and Nesmith in particular incited the group to wrest control of their recordings into their own hands. Partly to deflect criticism of the group as nothing more than puppets, and partly to effect control over their musical destiny (some of their early recordings had been packaged and released without their consent), the Monkees did indeed play and write much of the music on their third album, "Headquarters" (1967), with a lot of help from producer Chip Douglas . It didn't prove the band to be hidden geniuses, in fact sounding not much different from their previous releases, but as a hard-won victory to establish their own identity, it was a major point of pride. They would continue, however, to rely upon industry songwriters for the rest of their hit singles, and frequently employ session musicians throughout the rest of their career.

Despite the questions surrounding their musical competence, the Monkees did tour before live audiences. They made their own contribution to rock history by enlisting Jimi Hendrix , then barely known in the U.S., as an opening act for a 1967 tour; Hendrix lasted only a few shows before everyone agreed that the combination was a mismatch (to put it mildly). But the Monkees were always a lot hipper personally than many assumed from their bubblegum packaging. Their albums are strewn with rather ambitious, even mildly psychedelic cuts, some rather successful, some absolutely awful.

In 1968, they gained their freak credentials with the movie "Head", a messy, indulgent, occasionally inspired piece of drug-addled weirdness that was co-written and co-produced by Jack Nicholson (before he had broken through to stardom with Easy Rider).

By 1968, the Monkee phenomenon was drawing to a close. The show's final episode aired in March 1968, and Head, released in November, was not a commercial success, confusing the teenyboppers and confounding the critics. Surprisingly, it was not Nesmith, but Tork who was the first to leave the group, at the end of 1968. They carried on as a trio, releasing a couple of fairly dismal albums in 1969, as well as producing a little-seen TV special.

By the end of the '60s, Nesmith, who had established his credentials as a songwriter with "Different Drum," which was taken into the Top 20 by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys, was also gone, to start a lengthy solo career that finally allowed him to stretch out as a serious artist. That left only Dolenz and Jones, who fulfilled the Monkees contract with the pointless 'Changes' album in 1970.

When enough years separated the music from the hype, the Monkees underwent a critical rehab of sorts, as listeners fondly remembered their singles as classy, well-executed, fun pop/rock. That led to a predictable clamour for a reunion, especially after their albums were reissued to surprisingly swift sales in the mid-'80s, and their series was rerun on MTV.

Nesmith was having none of it; by this time he was a respected and hugely successful music video mogul with his Pacific Arts company. The other three did reunite to tour and record a predictably horrendous album, "Pool It!" (Nesmith did join them once onstage in 1989). Rhino records has treated the Monkee catalogue with a great deal of respect, reissuing all of their original albums on CD with added unreleased/rare bonus tracks, and even assembling a box set.

Micky Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork celebrated the Monkees' 30th anniversary with a concert tour that ran throughout 1996. In 1997, Michael Nesmith joined them for a spring concert tour of Great Britain and Ireland. All four Monkees were with their concert tour in the U.S. in the summer of 1997.

In 1999 Davy Jones was to have co-starred again with Peter Noone and Bobby Sherman on the Teen Idols concert tour, but in early April, Davy announced he would be leaving the tour immediately. Davy did not appear on any Teen Idols dates that year. In 2003, Davy was performing solo shows with his band around the country, as well as training horses.

Micky Dolenz began working seriously on his directing career in 1999. He directed an episode of the ABC-TV sitcom "Boy Meets World". With Davy's departure from the 1999 edition of the Teen Idols tour, Micky was asked to take his place on the tour, and he accepted the invitation. He continues to act and perform solo on the oldies circut.

Peter Tork has been touring regularly with his blues band Shoe Suede Blues.

Michael Nesmith completed a bicoastal book tour to promote his novel, "The Long Sandy Hair of Neftoon Zamora" (1998, St. Martin's Press). He also began working on his second novel, and trying to drum up interest in getting his script, "Fried Pies", turned into a feature film. Michael Nesmith's long-running legal trouble with PBS was finally concluded when a federal court jury awarded him a settlement of nearly $47 million dollars. PBS appealed the verdict. In 2003, Michael was working on a new album, "Rays".

By 2006, the members of the Monkees were saying that they have no plans to work together in the future. "I would not work with those guys again if my life depended on it," Jones told Scripps Howard News Service. "I can't be responsible for their attitudes and the way they treat people."

In the end, although many critics dismiss the band as "the fabricated four", The Monkees left us with a series of fondly remembered, toe-tapping hits from the classic age of rock and roll.

This was the first band that I personally saw live in 1973, with the warm up band being Billy Preston,Now 1000's of shows later I will always remember my virgin concert initiation.!!!!!


The foundation of what was to become "Grand Funk Railroad" was laid in Flint, Michigan in the mid 1960's. Richard Terrance Knapp was a popular local D.J. who decided to leave radio to enter the music end of the business. After deejaying at record hops with a local band named "The Jazz Masters", which consisted of Don Brewer (drums), Al Pippins (guitar), Bob Caldwell (keyboards), and Herm Jackson (bass), Knapp lied to them that he was personal friends with Mick Jagger and Brian Jones of The Rolling Stones. Because of this and his radio connections, the band invited him to join the group as their lead singer. To sound more "English", they renamed the band "The Pack", and Richard Knapp started using "Terry Knight" as his stage name.

The group soon developed a large local following and reached number 46 on the national record charts with a song called "I Who Have Nothing", released on the small "Lucky Eleven" label. Herman Jackson was drafted, and was replaced by a local kid named Mark Farner. Eventually, Terry Knight left the band and The Pack continued on without him.

By 1968, Farner and Brewer decided to leave and form a new band of their own. They recruited bass player Mel Schacher from Question Mark and The Mysterians, and renamed themselves "Grand Funk Railroad", inspired by a Michigan landmark, The Grand Trunk Railroad. By this time, Terry Knight had landed a job at Capitol Records in New York, but accepted an invitation to become the trio's manager.

After a wildly successful performance at the Atlanta Pop Festival on July 4, 1969, the band landed a recording contract with Capitol Records and immediately began making its name by performing at several large pop festivals. Their first singles reached the charts but Grand Funk soon proved its real strength in the album market. "On Time" reached number 27 in 1969, followed by the number 11, "Grand Funk" in 1970. By the summer of that year they had become a major concert attraction, and their albums routinely reached the Top 10 for the next four years.

The group's huge success is often attributed to the public relations expertise of manager Knight. In 1970, for example, Knight reportedly paid $100,000 for a huge billboard in New York City's Times Square to promote the group's "Closer To Home" LP, which subsequently became their first Top 10 album, reaching number 6 and spawning the FM radio-staple title track.

In June 1971, Grand Funk became only the second group (after the Beatles ) to sell out New York's Shea Stadium. Their recordings sold in greater quantity, even though many radio stations ignored their releases. 1970's "Live" Album reached number 5 and included another concert and radio favourite in Farner's "Mean Mistreater". The next year saw the release of "Survival" and "E Pluribus Funk", the latter most notable for its round album cover.

Around the time of recording E Pluribus Funk, it was decided to replace Terry Knight as Manager. Andy Cavaliere and later, John Eastman, father of Linda McCartney, were hired to take his place. The next few years were spent in litigation over the rights to the name "Grand Funk Railroad" and song royalties. The band eventually got to keep their name, but had to pay Knight a huge settlement.

In 1973, the group shortened its name officially to "Grand Funk", and added a fourth member, former "Fabulous Pack" member, keyboard player Craig Frost. Now produced by Todd Rundgren, they finally cracked the singles market, reaching number 1 with the album title track "We're An American Band", a celebration of the group's times on the road. In 1974, a major revision of Little Eva 's "The Loco-Motion" also reached the top (the first time in US chart history that a cover version of a song that had previously reached number 1 also attained that position). Later that year, they scored another top twenty hit with "Bad Time" (To Be In Love).

By the time 1975 rolled around, and the disco craze in full swing, the band found that their style of "garage band music", had lost much of its appeal. The following year, the group reverted to its original name of "Grand Funk Railroad" and signed with MCA Records to record "Good Singin', Good Playin", produced by Frank Zappa.

Although it is considered one of their finest by many fans, the album failed to reach the Top 50, and a discouraged Mark Farner decided to quit the group. He then went on to record two solo albums, while Don Brewer, Mel Schacher and Craig Frost added guitarist Billy Elworthy to form a new group they called simply "Flint". The new band failed to find commercial success with their solitary album.

In 1981, Farner and Brewer added bassist, Dennis Ballinger and re-formed to record "Grand Funk Lives" and "What's Funk?" for the Full Moon label. Failing to recapture former glories, they split again. Farner returned to his solo career, recording three Christian albums, before joining a band called "Adrenalin". Don Brewer and Craig Frost joined Bob Seger's Silver Bullet Band.

In 1995, Mark Farner was asked to join "Ringo Starr's All Starr Band", and during the next year, Mark, Don and Mel decided to go out and play a few "Reunion" concerts back east. Howard Eddy Jr. was asked to join as a sideman on keyboards, rhythm guitar, and back ground vocals. It wasn't long after that it became official, Grand Funk Railroad was reunited. The band toured extensively from 1996 to 1998, including a benefit for Bosnian orphans in 1997. Their 1998 tour was listed in Pollstar's Top 100 Shows as one of the top grossing tours of the year. Capitol Records released Grand Funk's Anthology "Thirty Years of Funk" on June 29, 1999.

The new millennium saw founding members Don Brewer and Mel Schacher joined by singer Max Carl (38 Special), lead guitarist Bruce Kulick (12 years with KISS), and keyboardist, Tim Cashion (Bob Seger and Robert Palmer).

Together, Brewer and Schacher created a new, dynamic and multi-talented five-piece band to not only carry on the tradition of the Grand Funk hits, but also having the potential to create a brand new chapter in the legacy of Grand Funk Railroad.