Gary James' Interview With Frank Marino Of
Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush



They toured with the likes of Aerosmith and Heart. They performed at California Jam III. The group we are referring to is Mahogany Rush, or known today as Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush. Frank Marino talked with us about the history of Mahogany Rush and the history of Rock music itself.

Q - I see you're doing this Rock Legends Cruise IX, February 18th to 22nd, 2021. Is this the first time you've done something like this? That's kind of different for the band, isn't it?

A - It's the first time I said yes, but I've been asked at least four times before. I always said no. Generally I don't like to say yes to something a year in advance 'cause I'm kind of a realist and who knows where we'll be a year from now, especially at my age. Once I spoke to a few people that said it's really gonna be a fun thing, you're gonna like it, there's gonna be a lot of musicians that are gonna be there, it's not just the gigs you're gonna play, you're gonna maybe jam with people. I'm that kind of guy. I like to just hang out. So once I looked at that I said maybe I will say yes and so I finally said yes. But those same people have asked me before, three or four times.

Q - Cruises seem to be a lucrative marketplace. There's Rock Cruises, Country Cruises, Disco Cruises. You must've noticed that.

A - I didn't know much about cruises to tell you honestly, even in the last four years. And there's not just the one cruise company, there's other companies that do cruises too. I only kind of knew about it from them asking me. I thought what is this all about? To me, cruises were things I'd seen when I was younger that maybe Lawrence Welk was doing. I didn't know much about what was going on. (laughs) I hang around Jazz musicians and a lot of Jazz musicians were always telling me, "Yeah, I just got back from a cruise." I thought these cruise were this kind of a deal where you go and play on a boat for six months or something as kind of a job. Like taking a club gig. But when they told me, "No, this is actually a show, your band plays a show, but it happens to be on the water." I'm like, "Okay. Let's see what this is all about." So, for the first two or three years I wasn't quite sure about it, but then I would see people that I do know that are doing it and I'm thinking "Why are they doing it? There must be a reason they're doing it." You said the word lucrative. I think it's more lucrative for the people putting on the cruise. I can tell you I ain't gonna get rich doing the cruise. (laughs) That's for sure. I don't know what they charge people or how much people pay to go do this, but obviously if they fill up a boat filled with people and they're charging 'em thousands of dollars like a vacation thing, they must be making quite a bit of money. I think from the band's perspective you're almost playing to a captive audience in a sense. (laughs) You're on a boat with an audience. You're there for, what is it, five days? I guess maybe that's why the bands like it. It's almost like a captive audience. Nobody can leave. (laughs)

Q - I've talked to bands that have done cruises where they will fly them from the city they're in to the part where the cruise ship is docked. After their performance they can either remain on the ship or fly them back to the part where they can catch another flight back to the city they live in.

A - In my case it's a little different. I won't play a gig without my whole band and without my gear. So in my case I have to get there. I can't just fly my gear and van to Florida and get on a boat and come back. The booking agents that work with me have to try and work it out so they route my band gigs down towards that and then we do that and after continue on because I have the added expense that a lot of guys don't have which is that I insist on having my own equipment and all of my band members and crew. From what I understand, some of these people that to go on these cruises say, "Hey, let's take a week and use the gear they give us and maybe we won't play all of our tunes." They kind of change it up to get the cruise. I don't look at it that way. In my case, flying me there and then flying me back is just a way, way bigger expense and they're not gonna pay for that. So, I have to get there. So, the plan was when I finally decided to say yes, I did say to the booking agent that does my touring, I said, "Look, I'll say yes to this if you say you'll have other things to get us there and back," and he said, "Yes." So, we'll see what happens.

Q - There was a time when the band went by Mahogany Rush. Now it's Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush. Is that because you're the only original member?

A - No, that's not right. That change came about halfway through the '70s. We were always Mahogany Rush. People didn't know this, but Mahogany Rush wasn't a band name so to speak. In other words, it wasn't, "Let's call the band this." From the earliest days when I was jamming with people, even before the main guys that everyone knew in the '70s, I was always calling my music Mahogany Rush music. It was kind of a name of a description. It comes from something in my youth. Mahogany Rush was more of a description of a type of music that I was playing. A psychedelic kind of idea. It became the band name because all of a sudden we started recording and that's what it was called. It was never an intention, even before Jimmy (Ayoub) and Paul (Harwood) came with me, to call a band Mahogany Rush. In fact, Jimmy and Paul joined up with me at two different times and it was always Mahogany Rush before either of them got there. So then it became the name they put on the album. I was very okay with that because I knew that Mahogany Rush was simply kind of an idea I was trying to express, especially on the earliest records. When I got to Columbia Records, which was three record companies later, 'cause my contracts were actually sold from one company to another, it wasn't like I was on a company and then left that deal and went and found another one. The first company that signed me sold my whole contract, like you're trading a hockey player. They sold me to the next company and they sold me to the next company. I finally ended up being sold to Columbia. So, when that happened, the first album we did for Columbia was still Mahogany Rush. But by that time Columbia was a company that was way, way more interested in image, the kind of bands they had. It was all about branding. We hadn't had that with 20th Century (Fox) Records or the earlier labels. So, they began this concerted effort to try to convince me that I should change the name to simply Frank Marino. My question was, well, why? And they said, "If you look at what you are, you're a three piece band. You're Mr. Guitar Player. You're a shredder guy. You've already made a name as that and really that's what the people are seeing. It's a better way of letting people know what they're getting before they get there." In those days you did start getting single name guys. Ted Nugent. It was happening at that time. I didn't really want to do that. So there was this compromise that, okay, and it was quite an argument by the way, "What if we put both names?" I thought at first that's a little bit long, (laughs), Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush. But then they said to me, "Ted Nugent had a band called Ted Nugent And The Amboy Dukes." So, I said "Yeah." "Gary Lewis And The Playboys and..." they started naming all these bands.

Q - Diana Ross And The Supremes.

A - They're saying, "Let us do that so we can at least try to get the name our there as kind of a brand. You do your thing so you haven't lost your Mahogany Rush thing." I kind of shouldn't have said yes to that at the time, but I did. I'd just joined Columbia. It was only my second album for them and I said okay. "Okay guys. Let's see what happens." So that's how Frank Marino got attached to Mahogany Rush. And we were still a three piece band at the time and it was the same three guys. So that kept on that way and then at one point the drummer was leaving the band. So at that point the issue came up again. What do you do? You're going to be getting another drummer. What's going to happen here? Well, he was still in the band when he was going to be leaving the band. (laughs) So, they decided; we had an album called "Power Of Rock 'n' Roll". One of the other arguments that Columbia always had with me, and I was always at odds with them, was they hated my covers. They hated my album covers. They were constantly trying to take over and do the album covers themselves. Well, I would never allow that, but the "Power Of Rock 'n' Roll" album they just did it. They didn't even consult. They invented a cover. They got an artist and they did the cover they thought it should be. I was mortified by that. It created a huge rift between me and them. It was the beginning of the end basically. I hate that cover to this day. That's where the Frank Marino came out without the words Mahogany Rush. Then Jim did leave the band and I still have two records to do with Columbia which were at our option, not their option. So, the next album was "Juggarnaut" and now I was a little confused. What am I going to do? They just did this whole Frank Marino thing. Do I stick with Frank Marino? Do I go back to Mahogany Rush? Do I put Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush? What do I do? So, I did the "Juggernaut" album and I kept the name as Frank Marino at that point. I justified it by saying Jimmy did leave. He's kind of gone now. I have a new drummer. By the time that album was finished I just didn't want to do the next album for Columbia. I'd had enough. It was over and done with. I didn't want to know them anymore. I exercised my option to not do the last album for them and walked away from them. I also walked away from pretty much the entire industry as it was at that time. I was going to be part of management. I wasn't going to be part of the big booking. I wasn't going to do the big gigs anymore. I just walked away. I had enough. That was the time between "Juggernaut" and "Full Circle", there wasn't an album for a few years, I think 'til '85. "Juggernaut" was in '82. So, there was at least three or four years between the next thing that came out. By that time Paul had left the band and everyone else had left the band. So now "Full Circle" came out and that was also Frank Marino. But I had noticed every time I'd go on tour, sometimes the marquee would say Frank Marino. Sometimes it would say both. (laughs) I didn't know what to do anymore. So, I started going back to Frank Marino And Mahogany Rush. (laughs) I'm putting them both together again for the next couple of albums. By the time I got to this DVD, which is after "Eye Of The Storm" and "Real Love", I said, "You know what?" Maybe it is time to just use my name because everybody knows that Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush are kind of synonymous. Let them call it whatever they want." So, on this next leg of he tour I don't know what they'll be using. Are they using Frank Marino? Are they using Mahogany Rush, or are they using both? I'll just leave it up to the promoters. The fans know this band, they know it's kind of a synonymous name.

Q - One thing I don't hear you say is there was Rush and Mahogany Rush. Maybe there would be some confusion there.

A - That was definitely brought up. That was one of the points they brought up. That was one of the earliest points they brought up because we had done a small tour prior to that. We're both from Canada. Rush is from Tornto. We're from Montreal. So, we had done a small Canadian tour of some of Ontario with three bands, Mahogany Rush, Rush and a band called Bull Rush. (laughs) All on the same gig! Early on. Really early on. So yeah, that certainly was a point that was raised to try and make me change my mind. But look, let's face it. I never really had a symbiotic relationship with anybody in the music industry. They said I was very hard to work with. I think what they were saying is I didn't bend over for whatever they wanted. I was very principled about what I would do or wouldn't do on a stage. I was very principled about what I would or wouldn't sing about. So they said, "Oh, he's hard to work with." Really the truth is they were hard to work with. They being the monolithic music industry that seems to do everything the same way all the time. It's something I never wanted, even in the beginning. I hated it when I was 15, 16 years old and I hate it today. So, I guess I'm more of a Frank Zappa type guy. I march to my own drum and I do what I want. I'm not going to let corporate suits dictate what I do with my life. I managed to get from 15 years old to 65 years old doing it that way, so I'm okay with that. If it means I'm not going to be super famous or I'm not going to be the latest, greatest, sliced bread, that's okay with me. I'm fine. As long as I can play music, do what I want and not have to listen to these people tell me what to do, I'm good with that.

Q - You are famous and you have been able to make a living doing what you like.

A - Well, I was never able to make enough money to buy a home. I live in a rental. I've rented all my life. People think we made a whole ton of money in all those years because we were playing those big gigs and we were on Cal Jam. We didn't make any money on that. Whatever money we should have been making from record sales was never reported to us. The industry was at the height of its thieving during the '70s. I'm not the only guy they did that to. There was hundreds of guys they did that to. You would have to count on one hand the guys they didn't do it to and there were a few they didn't do it to. There were many more acts that came out of the '70s that the music industry, whether it's record companies or the promoters, they made way more money than the artists did, but there were very few artists that did make big money, okay? Those were the ones that the industry decided they weren't going to screw, for whatever reason. Maybe they had back room deals. I don't know. But the point is, you could count on one hand, maybe two hands, the artists that actually did get rich off the music industry. But the great majority of 'em were not making a whole lot of money. They really weren't on a daily basis.

Q - I would agree with you. I've interviewed many musicians who did not get what they should've gotten.

A - I often make this case: I say going back as far as the '60s we've always heard the Top Ten. We even hear it today for movies. Top Ten grossing movies. Well, I made this case one day at a meeting in Columbia. I said; I asked the President or Vice-President of Columbia at the time, "How many artists are on this label?" He said 162. I said, "And you guys run around smiling when you've got a couple of acts in the Top Ten and you put all your effort into those acts. So, what you're really telling the other 160 acts acts is that we don't give a damn about you. Why do you have 162 bands if you're only going to try and make two or three of them get into what you call the important part of the industry, which is the Top Ten? You should be wanting every one of your acts to be Top Ten," but they don't. They put their focus on whatever's happening, one or two, maybe three. Maybe they'll do it to five or six, but they'll miss on four of them and they'll all be happy with what they got into the Top Ten. In the meantime there's a hundred and fifty guys out there that are happy that the people they signed with will help them, but they don't. And so when they take this money from the lower bands, let's say they're in the Top 120, okay? They're taking the money from them so that they can pay the guys in the Top Ten. That's how that game works. But at some point you say to yourself, like I did, by 1982 I figured it out and said, "Now I remember why I never wanted to sign with a record company when I was 15." I was an anti-establishment kid. I didn't like the industry. I came from the hippie days when you looked at the corporations as the enemy. You looked at it as a commercial. You didn't want to be commercial. So, by '82 I said, "I'm just gonna go do what I should've done when I was 16 years old. I gonna go back, make records when I want, play when someone will have me." And of course you're gonna play to less people. And of course you're gonna sell less pieces. But that's okay, as long as you're doing what you do, you can make money anyway. So, it's not like you're losing anything. The biggest surprise about that wasn't that the record companies acted like record companies do. That's what they do. Go in a tiger's cage, it eats you. You can't blame the tiger. But what really disappointed me was that all the people that you think are with you in thinking, as soon as you walk away from it, they don't walk with you; like your own crew, your own band mates. People you thought were really in on it with you. They go, "Well, you know, I got other things to do." And they desert you. So you have to start finding new people that have the same mental ideology, and that takes time because not only do they have to think like that, but they have to play well and they have to be interested in playing cool music. After all, that's what you're trying to do. That's the story of how it works. The problem is when you talk about it there's a lot of people who let's say are in the public arena who will say, "Well, that's just sour grapes." But to me, I'm not complaining about it. I'm actually happy that's the way my career went, (laughs) because that's the way I wanted it all along. I didn't want to be part of that glitterati. I don't want it anyway, even if they hadn't said it was there. So for me, I don't look at it as a loss. I look at it as a win. So, when I tell you all this, I'm not telling it to you in a way of complaint. I'm telling it to you in a way of, "Wow! That was close. I'm sure glad I got out of there." (laughs) That's the way I'm looking at it. People think I'm nuts, but I say, "Well yeah, but look at how happy I am.

Q - You do laugh.

A - Yeah. Other people might say they might have taken millions of dollars from you. I'm going to thank God they did. Who knows what I would've ended up being? (laughs) I really think I got the good portion here.

Q - You could've put a needle in your arm or a gun to your head.

A - There's a million ways that you can become an idiot. I have a great life. Forty years with a wife. I have three girls. We have a roof over our heads. We have supper. There's nothing wrong with that. Life is just fantastic. If you think about it, what are you going t trade this kind of a thing for, a boat or a yacht that you're never going to use? To me it makes no sense. Virtually everybody I know if you ask them, "How's your life? What's the ratio of bad to good?" They'll say "50/50." And I say, "No, it's not. How long have you been up today?" "Twelve hours." "What happened to you today that was bad?" They'll say, "Well, nothing." I'll say, "What about yesterday?" They go, "Well, nothing." "How about the day before?" "Got caught in a traffic light," or whatever. I say, "Multiply that by 365 and you'll have your ratio of bad shit in a year. It's not bad. Be grateful. Things are pretty darn good. Everything's pretty good. Just be more grateful about it."

Q - Is it true you only have a seventh grade education?

A - Yeah, well I have a much greater than seventh grade education if you count the learning I taught myself. Technically the last school I left was was the seventh grade. I was enrolled in eighth grade for twenty-six days and that was about it. So, technically I have a seventh grade education, but I was a voracious reader. I was a person who wanted to know things, so I taught myself electronics. I taught myself physics. I taught myself mechanics. I taught myself a lot of things, and theology, a big part of my life for the last forty years. So yeah, I'm well-read, but that's not because I got it in the school. I dare say if you go to the people who did have a tenth, eleventh or even a college education and you talk to them and say, "Tell me what you know from there," they'll say, "I don't remember it."

Q - I don't know how the education system works in Canada, but here in the U.S. you have to be sixteen to leave school.

A - Oh, it's the same here, but I was able to get out of it because of a weird series of events. When I blew my mind on LSD I had to go to the hospital. So, that effectively renders me not eligible to even go to school anymore. It was really hard for me to even go to school for the longest time. I was in and out of school and it was kind of allowed because I wasn't well. By the time I was getting better at that, all of a sudden I had a music career. Don't forget, they signed me when I was like 15 years old. My parents had to sign my first contract. They put me in a recording studio and the rest is history. So in a way I skated past it. The law didn't play any part in it at that point. But generally you're not supposed to have kids quit school in grade seven.

Q - You were signed then at 15 years old. For lack of a better word, how then were you discovered?

A - I was already playing and getting big gigs before the record deal came along. Locally, I was playing in the band and we would set up and have two or three thousand people show up in a field. It was kind of like a Grateful Dead thing. That's why the record company signed us. They came to see this kid who's playing to all these people in a field. They said, "Hey, we'll sign you to a record contract, kid." I first said to them, "Nope. I'm not interested," and they just kept pursuing it. And the only reason they talked me into it was they told me I could have a lot of equipment. (laughs)

Q - That'll do it!

A - You tell a 15 year old kid he's gonna have all the equipment he likes, he'll sign anything. So, it had nothing to do with the actual money. They stuck me in the studio. They let me produce my own albums. Totally unheard of to let me be the producer, but that was the way they got me to sign. I was 16 when I started that album and turned 17 while we were still doing it. So, that was the beginning. When they ended up selling me to the next record company they sold the actual contract. So, the stipulation that I have to be the producer went with it. When they sold it to Columbia that still went with it. So, I ended up being my own producer for my whole life. It was just by a quirk of fate at the beginning because I didn't want to sign in the first place that that happened to get in there.

Q - You formed your first band in 1971?

A - No. I formed it in '68, in '69. I went to the hospital in '68. I learned how to play guitar in the hospital when I was in and out a few times. By the time I came out I was like finding friends to play with. That was '69. When you say formed the band, it wasn't like, "Hey! Let's form a band." You know, like kids today might bring their Playstation over to their friend's house to play video games. In those days you didn't have that. So, you brought your guitar over to your friend's house to play loud music. Everything was just for fun. It wasn't because you wanted to be a musician in a band. The kids don't play with their Playstations so they'll be programmers. They're just doing it 'cause they like it. It just turns into something. That's what happened. It turned into, "Hey, let's go play at that park. We can bring our band over there and play at that school." It was that type of thing. So, I was already playing to quite a few people before I met Jim, who became the drummer of the band. Then I met Paul later, who became the bass player of the band. I had seven bass players before that. So, it wasn't a moment of forming the band. It was an osmosis of this crazy kid that got out of the hospital that was trying to play with anyone who would play with him. I was a bit shunned by a lot of people because I was a bit weird when I came out of the hospital. I was an oddball. Here's the guy that carries his guitar everywhere. It formed into Mahogany Rush, but I kept calling it Mahogany Rush music. I didn't have songs. The first manager was just a guy who was 18 years old who said, "Hey! Let me be the manager." It was like, "Okay. Be whatever the manager is. Go and do whatever that's supposed to be." Then another friend would say, "Let me be the roadie," and I say, "Okay, you can be the roadie." (laughs) It wasn't like a plan. It wasn't a business thing at all, but it became one.

Q - You recorded your first record in what year?

A - I was 16 when we recorded the first two songs for "Maxoom". I'd be turning 17 in November. Prior to November, '71, it was maybe September, October when I did "Buddy" and "Funky Woman". Jimi Hendrix died in September of 1970 and we were asked to play on a float in a parade. I was only doing Jimi Hendrix material in the beginning. We were asked to play on a float in a parade on Jimi Hendrix Day, which was September 18th, '71, one year after his death. There was a parade in Montreal where we were put on a float and for three to six hours the truck drove all around the city and we played all Jimi Hendrix material. So that's when I wrote "Buddy" about Jimi Hendrix.

Q - Did you ever get to see Jimi Hendrix in concert?

A - Yes. I did see Hendrix in 1968, but I wasn't a guitar player. I was a drummer. I had gone to that concert to see a band that was opening for them called The Soft Machine 'cause I liked their drummer. I also liked the Jimi Hendrix band because I liked their drummer. I didn't really care about the guitar. I remember I was at this arena and Soft Machine finished and this guy comes out and he was wearing red pants and I couldn't hear the drummer. All I could hear was noise. I said to my brother, "This is terrible. I'm going home," and I left. (laughs) So, I walked out on Jimi Hendrix actually and didn't realize how much of a part his music would play in my life in years to come. I find that very, very ironic. But, I never saw him again after that.

Q - When you were growing up, was there a thriving music scene in Montreal?

A - Oh, yeah. It was like San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury. It was Summer Of Love shit. It was the same stuff. It was the hippies, the love-ins, the whole thing. It was very much that. I was very much the young kid. I had an older brother and sister. So, they were of the genuine Woodstock variety. I was like the kid you might see at Woodstock with the older brother. I was the younger kid, the mascot. But, music was a very big part of that. It was Beatles, which was a big part of my upbringing. By that time The Beatles were doing "Sgt. Pepper". Then Hendrix came along and blew everything wide open. You had Cream, The Doors. That was our scene. Finally in '68, I'd been doing acid for awhile and blew my mind on it. I ended up in a hospital. The recovery of that was a terribly long, many, many year recovery which I became a seeker and tried to find out how to get home. That's where I became religious. I haven't had a drink or a drug of any kind since I went to the hospital in 1968. People think I did my whole career taking drugs, smoking dope and taking pills, but I actually didn't. The last thing I did was before I went to the hospital and I was only 13 years old. I was 14 when I came out of the hospital. So, I learned to play guitar in the hospital and came out and tried to play whatever music came into my head, which was basically the psychedelic music of the time. That's why I gravitated towards it.

Q - Don't you know in about a hundred years someone is going to take a look back at the 1960s and try to figure out this connection between musicians and drugs, why did the two go together? Who's started this idea? Who started this idea that to be a cool musician you have to take drugs?

A - I have definite ideas about that myself because now I'm a person who's far more astute. I've been able to look back over it. Hindsight is 20/20. I think really for all the people who tout the '60s as being this kind of awakening period, I don't kind of look at it that way, even though I was widely awakened myself. I look at it almost as an anesthetizing period where people began to think they could move away from the actual principles of reality and embrace principles that are totally delusional and drugs was the one way that making them believe their delusions were the way to go. What we have today let's say, what they say is the gap between whoever is older and younger is directly resulted from that period in the '60s where these crazy ideas took hold. Then you added drugs into the mix and the next thing you had was the '70s where they then took that to really, really sort of decadent heights. Here I was, going into the '70s music as a watcher of it basically, because I wasn't doing it, but I was in it. I was playing everywhere. Everybody was doing what they were doing. I was almost like an observer of it for this whole time and watching it completely degrade, which is why I quit in 1983. I just didn't quit in 1983 because I didn't like the music industry or the corporations. It was I didn't like everything about it. I didn't like what it had become. When we started we didn't call shows "shows". We called them concerts...

Q - You can thank Brian Epstein for that. He's the guy who labeled The Beatles performing live as concerts. Prior to The Beatles, concerts was a term associated with symphony orchestras.

A - They became shows. And they became spectacles and then it became about sex, drugs and people were somehow championing that as being the cool thing to do. In my sensibilities, especially as I was becoming a very Christian person, it started to not make any sense to me. But, I did get to watch it. (laughs) A front row seat.

Q - Like me, you're a purist. The best time to have seen The Rolling Stones was at the beginning of their career, without all the elaborate props and light shows. Just the five guys playing the music that people came to love.

A - Yeah. It all depends on what and why you went to see. I was what they called a Beatles fan. The Stones fans weren't The Beatles fans. And Beatles fans weren't The Stones fans. It's kind of like almost sports teams. (laughs) There were some people that liked both, but they always tended to like one more than the other. So, I was that. I liked The Beatles and I didn't really want to like The Stones, but I kind of couldn't help but like some of the early Stones' songs. When Brian Jones was with them, he wrote some pretty cool songs. After he left, I saw that The Stones tried to mirror "Sgt. Pepper" with "Satanic Majestics". I said, "This seems almost like when John Lennon famously said, "Well, you know Mick. He's always been a day late and a dollar short." That's the way I saw The Rolling Stones, as this band that wanted to be the bad boy version of The Beatles. Musically speaking from the playing point of view, remember when I was into all of that I wasn't a guitar player. I was a guy who played the drums. And my favorite music to play was Jazz. Swing on drums 'cause I liked Buddy Rich. When I saw that back and forth I sort of leaned more towards The Beatles and The Beatles' style bands of which there were a few. I always found that a little more musical. Yeah, of course we were impressed with The Beatles' long hair and the Beatle boots when they first came out when we were kids. In the late '60s it was genuinely music if you liked them. Yeah, I'm a purist in the sense it doesn't have to be the original people necessarily doing the original stuff, depending on what the stuff is. If you liked the Alan Parsons Project, who were the original people? It's a project. It's an album. If you liked The Mothers Of Invention, well who was actually the drummer and who was playing the keyboards? I like that music, so whoever could come along and do that music with honesty, then it doesn't really matter who's playing it. In Stevie Wonder's case, Stevie Wonder has to be a part of whatever's happening because he's the special guy in the band. So, I'm a purist in the sense that I like musicians to approach the music with a purity of conviction and honesty about the music itself. Let's not forget something. I think one of the worst things that ever happened to music in general, okay? Is the idea that after The Beatles, in order to be taken seriously, not only did you have to have your records famous, but you somehow had to be the writer of the music. Prior to them, artists almost never wrote their own music. It was totally okay if you liked Elvis or Buddy Holly. Whoever it was. Frank Sinatra. But somehow after The Beatles came along, a new criteria was introduced that artists could only be taken seriously if they also wrote the music. I don't agree with that. I don't agree that everybody's a poet laureate and everybody's a writer and everybody's a genius. So, to all of a sudden require that from artists seems almost like you're going to get a lot of fakery going on and you're going to be accepting a lot of less than you should. You're going to get generational artists that are going to come along not so often. You're going to get your Stevie Wonder or your Jimi Hendrix or your Paul Simon or even Elton John. You're going to get your one in a million guys, but they're not going to populate two hundred places on every record company. So, you end up having to fill the rest of the slots with guys that are maybe pretending to be that. In general it takes down the whole system.

Q - Frank, the whole system has already been taken down. Today's top singers can't sing. They work wonders on their voices in a recording studio.

A - Well, my favorite male vocalist is Tony Bennett. It has been Tony Bennett since I was a kid. Now, here's the interesting thing about Tony Bennett. Now he's in vogue again. There was a time when no one knew who he was. He was up, then he was down and he got really up again. If you go to see Tony Bennett now he'll never do an original song. No one will find that's a problem. He didn't write any of the music he's singing.

Q - It's his style of singing.

A - Right. He doesn't sing licks. He never sings a lick. It's always single notes. He's got a beautiful voice, but he doesn't have to put a quick lick at the end of every line like so-called good singers do. So, Tony Bennett is the pure vocalist, singing someone else's tunes, but putting into those tunes the emotion of his own voice. You can love that whether you pay $20 for his ticket or $200 or $1,000. So, what I'm saying is things get a little skewed. When it comes to the Rock business, they're basically saying we're going to charge you more money for this ticket or that show and look, we're going to show you Eric Clapton with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce. Meanwhile it's not really Cream anymore. So people are paying that money not really to hear "Disraeli Gears" or "Tales Of Brave Ulysses", but you're paying to be able to say, "I was there."

Q - Yes.

A - It becomes kind of "I was there" thing. That's why they go to the festivals and pay to be there and don't even look at the bands half the time, so they can say "I was there." Toronto, at one point, put on a SARS concert to raise money for a disease and they hired as many big bands as they could. There so many, there were too many. No band could play longer than ten minutes. I remember seeing them all come out. There's The Stones. There's AC/DC. They were basically coming out and taking a bow. The music didn't even matter anymore. People were there to say, "I was there." That's all okay, but think about it from the musical perspective how music is beginning to take a backseat to all the other reasons you were going to a place. At the end of the day, what are we really giving people as musicians. We're giving them sound, music, songs. That's what we're giving them. It shouldn't have to be a performance art. It should just be that they're playing you something that touches you emotionally, artistically and honestly. Whether they did it good or bad is subjective, but whether they did it honestly is not. Only they know that.

Q - Have you ever been told how many guitarists you've inspired?

A - I'm told there's a lot. I don't know for a fact, but I'm told that. I'm told that all the time. Because I meet a lot of people and have for years, yeah. You get told that by a lot of guys, "Hey man, you really influenced me. I started playing guitar because of you. Now I can play your live album." I'm very happy that that happens. I'm very honored that that happens. So, I guess that's the good thing you take from a long career. The longer your career is, the more likely you'll have a few more of those people who will respect you for what you did musically for them. And that's a great thing. You're kind of passing it on that way. We take ourselves too seriously in our business. We really do, and we shouldn't because at the end of the day we're providing music for people who are actually providing us the ability to play it. If all of a sudden the audience didn't want to buy the record or weren't interested, what would we do? We'd still play music in our basement. We'd still have fun playing the music. What the crowd is giving us is the ability to actually take it to them. I think that's sort of a great thing. I'm a very grateful kind of person. I am grateful when I get something. I like to be grateful. I think it's the key to happiness. So, I'm very grateful to those fans. In our industry I would dare say the least important people during a concert are actually the musicians providing the music. They really are. They're the luckiest people in the world to be up there.

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