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Frank Marino |
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FEATUREMontreal Guitar God Gets Back Into Action Thanks To His Loyal Fans…FRANK MARINO & MAHOGNAY RUSHby Tom Lounges
Frank Marino is not a household name, but his playing is revered by true guitar afficionados, who rank the Montreal native in the elite company of such greats as Jimi Hendrix, Robin Trower and Eric Clapton.
Like those famous string-bending gents, Marino can play it sweet and soulful, and he can also rip it up in a finger-blistering fashion that rocks as hard as anyone.
Hard rock, blues and jazz...are all his musical playgrounds. Just listen to the wealth of music he has created over the last three decades, both solo and with his group, Mahogany Rush.
Midwest BEAT caught up with Frank for a brief chat about his brand new 2-CD concert album, Real Live; the re-issuing of some of his latter day titles; and what brought him out of his self-imposed retirement.
“In 1993, I just quit. I didn’t announce it or anything. I just went home and I started to have kids. I’ve got three little girls now,” he said.
“I was perfectly happy during that time,” he continued. “It wasn’t like I turned around and quit in a bitter way. I’d had just enough. It wasn’t fun. It had been 23 or 24 years that I had been doing this and I thought it was time to do something else and give it a break.”
Marino never planned to quit playing his guitar, just to quit touring, recording and “playing the game” that the music business had long ago become.
“I knew that going home didn’t mean I wouldn’t still play my guitar,” he said. “I knew that I would still be making music with my friends and playing for fun. I have a studio at home and it was a nice place to retreat to at that time.”
One day while surfing the net, Marino stumbled upon a web site maintained by a fan named Willy Parsons called – www.mahoganyrush.com
“It was a really well done site,” recalled Marino, who contacted Parsons and soon began to maintain a steady presence on the site, chatting with fans.
“I was just amazed at how much the music meant to these people out there,” he said.
Marino had already begun recorded new material for what eventually became, what this writer and many Marino fans feel, is the artist’s finest album to date – Eye Of The Storm.
“I had no intention of releasing those songs,” he said. “What happened, is that I shared some of them with some of the fans on the web site and they started telling me that I just had to release this stuff”.
The songs – dark and prophetic with apocalyptic overtones – were compiled. In 2000, Eye of the Storm was released and Marino stepped back into the arena he had left seven years prior.
“It was the fans who got me doing this again,” he said. “I must admit, I am enjoying it again, because now I’m pretty much able to do it all on my own terms.”
Marino does not tour nearly as much as he once did during his turbulent Columbia years, when that label was trying like hell to make Mahogany Rush into another Aerosmith cash cow.
Still, the guitarist does love bending his strings for people out there who “get it” and who understand what he and his music are all about.
“We’re gonna have a great time at these live shows Tom. You’ve known me since the late-‘70s, so you know how much I love to play,” he said of the tour that brings Mahogany Rush to Chicago City Limits night club in Schaumburg on October 14.
“My shows can last two and a half to three hours sometimes, if the venue doesn’t put a time restraint on me,” he said. “So watch out!”
One such show, recently was immortalized by the fine folks at the Canadian imprint – Just A Minute Records.
Taped on September 8, 2001, at the Club Soda concert hall in Canada, the music heard on Real Live was one actual concert, not a splice and dice job like so many “live” albums out there.
Though it clocks in at just under two and a half hours, Marino, explained that nearly a third of that night’s set was trimmed from the release.
“Real Live would have been a 3-CD set if we’d left the whole concert there, so we had to trim it down,” he said. “I edited out songs that have been on past live records, like ‘The Answer’ and ‘Dragonfly’. I focused on songs that have never been released live before or that I did a really different approach on.”
Though the label now features other artists, Just A Minute, was actually established just for the sake of releasing Marino’s music.
“It’s a spin off label of Justin-Time (Records), which is a pretty big blues and jazz label here in Canada. It is run by a good friend of mine named Jim West.”
West, a former roadie for Marino during the early part of Frank’s career, was at the concert while it was being taped and took a real shine to Marino’s version of Hendrix’s “Red House”.
West offered to release those live concert tapes via his sources and the wheels soon began to spin for what has become a comeback for Marino to the world of recording.
Since then, West and his team have begun re-issuing Marino’s late ‘80s and early ‘90s catalog, complete with new packaging and a bonus song on each.
“I was very involved,” Marino said of the re-issues. “I mastered them and I picked the bonus songs. But I left the packaging entirely up to Jim and his people, because they did the packaging on Real Live and I love it. It’s real classy. So they obviously know what they are doing.”
Presently available are:
with other titles forthcoming.
“I certainly would if I could just get my records back from them,” responded Marino when asked if such landmark ‘70s-era releases like Mahogany Rush IV, Juggernaut, and What’s Next? would also be re-issued some day soon.
Columbia Records, the home of Mahogany Rush’s music throughout the 1970s, still owns the seven albums the band recorded for them during their peak of popularity.
“They told me that they were going to release a 3-CD set of my music. Then that project was bumped down to just one CD. Then even that never came out. I don’t know what they are doing with all that old catalog stuff,” he said. “But I wish I could get it back so that it could be handled right.”
Part of Marino’s new deal with West’s record company, stipulates that the guitarist record a blues album and a jazz album.
“I would actually like to do the jazz album before I do the blues album. I love jazz,” he said. “I started playing jazz drums when I was 5-years-old. I didn’t switch to guitar until much later in life.”
While some of Marino’s past material might already be perceived as jazz playing to some fans (i.e. “Avalon” and “Poppy”), Marino dismisses those as being “rock songs with some jazz influences.”
He stressed that the proposed forthcoming jazz record will be “real jazz” in the tradition of Bill Evans, Miles Davis and John Coltrane, only with his guitar taking the place of their horns.
“That’s the kind of jazz I like and the kind of record I’ll make when I get around to doing it,” he promised.
Marino has also committed to lending his music to a visual format for the first time in his career.
“I’ve promised a DVD to Jim, which is something I’ve never done,” he said. “It’s always been a philosophical thing for me. I’ve always been against the whole music video thing. When the whole MTV thing started to happen in the late 1970s, I felt it was killing the art of rock ‘n’ roll.”
West has assured Marino that any DVD they make will focus on artistry and not just be a glorified marketing sales tool.
“I guess it is about time for me to do something like this Tom,” he laughed. “I’m going to be 51 in November and I started making records when I was like 16. I’m probably the only guy out there with a guitar who hasn’t done some kind of video or DVD thing.”
Marino concluded by saying that he will continue making records and touring as long as it remains fun.
“If it gets to be too much ‘business’ again, I’ll stop,” he said. “But right now, I’m having fun again. It’s like I’m 16 all over again.”
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush perform October 14 at Chicago City Limits in Schaumburg, Illinois. |
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