Mark Farner, legendary frontman and guitarist of Grand Funk Railroad, joins host Jeff Moffatt for a lively and heartfelt conversation on Treasure Island Discs. From his Flint, Michigan roots to selling over 25 million records worldwide, Farner reflects on the family jam sessions that sparked his passion, the whimsical story behind the band’s famous cowbell, and the electrifying energy of their stadium-filling performances.

With humor, wisdom, and humility, Mark shares how songwriting became his outlet for faith, belief, and messages of unity — timeless themes that continue to resonate today. A true American rock icon, Farner brings both nostalgia and fresh perspective to this unforgettable episode.

Learn more at www.markfarner.com.

Other artists mentioned in this episode:

• Grand Funk Railroad
• Humble Pie
• Alice Cooper
• Ursa Majors
• The Yardbirds
• Jeff Beck
• Rick Derringer
• Steve Cropper
• Howard Tate

Welcome to Treasure Island Discs.

Get ready to set sail with your host, Jeff Moffat, as we dive deep into the stories behind the music.

One Treasure island disc at a time.

Everybody listen to me and return me my ship I'm your captain Though I'm feeling mighty sick.

From humble beginnings in Flint, Michigan, to the world's biggest stadiums and stages, today's guest is more than just a rock icon.

He's a storyteller, a man of faith, and an American treasure.

Mark Farner and Grand Funk Railroad helped define an era of American rock.

They sold over 25 million records during their career, and including 13 gold and 10 platinum albums.

Mark was just 22 years old.

In today's podcast, you'll hear some of the stories about the evolution of Grand Funk, including some interesting anecdotes about how a certain cowbell on one of their biggest songs came to be.

But what you're also going to discover is that after over 50 years in the music business, Marc Farner is a man of unwavering faith who has throughout his career, maintained a commitment to causes bigger than himself.

His music is how he communicates his beliefs.

And to this day, he continues to write, record, and perform to audiences around the world.

I think you'll enjoy his stories, his insight, and his wisdom.

I'm Jeff Moffat, this is Treasure Island Discs, and our guest is the one and only, Mark Farner.

Mark Farner, welcome to the show.

It's great to have you with us.

We've got lots to talk about today, including music and maybe a few other things.

All right, good to be with you, brother Jeff.

You know, at the risk of being kind of cliche, I'd love to start back at the beginning, your kind of your earliest musical experiences growing up in Michigan.

Was music a part of your life early on?

Yeah, it was jam session every Sunday, either at our house, my, my mother's house, or my Aunt Dorothy, her sister, they would host these jam sessions because everybody that moved up from Leitchville, Arkansas to get the high paying auto factory jobs in Flint, Michigan, they brought their instruments with them, including my Grandpa Cotton, Uncle Woody, Uncle Brian, Uncle Garland, all these people, they played banjo, fiddle, guitar.

My dad blew saxophone, played guitar, and all the women sang dude.

And it was just beautiful, beautiful family harmony.

I was three, four years old when I first, you know, I remember looking up and here's all these huge grown ups with these instruments in there.

They're playing and I'm down there just amazed by what I'm hearing.

And the good, you know, the.

The atmosphere.

The room was charged, man.

It was charged with love, with family, with.

Hey, there you are again.

Hey, you're.

You're here this week, too, you know, and food, food for days.

It was, you know, either southern fried chicken with hockey puck dumplings or sloppy joes.

That was the mainstay for the jam sessions.

Just depend on who was hosting.

And all of that music that I listened to influenced me to the point of where, when I was in school, I joined a choir because I loved to sing.

I always loved to sing.

So when I was playing football in junior varsity, actually started in the fifth grade, I was playing tuba, the sousaphone in the marching band.

And this is back when they were made out of brass, dude.

I mean, heavy son of a puppy.

And, you know, but I'm going down the road, you know, just with everybody else going down through there, strutting our stuff, but there ain't no girls looking at us.

They looking over at them football players.

So I got it.

After three years of that stuff, I said, you know what?

I'm going to join the football team.

And I did.

And I got injured.

I had to.

My.

The doctor told my mother I could not play football.

I couldn't run track in the fall.

I had sustained some injuries.

And so for my 15th birthday, my mother got me six guitar lessons.

And she rented a acoustic, a flat top for me to train on.

But it would have been probably better served as a bow and arrow set because the strings were this far away from that.

Yeah, man, try to pull them in.

And was like, oh, my God, is it going to be this hard?

But that's, you know, then.

Then my.

I just stayed with it because the guitar teacher, after three lessons, he called my mother, said he couldn't teach me anymore.

He had a hunting accident and he was injured.

He shot himself in the foot with a 12 gauge.

So he could not teach me anymore.

And he told my mother to have me just go watch the guys in the high school band that had this band that he knew about, because my sister played the drums, God rest her soul.

She introduced me to the guys and we played, you know, showing me chords.

And before I could actually plug into the amplifier that was sitting behind me with a light on, the cord went kind of through the handle and then just hung over the back just.

Just to have the appearance of that I'm playing, but I was singing.

I was standing up there singing all the songs, you know.

Then finally, when I got good enough, I got to plug into that amplifier and took off from there.

You know, that was my 15th birthday and Grand Funk had the first million selling album when I was 20.

What a trajectory.

Yeah, shot from guns.

So when you guys started off as 15 year olds, what kind of tunes were you playing?

I was playing do do do do do do do do do do do.

You know, the second lesson, my second guitar lesson, I was doing that and the guitar teacher was playing, you know, the rhythm and then I would play the rhythm and he would play.

He, and he just, he told me right up front, he says, you really want to do this, don't you?

I said, yeah, you know, it just feels good.

And I told him about, you know, all the relatives that played and I said, I know I got it in me, so let's get it out here.

In the band that I was in, we were called the Fabulous Pack.

I was just singing, I was not playing in that band.

There was Kenny Rich from Canada was playing guitar and he had, he would use these like steel guitar finger picks and do some stuff on a Telecaster.

Was very tasty, you know, good guitar player.

And the, the bass player was Rod Lester, a guy that was in that first band that I told you about, My sister was in, in high school.

He was playing bass in that band.

Craig Frost, who ended up playing keyboards with Grand Funk, he was on keyboards in that band.

And Don Brewer is on drums.

So there was five of us and all I did was sing.

I stood up front and I sang and, you know, entertained.

But we were in, out east, we were actually staying in cabins on Cape Cod and playing some gigs in the Boston area.

And they told us at the promotion company that sent us there, if you guys do good, we'll actually go back into this market and make some money.

And we were told that these were promotional gigs and we weren't getting paid, but we were going to get taken care of.

They were going to feed us and we wouldn't want for anything.

Okay, well, we were in these summer cottages.

We weren't paying for them.

They were putting us up there.

We were without food.

We had oatmeal and the pipes had frozen, so there was no water, no toilet to do anything in for that first week.

We thought we were going to die out there.

We were huddled around these gas heaters that were in the living room and everybody was, you know, two inches away from the heater, trying to get some of this heat, we're thinking, what are we going to do?

By the time we got back to Flint, Michigan, it was by virtue of the drummer's mother, Western Union, some money to a drugstore.

We had to hitchhike up the coast to get to this drugstore.

And we got the cash, we rented a van, got our equipment in there, and we got back to Flint, Michigan where these, where these guys that were married, their wives were threatening divorce, they had to quit the band.

That, that was the first phone call we got, was, man, I'm sorry, but I can't be with you guys anymore.

I'm going to have to quit.

And you know, I got to, I got a supply for my family.

I got to be the guy, got to be the breadwinner for my family.

And so that was what me threw, kind of threw us into.

What are we going to do?

I told Brewer, I said, let's just do a three piece.

And whoever we get, they can't be married, they can't even have a girlfriend.

We ain't going to let these women mess up our band again.

So that's, that was the initiation of us actually thinking about contemplating doing a three piece band.

Prior to that, we hadn't thought of it.

It wasn't necessary, but, but at this point in life, it became a necessity and it worked out for us.

I had played bass in Terry Knight in the Pack, and I had played rhythm guitar with Dick Wagner in the Bossman, his band in Michigan.

He had a show band called the Bossman.

And I loved playing with those guys.

Dick Wagner was a guitar player for Alice Cooper and Ursa Majors.

He had wrote some beautiful songs.

One night after a gig that we played in Michigan, we, we drove back to his place in Saginaw, Michigan, and he had an apartment there.

He had two kids and his wife.

So when we got in, you know, this is probably 2:30, 3:00 in the morning.

We come rolling in and we just stayed up playing electric guitars.

Not plugged in, just in his living room, sitting on this couch.

And I asked him, I said, dick, man, you write all these songs, said they're great songs.

Where the hell do they come from?

He says, mark.

And he reaches over and he touches me right here.

He says, they come right there.

Your heart, they're in there.

And he says, you can write songs.

I went, I can.

Really?

So when he went to bed that night, I stayed up and I wrote my first song.

It's on the first Grand Funk album.

It's called Heartbreaker.

I know the Song.

And people love that song.

I played that song live in Michigan with Dick Wagner and the Bossman.

As soon as, you know, the next morning when I played the song for him, and he helped me to put the verses and the choruses in the right place and kind of worked on it.

He says, we need to do this song in the set.

Man, it'd be great having you sing this song in the set.

It'd be wonderful to sing harmony with you.

And I'm going, all right, if that's what you want to do.

And so we played it around Michigan, and people heard it and they.

They loved the song, you know.

And now when I play that song, especially for some audiences, you know, different areas, like South America, when I play this song in South America, they are singing that song with me louder than the pa.

I mean, it's a wonderful, beautiful thing to have something.

My first song, you know, my first endeavor, seeing what I could do.

But it was like Wagner took that key and he stuck it in there and he just unlocked something for me that night.

That's incredible.

Yeah.

And probably gave you a ton of confidence that I can do this.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that's kind of the way life is.

All of a sudden, someday, somebody says something, you go, the lights come on, you go, holy shit, man.

Is that right?

Okay, then I'm going to be this.

I'm going to do this.

And we're just kind of simmering along until somebody takes that lid off and gives it a stir.

Did songwriting just come to you, like, you kind of gained traction and you latched right onto it?

Yeah.

In fact, when we started rehearsal for Grand Funk, we were at the rehearsal hall, actually a union hall in Flint, Michigan, on Averill Street.

And Frank Geyer, the guy who was the head of this union hall there, he would come out and he'd go, you boys turn that shit down.

We can't even hear the phones ringing in here.

My God.

Okay.

But we.

We needed a place, and we were all members of the unions.

We asked them, can we use this place to rehearse?

They would go.

They being Don and Mel, they would go get something to eat.

They would either drive over to burger King or McDonald's or someplace fast food, grab some grub.

And I would be writing the lyrics to the jam that I just came up with at the union hall prior to them leaving for lunch to get the food.

They say, okay, you write the lyrics in and we'll be back with the food.

Okay?

They'd come Back and I'd have at least one song, maybe two songs.

Yeah, it was.

That's how it was.

How did you write are you ready?

It was a jam bop bow.

And then.

And I just started.

It was like.

That was the wind up that, you know, it.

It's like, get ready, get ready, go.

You know, it's like leading up to.

And it's almost like, you know, the intro to songs like American band.

That intro.

I wrote that drum intro.

Brewer played it and I showed him what I was hearing and I said, it's got to have a cowbell.

I don't have a cowbell.

I said, it's gotta have a.

It's begging for a cowbell, dude.

You gotta.

You gotta have a cow.

He says, all right, I'll stop and pick one up on the way to rehearsal tomorrow.

I said, no, pick six of them up and take back the five that we don't use.

We gotta pick between, you know, the best sounding cowbell to fit this track.

So we picked one out and it was just had a little bit of a ringing over ring to it.

So a little duct tape, dude.

All right, perfect.

And it.

And it had that sound and it matched our.

The key of D perfectly.

So are you ready?

Was that kicking up?

And it just came to me.

Are you ready?

Wow.

Okay.

And we're kicking, man.

We're running.

I cannot think of enough, you know, a better song to kick off a show with.

It's amazing.

It's so perfect because it just immediately fires up the audience.

Yes, right away.

Yes, it does.

Yes, it does.

Sets the tone for the rest of the show.

Yeah, man.

I have this.

You know, it's behind me.

I have this thing.

Right?

All right.

And I have.

I don't have one copy, man.

I have two.

This one I stole from my older sister.

That's great.

True story.

Played it to death right, when I was.

I stole it when I was 6 years old from her.

Wow, that's great, Jeff.

Yeah.

And are you ready for the first track?

Right?

Like.

Yeah, man.

Yes.

After that crazy introduction, that.

Which is really cool on live album, huh?

Yeah.

It's just Mark, if.

I don't care if it's at Coachella or wherever it is, the audience would lose their mind.

I really believe that.

Thank you, man.

I appreciate that, brother.

Are you.

Well, then let me here you.

Must have been a crazy transition for a 20 year old kid when you think about that to Go from where you were, Michigan, to stadiums and all the success you had.

Quite quickly, I would say, right?

Yes.

Not quick in the sense that it wasn't four or five years because there's a lot of hard work that goes there.

But how did you deal with that transition?

It was not like it was expected.

It was such a surprise.

It was overwhelming.

And we were so busy.

We'd get a, you know, phone call from Terry Knight, our then manager.

And we're going to Europe.

We got, you know, we're going to play all these cities.

And we went over, we were playing ball stadiums in Italy, you know, and their, their National Guard troops were outside the stadium.

Humble Pie is opening for us.

Humble Pie is on stage.

And all of a sudden the music stops and Humble Pie comes in.

They, they're crying.

The National Guard had shot tear gas over the walls into the stadium.

And I'm thinking, you know, there was, they had sold this out, the concert sold out.

And there was still a few thousand people that wanted in there.

And that's kind of the way it was back then.

So they bring out the National Guard and they break up the whole thing.

But that, that band, Humble Pie, with Steve Marriott and Frampton up front on guitars, that was a kick ass band.

And I told Terry Knight, I said, we need to take these guys back to the United States with us and have them open for us there in the US they're just ass kickers and man.

And, and I loved, uh, Steve.

I just loved him.

He was such a spark.

And we would, when we got done with a gig over in Europe, you know, we'd go to a pub or something afterwards and Marriott and I would sit across the table from each other, singing to each other.

I mean, we don't, neither one of us are soft singers, you know, God rest his soul.

But there'd be a crowd there in a matter of seconds.

People standing around going, who are these guys?

They opened for us at Shea Stadium.

And that, that was the full band, you know, Jerry Shirley on the drums and, and they, it was like, I don't know how long it took for Frampton to break away.

And Humble Pie was without Frampton.

It was great when he was in the band because it just was something special, man.

It was, that was the right chemistry for rock and roll.

And they didn't, they didn't have anybody that could take Frampton's place.

Frampton's.

Frampton, man.

Stylistic.

So I kind of, I was bummed out in that regard.

As far as what happened with Humble Pie.

Because, man, I wanted the world to hear these guys.

They really had the heart.

They.

They had.

They were reaching out there.

And the sound that they produced was am amazing.

You guys also in Grand Funk as a three piece just generated so much energy with.

For three guys, there was an energy with your band that was kind of undeniable.

I think when I was watching videos leading up to knowing you and I were going to speak, I watched some of the live videos from 71 and that era, and there was such a freedom to the way you played.

You know, it was almost not that you were freestyling, because you weren't freestyling necessarily, but you really had an energy about the band.

Did you feel that way when you're on stage?

We got this and there's.

We're delivering and we're just.

We're vibing together and the audience is just giving.

Feeding you the energy.

Did you feel that?

That's it, Jeff.

That is it.

The audience was giving us the energy because it was these waves of emotion.

And emotion has a frequency, it has a sound, and it has a momentum.

And when that.

When that audience was tuned in and they were showing you how much they were loving you.

Back then, there was Vietnam War.

There was a lot of things that were not right, and I sang about them.

I wrote People, Let's Stop the War.

I.

You know, I wrote other songs that.

That my brothers and sisters were encouraged to hear that somebody else felt this way too.

And somebody else didn't have blindfold on or the.

You know, the horse going down that were, hey, we're looking around.

We're were having a look at what it is that we've become captured by, indebted to.

It was.

It was time.

You know, the people back then at the pop festivals we played, it was just a freedom with that.

The music encouraged that audience and that whole, you know, like when we played Atlanta Pop Festival, 185,000 people there, the whole place was in sync.

We were all in the same frame of mind, loving it, rocking it.

And there was.

There was no fist fights or any kind of bullshit like that.

I was just.

Just love.

And everybody had to love beads on and their paisley print and their bell bottoms and, you know, it was.

It was a good time.

It was.

The audience was very much part of.

Of the excitement, especially on that live album that you held up.

When I hear that, When I hear a cut from that, it takes me right back to that stage in that moment.

And I thank God that I have been able to live this Life and to not get sucked into the stardom thing.

I've always wanted just to be a brother to the brothers, a brother to the sisters, to be one of y'.

All.

And to say something with my music that was.

That I could be proud of.

And that was not misleading because I knew the Beatles, you know, like when sergeant Pepper came out and all these people were going, he said, everybody smoke Potter, everybody smoking pot.

It was like, you know, all these.

Then the records that, oh, if you played them backwards, you know, they said something.

Yeah, they said something.

Space age something, you know, it was bad enough forwards, you didn't have to play it backwards to get, you know, I think that people in these, some of the bands that were rebellious to the point of being anti religious to the bone, they were just, that was just rebels saying stuff.

But some of the audience and some of the, the audience's parents really took it serious and really thought, oh my God, they're devil worshiping, they're doing, you know, they were making money.

The people that were getting all sidetracked.

And I have predominantly.

I have sang songs and wrote songs that I felt I was responsible to love.

And I wanted love to survive.

No matter what was going on, no matter who was on top of the rock pile.

I really wanted love to survive.

So I've included it because I believe in love and God is love.

So, you know, when I say believe in love, I believe in God.

Because God is love.

And love is expressed with one single word.

Forgiveness.

That's it.

That's it.

That's it in a nutshell.

It ain't hard.

It's not.

You don't have to have a degree to understand it, because it's tender.

And its purpose is to set us free from any indebtedness put on us by situations, by misunderstanding, by people who had good intentions, but they had been bent over and made a slave to debt consciousness when they were kids and they just passed it on to us.

So my ambition with my music is to show people, to set the captives free, to show people that love if we.

We better embrace it now and get a hold of it now.

Because, you know, when we take our last breath by God, you better be hoping that, that you're going back to that love that put you here in the first place.

There's so many layers to what you're saying.

And one of the things that comes to my mind is asked you, because we all go through things in our lives personally, professionally, whatever, you know, whatever circumstances you're dealing with, and you Go through these things and you learn from them and you kind of re.

You reiterate your life and you use them as kind of as, as lessons.

That's right.

Do you feel at this point in your life that.

Because forgiveness also in my mind connotates that you have peace.

Do you feel that you have peace at this point in your life?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Because, you know, and people that have animals, dogs and cats, you know, pets, when they lose that pet, it's like I've heard a hundred, a thousand times.

If I've heard it a hundred times, just like a member of the family, it was like losing, you know, a son or a daughter.

Well, it's not.

But they love that dog so much.

And why?

Because that dog, no matter what they did to that dog, that dog showed them unconditional.

If they beat their dog's ass for doing something, that dog would come right back and go, do you still love me?

You know, it's like it, it's so.

So the love, even without being defined or somebody pointing it out, it occurs.

And I think that, you know, when we lose a loved one.

I lost my dad when I was nine years old.

And I watched my whole family, you know, they were in the dining room.

My mother's bawling her eyes out.

All my relatives, those people that came to the jam sessions, they were there trying to console her.

And you know, I walked out of a cigarette smoke filled dining room into the living room where my dad, just before he died, had purchased our first television set.

It's a black and white, you know, and it was on.

And as I'm my little nine year old ass into the living room, I look over and, and Billy Graham is on the tv.

And Billy Graham is in Flint, Michigan at Atwood Stadium on third Avenue.

And he's, he's saying, do you need a touch from God?

And I'm looking and I look around, I'm thinking, can he see me?

You know, I'm crying because I just walked out of that dining room.

Do you need God in your life?

Do you need.

And he.

And then also he says, come over here and put your hand on the television set.

So I walked over there, man, I put my hand on that television set and I prayed and I received Jesus Christ as my Lord and savior.

As 9 years old, I wasn't churched.

I didn't go to.

You know, once in a while my great grandmother, who was a free Methodist, would take us to church.

But there was a lot of hypocrisy going on that I was aware of at my young age.

And anyways, I prayed and then I became this rock star.

But I always went back to man.

When I prayed, something happened to me, something emotional, physical.

There was a change in who I was.

After I prayed, I had this confidence and it was just a spiritual enlightenment that I had.

She, you know, it was like, oh, I better go find God.

And I went to different churches.

I mean, I was at one church Monday, one church on Wednesday, it was another church Friday.

And I was, you know, I was looking for God.

Oh, man.

Yeah, I'm thinking, God, where'd you go, man, where'd you go?

And I go into the, you know, like this hellfire and brimstone.

And I was set near the back so that if something like that happened, I didn't have to be subjected to it.

I could just get up and leave.

And I did in most of those churches.

I just, I couldn't take it.

The condemnation and the bullshit that they.

So I finally got into this little church where this guy was preaching, an 84 year old guy preaching on the institution of marriage and how people walk out the front door of the church and they don't put the, they don't take it seriously.

They don't put those oaths that they committed to each other.

You don't, you know, hold them in their hearts and think about them every day and look that person in the eye and I'm going, my God, this guy, this guy is shooting and he doesn't have any blanks in that gun.

He's killing me out there.

I'm going, oh my God.

And when he gave an altar call, I went back up.

I ran up there and I recommitted my life.

And I said to the pastor, I said, you know, I kind of gave him the short version of what was going on in my life.

I said, she left me, but I want her back.

I love her.

I don't want to be with anybody else.

There's no one else in this world that can satisfy me.

They can give me this tenderness like my wife can give me the tenderness, the love.

I said, can you pray and ask God to bring her back to me?

He looks at me, he said, mark, you pray and I'll agree.

So I prayed just like I'm talking to you right now, Jeff.

And he Agreed.

And then I found out two days later that my wife, that Sunday was in a town 45, 50 miles away.

And our friends that we knew saw her.

She was going into the park, so they pulled over and they go, hey, Lisa, how you doing?

And she got in their car and she confessed to what was going on in her life and everything.

They called me and they said, your wife gave her life to the Lord Sunday.

And I went, what?

You got to be kidding me.

Yeah, man, she loves you.

She wants to get back together with you.

Oh, my God.

And that was.

That was out of faith.

And since I.

And it's not like.

And indebtedness, because that works against people, this indebtedness thing.

Yes, we need to operate in the spirit of freedom.

That's what love is.

And freedom is that forgiveness.

So if there's forgiveness and it's true forgiveness, then there is no debt.

There is no debt consciousness.

But we are all trapped by that shit, brother.

I'm telling you, not just.

Not just the financial debt, but the debt of unfulfilled expectations of other people.

The debt of regret that we hold against ourself if we did something that we wish we wouldn't have, if we had it to do over again, we wouldn't, or we didn't do something, we regret that we didn't do something that we should have done, and we kick our own ass for that, you know, so this indebtedness, it's imaginary.

It's just imaginary.

You can't go buy a box of it at the drugstore and dump it out on the table and let's.

Let's sort through this and have a look at it.

No, it's that imagination and what we have endured to prevent ourself from getting trapped in that debt again.

You know, learning as a child, I remember saying, you know, my parent would say, you do this, you know, I'm going to whip your ass.

It's like, okay, I'm not going to do that.

So I learned how to take orders.

But it was the imposition of this indebtedness that included a little pain with it as.

As a caveat to show you that they are serious.

Well, there's.

That's all debt consciousness.

It has, you know, it has ruled mankind for I don't know how long.

But we got to set ourselves free.

And we individually are the only ones who can set ourselves free from any measure of indebtedness.

It's really up to us.

And through my songs, through the lyrics of my songs, through the Spirit that inhabits my music, that causes my guitar to prophesy of this love that I speak of, that causes our band to float as a bubble up there on that stage of this impenetrable bubble.

It's just love.

We're not letting anything else in there.

And that is what propelled me from the first time I was hearing music was my love for that music.

It was just touching my heart.

Back when I was that little shaver looking up at all them grownups in the dining room, you know, it was love, man.

And so when I take the stage now, we give it to love.

I'm with guys who have lived, you know, various aspects of life down their own roads.

But when we come together and it is our intention to make people happy, to give it to love so love can inhabit that hall, that baseball stadium, that whatever it is, that prison, that.

That love will be satisfied with us.

Because, you know, we're not accepting any debt.

We don't bring any debt.

We don't put debt on somebody.

We just put the love on them.

And we put it in.

Not a 440.

Rockefeller changed it from 4:3:2 to 4:40.

I'm back in old school standard.

I've been playing in 4, 3, 2 for 20 some years now.

And it's way better frequency to make music in it is.

And 440 is out of beat with natural things.

432 embraces every natural thing.

Being that we are 70% water in our beings, in this human being here.

You want that music to harmonize with every organ and every little piece, every atom, every fragment of who we are.

440 is not the frequency for that.

I am going to change my tuner today.

Okay, good man.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to do that.

Good man.

Yes.

Yeah.

If you got an acoustic man, tune the.

I got a few.

Tune the acoustic first to 4, 3, 2.

And you will notice there's this little.

There's a little whistle as it comes into the 4, 3, 2.

You know, my little headstock tuner.

When it's green, it's good.

If it's yellow, it's flat.

If it's red, it's sharp.

But when it's green, it's good.

And as it's just coming into the green, you hear this note.

It's a harmonic, Jeff, that.

It's right on every string, too.

In fact, I was in Washington D.C. a few months ago playing At a engagement over there at a museum.

It's on O Street.

It's called the O Museum.

Rock and roll.

All this memorabilia.

They got Beatles stuff in there, the real stuff.

Anyways, I'm playing my six String Taylor and the guy's sitting in front of me and he's asking me questions and I play music and he asked me some more questions and can you do that?

Yes, I can do that.

And are you ready?

I was doing it all, buddy.

Love it.

And he, he says to me, mark, I. I had to count your tuners.

I said, what are you talking about?

He says, you got six tuners on that thing?

I said, yeah.

He says, it sounds like a 12 string.

I said, you're hearing it, dude.

You are hearing the harmonics from these strings that accompanies that.

Because it's four, three.

It's special.

It's the frequency we need to be playing in, man.

It's very healing.

A guy sent me a link and he said, watch this link and then call me.

So I watched the link and it's.

This dude has a kiddie pool, you know, about that deep, sitting on his deck.

And he puts a 15 inch driver speaker in a single enclosure right up next to the pool.

He's got a tone generator and an amplifier and so he plays a two in 440.

So he's tuned to 440, plays a two at 125 decibels and you know the threshold of pain is 90.

So he's way past pain and it's 125 decibels.

Man, this kiddie pool is.

Got a storm and it is just all just like waves and foam and froth and it's just jumping up and down like it's got legs on it, man.

I'm telling you, it was moving that.

Then he shuts it down, brings the tuner to 4, 3, 2, the tone generator and plays the same Note, the same spl.

125db.

It's glass.

It's like there's not even a quiver.

Not the faintest you could.

I mean it was blowing my mind.

I said, I'm not believing what I'm seeing here.

Wow.

That frequency at the same SPL as the, as the 440 note, but in 432.

Holy shit.

So I called him, I said, man, you got my attention.

What am I listening to?

What am I looking at here?

And then he starts telling me about the solfeggio scale that it was a scale from, I don't know.

The 16th century or something like that that they discovered.

And then more recently, people were revisiting the various tunings, and he said, I would like you to tune your acoustic guitar to 4, 3, 2, he said, and set in your kitchen, where you got all those reflective surfaces feeding back to you.

And I did, man.

And that's when I discovered that that harmony, that.

That's the.

It's just.

You're not playing that note.

It accompanies.

It is just the most pleasant.

And it's not like it's louder, Jeff, but it's more.

It's more.

You play in 4, 3, 2.

It's more so because you.

Because you have the harmonic overtones.

Yes, yes.

And they are definitely audible.

And instead of, you know, somebody putting boxing gloves on and punching your guts with 440, somebody put some velvet gloves on and they reaching into your heart and they're just.

Just.

It's such a loving thing, man.

I'm telling you.

We need four, three, two, bad.

I'm gonna.

I'm gonna try it.

You're a good man.

You're a good man.

Are you.

Are you doing a lot of writing?

Yes.

Yes.

Yeah, it's like I've.

In the.

In the past couple of months here, I've.

I've done, you know, roots, four or five, I think.

You know, I work on songs.

I think they're a hit, Jeff.

If I didn't, what's the sense of working on them?

So.

And I've got.

I got some that are rockers, I got some that are tear jerkers.

It's all about the love, brother.

And no matter if it's rocking or if it's, you know, pulling on your heartstrings, it's all about the love.

How do you feel about what's happening in the music world right now?

Well, I don't like it because it's so controlled and contrived and the audible, what we hear, what we end up hearing, is it through a box that controls your voice so that it sounds like you're not singing out of tune when you really are.

Is it an electronic thing?

Is it AI coming across?

Or is it a human soul?

Is it the spirit that dwells within that bone suit that is finding its way out in a beautiful and encompassing that love and encompassing our hearts?

I think the music scene, there's just a lot of debt, a lot of pain, people expressing pain.

And I can't help but have a heart for them and have a heart for their music, because it's been, like, us, like you and I, you know, we were led through these different eras of time and by what was going on around us.

We just wanted to play our music and be happy.

But we had all these other influences of those powers and principalities that rule the darkness of our world.

And it's the spiritual wickedness in high places because I know that myself.

I used to go to churches, but all of these churches, so called churches, the modern day church, let me just put it like that.

They, they put you in debt consciousness and they should be setting you free, they should be setting your ass free and they put you in debt consciousness.

It's a really interesting time that we're living in.

Yeah.

All of the stuff that's going on in the United States, the stuff that's going on in Canada now there's this.

As a Canadian, I spend a lot of time in the United States in Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Tennessee, wherever I'm at.

And the narrative in Canada since the election has been that a lot of people don't want to go to the United States, which I think is a false narrative.

Absolutely, brother, I hear you.

It's all part of this.

And you know, I say powers and principalities, but they are in bone suits, they're in flesh and blood and it's sickness.

This is insanity that's ruling our world.

And my wife and I, we had some property in Canada and it was our intention that someday we would retire and have this place up in.

In.

It was outside of Echo bay, off of 17 there, Highway 17, just to the east of Sault Ste.

Marie.

And people loved us there.

We go to the restaurant, they treat us good, we'd eat them butter tarts.

Dude, I love a butter tart and a cup of coffee.

Forgot about it.

I had friends that would, you know, my great friend Lionel, 90 some years old, running a trap line on a skidoo, you know, a healthy guy.

I had healthy respect for him.

He was one of the best people, one of the most sincere, sincere, loving, kind Canadian through and through.

But we loved each other for what our hearts embraced.

And when I hugged him, when he hugged me, it was meaningful.

It was true.

It wasn't.

Let's see, how can I take advantage of this guy?

I never got any of that.

He never got any from me.

We just had the.

And really what's going on in the world, we should not let it come between neighbors.

When I did the 25th anniversary of the Wall, which is the Vietnam Veterans monument in Washington D.C. and I took my band there and I played a free show for the veterans that showed up there.

There was not only the US Vietnam veterans, but there were the Canadian Vietnam veterans there, our brothers and sisters.

And I'm telling you, we all sang together, we all cried together, and that's how it should be.

Those powers and principalities that separate us by the bullshit.

Those, those are just gangsters.

The banksters are the gangsters and they control it all.

The Federal Reserve, the European central banks and the bank of England, those cats.

That's who's pulling all the puppet strings on all these politics and trying to stir up negativity and hate.

They have succeeded to some degree, but they are not going to ultimately dictate what is going to go on because the power of love is way stronger than any of that dark bullshit that they are trying to, you know, put on us and trying to cage us with.

My heart says I'm free.

My heart says you're free, Jeff.

And I want to encourage you in that freedom.

And I don't.

I don't want people trapped as I see them falling for the lies.

But there's.

My music is saying it.

And there's a lot of people waking up and I'm in that, that army.

It's the people's army of planet Earth.

Earth.

And.

And we are a.

A strong army.

And it's.

We're led by love.

There's an army marching through the land there's an army, you must understand this army stands for peace.

This army stands for love and justice, people.

There's an army marching through the land.

Listen, Mark, in the interest of your time, I want to ask you, give me three to five albums or artists that are the most meaningful for you in your life.

I'd love to hear your, your top five, let's say.

Okay, well, you know, I'm a guitar player as you are, brother.

And so in guitar playing, it's Jimi Hendrix, number one.

He's my guy.

Jimi Hendrix.

I became friends with Jimmy.

We did pop festivals together.

You know, we talked for hours, but he's my guy.

And.

And of course, Jeff Beck, when, when he was in the Yardbirds, they played Flint Michigan at the IMA Auditorium.

I saw him stand that Telecaster on its edge on the stage.

And he's back going like this.

He's got it turned to 11 and the amp is just.

Wow, it's just.

Just going crazy.

And.

And he's back there, he's putting on a show.

And then the solo on Train kept rolling.

Oh, my God, forget about it.

And Derringer, Rick Derringer Another influence upon me, Steve Cropper.

I couldn't, couldn't mention guitar players without mentioning Steve Cropper.

Man, he's a badass.

And he puts the funk all over those strings.

As far as vocals, my main man, Howard Tate, a lot of people have not heard of him, but he is the biggest vocal influence on me.

Beyond Aretha, who I love, beyond Stevie Wonder, who I love, Donny Hathaway.

There's a lot of people that I really, you know, enjoy hearing them sing.

But Howard Tate, man, whoa.

First time I heard him sing, I went, man, I want to sing like that.

I want to get some of that on me.

And I did.

With Howard Tate singing, you didn't need anybody else singing, man.

He was doing it all.

He a wonderful spiritual man.

That's what I think.

Wyatt made it so attractive to me to listen to him because he was very much the song.

He was that person.

He became the person he was singing about.

Like, when I go in to do my vocals on any song, dude, I got my eyes closed so that I can concentrate on that person, so that I can emphasize what needs to be emphasized.

When it comes to this part, if there's just one word that needs to stick out, I want it to be heard, but not to be thunderous.

I want it to go into people's hearts.

And I learned that very much from listening to Howard Tate.

Tell me, what would Mark Farner today tell 25 year old Mark Farner?

Get yourself your own representation.

Do not settle for your manager's lawyers.

Get your own lawyers who do not know your manager or your manager's lawyers and have them represent you.

Because there's a lot that gets pulled.

You know, you think it's good.

You think all of these things that they're telling you.

Oh, yeah, I can't wait for that to happen.

And then, man, yeah, that's the biggest thing.

We just, we were 20 years old, didn't have an attorney.

Terry says he's the manager.

You can use my attorneys.

Oh, great.

Whoa, there it was.

That was the setup.

Yeah, I think.

I think that's very sage advice.

Listen, I. I'm so grateful for a couple things, of course, your time today.

Thank you.

And I feel we could talk for hours.

But I'm also really grateful for your honesty, your insight and your wisdom, because I think you're a very wise person.

And I think everybody who loves you is so grateful for the gifts that you've given them and continue to give them as a musician and as a person.

So I want to thank you so much for that.

I love you, dude.

You're just.

It's been amazing talking.

Appreciate you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm gonna put that right in my heart where it belongs, brother Jeff.

I feel it.

Thanks for joining us today.

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I'm Jeff Moffat and we'll see you next time on Treasure Island Discs.