This exclusive interview between GNW Editor Neil Shedden and Frank Marino was made possible with the help of Wild Willy Parsons.

Don't know Frank? Find out about Frank Here:
Strange Universe
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush Official Fan Page
Frank would love to hear from you: Mail him

Find out about Willy here:
Wild Willy Parsons - The Original Biker Comic
Email him!

Here's the interview:

Hi Frank, thanks for agreeing to be interviewed :)

My name is Neil Shedden, I'm the Editor of Guitar News Weekly. This Zine gets emailed out free to over 8,000+ subscribers each week, and is read by countless more on the Website, GuitarSite.com, which gets over 600,000 page views each month. So, rest assured, your comments will be read by many keen guitarists from around the world!

Many of the new guitar players and music fans out there may well be unfamiliar with your long career, especially its beginnings back in the 70's, so forgive me if I ask questions you've answered many times before in the past - your response will be news to the kids of the 90's!

So, here we go...

We're looking forward to the forthcoming release of your new CD - what can you tell us about it? What inspired it? Who plays with you? Who produced it? When is it released? What is it called!

First of all Neil, thanks for your interest in interviewing me. I hope I can answer all the questions to your satisfaction. The new record doesn't really have a name yet...There's a few working titles kicking around but they'll probably change by the time I finish the CD, so we'll leave it at that. I did the album with Peter Dowse on bass, and Dave Goode on drums. I may still add a B3 player on some tracks...there's a great player I'm working with on another thing whose name is Tim Jackson. We'll probably do some of the keyboards within the next week or so. I produced the album, and the release date is not yet known. Hopefully not too long from now. I know alot of the fans have been waiting awhile for this record, but I'm so caught up in a bunch of other things right now that I want to make sure that I do it right when I finally finish it. I like to refer to this album as "the album I wanted to make when I made my first one, but didn't know how...". It's a sort of late sixties feel, really psychedelic and hypnotic sort of thing. It kinda reminds me of a cross between early Mahogany Rush, Hendrix, The Doors, The Beatles (late Beatles), and Quicksilver....with a bit of Dylan thrown in. I really like it.

...and your plans for touring? Any details/dates?

I'm dying to do a long tour...not necessarily a large tour, but a long one. I'm trying to get an independent sponsor interested in backing it so I don't have to go through agents and club owners, but it'll all depend on whether or not we can get a sponsor big enough to give us the needed expenses, which can be quite high. We'd need a major company for it and we're looking at some now.

Who is touring with you?

The guys with me will be the same guys on the record, with possibly an extra guitar player...though I'm not yet sure who it will be.

What city/country/place would you most like to perform in?

Well, I've been just about everywhere in the world and I like most places...but strangely, I haven't yet been to Italy, which is the country of my father, so I would like to go there...and Sicily as well, since that's his actual roots.

Anywhere you never want to go to/go back to?

Not really. I really enjoyed everywhere I went. Maybe we had some problems in some places, but it was never because of the place....It was more because of circumstances that happened to be while we were in certain places, but they could have happened anywhere.

Would you like to share with us, how and why, you first started playing guitar?

Well, I started guitar as a type of therapy. I was a young boy recovering from a bad LSD trip in a hospital, and playing the guitar was a way to keep focused on something other than the bad trip. From there, it just became the only thing I did for a long time.

Who you were your early influences and who do you listen to these days?

The Beatles, The Doors, Hendrix, Quicksilver, Johnny Winter, Pink Floyd, Santana, Larry Coryell, The Allmann Brothers, Paul Butterfield, The Mothers of Invention, Bob Dylan and a few others. These days, if I listen to music it's pretty much the same stuff, but with a bit more Jazz.

What inspires your music, your playing?

Well, mostly it's just things from everyday life....sometimes I just feel like playing guitar and sometimes I go for quite awhile without it. I get inspired to write songs from different things...but mostly it'll be a train of thought or a philosophy...it really depends on the circumstances.

What do you feel passionate about?

I'm pretty passionate about matters of justice, religion, fair play....that sort of thing. I can get pretty worked up over a cause I may feel strongly about, whether it's political or spiritual. I'm a little out of the ordinary as compared to most modern music artists when it comes to matters of this sort...for instance, while most of my contemporaries may line up to support certain popular causes like abortion on demand, you'll usually find me at the opposite end of questions like this. I'm pro-family, believe in God, and generally take a pretty dim view of those who would camouflage depravity by allowing it to masquerade under the banner of "free choice". Being a "sixties" product, meaning that's when I grew up, one would expect to find me diametrically opposed to the views I now espouse, but I have the distinct advantage of having been there before and I see things quite differently now. I guess I'm sort of saying..."Been there...Done that."

What would you say have been highpoints in your career?

Career wise, I'd say the highest points were probably the times that I got to play alot of the large festivals like Cal Jam with alot of great artists, but from a personal perspective the highest points were the births of my three daughters.

Any regrets? Things you would like to have done differently/worked out differently?

I suppose I'll always wish that the record label I spent so much time with would have believed a bit more in the kind of music I was doing, and would have helped get us on the radio and in stores a bit more, but all in all I can't really complain. I had a great run that alot of people would have loved to have and I'm thankful for it to God and the fans who gave it to us. I really don't have regrets, although there was a time when I thought I might have.

Who would you invite to your dream jam session? (living or dead)

Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Elvin Jones, Paul McCartney, Johnny Winter, John Cippolina, Buddy Rich, Roland Kirk, Jimmy Smith, Jocko Pastorius, Stanley Clark, Chick Corea, and probably a few more.

How regularly do you practice?

I've never practiced at all, even in the beginning in the hospital. I've spent time playing and jamming quite a bit, but it was never practice. I suppose I wouldn't even know how to practice or what to practice. Sometimes we'd do a tour and I wouldn't have even touched the guitar for six months prior to the first show. I just do what comes natural and never try to do more. Guitar for me is simply a means of expressing myself, and it really doesn't matter how well I execute something. As a matter of fact, it's usually much better with the messiness and the mistakes.

What stops you from playing?

Well, life sometimes gets in the way. But most of the time it's just that I don't feel like it and so if that happens I just stop until I do feel like it.

What gear are you currently using?

I build my own pre-amps and use them with various power amps. Never the same ones, just anything that can produce good clean power. I'll use that setup with 4 15" speakers and a rack that has reverb, flanger and overdrive.

In your collection, which is your favorite guitar - what do you like about it?

My favorite guitar is currently a new guitar that was built for me by Jim Glynn. It's modeled after my main SG-Les Paul (1961 1/2) but it has some major differences, one of which is that it's semi hollow. It's absolutely gorgeous and this gift to me from Jim was probably the nicest gift anyone ever gave me in my life. (see the guitar at http://www.wildwilly.com/jimglynn.htm)

Any tips for young people aspiring to become professional musicians?

The most important thing I would say, and I can't say this strongly enough, is that they should play for the fun of it and stay away from playing with a goal in mind such as getting signed or getting gigs. If you play strictly for the fun of it, the rest will take care of itself and you will always be true to your work...and the fans will know it cuz they're not stupid.

Do you think music can be taught or learnt by anyone if they try, or do you have to be born with a certain natural talent?

I think it can be taught and learned, but it's not talent you need to be gifted with, but desire. If anyone really desires to do something, they will become a master of it, no doubt about it. I mean, this is supposing of course that there is no physical reason stopping them, but that aside, anyone can master anything they really want to do....and I truly believe that, it's not just lip-service or a bullshit cliche answer.

Have any of your family followed a musical career, or have aspirations or talents?

Both of my brothers are musicians, and pretty good ones at that, and one of my sisters is an actress. My daughters are already showing an interest and an affinity for music, but we'll have to wait awhile on them cuz the oldest is only five.

What do you see as the future for traditional record companies, with the self-promotion and distribution possibilities of the Internet?

I think record labels will be almost dead within one year and totally insignificant within three, unless they find a way to re-invent themselves. You must understand that the whole idea of record companies from their inception was based upon their ability to take advantage of musicians who were, by and large, very non-business oriented people. Multitudes of these musicians went to their eventual demise being shamelessly exploited, robbed and raped. The Internet affords us the ability to communicate one-on-one with our fans and effectively cuts out the middleman, which is a record label's worst nightmare realized. I, for one, couldn't be happier about it. It couldn't have happened to a more deserving bunch. Power to the People.

Have you had much involvement with mp3s? Do you like to spend much time on the 'Net?

I'm on the Net as much as I can be. I plan to release everything I do on Mp3. I fully support the fans use of it and I believe that if fans really like and believe in one artist or the other, they'll be willing to support that artist by buying his work directly at a reasonable price. I know that there will be alot of pirates who would copy the work and offer it for free, but I believe that the only people who will bother to get the free copy are probably those who wouldn't have bought it anyway, so nothing is really lost except in theory.

If you hadn't been doing this interview, how would you have spent the last hour?

I would have been down in the studio working on the album.....

And finally, where & when can people see you play live, and get your latest CD?

Like I said before, I hope to get it out before the end of the year and to play soon after that. But God only knows if that will become a reality. I'll try...but don't hold me to it.

Thank you Frank :)

Now you might like to take a look at some of these sites:

Strange Universe
Frank Marino & Mahogany Rush Official Fan Page
http://www.wildwilly.com/marino1.html
Frank would love to hear from you: email him.

Find out about Willy here:
Wild Willy Parsons - The Original Biker Comic
www.wildwilly.com
E-mail him!

Victory Lane
Wild Willy's Jeff Gordon Fan Page
http://www.wildwilly.com/jeffgordon.htm
E-mail him

Website Design
Dead Elvis Productions
http://www.wildwilly.com/dead_elvis.htm
Email him

But don't waste your time on this one:
www.frankmarino.com
"Frank Marino - the world's most famous female impersonator". It has nothing to do with the real Frank, they just got the .com domain name first!