Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush

“When I was a kid and I first heard Frank Marino, I was stunned. His technique and tone was smooth yet aggressive. He is a very powerful performer and was an inspiration to me at a critical time in my musical evolution.”~ Steve Vai

Yeah, when you are an inspiration to a virtuoso like Steve Vai, you can certainly say that you've got something. Frank Marino on stage is like watching a lion in the wild feeding on a fresh carcass. He slashes, attacks and works his Gibson SG like a logger working a chainsaw and yet, as noted above, he's smooth. Scary smooth. The notes fly with a rapid-fire staccato that pierces the ear and raises the blood pressure and yet his style is exceedingly melodic. His rock and roll is pure and when he plays the blues, it's gritty, savage and most of all fun; a twisting and swirling kick that lands right in the solar plexus.

So how is a guitar A-lister like Frank Marino not a name mentioned in the same breath with other guitar greats after rattling the foundations for close to 40 years? That's a tough question and one that perhaps only Frank himself could answer. Then again, it could have something to do with a weird story that surrounded Frank at the start of his career and even now, refuses to die despite the vehement denials from the man himself.

Born in Montreal, Marino began playing drums at the age of 5. His switch to the guitar was, as Marino describes it, a strange one. In an interview with the New Music Express in 1977, Marino said "The summer of '69. I was a kid who hung around the park beat up on other kids and took drugs. .. so when the drugs finally hit me, I had no one to go to. Hallucinations? What's that? It really hit me, man. I was doing a lot of acid and in the last month before I quit – I quit drugs after that – God, I did easily 1,500 trips of acid.

'And I got sick. Physically. Demolished myself. I was 14 going on 15. And to make a long story short, I was in the hospital, *expletive deleted* up and believe me, freaking out isn't the word: it took me a year to recover.

'So here I am, half dead, not knowing where I am. … thinking of these tunes I'd been hearing on record players all summer – they happened to be Jerry Garcia tunes - and there was a guitar there …." Apparently, while in the hospital, there was a guitar sitting in the rehabilitation room and Marino took to it immediately.

And this is where the story takes on urban legend status. Within three years, Marino had formed Mahogany Rush and had begun to tour Canada heavily. In his first interview (The Montreal Star), Marino is quoted as saying that while he was in the hospital, he lapsed into a coma which lasted for 3 days. When he awoke, he claims that he was visited by the ghost of Jimi Hendrix and although a non-musician, he grabbed a guitar and began to play immediately like Hendrix and Garcia. Another version is which Marino claims to be inhabited by the very spirit of Hendrix.

Marino has denied this story for years. Vehemently. But it doesn't seem to matter much. Close to 40 years later and the story persists. It doesn't help that Marino plays Hendrix almost as well as Hendrix did. The influence is unmistakable and it is woven throughout his style and his scorched earth versions of Hendrix's 'Red House', 'Voodoo Chile', 'Purple Haze' and 'All Along The Watchtower'. He is clearly an apostle of Hendrix and has spent his career spreading Jimi's message of the 'Sky Church Music'. When facing the criticism that he is nothing more than a 'Hendrix clone', Marino offers that he didn't set out to consciously imitate Hendrix but rather 'The whole style just came naturally. I didn't choose it; it chose me."

Mahogany Rush was even set up much like The Experience; a power trio (bassist Paul Harwood and drummer Jim Ayoub) that could blow the roof off of just about any venue they played. Through the 70's, they band achieved a modicum of success, showing up on the lower tiers of the Billboard charts, catching limited radio airplay and showing up at such legendary concerts, like the California Jam where they shared the stage with Aerosmith and Ted Nugent.

The band, originally known simply as Mahogany Rush, released 5 albums throughout the 70's, from their debut of Maxoom in 1972 through 1979's Tales Of The Unexpected before becoming Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush and then simply Fank Marino when drummer Ayoub split the band.

Marino went solo for a few albums in the 80's before reforming Mahogany Rush and going on to becoming a premiere club/festival band. They continued to perform throughout the 80's and the early 90's.

Marino retired from music in 1993 and remained out of sight until reemerging in 2001, drawn out of retirement, in part, to the enthusiasm of a fan based website. Marino has said "I always knew we had fans, I just didn't know I'd find half a million of them on the Web."

Since coming back into music, Marino still tours heavily and seems as relaxed live as ever. His wanders more into lengthy, improvisational jam sessions and can still bleed the ears of anyone inside of a club.

But back to the question: why didn't Frank Marino make it as big as maybe he should have considering his skills?

In an on-line interview with Hardradio.com, Marino answers it this way:
"I guess what it comes down to is 'what is the dream?' If it's someone's dream to be famous, they feel they have to have money and therefore act famous and act as if they have money in order to get money and fame to come to them. That's pretty much how most people would fulfill their dream. In my dream, from the inception of when I started playing music, I've never cared about fame...in fact, I actually dislike it. I don't like being recognized or told that I'm great...it makes me feel embarrassed. It's a complex in a sense. That's why you would never see me get in or out of a limousine, even in my heyday. I would always try to remain as normal as possible and I would never refuse to meet someone.

So my dream has never been about selling records or being famous, or even being considered good at what I do. My dream has always been about meeting the guys who I think are great players and being able to hang with them, talk about music with them, and learn from them. This is my dream - having their peer respect. Unfortunately it eluded me for almost my entire career until I quit in the '90s. It was after I quit when I began to hear about other guitarists such as Zakk Wylde, Steve Vai, Steve Lukather, Marty Friedman, and all these guys saying that 'Frank Marino was one of the huge influences on my life.' I had no idea that was happening until the late '90s."

It's been a long road for Frank Marino but it would seem that he may finally be where he has always wanted to be.