January 20, 2024 • 15 mins
Guest host Richard Syrett and guitarist Frank Marino of the rock band Mahogany Rush discuss his career as a musician releasing his first major label album when he was still a teenager, and how music helped him survive a terrifying experience on psychedelic drugs.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now Here's a Highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
After playing drums since he was five, Frank Marino started
playing guitar around age thirteen or fourteen while in hospital
in Montreal. By the time he was sixteen, he was
given a record deal and allowed unprecedented artistic freedom. He
released his first album, Maxoom in nineteen seventy two, at
the tender age of eighteen. That album was followed by
(00:27):
Child of the Novelty in nineteen seventy four in Strange
Universe in nineteen seventy five. Those two album covers depict
Marino's tortured experiences while on acid, which were relayed to
album cover artist Ivan Schwartz. More recently, Frank released a
six hour live recording on CD and DVD Live at
the Agareth Theater. An open or an often repeated myth
(00:51):
is that Frank Marino was visited by an apparition of
Jimmy Hendrix after a bad acid trip, a myth Marino
has always disavowed, and continues to do so on his
personal website. His playing, however, is inspired by Hendricks. On
the Gibson website, He's described as carrying Jim's Psychedelic Torch,
and Frank is notable for often performing cover versions of
(01:13):
Hendrix's classes classics, such as All Along the Watchtower. Frank
has described Mahogany Rush's sound his sound as the Grateful
Dead meets jazz. Mahogany Rush played before three hundred thousand
people at California Jam two in nineteen seventy eight. He's
toured with Aerosmith and Johnny Winter. He's widely considered a
(01:33):
guitar player's guitar player. And it's a great pleasure to
welcome Frank Marino to Coast to coast, am Frank, climb aboard.
How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
How are you Richard?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I'm flying, I'm great, Thank you. How are things in Montreal?
Are you getting a typical Montreal a winter?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
They they're very cold, They're very very cold. We had
a snowless December and part of January and now I.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Git a no burst water pipes?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I hope no, not yet.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Okay, that's good. You know, I'm just thinking about your
your childhood and you know, Ringo Star likes to tell
the story of how he learned to play the drums
or decided he was going to be a drummer while
he was in hospital. For you, it's kind of the opposite.
You were playing the drums at a very young age
and then you went into the into the hospital and
picked up the guitar. But let me ask you about drumming.
(02:28):
I understand like you wanted to be Buddy Rich. Like
were you an old soul? Like I can't imagine a
five or a six year old deciding I want to
be Buddy Rich.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, Buddy Rich. Guys like Buddy Rich. And you know,
when I was growing up, that's if you heard drummers
and you heard Buddy Rich, there was no other drummer
you wanted to hear a clipt Buddy Rich. There was
Elvin Jones, but I liked Alvin Jones because you know,
it was it was that same kind of jazz type
(02:56):
of playing. And yeah, I wanted to I wanted to
draw up and be a drummer. I wanted to be
Buddy Rich. And believe me, when I went to the hospital,
they'd had a set of drums in there. I'd have
played the drums all the time, but they're not going
to put a set of drums in a hospital. So
while they had was a guitar.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Can you tell us how you ended up in the
hospital at the age of thirteen for an extended period
of time.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, it was the sixties, and you know, I had
older brothers and sisters while an older brother and older sister,
and I was like the sort of mascot of the gang.
And LSD was being used, and you know, psychedelic drugs
were being used, and I guess I just used too
(03:41):
much of them, and at one point it just got
you get to a point on a psychedelic drug, especially
if you're young, where you sort of crossed a certain threshold.
It's like a kind of a rubicon, and once you
crossed over, it's not like you can unsee or unfel
(04:03):
or unhear what happens to you. And nobody really knew
what to do about that. I mean, you could call
it a bad trip, but it was more than a
bad trip. It was a it was a complete, you know,
psychedelic experience, to quote Timothy Leary. And all I could
(04:24):
do is end up in a hospital because I didn't
know what to do about it. I mean, it had
never happened before. I had done done those drugs for
a while as a young kid, and it just all
blew my mind one day and from the time that
I went to the hospital, I never touched another drug
again or or even a drink to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
When would we would you describe it as like a psychosis?
Did it induce a psychosis?
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You know the story of Alice in Wonderland. Yes, imagine
that really happening like e more. I mean, it wasn't
just like because I had done acids for a while.
You know, so most people who do acid, they feel
high and they sort of stevid walls breathe, and you know,
(05:17):
just it's sort of a light experience. But when it's
like I crossed over into what you like you call
a psychosis. And I guess it's similar to when they
say that schizophrenic people hear voices. Well that's just one sense.
Imagine all the sense is doing that to you and
creating a whole trip. And those early album covers are
(05:42):
really really are especially strange Universe, really are indicative of
what the trip was like. And it didn't just end suddenly.
It went on for many many years while I was playing.
So in the early days when I was doing those
albums with those covers, I was always trying to express
myself with the music that I was doing, trying to
(06:06):
express that trip. And I know it's interesting to believe me.
It wasn't a nice experience.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You know, it's interesting because we people tend to romanticize,
you know, that that era and and the you know,
dropping LSD, and you know, the U with the Grateful Dead,
the electric kool Aid acid trip and all of that.
I mean, the way you're portraying it, it sounded like
(06:35):
an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine a young a young
child going through that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a scout night. Now, it
wasn't a nightmare in the beginning. It was it was
what everyone romanticized, you know. It was that, Uh there's
an old joke about you know, what do the Deadheads
say when the acid wears off? They what's that noise?
(07:06):
So it was it was romanticized and it was cool
and everything, and everyone was like if you woodstock, It
was very much like that. But in my case, I
went that one little silly step further. It might have
been because I was only thirteen, Uh, it might have been.
Who knows why it didn't happen to a lot of people.
(07:30):
I know of two other people that it did happen
to and they never recovered.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That is tragic.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So, you know, I think it's a dangerous drug. I
think all drugs can be dangerous if you don't know
what you're doing, like anything else. Sure, once I once
I hit the hospital and came out of the hospital,
(08:02):
and I went in and out, in and out for
a while. It was like back and forth, back and forth.
You know. I'd go in the hospital and said I
don't like being in the hospital. I want to go home.
And I'd come home and say I better get back
to the hospital. It was. It was a really it
was a really awful time. But the guitar was what
I held onto. It was like imagine being imagine falling
(08:27):
off a boat in the middle of the ocean and
finding one piece of wood that you could hang on to.
The guitar became that for me. And they had an
acoustic guitar in the hospital, and it became the only
thing I would gravitate towards for what however, hour, every
hour of the day. And when I had to go home,
(08:48):
they wouldn't let me take it. So my mother bought
me a guitar, and that guitar that she bought me
actually ended up becoming the guitars that I did in
my career.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
With That's the the the the Gibson, the sixty one
Gibson s g Well yourself taught. I mean, how did
you learn to play in hospital?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I thought I could. It's hard to explain. I believed,
like I believe the songs I was thinking of. I
was thinking I was writing they. I wasn't writing them.
They were they were Grateful Dead tunes. They were doors tunes.
They were they were tunes, you know, they were Jimmy
(09:33):
Hendricks tunes. They were toned from that era. And I
was thinking, oh, I'm just going to work on my songs.
Like I was crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But how did you learn? You know, how to play chords?
And you just figured it out on your own?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
That just came on, you know. I started with notes.
I started with notes, and I had always had good
rhythm because I was a drummer, so timing wasn't a problem.
And later on notes became you know, oh, these two
notes go together and they make a chord. And then
(10:11):
much later on after that, when I started to well,
I won't say come down but I started to be
more in the world. Then I started looking into what
it was that I was playing and asking other people
what is it that I'm playing, and they'd say, well,
that's an A, and that's a B and that's the
(10:32):
G sharp and I started learning about music. It was
a long process, but it all happened pretty quickly because
it started at thirteen, you know, well it started. I
had three experiences like that, and it was the third
one that put me in the hospital. And that all
started between July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty eight, and September
(10:57):
third and fourth of the same year. That's when I
ended up going to the hospital, right And I'm born
in November, so I was just turning fourteen, so I
was still thirteen years old when it happened to me.
And between that point and being in the hospital for
(11:18):
most of the early part of sixty nine, you know,
I was supposed to go to Woodstock and didn't go
because I was I was completely you know, my mind
was splited. But between the time that I did the
hospital and the time I was eventually at sixteen going
(11:41):
on seventeen, by that time, I made an album.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, this is astounding to me, it really was.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I look back at it and I almost don't know
who that person was.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
How did that happen? Was at nine Records? Was that
the label that came to you and said, here's the
keys to the candy store, Frank, go record an album
and you can produce it.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
They tried everything to get me to record, and I
kept refusing because it wasn't cool in those days to
be part of the quote establishment. And the way that
they finally talked me into it because I said, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to do that. I don't want to
do that. I just wanted to stay in the room
(12:25):
and play music with my friends, and that's what I
did for twelve hours a day. But crowds would come
and see us. And so these people saw these huge
crowds coming to see us. We'd play outside, we'd play
in parks, and so they thought, oh, we can make
(12:46):
a buck with this, and so they said, let's get
him to sign a record deal. And I wasn't even
of age to do it. I had to have my eventually,
when I did find me ag reading what my parents
had to sign the papers, and it was unusual for
(13:10):
someone that young to be making a record, let alone
producing it myself. Because that's how they got me to
do it. They promised that if I would do it,
they'd give me whatever equipment I wanted. And that was
like a magic word. Sure, equipment will put you in
a place called the studio and it's full of equipment,
(13:32):
and I'm like, equipment, Oh wow, and we won't even
we won't even show up. You do whatever you like,
you produce it. That was when heard us sixteen year
old kid produces own record.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
And the band Mahogany Rush. I mean, did you have
to quit you had to quickly put together a band
or with these studs.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I had, whoever played with me, like the jamming that
I was doing, it was always Mahogany Rush, before the
Mahogany Rush that became Mahogany Rush and finally did that album,
you know, when I was sixteen seventeen, right, I had
played with a lot of guys before that, and it
(14:19):
was always known as Mahogany Rush because Mahogany Rush was
not a name of a band, it was the name
of the of the experience I had, almost like the
Alan Parsons project, you know, like it was like I
would say, I'm having a mahogany rush. So I would
(14:40):
tell the doctors. It made no sense to them, but
to me, it made a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
You were describing the feeling you had while you were.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Wanting to describe my trip. Yeah, and so whoever played
with me was playing mahogany rush music. It was almost
a choke to people. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It wasn't the name of a band, it was the
genre you were playing.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, Yeah, that's right. That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
Now Here's a Highlight from Coast to Coast am on iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
After playing drums since he was five, Frank Marino started
playing guitar around age thirteen or fourteen while in hospital
in Montreal. By the time he was sixteen, he was
given a record deal and allowed unprecedented artistic freedom. He
released his first album, Maxoom in nineteen seventy two, at
the tender age of eighteen. That album was followed by
(00:27):
Child of the Novelty in nineteen seventy four in Strange
Universe in nineteen seventy five. Those two album covers depict
Marino's tortured experiences while on acid, which were relayed to
album cover artist Ivan Schwartz. More recently, Frank released a
six hour live recording on CD and DVD Live at
the Agareth Theater. An open or an often repeated myth
(00:51):
is that Frank Marino was visited by an apparition of
Jimmy Hendrix after a bad acid trip, a myth Marino
has always disavowed, and continues to do so on his
personal website. His playing, however, is inspired by Hendricks. On
the Gibson website, He's described as carrying Jim's Psychedelic Torch,
and Frank is notable for often performing cover versions of
(01:13):
Hendrix's classes classics, such as All Along the Watchtower. Frank
has described Mahogany Rush's sound his sound as the Grateful
Dead meets jazz. Mahogany Rush played before three hundred thousand
people at California Jam two in nineteen seventy eight. He's
toured with Aerosmith and Johnny Winter. He's widely considered a
(01:33):
guitar player's guitar player. And it's a great pleasure to
welcome Frank Marino to Coast to coast, am Frank, climb aboard.
How are you?
Speaker 3 (01:42):
How are you Richard?
Speaker 2 (01:43):
I'm flying, I'm great, Thank you. How are things in Montreal?
Are you getting a typical Montreal a winter?
Speaker 3 (01:51):
They they're very cold, They're very very cold. We had
a snowless December and part of January and now I.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Git a no burst water pipes?
Speaker 3 (02:02):
I hope no, not yet.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Okay, that's good. You know, I'm just thinking about your
your childhood and you know, Ringo Star likes to tell
the story of how he learned to play the drums
or decided he was going to be a drummer while
he was in hospital. For you, it's kind of the opposite.
You were playing the drums at a very young age
and then you went into the into the hospital and
picked up the guitar. But let me ask you about drumming.
(02:28):
I understand like you wanted to be Buddy Rich. Like
were you an old soul? Like I can't imagine a
five or a six year old deciding I want to
be Buddy Rich.
Speaker 3 (02:36):
Well, Buddy Rich. Guys like Buddy Rich. And you know,
when I was growing up, that's if you heard drummers
and you heard Buddy Rich, there was no other drummer
you wanted to hear a clipt Buddy Rich. There was
Elvin Jones, but I liked Alvin Jones because you know,
it was it was that same kind of jazz type
(02:56):
of playing. And yeah, I wanted to I wanted to
draw up and be a drummer. I wanted to be
Buddy Rich. And believe me, when I went to the hospital,
they'd had a set of drums in there. I'd have
played the drums all the time, but they're not going
to put a set of drums in a hospital. So
while they had was a guitar.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Can you tell us how you ended up in the
hospital at the age of thirteen for an extended period
of time.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Well, it was the sixties, and you know, I had
older brothers and sisters while an older brother and older sister,
and I was like the sort of mascot of the gang.
And LSD was being used, and you know, psychedelic drugs
were being used, and I guess I just used too
(03:41):
much of them, and at one point it just got
you get to a point on a psychedelic drug, especially
if you're young, where you sort of crossed a certain threshold.
It's like a kind of a rubicon, and once you
crossed over, it's not like you can unsee or unfel
(04:03):
or unhear what happens to you. And nobody really knew
what to do about that. I mean, you could call
it a bad trip, but it was more than a
bad trip. It was a it was a complete, you know,
psychedelic experience, to quote Timothy Leary. And all I could
(04:24):
do is end up in a hospital because I didn't
know what to do about it. I mean, it had
never happened before. I had done done those drugs for
a while as a young kid, and it just all
blew my mind one day and from the time that
I went to the hospital, I never touched another drug
again or or even a drink to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
When would we would you describe it as like a psychosis?
Did it induce a psychosis?
Speaker 3 (04:54):
You know the story of Alice in Wonderland. Yes, imagine
that really happening like e more. I mean, it wasn't
just like because I had done acids for a while.
You know, so most people who do acid, they feel
high and they sort of stevid walls breathe, and you know,
(05:17):
just it's sort of a light experience. But when it's
like I crossed over into what you like you call
a psychosis. And I guess it's similar to when they
say that schizophrenic people hear voices. Well that's just one sense.
Imagine all the sense is doing that to you and
creating a whole trip. And those early album covers are
(05:42):
really really are especially strange Universe, really are indicative of
what the trip was like. And it didn't just end suddenly.
It went on for many many years while I was playing.
So in the early days when I was doing those
albums with those covers, I was always trying to express
myself with the music that I was doing, trying to
(06:06):
express that trip. And I know it's interesting to believe me.
It wasn't a nice experience.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
You know, it's interesting because we people tend to romanticize,
you know, that that era and and the you know,
dropping LSD, and you know, the U with the Grateful Dead,
the electric kool Aid acid trip and all of that.
I mean, the way you're portraying it, it sounded like
(06:35):
an absolute nightmare. I can't imagine a young a young
child going through that.
Speaker 3 (06:42):
Yeah, it wasn't. It wasn't a scout night. Now, it
wasn't a nightmare in the beginning. It was it was
what everyone romanticized, you know. It was that, Uh there's
an old joke about you know, what do the Deadheads
say when the acid wears off? They what's that noise?
(07:06):
So it was it was romanticized and it was cool
and everything, and everyone was like if you woodstock, It
was very much like that. But in my case, I
went that one little silly step further. It might have
been because I was only thirteen, Uh, it might have been.
Who knows why it didn't happen to a lot of people.
(07:30):
I know of two other people that it did happen
to and they never recovered.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
That is tragic.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
So, you know, I think it's a dangerous drug. I
think all drugs can be dangerous if you don't know
what you're doing, like anything else. Sure, once I once
I hit the hospital and came out of the hospital,
(08:02):
and I went in and out, in and out for
a while. It was like back and forth, back and forth.
You know. I'd go in the hospital and said I
don't like being in the hospital. I want to go home.
And I'd come home and say I better get back
to the hospital. It was. It was a really it
was a really awful time. But the guitar was what
I held onto. It was like imagine being imagine falling
(08:27):
off a boat in the middle of the ocean and
finding one piece of wood that you could hang on to.
The guitar became that for me. And they had an
acoustic guitar in the hospital, and it became the only
thing I would gravitate towards for what however, hour, every
hour of the day. And when I had to go home,
(08:48):
they wouldn't let me take it. So my mother bought
me a guitar, and that guitar that she bought me
actually ended up becoming the guitars that I did in
my career.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
With That's the the the the Gibson, the sixty one
Gibson s g Well yourself taught. I mean, how did
you learn to play in hospital?
Speaker 3 (09:11):
I thought I could. It's hard to explain. I believed,
like I believe the songs I was thinking of. I
was thinking I was writing they. I wasn't writing them.
They were they were Grateful Dead tunes. They were doors tunes.
They were they were tunes, you know, they were Jimmy
(09:33):
Hendricks tunes. They were toned from that era. And I
was thinking, oh, I'm just going to work on my songs.
Like I was crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
But how did you learn? You know, how to play chords?
And you just figured it out on your own?
Speaker 3 (09:50):
That just came on, you know. I started with notes.
I started with notes, and I had always had good
rhythm because I was a drummer, so timing wasn't a problem.
And later on notes became you know, oh, these two
notes go together and they make a chord. And then
(10:11):
much later on after that, when I started to well,
I won't say come down but I started to be
more in the world. Then I started looking into what
it was that I was playing and asking other people
what is it that I'm playing, and they'd say, well,
that's an A, and that's a B and that's the
(10:32):
G sharp and I started learning about music. It was
a long process, but it all happened pretty quickly because
it started at thirteen, you know, well it started. I
had three experiences like that, and it was the third
one that put me in the hospital. And that all
started between July twenty sixth, nineteen sixty eight, and September
(10:57):
third and fourth of the same year. That's when I
ended up going to the hospital, right And I'm born
in November, so I was just turning fourteen, so I
was still thirteen years old when it happened to me.
And between that point and being in the hospital for
(11:18):
most of the early part of sixty nine, you know,
I was supposed to go to Woodstock and didn't go
because I was I was completely you know, my mind
was splited. But between the time that I did the
hospital and the time I was eventually at sixteen going
(11:41):
on seventeen, by that time, I made an album.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yeah, this is astounding to me, it really was.
Speaker 3 (11:50):
I look back at it and I almost don't know
who that person was.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
How did that happen? Was at nine Records? Was that
the label that came to you and said, here's the
keys to the candy store, Frank, go record an album
and you can produce it.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
They tried everything to get me to record, and I
kept refusing because it wasn't cool in those days to
be part of the quote establishment. And the way that
they finally talked me into it because I said, no, no, no, no, no,
I don't want to do that. I don't want to
do that. I just wanted to stay in the room
(12:25):
and play music with my friends, and that's what I
did for twelve hours a day. But crowds would come
and see us. And so these people saw these huge
crowds coming to see us. We'd play outside, we'd play
in parks, and so they thought, oh, we can make
(12:46):
a buck with this, and so they said, let's get
him to sign a record deal. And I wasn't even
of age to do it. I had to have my eventually,
when I did find me ag reading what my parents
had to sign the papers, and it was unusual for
(13:10):
someone that young to be making a record, let alone
producing it myself. Because that's how they got me to
do it. They promised that if I would do it,
they'd give me whatever equipment I wanted. And that was
like a magic word. Sure, equipment will put you in
a place called the studio and it's full of equipment,
(13:32):
and I'm like, equipment, Oh wow, and we won't even
we won't even show up. You do whatever you like,
you produce it. That was when heard us sixteen year
old kid produces own record.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
And the band Mahogany Rush. I mean, did you have
to quit you had to quickly put together a band
or with these studs.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
I had, whoever played with me, like the jamming that
I was doing, it was always Mahogany Rush, before the
Mahogany Rush that became Mahogany Rush and finally did that album,
you know, when I was sixteen seventeen, right, I had
played with a lot of guys before that, and it
(14:19):
was always known as Mahogany Rush because Mahogany Rush was
not a name of a band, it was the name
of the of the experience I had, almost like the
Alan Parsons project, you know, like it was like I
would say, I'm having a mahogany rush. So I would
(14:40):
tell the doctors. It made no sense to them, but
to me, it made a whole lot of sense.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
You were describing the feeling you had while you were.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
Wanting to describe my trip. Yeah, and so whoever played
with me was playing mahogany rush music. It was almost
a choke to people. Right.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
It wasn't the name of a band, it was the
genre you were playing.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
Yeah, Yeah, that's right. That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1 (15:08):
Listen to more Coast to Coast AM every weeknight at
one am Eastern, and go to Coast to coastam dot
com for more
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I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Special Summer Offer: Exclusively on Apple Podcasts, try our Dateline Premium subscription completely free for one month! With Dateline Premium, you get every episode ad-free plus exclusive bonus content.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.