Don Brewer: The Mr. Skin Interview

You were a hard-touring band and your number-one hit single "We're an American Band" talks about "partying down" with "Sweet Connie" and "four young chiquitas in Omaha" that helped you "tear that hotel down." Are these based on true incidents?
You know, to a certain extent. We were on the road in 1972 on the Phoenix tour, in support of that album. We were going through huge lawsuits with our former manager. He was suing every town we went into. There was a huge trip going on.

I was just taking little snapshots in my mind of things that were going on, on the road. One of which was "up all night with Freddy King, I got to tell you poker's his thing." Freddy King being the great blues player from Texas that we wanted on that tour. It was sort of our separation from the former Grand Funk to the new Grand Funk and we wanted to have a great opening act, so we wanted to have Freddy King.

I thought it was fantastic that he would stay up all night playing cards with his band. He'd make his band play cards with him so he could make the money back that he paid them to keep them broke. So that line, "Up all night with Freddy King, I got to tell you poker's his thing" that was one of the things that happened.

The four young chiquitas in Omaha, well yeah, there were four young chiquitas in Omaha that were waiting in the hotel lobby as we checked in, but that's about the extent of the truthfulness there.

And, of course, everyone from that period knew who Connie was from Little Rock, it wasn't just us. She was mentioned in our song and everybody drew the thing between us and Connie. Well, you know, it was no big deal that Connie was with Elvis, Connie was with a former governor named Bill Clinton, with everybody who came to Little Rock [laughs]. Those things did happen, at least seeing those people and meeting those people, yes.

What backstage antics did you leave out of that pop classic?
It was always a big deal to tear up a hotel room. Not that we ever did that on a regular basis, but it did happen. It's more of a song that's written about what everyone thinks a rock band is about [laughs]. That is what makes us the American band, right?

Have you toned down your touring excesses now that you're back on the road?
We tour every year. We do about thirty to forty shows. It's nowhere near kind of the craziness it was back then. Back then we used to do two a year, forty cities in forty days. And then we'd come off the road, take a few days off, and go right back into our rehearsal studio working on the next album. So it was like nonstop. Now we do thirty or forty shows a year [laughs].

And things are not as wild?
If you're going to stay alive to the age of fifty-seven, like I am, you can't be doing that all your life. That's for sure [laughs]. You can't live like you're sixteen.

Do you find that girls like drummers, you know, better endurance, stamina, that sort of thing?
Oh sure, my wife is [laughs]. I put on a high-energy show, as far as drummers are concerned. There are a lot of drummers that do the same thing. People come up to me after the show amazed by the energy level, especially at my age, I guess. It's just the way that I play. It's the way a lot of drummers play. It's a very physical thing to be a drummer if you play rock and roll, if you play hard. It doesn't have to be. Jazz drummers don't put out a lot of sweat. We play hard and we still do. We play full boogie, full-tilt boogie. It's all out!

"We're an American Band" has been featured in lots of movies, most recently the hit Sahara, and since Mr. Skin is a movie site, a specific type of movie site, that leads me to ask what was the first sex scene you saw in a mainstream movie growing up?
Wow, the first sex scene... [laughs]. You know, to be very honest, I don't recall a movie, sitting in a theater watching a legitimate movie, the first sex scene I saw. What I recall was a guy in the band bringing some porno films that his brother got in California. He brought them over to the house, set up the projector and we watched some really cheesy porn from way back in the '50s. That's the first porn I ever saw, first nudity in a movie.

What are your favorite sexy movies?
One very romantic movie, and I can't really recall if there was a lot of sex in the movie, was Doctor Zhivago (Picture: 1). Julie Christie (Picture: 1 - 2). I must have been thirteen, fourteen years old or something and the school did an outing and took us down to Detroit to see this movie and I just fell in love with Julie Christie.

Pen?pe Cruz (Picture: 1) is pretty hot in Sahara, no pun intended for once. Which actresses working today make you beat your skins?
I think Julia Roberts (Picture: 1) is very attractive. Everybody jokes about her nose, huge nostrils. But I still find her very attractive. Let me think, Angelina Jolie (Picture: 1), very hot, attractive-looking woman. I don't know about her personally....

How about old-timers, who turned you on as a kid?
Julie Christie was a major attraction. I was always attracted to Goldie Hawn (Picture: 1 - 2), too. Even in her Laugh-In days I thought she was very attractive. I'm not a big movie buff, so I don't really stay up on things.

How about something more general. Are you a breast man or leg lover?
Oh, the overall package. There was another girl I was very attracted to I remember growing up. What was the English detective show, the guy wore the derby hat?

The Avengers, Diana Rigg (Picture: 1).
I thought she was extremely attractive, leather jumpsuit. Hey, she wasn't a big-breasted woman, just a lot of attitude. She had a great look.

You used to sport quite a massive 'fro, which begs the question of pubic hair: Are you, like Mr. Skin, a lover of the full bush or do you prefer a manicured garden?
I prefer whatever it is naturally, but I don't like a huge afro down there [laughs]. But I'm not really into the manicured thing also. I prefer somewhere in between, but naturally.

Before I let you go, what's next on the agenda?
Everybody can always go to GrandFunkRailroad.com, everything is there: We have a new promo video that's available there to stream on your computer. We're always looking to work on a DVD. We're trying to get enough stuff together to have a full-length DVD of the show. We always work on new material and we have new songs in the show. We really focus on doing a Grand Funk all-hits, high-energy rock show, but we like to experiment with a few new things, too. We'll be out on the road all summer, doing thirty, forty shows this year, as well as next year and the other. We'll just continue moving on. Along with the GrandFunkRailroad.com there's also a group of folks called CyberFunkers that you can join through GrandFunkRailroad.com, and they travel around the country with the band.

Like Funk-Heads. Well, Don, you've been a really good sport. I know this isn't your typical technical drummer's-type interview.
Hey, certainly isn't. Thank you, I appreciate it.