“It’ll die if you don’t tar up those stumps,” Mark said. Mel had sawed most of the branches off a tall pine, because they were strangling another tree. These three plaintiffs/defendants were smoking a joint in the afternoon sun, looking out over the green lawn, steep ravine and forested hillside that Mel owns behind his new house in the Michigan countryside. I have to feel right, you know? It’s got to be a natural feeling in order to enjoy it, and to have the crowd enjoy it. It might have been for a while, but it seemed like I had to get too phony to do it. Mark: “I just felt that wasn’t where I was at anymore. “I told him, ‘Look, Mark, I’ll buy you a new pair of pants every night.’ “ “This fucking kid was taking home $50,000 a night and he couldn’t afford a cleaning bill for his fans,” Knight fumed. Mark tendered a vague explanation: It made the knees of his pants dirty. He would hurl the guitar through the air, dance with it and wiggle it, but he drew the line at intercourse.
NEW YORK – - One night during Grand Funk’s 1971 American tour, Mark Farner went to Terry Knight, the man who had managed the group from obscurity to gold records, Lear jets, and ballparks full of cheering crowds, and said he was no longer willing to go down on his knees on stage and pretend to ball his guitar.