for fans of Grand Funk Railroad an obit

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   I'm not of this cadre but if there are any fans of Grand Funk out there, this obit from tomorrow's Guardian newspaper....
During the early 1970s the heavy rock trio Grand Funk Railroad was the
biggest band in the United States, appalling critics but selling millions of albums to working-class teenagers.
 The group’s success was due in large part to the promotional genius of their manager and producer Terry Knight, who
has died aged 61 of gunshot wounds suffered during a domestic dispute.
 Born in Flint, Michigan, he attended Lapeer high school. By the early 1960s Knight had become a successful local
disc jockey, but yearned to appear on stage. After stand-up comedy and folk singing, he became lead singer in a local
group after convincing them that he knew Mick Jagger and Brian Jones. “Terry Knight and the Pack” developed a local
following and had some minor hits.
 In 1967, in London, Knight met Paul McCartney and Twiggy. Back in the USA, he composed and recorded the song
St Paul. Beatle folklore has it that this was the source of the rumours that McCartney had died.
 The Pack split up, but in 1968 Knight was invited to manage a group formed by its ex-members Mark Farner and Don
Brewer. He named it Grand Funk Railroad - inspired by the local Grand Trunk Railroad company and, embarking on the
mission to make it famous, got the group a booking at the Atlanta International Pop Festival of 1969.
 There they played to a crowd of 125,000 in a temperature of 110 degrees. This brought a Capitol Records contract
and six Knight-produced albums within three years. In 1971, Grand Funk Railroad, like the Beatles before them, sold out
New York’s Shea Stadium.
 The sound was simple power chord riffs, the lyrics jejune protests against parents and war, and the band sold millions
to young Americans unimpressed with psychedelia and progressive rock. Knight tirelessly promoted them as a “people’s
band”.
 He designed controversial album covers, composed bombastic sleeve notes that described the group as “Three who
belong to the New Culture, setting forth on its final voyage through a dying world”, and booked the main billboard in
Times Square to promote their latest album.
 His choice of “render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s” as an advertising slogan for the E Pluribus Funk album
brought condemnation from the New York archdiocese.
 The rock establishment was appalled. Its house organ Rolling Stone called Grand Funk Railroad the world’s worst rock
band and accused Knight of “apparently innate gaucheness”.
 The late Greg Shaw (obituary, October 29) said, “from the beginning, Grand Funk was sold over the counter like so
much raw meat”. Other critics were less dismissive. Lester Bangs wrote that what made them a phenomenon was “the
combination of Knight’s promotional acumen and the band’s extraordinary relationship with its audience”.
 Amid suspicions of financial mismanagement, in 1972 the group sacked their manager. Lawsuits followed. Knight
claimed $60m, and incidents such as the impounding of the group’s equipment shortly before a concert followed.
 Eventually, Knight was paid off with a reported $15m. Now called Grand Funk, the group eventually disbanded in 1976,
but subsequently re-formed in the mid-1990s and has toured the US occasionally ever since.
 Knight continued, unsuccessfully, producing Bloodrock, the Jayhawkers and Mom’s Apple Pie for the Brown
Bagcompany he had set up with United Artists. In 1974, he had left the music business, having turned down the chance
to manage a new band, Kiss, finding their transvestite outfits too much of a challenge. He later admitted that this was a
mistake.
 He was said to have squandered much of his Grand Funk Railroad pay-off on such items as a personal jet and racing
cars. He lived in Connecticut and Michigan before moving to Arizona after joining a witness protection programme as a
result of giving evidence in a drugs case.
 At the time of his death, he was sharing an apartment with his daughter in Temple, Texas. Police said that Knight was
shot by his daughter’s boyfriend after intervening in a quarrel between the couple.