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Frank Marino
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Frank Marino
Background information
Birth name Francesco Antonio Marino
Born November 20, 1954 (age 63)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Genres Hard rock,
blues rock,
heavy metal
Occupation(s) Musician, songwriter
Instruments Guitar
Years active 1970 – 1993
2001 – present
Associated acts Mahogany Rush
Website mahoganyrush.com
Francesco Antonio Marino(born November 20, 1954) is an
Italian Canadian[1] guitarist, leader of Canadian
hard rockband
Mahogany Rush. Often compared to
Jimi Hendrix, he is acknowledged as one of the best and most underrated
[2]guitarists of the 1970s.
- Biography and career[edit]
After playing drums since he was five,
[3] around age 13–14 Marino started playing guitar.
[4] An often-repeated myth is he was visited by an apparition of Jimi Hendrix after a bad
LSD trip,
[5][6] a myth Marino has always disavowed, and still does so now on his personal website.
[7] His playing, however, is inspired by Hendrix (on the
Gibson website he is described as "carrying Jimi's psychedelic torch"
[8]), and Marino is notable for strong cover versions of Hendrix classics such as "
Purple Haze" and "
All Along The Watchtower".
[9][8] He has been criticized by some as a Hendrix clone.
[10][11] Marino himself claims that he didn't consciously set out to imitate Hendrix's style at all: "The whole style just came naturally. I didn't choose it; it chose me."
[12]
Mahogany Rush was moderately popular in the 1970s. Their records charted in
Billboard, and they toured extensively, playing such venues as
California Jam II (1978). Toward the end of the 1970s, the band began to be billed as "Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush."
[13] Not much later, Mahogany Rush split up and in the early 1980s Marino released two solo albums on
CBS. The band reformed and continued to perform throughout the 1980s and 1990s. In 1993, Marino retired from the music industry.
Marino returned in 2000, "I always knew we had fans, I just didn't know I'd find half a million of them on the Web," he said in an interview with
Guitar Player in 2005.
[3] He released
Eye of the Storm, and went on tour again, playing more improvisational shows.
[3] Frank is still active, recording and touring under his own name. He has also been involved in blues recordings with other artists as well, playing on tribute albums to
Albert King and
Stevie Ray Vaughan.
Marino is uncle to Danny Marino, lead guitarist of Canadian metal band
The Agonist.
Technique and equipment[edit]
Besides Jimi Hendrix, Marino acknowledged the influence of
John Cipollina(of
Quicksilver Messenger Service fame),
Robby Krieger,
[14] Duane Allman,
Johnny Winter, and
Carlos Santana. He plays blues, heavy metal, and improvisational styles; one of his notable tricks is playing (live) a lick as if it were played backwards, with the help of only a volume pedal and a delay.
[3]His style has influenced many guitar players, including
Zakk Wylde,
[15] Joe Bonamassa,
[16] Eric Gales and Paul Gilbert.
[17] His tone is recognized by for instance
Guitar Player, which called him a "full-spectrum guitar god," alongside
Jeff Beck,
Eddie Van Halen, and
The Edge.
[18]
Marino is a devoted
Gibson SG player and uses them with the original
PAF pickups and two with
DiMarzio humbuckers.
[3] He also has an SG with single-coil DiMarzio pickups.
[19] He is noted for complicated setups; according to
Guitar Player, he has "an entire pedalboard ... assigned to hold the expression pedals that control the parameters of the effects on
anotherpedalboard."
[3] In the past, he has built his own amplifiers to achieve the right sound; he also uses
Fender Twins.
[3] He currently uses a preamp which he built himself, reminiscent of a Fender, and any available power amp, through a 2x15" Fane cabinet.
[19]
Discography[edit]
Solo[edit]
