“People Get Ready!” Spotlight on Vanilla Fudge’s Mark Stein
By: Spotlight Central
Tags: New Jersey, Rock And Roll, 60s Rock, Music, Rock

Spotlight Central: We’re told that while playing with that group, you and Tommy Bolin jumped onstage and started jamming with Carlos Santana in front of 7000 people!

Mark Stein: That was a great gig! The Tommy Bolin Band was opening for Santana in Albuquerque, and there were a lot of folks there. We jumped up on stage and I got up on the keyboards and Tommy, of course, got on the guitar and we just started jamming and having a ball up there. It was an incredible night and just a great experience; I can remember hanging out with Carlos afterwards just talking about music and talking about all the bands of the day — it was a very, very cool trip, for sure.

Spotlight Central: You also played for a crowd of 50,000 people at Mile High Stadium opening for Peter Frampton where you got an extended standing ovation after your name was announced following your solo. How gratifying was that?

Mark Stein: That’s when Peter Frampton had his huge Frampton Comes Alive record; I think it was in 1976. We had the gig opening for Frampton in Denver, and it was an incredible day. I think there were 50,000 people there. I had a big following from Vanilla Fudge from the late-‘60s, and I used to do this really cool solo with the band and I do remember after the solo was over, Tommy announced my name. It was a pretty inspiring ovation, so that was a cool moment, for sure.

Spotlight Central: The fans not only appreciated what you were doing there in the moment, but were also honoring you for your work with Vanilla Fudge.

Mark Stein: Well, Vanilla Fudge was really strong in that market because we had toured with Led Zeppelin in Denver and had played a lot of big shows there.

Spotlight Central: And after that, you worked with Alice Cooper, with his Welcome to My Nightmare tour of Australia and New Zealand. What was that like?

Mark Stein: That was pretty crazy! It was a really elaborate show — probably at the time, the most visual rock and roll show on the planet. It was a long, long journey to the Southern Hemisphere. And I do remember it was a really good band, and playing huge venues in Perth, Adelaide, Sydney, and Melbourne, Austrailia, and over in Auckland, New Zealand, too. At the time, it was the biggest-grossing tour of all time in the Southern Hemisphere — and I remember that when I first got down to Australia, even though Vanilla Fudge had never toured there, I found out that our records were huge sellers in that part of the world and I remember being greeted with a lot of positive vibes, for sure.

Spotlight Central: In the ’70s and ’80s you toured or recorded with a who’s who of artists including Dave Mason, Rod Stewart, and Michael Jackson. We’ve heard that — and we don’t know if it’s true — but there’s a story out there which suggests that at a Frank Zappa concert an anonymous fan once yelled out, “You guys stink — bring on the Fudge.” But you were friends with Zappa, weren’t you?

Mark Stein: Oh, man, I heard that story. And you know where that was? I read that was at Westbury Music Fair, but that was probably from a show back in 1967. Frank was brilliant, man, and he was a great guy. Frank and the Mothers of Invention did a lot of shows with Vanilla Fudge on the East Coast back in those days. So, yeah, we did become friends. He really liked the Fudge, and I liked him a lot, and we used to talk a lot.

One night, he saved my ass, ok? We were partying for a couple of nights — I don’t think I slept for a couple of nights — and my voice was completely hoarse. I was freaking out and I remember I was in the dressing room talking to Frank and I said, “Man, I don’t know how I’m gonna get through the show tonight.” They were doing the sound check and he just said, “Look, man. I’ll take care of this. Don’t worry.” He sat me down and he calmed me down. He gave me some tea and honey, and he said, “Now drink this and take it easy. Have a positive attitude and just believe you’re gonna get through the night tonight.”

He really befriended me that day, and that night, and I did get through the show. Even though I had a pretty hoarse voice, that was really cool what he did, and over the next year we’d run into each other often. We played lots of shows together and had a nice friendly relationship. He was really a cool guy, and he left us way too young.

Spotlight Central: And so ahead of his time, too. In the early 1980s, Vanilla Fudge did a benefit concert in New York City. When Atlantic Records heard you guys perform there, they wanted the group to get back together. You did, and you recorded your 1983 reunion album, Mystery, and you also did a tour in 1987 which produced a live album. Was your approach to music in the 1980s different or similar to the approach Vanilla Fudge took in the 1960s?

Mark Stein: What happened was: when we reformed to do this Mystery album, we wanted to change with the times. It was the ’80s when we started doing that record, and this was the time of The Police, and Toto, and a lot of really great pop songs and pop arrangements, and that’s kind of where we were going with that.

After the record came out, a lot of the diehard fans weren’t happy with it because it didn’t really have the Vanilla Fudge sound of the ’60s. It was an ’80s sound, which is what we wanted. Spencer Proffer was producing us — he was in the middle of producing a band called Quiet Riot at the time, but they hadn’t made it yet.

The Mystery album was supposed to be the big comeback album of the year. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of some difficult legal problems at the time, and it really got in the way of the momentum of the music. It’s a real shame, too, because I thought that was a really good record. And, actually, I think it was Billboard that spotlighted the title track, “Mystery,” and touted that it could be a Top 20 single.

But because of all of the problems, Atlantic dropped the ball on it, and that was the end of it. But there were songs like “Golden Age Dreams,” and “Mystery,” and a song called “Under Suspicion.” If anybody Googles the Mystery album and checks out those tracks, I think they’ll find them to be pretty cool.

Spotlight Central: And speaking of a cool track, in 2001, you recorded a cool version of “America the Beautiful.” What inspired you to do that?

Mark Stein: We had been watching the towers come down, and a couple of days after 9/11, my wife, Patty, and I were checking out the news and we saw these amazing dogs — these search and rescue dogs — that were climbing over all the rubble and getting burned. Some of them were even dying from the heat and the exhaustion — they’d have them combing the site and they’d be giving them oxygen, and intravenous, and all kinds of stuff — and I was saying, “This is amazing.”

I’d always been patriotic but, after that, I was feeling super patriotic, and I wanted to do a version of “America the Beautiful.” I put together a bunch of really cool musicians and went into my friend’s studio and we recorded it. I put it up on my website and all the donations coming from my website for “America the Beautiful” went to the organization that services the search and rescue dogs, and we raised a bunch of money. Actually, Whitey Ford — who at the time was a really good friend of mine — and his wife, Joan, gave a nice donation to the organization. So that’s what inspired “America the Beautiful.”

Spotlight Central: In 2003, you recorded a solo album, White Magik, which features “America the Beautiful” and a few other cover arrangements, in addition to seven original songs. As a songwriter, when you create songs, do you find yourself mainly composing at the keyboard, or can ideas pop into your head at any time?

Mark Stein: Usually, it works for me when I’m sitting at the organ or the piano and I’ll come up with a groove, or a lick, and I’ll say, “Wow, that really sounds cool!” — or maybe I’ll start singing a hook out of the blue, and then I’ll start writing a story and lyrics around the hook. For different songwriters, it can come in different ways, but for me, it usually starts with the keyboard — and, sometimes, it’s just simultaneous when the ideas come out.

Spotlight Central: And speaking of keyboards, not long ago, you worked as a featured artist with drummer Carl Palmer as a vocalist, keyboardist, and organist, playing on his 2018 Live: Carl Palmer’s ELP Legacy album. How did that come about?

Mark Stein: Carl Palmer put his ELP Legacy tour together to honor Emerson, Lake and Palmer, and he was looking for a singer who could also play keyboards. He saw me on TV with Vanilla Fudge on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and he called his manager and said, “Can you contact Mark Stein to see if he’d be interested in doing a couple of shows with me?” I called Carl in England and we hit it off really well. We went out and we did a handful of shows and that was a great experience, actually, playing Keith Emerson and singing Greg Lake at the same time. In fact that was one of the most challenging things I think I’ve ever done.

Spotlight Central: Absolutely!

Mark Stein: But I did it in my own style, you know? I could never play like Keith Emerson, but I can play like Mark. And the people dug it, and Carl dug it — he had a great band — and it came off really well.

Spotlight Central: More than a half-century following its creation, you, Carmine Appice, and Vince Martell, along with bassist Pete Bremy, are still performing as Vanilla Fudge. We’ve seen you in concert on several occasions where you play hard rock versions of songs like The Monkees’ “I’m a Believer” and The Doors’ “Break on Through to the Other Side,” but one of our all-time favorite Vanilla Fudge cover songs is “People Get Ready.” Can you tell us more about that particular arrangement and if you enjoy performing it as much as we do listening to it?

Mark Stein: “People Get Ready” was originally done by The Impressions with Curtis Mayfield. And The Fudge — the original guys, when we were kids — we sang really well together. We were like a street corner group — a doo-wop group — the blend was so good. We used to do songs like that in the car; we used to sing on the way to shows. Then we got to rehearsal and we came up with this arrangement of “People Get Ready” probably around 1966 and, I guess, still to this day, it’s one of the fan favorites.

And I actually dedicated that song to Martin Luther King after he was assassinated back in 1968. I remember dedicating it to him at the New Orleans sports arena, and they started throwing molotov cocktails out of the stands. Our manager was really angry with me. He said, “Don’t you know where we are? We’re in the Deep South!” But I was young and I was an activist, and I had that kind of attitude and I really didn’t care — plus I was getting patted on the back by my peers in my age group — but the business people were freaking out. But, hey, that’s the way it was, man. A lot of racial divide was going on back then — it was a big crisis — and, yeah, it was crazy times.