Frank Marino was born November 20, 1954, in Montreal. He started playing drums at age five, but switched to guitar when he was thirteen. He is best known as guitarist and leader of Canadian hard rock band Mahogany Rush, but has done extensive work with Canadian rock band April Wine, Nanette and Billy Workman, The Montreal Jubilation Gospel Choir & Big Band, The Vargas Flamenco Blues Band and blind New Orleans blues guitarist and singer Bryan Lee, who is a fixture on the Bourbon Street scene since the 1980s playing 5 nights a week at the Old Absinthe House. Criticized by some in the early 70s as a Jimi Hendrix clone, 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."
Over the years his legend grew and among guitarist's his name is often mentioned in the same breath as Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, Jeff Healey and Edward Van Halen as a pioneer of both blues and rock. Mahogany Rush was moderately popular throughout the 1970s. Their records charted on Billboard, and they toured extensively, playing such venues as California Jam in 1978. Toward the end of the 1970s, the band began to be billed as "Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush." With the dawn of the 1980s, Mahogany Rush split up and Marino released two solo albums on CBS. The band reformed in the 80s and continued to perform until 1993 when Marino retired from the music industry.
Frank returned in 2001, relaunching his solo career and appearing on multiple guitar compilations and tribute albums to Stevie Ray Vaughn and The Beatles. In 2005, George Lynch, Ronnie Montrose, James Byrd, Audley Freed and others released Secondhand Smoke: A Tribute to Frank Marino. Frank is still referred to as the Canadian Jimi Hendrix, but the moniker is no longer a criticism and he is acknowledged as one of the best and most underrated guitarists of our time.
~ Frank Marino ~
