“That song does what it’s supposed to do. There was no video with that song Dan so it’s up to the listener to run the video in their head, and the imagination of the listener is far greater than any video could portray.”

Mark Farner on writing “I’m Your Captain/Closer to Home.”

August 2020

“Bad Time”

Music and Lyrics: Mark Farner

Arrangement: Tony Camillo

Producer: Jimmy Lenner

Also, from the album “All the Girls in the World Beware!!!” “Bad Time” was the band’s fourth and final single to reach the Top 10 and their final Top 40 hit in the U.S. It reached #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 1975.

Farner: It was a bad time in my life because my first wife was in the kitchen mumbling under her breath how she was going to put this 12-inch cast-iron skillet through my forehead. In between the living room and dining room, we had a little spinet piano in there and I sat down, and I wrote “Bad Time” on that little spinet. I was singing it out loud and she was getting madder.

I think a lot of people were having a bad time that year, but that song helped them to get in touch with their innermost feelings on it.

“Bad Time” was played more than any other song in 1975 and I got a BMI award for that song. And ’75 was before deregulation of the FCC, and they would play whatever the callers would call in [for]. I could call in and say, ‘Hey, will you play that?’ ‘Yeah, we could do that,’ and everybody was calling in for “Bad Time.” That’s how it got played more than the one that went to number one because people were calling in for it.

I always like to share that story because when it was deregulated in 1995, the ownership of our radio stations went to corporate conglomerates, and it went out of the hands of the private, patriotic individuals that used to own them; television and radio.

When the 777 rule was enforced, you could own 7 AM, 7 FM, and 7 television stations, but when they deregulated 1995, that was the razor across the jugular vein and the people haven’t had a dog in the fight since. We’ve been crammed full of false narratives and lies and hatred of all kinds because the family structure is gone. There is no moral conscience over what our children are seeing and hearing like there was prior to ’95. It was families that used to own all of the media. US families, patriotic people, and now since ’95, since the deregulation, it’s international corporate conglomerates that give a rip about people.