My name is Mark Hermann. This is my website and here is my story.
I became conscious of music somewhere around five years old. When I couldn't sleep, I would stay up listening to my parents partying downstairs with their friends while the sounds of The Fifth Dimension, Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach would waft upstairs into my young, impressionable ears. This was suburban Westport, Connecticut in the late sixties.
At the same time, my babysitters, mostly teenagers at the cusp of the flower power movement, were bringing over Steppenwolf, Grand Funk Railroad and Led Zeppelin records. Rock 'n roll took hold at a very early age for me. I met my best friend, Eric, who lived three houses down from me during this time. He came from one of those Italian families where everyone played music. His dad was a jazz guitar player. With young boys, everything is a competition so it was John Kay and Steppenwolf (my heroes) against Grand Funk Railroad with Mark Farner (Eric's heroes), even though we loved them both. And there was also Cream, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper to help corrupt a young mind. But there was this whole other soul thing that was also happening at the same time.
This was when AM radio was king and in the tri-state area, WABC reigned supreme. They had the greatest DJs; Cousin Brucie, Dan Ingram, Harry Harrison. This is where Imus In The Morning came from. You could hear Magic Carpet Ride, Midnight Train To Georgia and Ball Of Confusion all within fifteen minutes. Band Of Gold, Clean Up Woman, Me And Mrs. Jones, fuhgetaboutit! This was the soundtrack to my childhood and the building blocks of my musical foundation.
I'll never forget how I came to discover the Beatles. My parents had these friends who also had kids roughly our age (I have an older brother). We stopped over one day and my parents told us to run upstairs and play with their kids. The daughter was much older (like 11?). I remember her door was slightly ajar and as I approached, I heard Come Together for the very first time and she was dancing on a chair in a miniskirt and white go go boots. That was it for me. That's when I got hooked on The Beatles and that image will remain forever burned into my memory.
In junior high school, I was fourteen and had just discovered girls. We got a new drama teacher, Miss Lipson. She was smoking hot. I joined the chorus just to be around her. That year she was going to present Bye, Bye Birdie as the school musical and had a meeting to give out parts. There was a small part for the guitar player in Birdie's band so I raised my hand. She said that the part called for actually playing the guitar and asked if I knew how and I nodded yes, lying through my teeth. I ran home that day to Eric's father and asked him to teach me. That was where it all began for me.
