MARCUS KING

Southern rock royalty: King (clockwise from below) at the Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway, January 2022; with Dan Auerbach in Easy Eye Sound Studio, Nashville, 2019; on-stage with father Marvin King, Greenville, 2019; loving life on the road, 2022; microphone fiend: Marcus performing at Hinterland Music Festival, St. Charles, Iowa, August 7, 2021.

“DADDY HAD TRIED WORKING A PROPER JOB AFTER I WAS BORN, AND HE HATED IT. I WAS NEVER GOING TO DO THAT.”

MARCUS KING GOT OUT. WITH A sound that fnds a home for Creedence and AC/DC, The Black Crowes and Funkadelic, his fve albums so far – the most recent being 2020’s El Dorado and the pending Young Blood – have poured new energy into Southern rock’s classic mix. But while his ascent seems swift, he’s paid his dues: playing on albums with his father at 11, gigging at 13, living a life that alienated him from his peers. At high school, he was a loner, preferring the company of guitars to his classmates. He likens his years in education to a prisoner serving time.

“It’s not the same as being locked up, but if you see someone in math class every day you might as well hang out, right? I just wasn’t really tight with anybody, which probably wasn’t their fault. I went to high school parties,” he says, a mischievous grin breaking across his face, “but that was because I had the best weed.”

In truth, all King wanted was to be on the road, playing guitar, either with his dad’s band or his own.

“It’s all I cared about,” he says, “while all those other kids only ever worried about getting to college. You know, Daddy had tried working a proper job after I was born, working as a contractor, and he hated it. I was never going to do that, and I was lucky to get out.”

But there are worse things than school, or a 9-to-5. As a teenager, with his own band just taking off, King lost his frst sweetheart, Hallie, in a car accident. By then his musical tastes had moved past his father’s introductions to embrace Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Tina Turner and The Temptations, but he was still a guitar player, not a singer.

“I started singing because, after she passed, I couldn’t wrap my fnger around the total need I had to express my emotions,” he says, his voice hesitant. “I just knew I couldn’t get all that out through the guitar alone.” Asked the Sophie’s Choice question – would he save his ability to play or his passion to sing? – he’s genuinely stumped: “I really don’t know how to answer that other than I feel like a guitar player and I’m still just trying to fgure out the singing part.” You’d never guess it from watching King perform live, where his voice comes into its own, sounding like Otis Redding one minute, Lowell George the next. It’s an ability to harmonise diverse influences that’s reflected in a list of live covers encompassing Blind Faith, Webb Pierce, When A Man Loves A Woman, Black Sabbath’s War Pigs (with a trumpet solo) and even Don’t Dream It’s Over. Who knew the world needed a Southern rock version of Crowded House?

“Hey, a great song is a great song,” shrugs King, “and it’s a great song. It’s got soul.”

IF MARCUS KING NEEDED WARNING OF THE MUSIC business’s darker side, he needn’t look far beyond his father’s struggles with alcohol and record labels. In 1993 Marvin’s band, all in their late-thirties, were given one last dice roll, signing with Liberty/Capitol in Nashville. Just as they were about to record what they believed would be a breakout album, their A&R man was fred and all his acts dropped. Among the songs chalked in for the album was Simmons and Loudermilk’s Indian Outlaw; a year later the song became the frst US Top 20 single for big-hat C&W star Tim McGraw. It’s a cautionary story of the industry’s fckleness that King Jr takes to heart. King Sr, however, is no longer complaining.

“He was a really fery player,” says Marcus, “especially tapes of him back in the ’70s and ’80s. He just never quite believed in himself enough to be his own artist, but now he gets to come out and play with us and live vicariously.”

Meanwhile, the pitfalls of the life his father once negotiated are addressed in the song Rescue Me, from Young Blood. In it, the