Making His Mark
By: Mary Huhn - NY Post
August 12th 2001 7:12am
Mark McGrath, the blond-tipped, tattooed tour de force who fronts Sugar Ray, claims he can't take much credit for his own success. The Sugar Ray phenomenon, he says, is unrelated to any genuine singing talent he might have, despite his band's skill at pushing a pop song from the radio into a girl's head, where it plays incessantly. And McGrath's penchant for making fans swoon over him at concerts is, well, merely a blessed fact unrelated to any ability of his. "I'm not the best guitar player in the world," admits McGrath, 33, who, as a second-grader in his home town of Hartford, Conn., pretended to be Ace Frehley from Kiss and strummed on his tennis racket. What McGrath does allow is that his voice sounds pretty darn catchy on the radio. "For whatever reason, people have reacted to [my voice]," he says. "If that's the talent, then maybe that's where it lies." Of course, it helps that lines like the one about a halo hanging over his girlfriend's fourpost bed from "Every Morning" have infected listeners from 14 to 40. And that McGrath guided Sugar Ray, which hits the Hammerstein Ballroom tomorrow in support of its self-titled fourth album, from a ska-inflected hard rock band to a sugar-pop sensation. Certainly, hop-scotching across musical styles and reaching younger audiences is working like a charm for the band, which formed in 1988 in Newport Beach, Calif. (McGrath moved to California's Orange County when he was 8.) Members of the group - drummer/guitarist Stan Frazier, 33, guitarist Rodney Sheppard, 34, bassist Murphy Karges, 34, and Craig Bullock, a.k.a. DJ Homicide, 30 - connect with those teen girls despite being twice their age. But McGrath gives Sugar Ray more of an edge than the smattering of boy bands like *NSYNC. And he adores those fans. "It's an amazing thing to see people react to your songs, hear your songs on the radio," says the singer. "That is basically all we ever wanted to do, whether it was a punk song, rock song, whatever. Just, you know, see yourself on the radar. "And that's not very cool. It's not a very indie way of thinking." So is McGrath the hunky rocker with a wild side or just a regular guy who loves playing in a band? It seems a little of both. He's been profiled in September's Teen People, the pop-culture bible of young schoolgirls, but was once named sluttiest male rock star by groupiecentral.com and used to hang out with Hugh Hefner at the Playboy Mansion. Whatever image you see, Sugar Ray is enjoying a remarkable run. "Fly," from the band's double-platinum second effort, "Floored," was a radio hit, and the group's third album, "14:59," went triple platinum. The disc was fueled by pop-chart hits "Someday," "Falls Apart" and the ubiquitous "Every Morning," which became Sugar Ray's best-selling single. Such success led to the band landing a supporting role on the Rolling Stones' Bridges to Babylon tour. The album "14:59" refers to Andy Warhol's comment about everyone being famous for 15 minutes. So far, Sugar Ray has gone well past that quarter-hour ration. And, says McGrath, "I don't want it to end." He may get his wish. The group's latest album is selling well, having gone gold since its release in June. "If you can just make another record and keep doing what you're doing, I think that's where the success lies," says McGrath. Competition, he feels, comes from the likes of *NSYNC, which McGrath calls "really talented." But then he points out one thing that separates *NSYNC from his own group: Sugar Ray's organic roots. "We started like, you know, in your garage in any town USA and the dream kind of happened for us," he says. "We weren't down in Orlando, coming out of an entertainment factory. We were doing it like anybody. "So that's probably the big difference between us and them, other than they've sold 10 billion zillion more records than we ever will." If Sugar Ray ever does catch up, it could be due to the heartfelt appreciation McGrath feels for the band's followers. "It's a young audience, a vocal teenage girl type, which is always appreciative," he says. On the band's current tour, he reaches out to them, literally, in a campy, playful segment that shatters McGrath's old playboy image: He casts himself as a game-show host and hoists a few youngsters on stage to spin a wheel loaded with pop songs from O-Town and Shaggy. The fans then do their best karaoke of whichever tune the wheel lands on. "It's extremely entertaining," says McGrath. "Sometimes they suck. Sometimes they're really good. I have the cheesy coat on. I'm like the cheesy emcee. "For some reason, when you get out there and do it and you surrender yourself to the Velveeta factor, everybody has fun."
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