Three chords and the truth, that's the essence of rock and roll; the best of it that is. When it gets you, you stay got. That was the case with Mark Doyle. Then, the British landed the shock troops being the same four Liverpudlians who conquered the hearts, minds, bodies and souls of millions around the planet. First it was their groundbreaking appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and then it was off to the movies.

Mark Doyle: I saw "A Hard Day's Night" at a local theatre. They had a local band, the Auburn Beatles playing live before the movie and that was it. I always related heavily to John Lennon. He was always sort of my hero even though he wasn't like a lead guitar player or anything.

That was all well and good. Except Doyle was a jazz playing piano prodigy showcasing his talents on hometown and regional TV shows in his native upstate New York while he was still in grade school. He was all set to follow in the footsteps of his father who was also a jazz pianist. It's hard enough for most musicians to support themselves let alone a family. The fact that Mark Doyle's parents were able to do so on the single income brought in by his piano playing dad is made staggeringly impressive when you consider they had thirteen little Doyles to bring up. When it looked like Mark was going to squander his natural gifts and the work that went into honing them, Dad was not pleased. But perhaps remembering his own struggles he didn't completely block his son's ambitions.

MD: My dad had a beat-up acoustic guitar which he bought just so he could understand how to arrange and write for guitar, and that's what I learned on. I finally got an electric guitar and amp; a red Hagstrom with 3 pickups and a lot of switches and a Univox amp.

He spent hours in his room practicing "like a maniac" not even coming out to eat.

And it paid off pretty quickly. His first band, Free Will, was a local hit, opening for major acts in New York and across the border in Pennsylvania. He was barely out of his teens when his next band, Jukin' Bone, was signed to RCA. Their two albums on that label, "Whiskey Woman" and "Way Down East" were called "seminal classics' by the legendary Creem Magazine thought sales didn't match the notices. When the band broke up in 1973 Doyle was already getting calls to work as musician and arranger for a variety of performers including Judy Collins, Cindy Bullens, David Werner, Hall and Oates and singer/songwriter Andy Pratt. During a tour with Pratt in the late seventies a date at the Bottom line in New York led to his biggest and perhaps most tumultuous gig.

In the audience at that night was mega-rocker Meat Loaf along with his producer Jim Steinman. The Loaf was shaken up by Doyle's searing playing and offered him a job on the spot. He had to say no because he didn't want to let down Pratt but opportunity knocked again a couple of years later when he got call from producer Bob Clearmountain.

MD: I had made a few records with Bob. We worked on Cindy Bullens' first album, David Werner's Epic album, and Bryan Adams' "Cuts Like A Knife" album together, and Bob was at Power Station mixing Meat Loaf's "Dead Ringer" album. He overheard Meat saying that he was about to go on tour and needed a guitar player, and Clearmountain said, "You need a guitar player? I know this guy who's great, his name is Mark Doyle" and Bob said Meat practically jumped over the console, saying "You know Mark Doyle? Get that boy on the phone, now!"

So Bob called me, actually tracked me down to a rehearsal space I was at. As it happened I was leaving for NYC the next morning to audition for Foreigner as a keyboard player, and Meat got on the phone and said "You don't wanna play with them, you wanna play with me, boy! What does the gig offer?" etc etc. So I went to Meat's office the next day and signed on, no audition required.

The gig had its ups and down with, as Mark says, most of the details best left for the book. But he got to see the world without having to join the Army and when it ended after about three years he moved to Boston where he hooked up with boy band Svengali Maurice Starr who put him to work as a player and arranger for New Kids On The Block, Tiffany and other acts in his pop stable. By 1994 he was ready to take it back to Syracuse; developing technologies making it possible to do a lot of work from home.

But while boy bands, techno pop, folkies etc. were good sources of income they weren't scratching the primary itch. So, naturally, he started a rock and roll band, Mark Doyle and the Maniacs and as the song sort of goes, began to get back to where he started from. The group's debut "Shake "Em On Down: A Salute to the ‘60s British Blues boom makes good on the promise of its title. The album is a sweat drenched neck vein popping celebration of the British blues-rock that inflamed Doyle's musical passion when he was kid. That meant not just the Beatles but Van Morrison's Them, Cream, Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac and particularly Savoy Brown which featured one of Doyle's biggest guitar heroes, Kim Simmonds.

MD: A bunch of hippie comrades and I made the 5-hour drive from Syracuse to NYC to see Savoy Brown at the Cafe au Go Go. Their opening act was Tyrannosaurus (later T.) Rex, which was then a folk duo with Marc Bolan and Steve Peregrine-Took sitting on the floor guru-style singing blissed-out hippie anthems. The Cafe Au Go Go was set up in the round, with about 10 rows of church pews winding around the stage. We were in the front row, and when the band arrived resplendent in crushed velvet trousers, silk shirts, etc and got a look at the Fender Super-Reverb amps that were being provided for them, an argument started to ensue between the road manager and the club owner, which they took into a private office. A few minutes later, Kim came out and walked right over to the front row where we were sitting and addressed the small audience en masse, saying "To those of you that have come out to see the group, we apologize but we won't be able to play under these conditions."

He walked away, back into the office, and about 10 minutes later (we all stayed put, probably too stoned to move) the band came out and played after all, a killer set. I was hooked. We saw them a few more times closer to home, and after Chris Youlden left and they continued as a 4-Piece for the "Looking In" tour. My band, Free Will, got to open for them at a theater in Wilkes Barre, PA.

Mark would also open for Simmonds and a later version of Savoy Brown when he was band leader and lead guitarist for blues singer Kim Lembo. At a Florida gig they played together for the first time which led to a professional relationship and a friendship that are both going strong. Mark played on and was associate producer for Kim's recent solo album "Out Of The Blue" (Panache records) and there is more planned for the near future.

In the next year Mark Doyle and the Maniacs will be touring in support of "Shake ‘Em On Down." Decades on, the music that Mark Doyle couldn't pull himself away from even long enough to scarf down a home-cooked meal is getting him his best reviews yet.