Mark McGrath’s Shaky Past

Photo: The Howard Stern Show

Mark McGrath stopped by to promote his new hosting gig on VH1’s ‘Don’t Forget the Lyrics’ and thanked Howard for sending a kind word after his hard-living father passed: “He lived how he wanted to, he died how he wanted to. We should all be so lucky.” Mark said he’d tried to put his own hard-living behind him–for the sake of his now-fiancée: “We kind of destroyed the foundation [of our relationship]. We’re building it back up but there are cracks in the table…I have not been perfect.” Robin wondered if Mark was doing any real work to repair that damage: “Are you in counseling of any sort? How do you think you’re going to keep it on the straight and narrow?” Mark shrugged: “I should be…I don’t deserve her. She’s beautiful. She’s an angel…I did get a number for a doctor last week for this very thing.” Howard laughed: “You know the number he has is [for] a hot female therapist.”

Sugar Ray Is Still Touring

Photo: The Howard Stern Show

Mark said he planned to keep gigging with Sugar Ray on the weekends: “If you smell funnel cake, Sugar Ray’s playing…we [recently] played the halftime of a football game out in Vegas. It was a high school football game, but we played a hell of a show…we still play casinos and street fests and shrimp fests and things like that.” Mark added that the band can bring in anywhere from $35-100K a night: “Your check clears, we’re playing, man.”

His Rock Heroes

Howard noted Mark’s reputation as a rock scholar and asked him to name a few favorites.

Rock singer: Chris Cornell. Overall frontman: David Lee Roth. (“Mick [Jagger] is right there.”) Best band of all time: The Rolling Stones. Best songwriter: Brian Wilson. Clapton or Hendrix: “Clapton spoke more to me.” Best female rock singer: Chrissie Hynde.

On John Stamos’ ‘Jam’ Behavior

Photo: The Howard Stern Show

Late in the interview, Mark laughed at the idea that John Stamos had questioned his frontman skills after the now-infamous “jam” at Jimmy Kimmel’s party in Howard’s honor: “He plays Mustang Sally for 25 minutes and 7 guys take leads and it’s this big sort of like Beach Boys jam. And I love the Beach Boys, [but] I jam to Clash songs, Ramones songs–songs that end. You know what I’m saying? He wants to do this sort of like technical Yes jam and I’m not that jam guy. Never claimed to be. And if you’re looking to me to be the band leader, you got problems.”