Dennis Marcellino

Dennis Marcellino (born January 17, 1948) is an American musician, speaker and author of psychology, philosophy, theology and political books. He has been a member of some famous music groups: The Tokens (famous for The Lion Sleeps Tonight), Sly and The Family Stone (named by MSNBC as one of the top 10 rock bands of all time), The Elvin Bishop Group and Rubicon (who closed the largest paid-ticket single day event in history, Cal Jam II, 250,000 tickets sold, 350,000 attended). He has also had a number of CD releases under his name, including an international bestselling jazz CD with Mark Stefani titled "An Evening To Remember" (currently released as "Tenderly"). He currently tours as a speaker, musician and does media appearances. He wrote and produced the 5 episode television documentary "Proven Answers To Life\'s Biggest Questions."\n', ' Marcellino was born and raised in San Francisco and started out as a typical all-American boy, involved in the Boy Scouts and was the oldest of four children from a traditional Italian family. His grandfather bought him a clarinet, which he started playing at 8 years old. He fell so in love with it as an extension of his lifelong love of music that he began going door to door to play for people (and for tips) and played on the street corner in his neighborhood. Within 2 years he was touring all the elementary schools in San Francisco as a soloist. With the encouragement of his junior high teacher, John Arnaudo, he ended up being the first chair player of nearly every instrument in the school band, including clarinet, trombone, sousaphone, oboe, bassoon and cello in the school orchestra. He also continued as a featured clarinet soloist. Soon he was playing at the Seattle World\'s Fair in 1962 and in two Rose Bowl parades (1961 and 1962). Because of the changing tastes in popular music in America, in 1962 he switched to saxophone and became a vocalist/front man in his first rock band, The Spotliters, whom he worked with until 1965. That year he also got married the month after he graduated from Lowell High School.\n', ' Assuming that music was not a stable, money-making career for a family man, he pursued a career in engineering. He was also being encouraged by teachers and counselors to go in that direction because he came in 2nd in a math contest that all students in San Francisco were required to enter, and he received the highest percentile scores on the SAT test in both English and Math. Subsequently, Marcellino was offered a scholarship to study aerospace engineering at Auburn University in Huntsville, Alabama, where NASA and its first Director, Dr. Werner Von Braun were. As part of his internship in engineering, he worked as a junior engineer in the engineering department of the Bank of America world headquarters in San Francisco.\n', '