Marc Storace (; born 7 October 1951) is a Maltese-born Swiss musician. His career in music started in the 1960s. He is most noted for his position as the lead singer and songwriter of the Swiss hard rock band Krokus from 1980. Before joining Krokus, he sang with the Swiss progressive rock band TEA. He has also since undertaken a solo project, duets, an acoustical project, and many guest slots. He also had some close encounters with the classical meets rock world and has worked with a few other rock acts as writer and a singer.
Storace has a high pitched raunchy voice, making him a very distinct vocalist, and has been compared, according to most music-journalists, to AC/DC's former lead singer Bon Scott or Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant in terms of vocal style. Since he began singing professionally in the 1970s, his style and voice have remained largely the same, with a noticeable increase of character, through maturity and years of live and studio experience.
He played a major role in the Swiss-German films Anuk and Handyman, in which he acted, as well as contributed his writing and singing to songs for both the film's soundtracks.
As of January 2019, Storace was still active in rock projects as well as his "ongoing" semi-acoustic one. Krokus embarked on their "Farewell Tour" that April.
Early life
Born as Mark Anthony Storace Crockford, one of six children to Anthony Storace and Edna Crockford on the Mediterranean island of Malta, Storace taught himself to sing at a fairly young age. His life in bands began at the age of fourteen (1965) when he made his first live performances with two local bands: Stonehenge Union (who covered the likes of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones , the Troggs and the Kinks) and: The Boys (who covered some of the same songs, as well as newer chart material containing more vocally challenging songs e.g. Aquarius from the Musical "HAIR"). Inspired by the gigantic WOODSTOCK Festival in the late 1960s, Storace renamed The Boys to Cinnamon Hades. Whilst retaining the popular Beatles "Abbey Road Medley" the band started to cover Iron Butterfly, Jimi Hendrix, and Hard Rock acts such as The Who, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath.
Wanting to follow his dream of making a career as a rock musician, Storace was forced to leave his island home. He moved to London in 1970.
Further on in his career, after joining Krokus, many people who heard Storace sing thought that he sounded like Bon Scott of AC/DC. He did not take this as a compliment at the time, saying that, with all respect to Bon, he had his own singing identity (proof of this is on ballads and other songs he recorded with TEA & KROKUS) Storace was later approached (by a production company used by both AC/DC and KROKUS at the time) to audition for the frontman job with AC/DC after Scott's death, but Krokus was enjoying a fast increase in success whilst, at that point in time, AC/DC was not that huge, so Storace preferred to stay with his new bandmates.
Early career
At the end of 1971, Storace joined Swiss progressive hard rock band TEA. With them, he toured Europe with big acts such as Queen, Nazareth,or The (Ginger) Baker Gurvitz Army; and released three studio albums: TEA, The Ship and Tax Exiles. All were produced by Dieter Dierks, at that time the man behind the Scorpions. For a while, TEA became Switzerland's international rock Flagship, performing as far as Hamburg, London, Wales, Glasgow, Naples and even Malta.
In 1976, TEA performed their last tour, taking Krokus on-the-road as supporting act. The seed was sown for what followed later on. Meanwhile, he returned to London and formed the band Eazy Money. Their song "Telephone Man" was included on a Metal-Music-Compilation album called Metal for Muthas Vol.2. In 1979, he received a call from Krokus founder Chris Von Rohr, who told him they were looking for a new singer and invited Storace for a "weekend jam" in Switzerland. One exciting long weekend session later, Storace decided to join Chris, Tommy, Fern and Freddie in their quest for success.