Burton Cummings

group does not. They can't market themselves as the guests who. They have to start marketing themselves as a cover band. It's as simple as that.

promote their shows and they can't do that. That's a miss misrepresentation.

McDougall there. It was a kind of a representation at that point. Unce Cale heard that. The first thing he got, the first thing he did was get rid of those guys and hire, you know, and just just hire other guys, it's now basically, Bob. It's a cover band using the real recordings to dupe the audiences, and people all over the place are thinking that I'm going to be there, that Bachman is going to be there. They think it's the old band. It's not.

let me tell you one more thing, Bob. But their most recent the most recent concert announcement described the band as having more hits than anyone can count, record sales well into the multimillions, and a group that's connected with the masses for decades, a virtual hit parade spanning fourteen top forty hits. This is not the cover band that is showing up. Believe me, how long have they been doing it? Oh, for a long time. It's been going on for years. But let me tell you this, Bob.

When the COVID layoff happened, when things started moving back again to normal where shows were starting to be done and crowd were allowed to get together, they really stepped up their advertising. It's fake advertising. You just have to look at the streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes and see how they've hijacked the landing pages, removing the pictures of the real guess who and the ones that are on the recordings. They're putting their own pictures up over

our original. That's really heinous, but just a little bit slower. So they were going out as the guests who prior to COVID, but it was a minor operation and you figured it wasn't worth the effort. Is that what was going on? Yeah, and then when COVID happened, of course, everybody had a two year layoff, and then we all started trying to get back into the picture, and that's when they really stepped up. They really stepped up their

fake advertise. Bob I was sent a video from a news station in Evansville, Indiana, showing a meet and greet the Cover Band did ahead of their recent show. Not one original member was there, not even Peterson. They were meeting the fans and taking accolades for the songs. I posted it on my social media so people could see exactly what was going on. They go to meet and greets and hold up albums of the old band. Okay, the media was there. The media was there, rubber stamping

them as the guests who and fans. Okay.

real original recordings of American Woman, these eyes laughing. No time Clap for the wolf Man, all those songs that this cover band had nothing to do with.

I'm not sure where the streaming How how we get that worked out, Bob. The streaming is a whole other animal. I'm not sure who controls the streaming. But we're going to get to the bottom of this. Definitely. I think the fake band took control of the streaming, and I don't know where we're investigating that right now. So in this I own listen, I published the songs I own the songs, published the songs and wrote them, and I own the songs. How can these guys put their picture up over my music?

the cover band saying? Now?

say I'm defaming the cover band. I mean, where does where does nonsense stop and reality start? Bob?

is one of them. How can we be defaming a band that's a fake band to begin with? Have you reached out.

got to Philadelphia. This was around two thousand, I guess, or maybe a little later. We got to Philadelphia and I was handed a Live at the Paramount album Guess Who Live at the Paramount, and this guy wanted me to sign it. One of the fans wanted me to sign it. It's a double album. When you open it up, there's individual pictures of each of us inside. I opened the album up, I went to sign my picture and it was already signed by Cale's lead singer at the time,

named Terry Hattie. I went to sign my own picture and it was signed by Terry Hattie, who had had nothing to do with the Guess Who records. That broke my heart and it made me angry. Well, the guys signing my picture, and I know, I know that Cale and Peterson have sanctioned that, because Cale probably even encouraged it. He probably said, look, you're the singer signed the singer's picture.

cover band. And now Peterson is all angry. He's angry and threatening me and Bachman. I guess he's threatening to sue me for defamation for saying they're a cover band. Goodness, gracious, what are you supposed to call them? Okay, since you file the lawsuit.

other than the lawsuit? Well, I'm well into a new album. I've had the same band now for many, many years. It's a tight band. It's great. I've got the best songs I've had in years, where about two thirds of way finished, two thirds of the way finished on a brand new album. I'm very excited about it, and now that all this is coming to light, I'm getting the attention of my fans again that I've had all along.

And also I have a second poetry book that was just published, so I have two books of poetry out now. I have some gigs coming up. I'm doing a show in Hawaii, I think within about a month, and I'm doing another show in California.

sang and wrote all these records. You know. We can't have these guys anymore going out and calling themselves the guests who without saying it's a tribute or a cover band's that's my motivation. So you mentioned.

Canada is I mean, it's it's much smaller. You know, the population in Canada is only about thirty million, thirty five million. There are more people than that in California alone, So it's hard for Americans to understand how big Canada is with so few people.

There was no I mean, there's always a little bit of crime, but it was.

before television. I remember listening to the listening to the football and baseball games on the radio, and I was glued to the radio as a kid because I loved the music and what music was that as a kid well, as a kid, I loved Fatz Domino, of course early Elvis, but even before that, my mother had seventy eights, so before I ever went to kindergarten or grade one, I was listening to my mother's records of Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Guy, Lombardo,

Glenn Miller. I loved music from the time I was old enough to crank up our old seventy eight record player, and I knew very early the magic of records, recordings freeze time. I knew when I was a little kid that when that record finished, you could pick up that needle and put it back to the beginning and hear the same thing over again. And I always wanted to make records when I was a tiny kid.

before the Beatles hit. And then once I was in a band and the Beatles hit, then all came that British came, all that British invasion music, the great music from England, the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, the Zombies, the Dave Clark Five, Billy Jay Kramer and the Dakota's Jerry and the Pacemakers. I was singing all those songs by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, and I was obsessed with making it. Wanted to make it in a band. So when you were before the Beatles. What

kind of music was your band playing? All We were doing stuff by Richie Allens. I loved Richie Allens. We did some Buddy Holly stuff. We did walk right In by the rooftop singers. We did some Gene Pitney songs, we did some Bobby v songs, all that stuff that came before the British invasion. We were right in on that.

learned how to play flute. A little bit of guitar, but basically I was a pianist, and the piano helped me with my music. You know, piano is a great It's a great foundational instrument for learning other instruments and for learning how to write write songs.

great songs. I mean, glad all over and because tremendous stuff anyway you want it, bits and pieces. Those were big records. Absolutely.

then the following year they were doing HMS Pinafore. I auditioned again and I got the lead tenor role in HMS Pinafore. So those two lead roles were really huge in making me comfortable performing in front of people. I was already in a band, the Devrons, my first band. But that was real vocal training, those two operettas, and they were year long projects. We didn't do the operettas in front of the people until May, but we started

rehearsing around October, so they were year long projects. And that was basically between the church choir and the two operettas. That was the real vocal training that I had. And you finished high school. Never did finish, Bob. I got halfway through grade eleven and the Devrons were starting to take off locally in Winnipeg, and I just one day, I just said, I'm going to devote the rest of

my life to music. I was seventeen when I left high school, and I've never regretted it because because of the music career.

a bird bath out of my backyard one time. They also came and stole the numbers off the front of our house one time. My mother was furious, but she kind of laughed that she thought it was part of being popular. We were very popular as teenagers.

Not really, I mean not money that you would speak of, but we were bringing home decent salaries every week at some point in the Devrons, we were probably making more than our parents were because none of us was from money, but we were bringing in, you know, a couple hundred dollars a week each in the in the as teenagers way back in the sixties. That was a lot of money. So what was the dream at that point? I guess the big dream for any band at that point was

to make it like the Beatles. You know, the Beatles were the idols of everyone in bands. I guess the dream was to have, you know, to be in the magazines and have your pictures circulated everywhere, and be on the radio and have million selling records. We wanted to have gold records. So you're in the Devrons, you cut a couple of records to get played in Winnipeg. Are you saying this is gonna go. Are you saying, wait

a second, this is not the right thing for me. Well, I was very happy in the Devrons up to a point, and then I got a magical phone call. I was still seventeen years old. Bob and the Guests who phoned me and asked me if I would like to be in the band. They were already successful with a record called Shaken all Over, which had hit in the States, and at that point they were doing fairly well in Canada. So when I was asked to join, I was only

seventeen years old. I said yes, in spite of the fact that it was very tough on the other guys in the Devrons. A chance like that's only comes maybe once in a lifetime. So I said yes. And I was seventeen, and I knew I was going into the Guess Who. Why did they want you? Well, we had all done a show together, the Devrons, the Guess Who, opening for Jerry and the Pacemakers in nineteen sixty five in Winnipeg, and we were, you know, the Devrons, we

were still teenagers. This was at the height of the British invasion. Nineteen sixty five. Jerry and the Pacemakers come to Winnipeg, all the way from Liverpool. They had inch thick guard ropes up to keep the crowds back from swarming the stage. It was a huge night. Vrons went on first. There were twenty thousand people there. The guess who were next? The guess who saw me that night, And they liked the way I performed in front of a big crowd. Was the biggest crowd that we had

ever played in front of. They liked the way I sang, and a few months later they decided to ask me into the band. And what were you going to do in the band? What did they envision your roles being? Well? At that point, Bob Chad Allen was still in the band, the lead singer that had sung Shaken all Over, and he was their main singer. I was asked to join because their piano player had quit and gone back to university. I was asked to join basically as a piano player

and background singer and harmony singer. And when I first joined, Chad was still there and I was only singing about three songs a night, but they liked my strong voice. They that I could scream like Eric Burden and Paul McCartney, and we were. You know, we were still doing the songs from the Hit Parade at that time. We didn't have our own hit records yet. So they liked my singing and they thought I was young and energetic, and I guess I filled the bill at the time. Okay, you're seventeen.

did Chad Allan leave? Chad Alan left to go back to university and he had a trouble being in front of crowds. And let me tell you this, if you have a trouble being in in front of crowds, don't go into show business. You know that's the last place you should go. But anyway, Chad Allan left and that left me as the lead singer and piano player. Okay, you're the lead singer piano player playing all around Saskatchewan. Yes,

what happens next? Well, we were going broke. We went to England to try and sneak in through the back door. Nineteen sixty seven. We went to England, the whole thing fell apart. We were supposed to have a tour and a recording contract. Our manager wasn't really looking after us. We get over there, there's no tour, there's no recording contract. We were broke. We barely had enough money to come back to Canada. We get back to Canada. We're broke,

we're almost breaking up. And then CBC Television offers us a weekly, a weekly show. So we did weekly television for two years and that saved the band, and it paid our living expenses and our paid for our guitars and amps, and we kind of got out of debt because of the television show.

So we learned to play all different styles and genres. And for me as a singer, it was great because I was imitating all the singers like Paul Jones from Manfred Mann, and Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Mick Jagger and Billy J. Kramer and Jerry Marsden from Jerry in the Pacemakers. I was whenever we would do him Marvin Gay, I would imitate. I would imitate Stevie Wonder, whatever songs we did, I imitated the singer and that helped me with the vocal style.

What what happened was, here's here's the magic moment for me. We were doing all kinds of shows, shows about what was on the hit Parade, and our producer Larry Brown at the time, our producer said, listen, I understand you and Randy are writing some songs. Why don't you You've got a national showcase here. Why don't you do a couple of your original songs on one of the shows and we'll see what happens. So one of those songs

that we did was these Eyes. And ironically, Jack Richardson, who ended up being the producer of the guess who he was watching the show that day. He believed so much in the song that he contact at us and put the wheels in motion to take us to New York to record our first album, Wheatfield Soul.

Randy had part of it. And the strange thing is, Randy had that piano intro boom boom, dum boom boom, and he played that for me and I thought, my goodness, that's that's very clever for a guitar player to come up with that. But he wanted to call it these Arms,

and I said, nah, let's call it These Eyes. And then I came up with pretty well all the lyrics after that, and I came up with that bridge and these are They've seen a lot of love, but they're never going to see another one like I had with You, which which kind of like an emotional part of the record.

But Randy and I had pieces and one morning I was still, you know how long ago it was, I was still living at home with my mother and grandmother, and Randy came over to our house one Saturday morning and he started playing that piano riff and I started singing, and about an hour and a half later, the song was finished and it changed our lives forever. How did you come up with the lyrics? Oh, I'm I'm the lyric guy. Usually I've I've always written lyrics. I've written

poetry since I was in school. I just I banged out the lyrics pretty quickly, to tell you the truth, and it was finished. Is that how you normally write lyrics pretty quickly? Yeah? I don't. Actually, As far as writing songs in general, I don't stress over it too much. If it doesn't happen within the first half hour of forty five minutes, I'll just throw it away and go to something else. I don't. Some people will work for weeks on a song. I've never been one of those people.

I just when it hits me, I run to a keyboard and I write. And if it doesn't hit me, I don't find force it. I really don't.

He somehow came up with the money. We had no money, and he flew us to New York, put us up in hotels, and took us to A and R studios. And believe it or not, the engineer on those sessions was Phil Ramone, who went on to be a monstrous producer engineer himself, but he was the engineer. Jack Richman was the producer. We did the whole album, which included these Eyes, the whole album in about five or six or seven days, and that was it. And that was

my big experience in recording in New York. I think I was still twenty. I couldn't even legally have a beer yet, but we were recording a big record in New York City. I was thrilled. I was a little kid, a little kid from the North end of Winnipeg making a record in New York City. How could you not be thrilled?

like crazy. And then the vice president of at the time, he was ahead of A and R, A guy named Don Burkheimer, came to Randy and me because he knew Randy and I had written These Eyes, and he said, please give us another one like These Eyes. Well, Bob, it was nineteen sixty nine. Everybody wanted to be led Zeppelin. We didn't want another ballad, but we did it anyway. We wrote Laughing and it too went right through the roof. That was our second gold record in a row, so

we knew something was happening. At that point, we really knew something was happening. We were flown down to Los Angeles. We appeared on American Bandstand with Dick Clark. Dick Clark presented us with gold record for These Eyes. I mean This was a pretty big deal for me, and I was still only twenty one at this point.

Try Try Try Fiber Bridge whatever it's. Yeah, we're looking at We're looking at the skyscrapers and the the UH Empire State Building and the beauty of New York. The big, big New York is right in front of us. These Eyes finishes on the radio, and the disc jockey comes on and says, yeah, These Eyes, that's that great Canadian record by the guests who from Canada, and Randy and I looked at each other. Here we are looking at New York City looking at the Empire State Building and

we're hearing the song we wrote. We were absolutely thrilled. That's a moment, Bob, I will never ever forget. I was twenty one, just a white Anglican boy from the North End of Winnipeg and here we are in one of the meccas of pop music in the world. We're looking at the skyscrapers and these eyes is playing. I would re under hypnosis. Someday I'll go back and relive that moment over and over and over again. It was tremendous. It was just tremendous. It was like dreams having all

come true. Why was the album named Wheatfield Soul? I came up with that one. We used to go to Toronto and play, but we were never there very long and it was a struggle. This was at the beginning. We hadn't had success yet, we hadn't even had television shows yet, and Toronto was a big R and B town and we weren't an R and B band. We were just a four piece rock and roll band. Toronto was all big bands with horns and silk suits and R and B. And they used to say, oh, you Hicks,

you hicks from Manitoba or in town again, huh? And I one day I said, yeah, but we've got we Field soul and everybody liked it. And that's where the album title came up. Everybody liked that when I came up with that, So that's what we called the album. And I think it's a good album title. I think it's a good title. It is a good title. But why is the next one canned Wheat? Well, but we wanted to stay with the wheat field thing, so they did.

They did a cover of put us all on can you know hand labels and canned wheat, and we wanted to stay with the wheatfield thing. We were starting to be identified as the guys that came from the wheat. You know, Manitoba is known. Manitoba and Saskatchewan could feed the whole world if it weren't for politics and money. There's enough wheat comes out of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to feed the entire planet. So we were starting to get that reputation as wheatfield guys. So second album canned wheat.

under his own volition. It was called The Business of Music or This Business of Music, right billboard book, I think, yeah. And Randy read that cover to cover and he started understanding that the songwriting is a whole other income stream. So he taught me a bit about that, and then from from that point on we were a little more curious about where the money was going and how did you write? Laughing, laughing, that's an interesting story. We had played a bunch of shows on Vancouver Island and you

have to take a ferry over from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. Well, we had done three shows on the island. We drove to the ferry terminal. The first ferry leaves at six thirty in the morning. We got to the terminal about six o'clock. We had to wait a half hour. At the ferry terminal, we're sitting on our old highway bus, getting ready to get onto the ferry. Randy picks up a guitar starts strumming some chords. I start singing, coming up with lyrics. Before we got on the ferry at

six pot thirty, laughing was finished. We finished it in about half an hour, and it was a half hour very well spent because that was our second gold record in a row. Okay, did you know it was a hit when you wrote it? We kind of liked it, but we You know, Bob, you probably know as well as anybody you've talked to enough people, you never really know. You never really know when you've written it until it's released.

It's like a kid leaving home. You never know if that kid's going to be successful until he leaves home and tries well. With releasing a record, you never really know until you release it. But we felt good about it. And Dn Berkheimer, the guy that had begged us to write another one in the vein of these eyes, and we didn't do it. We really didn't want to do another ballad. As I said, it was sixty nine. Everybody

wanted to be led Zeppelin. But when Laughing took off, it really took off, and the flip side of laughing it became a two sided single because the other side was undone, which I still think is one of the best songs Randy Beckman ever wrote. So that was a two sided hit for us.

Richardson always thought it was catchy. He loved the guitar riff, the own very catchy, and Jack Richardson suggested that we re record it, cut it down to about three and a half minutes, more like a single time, And when we re recorded it it was in the Chicago studios of RCIER, which were much better studios than where we had done Canned Wheat. So time I became all of a sudden it was a commercial song. They released it, it was a smash hit record. So that was our third hit record in a row.

I wanted to shriek like he did, like a banshee. When that first Zeppelin album came out, I almost quit the business, went back to school. I said to myself, Hell, man, I'm not a I'm not a singer. That's a singer. Robert Plant I could never do what Robert Plant did, so I almost quit. But I was trying my best when we did American Woman, I was trying to scream like Robert Plant, and I was always disappointed. I never quite quite made it to where I wanted it to be. Now.

The irony then of this is Robert Plant was in Toronto years ago. He was on the air with a guy named Jian somebody. I remember. This guy did a little John Gomeshi jeon, that's right, Gian Gomeshi, and and he was interviewing Robert Plant and the subject of Burton Cummings came up, and Robert Plant went on and on about what a what a hell of a singer I was,

and uh. He even mentioned a deep cut called Ballad of the Last five Years, which even my biggest fans I've hardly ever heard, Robert Plant knew it because he must have been listening to deep cuts. He said, oh, Ballad of the last five years, great song, Burton Cumming's great singer. And I was like, I heard this, and I was a foot off the ground for about a month.

I couldn't believe that my absolute idol as a singer was complimenting me, so I'm very lucky in the fact that people have heard me way beyond what I would have imagined and dreamed of. I really am well.

a lot to do with it. And there was a whole scene in there where a guy had a Guess Who shirt on and he talked about the Guess Who. And it was very very flattering to me that Cameron crow had included us in that film.

which was a poem I had written. When I first heard the word talisman, it was from the Classics Illustrated Comics, and I think it was by Sir Walter Scott. But I had never heard the word talisman. I didn't know what it meant. It means a lucky charm or a good luck charm. So I wrote this poem one night and Randy loved the words. So he came up with this beautiful guitar riff. This it's a very a modal scale almost, and it fit, and he worked at it for a while and made it fit the rhythmics of

the words I had written. I still like Talisman to this day, and it's just back and Cummings, it's nothing to do with the other guys.

That ended up being seven minutes though, so then behind my back, Jack Richardson scooped No Sugar Tonight out and just put it on the flip side of American Woman. Probably probably a good idea commercially, although it broke my heart that my song was gone. But in the long run it ended up making American Woman and No Sugar a double sided single, and that sat at number one in Billboard for three consecutive weeks. A double sided single, not many people can say that. Bob Okay, Randy Bachman

then leaves the band. What was going on there? Well, you know, I was, I guess, more of a hippie than Randy liked, and I was starting to experiment with various substances and partying a little more. And Randy at that point, he was a devout Mormon, he had converted to Mormonism. He didn't really like the whole rock and roll lifestyle, and we just had a bunch of disagreements. So next thing we knew, he was gone, and we got Kurt Winter and Greg Lescue, the two best guys

we could think of back in Winnipeg. We wanted to recruit guys from back home, so we got Kurt Winter and Greg Lescue from Winnipeg, and from that point on, I think we were a little bit more of a hard rock band because we now had two guitar players, two electric guitar players.

helped me and I tried to help him. We turned each other onto a lot of different styles of music. But eventually it was time for him to leave, and we kind of all knew it, and it all happened very fast. Next thing we knew, Greg and Kurt were in the band. Next thing we knew we were flying to Washington to play at the White House for Tricia Nixon and Prince Charles, who's now the King. So it was a very very fast summer in nineteen seventy. Okay, slow that down. How did you end up playing at

the White House? And what was that experience? Like? Well, American Woman was such a monstrous record, and I think Tricia Nixon really liked it. So she asked her dad or whoever, I guess, whoever was putting on the event, can we get I guess who? I love that song American Woman. So there we were asked to play at the White House. Now we had a manager at the time who should should have had his ass kicked because

it was the stupidest idea in the world. He told us we shouldn't play American Woman because it might offend the White House, and we'll make a big publicity gimmick out of it to say that we were asked not to play American Woman. Well, the whole thing backfired on us. First of all, we got dumped on by Rolling Stone and the underground press for even playing for the Nixons because that was not a popular administration. So at all backfired. And we were never asked not to play American Woman.

That was our manager's stupid idea. We should have done it, but we didn't. So that was that. Okay, did you meet Tricia Nixon? Did you meet Richie? Yes? Absolutely didn't meet Richard Nixon, met Tricia Nixon, met Prince Charles. His sister Princess Anne was there. Lear the heir to the lear Jet fortune. I mean, this was a This was a party of luminaries. There were some serious, serious money people there, but it was the White House. You would expect that, you know. I'll tell you one thing was

interesting about it, Bob. There was all virtually no security going in. We were in a limo, two different limos, and all they did was sweep under it with the metal detector for about ten seconds, and away we went. Today you can't even get within a block of the White House, But in nineteen seventy there was almost no security. But don't forget it was way before terrorism had reached hijacking proportions. You know, it was way before nine to eleven,

before all of that stuff. But I remember the security was very lax. There was a guy took us around a tour, showed us all the old paintings, and they took us all over the White House anywhere we wanted to go. It seemed pretty lax to me. Pretty fascinating though, So Randy Backman leaves the band. Is there anything that goes through your head? Hmm?

hand me down, world, I've got one already. Those lyrics are still powerful today and it's fifty five years later. So we were lucky that Kurt said yes joined the band because I instantly had another writing partner.

the American Woman album. But Share the Land itself, the song itself became almost like a bit of a hippie anthem back then, like the young Bloods had had get together and it was that feeling of the hippie days, you know, and Share the Land was right at that at the proper moment, the September of nineteen seventy, you know, when everything was leaning towards the New Musical Revolution and.

because it was the B side. We had a song called Broken, which I thought was pretty good, but as I hear it now years later, the vocals sounded like I was trying too hard. So for some reason one of the radio stations flipped it over and Albert Flasher the B side, became quite a big hit record for us. So I was very happy about that. And then what about Clap for the Wolfman. Clap for the Wolfman was a monstrous single for us. We had been on Midnight

Special six or seven times. I think must have been doing something right to get asked back all those times. And during all those visits I became quite friendly with Wolfman. He was a fascinating guy. He was a radio legend, you know, he was Everybody knew who Wolfman Jack was. And we were going to do the record with me imitating the Wolfman, and you know, just throwing in a few lines here and there between verses. Now here again Fate stepped in the music, God smiled on us again.

Wolfman Jack happened to be in Toronto the same time we were recording Clap for the Wolfman. He was there m seeing a car show a show. We got a hold of him. We said, look, we've got a record that's about you. Would you come and put your voice on it? And he was very hesitant at first, he didn't want to have anything to do with it. So we got in a cab, went over to his hotel, went up to his room, played him the song first time he heard the first verse, and he loved it.

He said, when do you want me in the studio? He was so he was flattered and happy and thrilled. And I think he knew that it was going to be a big, big deal for his career too, so he was glad to come in do his ad libs and has saved me for trying to imitate his voice. And it worked out great. I think it worked out great. Okay, since you had so much interaction. What was the Wolfman like as a guy? Oh, he was a great guy.

I you know, he knew everybody. That's one thing. He had known d Eddie and you know, all the heroes I had when I was a kid. He had he had learned about the He mceed rock shows way way back before it was popular to MC rock shows. So he had met a lot of my heroes. And he, boy, he really knew the stuff. He knew what had charted from every year, from every decade. He was a great guy. I liked him very very much. We got along great.

but it was never the same. Once Troyano was there, it was more like a fusion band wanna be fusion band, and I just didn't want to I didn't want to fight anymore about where the band was going in the direction of the band, so I just decided one time, it was a autumn of nineteen seventy five, and I called a meeting and I said, look, boys, I'm going to try it as a solo artist. And that was it, okay, since really it was your band. Did you ever think, well,

maybe I'll get rid of Dominic. No, I think by that point, see, I'm one of these guys. I don't like a lot of personnel changes in bands, even going back to the Beach Boys, when David Marx was gone and Al Jardine was there. I looked at this and I said, this isn't the Beach Boys. What's going on here? Where's David Marx. I didn't want to be one of those bands that had had a history of fifty guys in the band. So I thought, at that point, we've

had enough guys, enough co writers, enough guitarists. I'm going to try it as a solo artist. And we had known Neil Young since we were all teenagers, and we had seen him leave Winnipeg and watched him rise to fame in the Buffalo Springfield. So I saw that as maybe I could follow his steps, you know, hopefully I had some kind of a hope as a solo artist. So that was it. There was no more Guess Who. After nineteen seventy five, Well didn't they continue a little

bit without you? They tried for a while. Cale went and got Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall, who had been in the band for a while, and he went out as the Guests Who. And we didn't do much about it at the time because Kurt was still there, Donnie was there, and Donnie sings very much like me, so it was, you know, more of a more of a representation back then. But we're still talking almost fifty years ago, you know, a long time ago. And then I guess

when he when he registered the name. You see, it had never been called the Guess Who until I came in and we did the It's Time album. There were two albums before that that I wasn't on, but it just said Guess Who. They were still called Chad Allan and the Silvertones. Chad and the Silvertones. So the first time it was ever called the Guess Who. I was there, and it was sixty six on an album called It's Time. Okay,

how do you hook up with Richard Perry? I signed, I got out of my RCA contract act with the guests who an RCA, and looked around Los Angeles. My manager at the time knew that Richard Perry was the producer at the time. I mean, he had done the Pointer Sisters, and he had done Your So Vain by Carly Simon, one of the biggest records ever, and he had done Leo Sayer and he was a really, very very much choice producer at the time, in demand. So

they somehow hooked me up with him. I went and had dinner with him and played him some of my songs at the piano. He loved it. He particularly loved stan Tall and I'm Scared, two of my songs from this debut solo album. So I ended up working with Richard Perry, a legendary producer.

a big billboard up on Sunset Strip. Stan Taal was the first record ever on Portrait, and all of that got me extra promotion, I think, so it was a good thing.

was that experience like for you? Well, it was exhausting, and yet I could see his method. But he made me sing certain songs thirty forty times and then he would end up keeping half of take six and half of take eight, you know, but I can understand that's that's the way Richard works. So I just I went along with his methods. But it was exhausting. But I'll tell you this. It's it's interesting how Richard works because he's a hit record maker and he's very, very concerned

with the lead vocal all the time. So I watched when we were recording everything, you know, everything would be on whatever tracks they were, and then when all the recording was done, when it was time to start mixing, Richard would move the lead vocal down to track number one and just sit down there on the fader of number one and ride the vocal throughout the rest of the song. That that's the way Richard made records. And who can argue with his track record He had some

tremendous successful records. And oh and he did Barbara Streissan, the Pointer Sisters, Leo sayre uh yeah, and your Solvain, which is one of the biggest records ever. And here's an interesting thing. I don't know if you even know this, but you would know this, Bob. But if you listen carefully to your Solvain. It's Mick Jagger doing background vocals with Carly Simon. But until somebody tells you that, until somebody tells you that, you would never really listen for it.

Once you listen for it is as clear as a bell, Mick Jagger backing her up on your Solvain. Absolutely. So you make a record with Richard and you have a huge hit with Stan Tall Yeah, and uh, and we had another one, I'm Scared, which we all believed in, but it didn't quite click in the States the way it did in Canada, but Richard loved it anyway. I still love the song. It was my mother's favorite song I ever wrote, So it was Uh. I was pretty

proud of that first album. And we also did a takeoff on Randy Bachman's you Ain't Seen Nothing Yet because it had just been the number one in Billboard, and I did a big band version of it with horns and everything and kind of a kind of a sarcastic jab at Randy. But Randy was still impressed with the version we did. How did you.

and Spider Turner. I think as the artist, if my memory serves me, and Spider Turner did stand by Me, but he imitated a lot of different singers throughout Bennie King and some other people. And one time when I was a teenager, I saw Fred Turner do the Spider Turner version of stand By Me and did all the vocal imitations during it. So I was always impressed with Fred Turner. I figured he would make it someday.

give it a shot. You know, I'll do the best I can. I'll promise you I'll give you my very best attempt. And they let me write the songs for the movie and I had a nude scene, which was very embarrassing and kind of strange to do, but overall it was you know, I could never have been an actor. You act for two minutes, you sit for six hours, you act for three minutes, you sit for four hours. I could never ever have done that, and I don't have the chops anyway. I'm not a you know, I'm

not Robert de Niro or Lawrence Olivier. I never had those chops. But it was an interesting experience and I'm all the better for it knowing how good you have to be to be a movie person. So as the years go by, often on you work with Randy Bachman, what would cause you to get back together with him? There were tremendous offers for Bachman and Cummings because everybody knows that we were the guys that wrote these I

as an American woman, et cetera, et cetera. There were tremendous offers for us everywhere, and we just decided, Okay, let's let's go out and see Let's go out and see how this works. And I believe it was nineteen eighty seven or eighty eight when we first did the Bachman Comings, first Backman Comings tour, and it worked out great. It was fun to be with him again at that point, But you've.

to be from the fans every time. It's tremendous. And we end the night with taking care of business, which is kind of an anthem in itself, you know, between American woman taking care of business, share the land, clap for the wolfman, stand tall, let it ride, no sugar. You know, it's two hours of hit records. Sometimes it's nice to go and do that. And how did the two of you get along? Now? Oh? We get along fine. We've teamed up together to stop this Guess who nonsense,

So we're fine right now. Okay, Prior to COVID, the two of you were planning to go out, yes, and what happened. COVID shut everybody down. And I will tell you, This bob the worst of my worst two years of my adult life. And then when I tried to come back after lying around for two years, I had no chops. A singer has to sing all the time. You can't be I've said this before, but I'll say it again. You can't be a marathon runner and lie around off and on on your couch for two years and jump

up and run your twenty six miles. It's not going to happen. We did a Backman coming show shortly after the COVID shutdout was over. We played in Winnipeg and it was a big deal. They made a big deal of it. Backman and Cummings returned to their hometown and twenty thousand people there, and I couldn't hit my notes. It was so embarrassed. I was devastated. We filmed the whole thing with five cameras. It's all unusable unless I go in and do post sync and re record all

my vocals. I had no vocals. I had no vocal chops. Broke my heart. But fortunately now I've worked and worked and worked at it and done something. We did a lot of touring this last summer. We did over thirty shows, and my chops are finally back. I'm starting to sound like Burden the singer again. Okay, you are a rock star. Rock stars there's a lot of things. They frequently have multiple marriages, multiple kids. How's your personal life worked out. I'm divorced. I am living in moose Jaw with my

full time spouse. One of the reasons I moved to moose Jaw I had had enough of the big city. I like the small city. And my spouse that I'm with now is perfectly supportive of me musically and career wise, and I'm happy to be in a small town again. And I'm you know, I'm quite enjoying life right now, except for this guess who debacle.

You just instantly click. And Carrie and I have been together now for seven years and that's you know, that's longer than a lot of people stay together. So I'm quite happy right now. And do you have any children? No, no children ever. I've never wanted kids. And people say, well, why is that? And you know, when I was young, it was the career. I was on the road all the time. And at the beginning of the Guess Whose Success, Randy had his first two kids and he never saw

them grow up. We were on the road all the time. He never saw their first step, he never heard the first word. And that was enough for me to know I didn't want that. I and you know what, I don't have unlike most people, I don't have a burning desire to have kids. Everybody says, well, what's wrong with you? Well, how about nothing's wrong with me. I just it's not. It's not for everybody. Kids are not for everybody. It's

as simple as that. There's nothing wrong with me as far as not wanting having kids.

never gone away. I still hear these eyes, I still hear sharing the Land, I still hear clap for the wolf Man. It's fifty years later, and I'm still hearing those songs that came out of my head and came out of my mouth. Now, you know, you talk about songwriting royalties, there's also a record royalties. This is a morass. Do you get any record recording royalties or do they still say we don't know your money? What's going on there? Well?

These days, I guess a lot of the streaming, a lot of the money is streaming, and a lot of the money is performance on the radio. I think only the only Taylor Swift is really selling records, and she's breaking all the Beatles records, so good for her. But other than Taylor Swift and a couple of rappers, I'm not so sure how many physical copies are being sold. Although, as you would know, Bob, there is a huge resurgence

of vinyl. So we're we're we're repackaging and and and reproducing a lot of the vinyl guess who albums with the with the real people on there by the way, So in terms of legacy, as you say, these records are never going away, Well stop there for a minute. How did did you know that Lenny Kravitz was going to cover American Woman. We had no idea, but uh, that came about because of Mike Myers having grown up

in Canada. He was a huge fan of mine. I've known Mike for a while, and Mike had done that movie and they were going to use Lenny Kravitz's version of American Woman for the for the ending titles, like the ending credits, and he just went in and did a bang up version of American Woman. And that's as far as he knew, as far as he told me one time, as far as he knew, it was just going to be for the ending credits, but then his record company liked it so much they put it out

as a single. And this is how big the single got, Bob. They had a bunch of Lenny Kravitz's greatest hits albums out in the market. They recalled a lot of them back in so they could repress them with American Woman included. So the irony here we are again talking about musical irony, Bob, Lenny writes all his own stuff, biggest hit of his career, American Woman irony again. So do you care about legacy?

Do you care if your songs are remembered? Yes? I do, but I want them to be remembered by the guys that recorded them. I don't want some cover band going out there claiming taking the accolades for stuff we did decades ago. And by the way, some of these guys in the cover guess who the guess who cover band were barely born when those records were made. So it's just a travesty. It's a perfect word. It's a travesty. I don't see how you don't ow ultimately succeed in

this action. And we're getting the word out. I think the word's gotten out pretty well already, Burton. I want to thank you for taking the time and telling your story to my audience. Thank you very much for having me, Bob, and I really appreciate the outlet to let people know what a problem this is. I appreciate very much. And you're very famous. I knew all about this and I was a little bit nervous talking to you today, So thank you very much for being kind, and thank you

for understanding the situation. Bob. Yeah, you know, it's happened before, usually with older generations. It's really sad. In any event, till next time. This is Bob Left stands