Speaker 1: Welcome, welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
Speaker 1: My guest today is Burton Cummings. Burton, tell me all
Speaker 1: about this Guess Who lawsuit. Well, let's put it this way.
Speaker 1: There are guys out there that have had nothing to
Speaker 1: do with the records. They're a group of hired musicians.
Speaker 1: They go on stage and their shows are marketed as
Speaker 1: though they are the ones that made the songs, and
Speaker 1: they're not. Here's the thing. Once in a while, Peterson
Speaker 1: might be there, but having one guy from the original
Speaker 1: group does not. They can't market themselves as the guests who.
Speaker 1: They have to start marketing themselves as a cover band.
Speaker 1: It's as simple as that.
Speaker 2: Okay, let's go back to the beginning. Who owns the
Speaker 2: name today? I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Who. As far as who owns the name, welly, you
Speaker 1: mean these things are all up in the air because
Speaker 1: we don't believe that it was correctly copyrighted in the
Speaker 1: first place. We're not We're not really sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've been out there. It's a cover band out there
Speaker 1: calling themselves the Guess Who. Okay, let's just back up.
Speaker 1: They are Bob. They use recordings of Bachman and myself
Speaker 1: the original they use the original guess Who Records to
Speaker 1: promote their shows and they can't do that. That's a
Speaker 1: miss misrepresentation.
Speaker 2: Well, I want to get a little deeper into it,
Speaker 2: but just want to understand. And I don't know these
Speaker 2: guys whatsoever, but I can just see online they say
Speaker 2: that they registered the name guests Who in seventy seven.
Speaker 2: And you said that was okay? Is that true?
Speaker 1: We never said it was okay for them to copyright
Speaker 1: the name or register the name. That was never ever said.
Speaker 1: What happened was Cale phoned Backman and me in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: We were working on one of our albums and Cale
Speaker 1: phoned and he had Kurt Winter, one of the original
Speaker 1: guys from the Big Records. He had Kurt Winter and
Speaker 1: Donnie McDougall and himself, and he said, can we go
Speaker 1: out and use the name? You know? We thought, okay, temporarily, sure,
Speaker 1: go ahead, and you've got Kurt there, You've got Donnie
Speaker 1: McDougall there. It was a kind of a representation at
Speaker 1: that point. Unce Cale heard that. The first thing he got,
Speaker 1: the first thing he did was get rid of those
Speaker 1: guys and hire, you know, and just just hire other guys,
Speaker 1: it's now basically, Bob. It's a cover band using the
Speaker 1: real recordings to dupe the audiences, and people all over
Speaker 1: the place are thinking that I'm going to be there,
Speaker 1: that Bachman is going to be there. They think it's
Speaker 1: the old band. It's not.
Speaker 2: Okay, we'll get to that point. Did they ever register
Speaker 2: in Canada or America that they own the name?
Speaker 1: I'm not sure their mark started in seventy seven. I
Speaker 1: think so they can. They can be the guests who
Speaker 1: after nineteen seventy seven and use all those songs. But
Speaker 1: they've tried to record some new things. But what they're doing, Bob,
Speaker 1: is they're using the big hit records to promote the
Speaker 1: cover band. I get it. I'm totally with you. I
Speaker 1: find it offensive too. How long have they been here? Listen,
Speaker 1: let me tell you one more thing, Bob. But their
Speaker 1: most recent the most recent concert announcement described the band
Speaker 1: as having more hits than anyone can count, record sales
Speaker 1: well into the multimillions, and a group that's connected with
Speaker 1: the masses for decades, a virtual hit parade spanning fourteen
Speaker 1: top forty hits. This is not the cover band that
Speaker 1: is showing up. Believe me, how long have they been
Speaker 1: doing it? Oh, for a long time. It's been going
Speaker 1: on for years. But let me tell you this, Bob.
Speaker 1: When the COVID layoff happened, when things started moving back
Speaker 1: again to normal where shows were starting to be done
Speaker 1: and crowd were allowed to get together, they really stepped
Speaker 1: up their advertising. It's fake advertising. You just have to
Speaker 1: look at the streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes and
Speaker 1: see how they've hijacked the landing pages, removing the pictures
Speaker 1: of the real guess who and the ones that are
Speaker 1: on the recordings. They're putting their own pictures up over
Speaker 1: our original. That's really heinous, but just a little bit slower.
Speaker 1: So they were going out as the guests who prior
Speaker 1: to COVID, but it was a minor operation and you
Speaker 1: figured it wasn't worth the effort. Is that what was
Speaker 1: going on? Yeah, and then when COVID happened, of course,
Speaker 1: everybody had a two year layoff, and then we all
Speaker 1: started trying to get back into the picture, and that's
Speaker 1: when they really stepped up. They really stepped up their
Speaker 1: fake advertise. Bob I was sent a video from a
Speaker 1: news station in Evansville, Indiana, showing a meet and greet
Speaker 1: the Cover Band did ahead of their recent show. Not
Speaker 1: one original member was there, not even Peterson. They were
Speaker 1: meeting the fans and taking accolades for the songs. I
Speaker 1: posted it on my social media so people could see
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on. They go to meet and
Speaker 1: greets and hold up albums of the old band. Okay,
Speaker 1: the media was there. The media was there, rubber stamping
Speaker 1: them as the guests who and fans. Okay.
Speaker 2: So after COVID there's a two year layoff, they start
Speaker 2: all this hype advertising. At what point do you decide
Speaker 2: this is enough and you want to take action.
Speaker 1: Well, we saw all kinds of fake advertising online and
Speaker 1: all these streaming platforms. What they have done. They've gone
Speaker 1: in and hijacked all our songs and they're putting pictures
Speaker 1: of the cover band up where on these streaming platforms.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm appalled at all of this. And
Speaker 1: finally you say to yourself, Okay, enough is enough. Randy
Speaker 1: Bachman has kids asking him is he going to be
Speaker 1: in Evansville, Indiana or this? And that they're using the real,
Speaker 1: real original recordings of American Woman, these eyes laughing. No
Speaker 1: time Clap for the wolf Man, all those songs that
Speaker 1: this cover band had nothing to do with.
Speaker 2: Okay, now, it's just not right. If one goes to
Speaker 2: Spotify right now, you do see a picture of the
Speaker 2: cover band. Yes, have you made an effort to change
Speaker 2: that on streaming platforms?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yes, yes we've We've made an effort to change
Speaker 1: everything on the streaming platform, but it's so slow to
Speaker 1: get changed. Have they agreed to change it? They have
Speaker 1: never agreed to change it. I'm talking about Spotify itself,
Speaker 1: the band. I understand the fake band. That's a separate thing.
Speaker 1: But the streaming outlets themselves, Spotified, Amazon, Apple, Have they said,
Speaker 1: you're right, let's put up the right pictures. Well, I
Speaker 1: don't know who controls the streaming. I guess they do.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure where the streaming How how we get
Speaker 1: that worked out, Bob. The streaming is a whole other animal.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure who controls the streaming. But we're going
Speaker 1: to get to the bottom of this. Definitely. I think
Speaker 1: the fake band took control of the streaming, and I
Speaker 1: don't know where we're investigating that right now. So in
Speaker 1: this I own listen, I published the songs I own
Speaker 1: the songs, published the songs and wrote them, and I
Speaker 1: own the songs. How can these guys put their picture
Speaker 1: up over my music?
Speaker 2: So in the spring you reached out to them. What
Speaker 2: do you do in the spring? And what happened there.
Speaker 1: This spring? We uh, we finally got some lawyers together
Speaker 1: and and we're we're moving ahead as best we can.
Speaker 1: We've got lawyers investigating receive Randy Bachman and I were
Speaker 1: we were scheduled to do a show in Akron, Ohio
Speaker 1: and me and Randy. It was canceled because of COVID
Speaker 1: A few months afterwards. The then you booked the cover
Speaker 1: band in and you can release You can read the
Speaker 1: backlash on ticket Master. So many people complained they were
Speaker 1: buying tickets to see Randy and me? So what is
Speaker 1: the cover band saying? Now?
Speaker 2: Are they saying you're right? Are they continuing to book gigs?
Speaker 1: What are they doing? I think they're trying to continue
Speaker 1: to play. We we've seen a couple of cancelations because
Speaker 1: I don't think that the promoters really want to get
Speaker 1: into this battle. You know, there's a lawsuit now, and
Speaker 1: I think in a lot of places, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: we can we can investigate this for a while, and
Speaker 1: and and and see what the lawyers say. But they cannot.
Speaker 1: I think they're threatening to charge me with defamation for
Speaker 1: for speaking out about this. They're they're they're starting to
Speaker 1: say I'm defaming the cover band. I mean, where does
Speaker 1: where does nonsense stop and reality start? Bob?
Speaker 2: So if you could snap your fingers right now and
Speaker 2: have happen what you want to have happen, what would
Speaker 2: that be?
Speaker 1: Here's the thing. They can claim that they're a cover band.
Speaker 1: They have to start saying they're a Guess Who tribute
Speaker 1: or a Guess Who cover band. They're the only songs
Speaker 1: they're using for bait for ticket sales are the one
Speaker 1: from the original recordings because they have not had any
Speaker 1: success of their own. It's a cover band, it's a
Speaker 1: bar band using the name the Guess Who. Now, it's
Speaker 1: just it's deceptive advertising from day one.
Speaker 2: I completely agree with you just getting into the machinations
Speaker 2: of this. The two members were in the band who
Speaker 2: started this, you know, cover tribute band. What are they
Speaker 2: say saying in response to everything you're saying.
Speaker 1: Well, we've had no response from Jim Cale. We don't know.
Speaker 1: He's very very hard to get a hold of Peterson.
Speaker 1: He just says, well, we're keeping the uh, we're keeping
Speaker 1: the legacy alive. And Peterson is starting now, I think,
Speaker 1: to threaten me for speaking out about this, and he's
Speaker 1: not even there most of the time. It's five nobody's
Speaker 1: that had nothing to do with the records. And what
Speaker 1: is he threatening you with? I don't know what. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what his threats are. I guess the defamation
Speaker 1: is one of them. How can we be defaming a
Speaker 1: band that's a fake band to begin with? Have you
Speaker 1: reached out.
Speaker 2: To promoters across the country and world saying don't book
Speaker 2: this band.
Speaker 1: We're trying to make them all aware of I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people know about the lawsuit now, and
Speaker 1: a lot of promoters don't want to get involved. You know,
Speaker 1: there's a legal action being taken now, and now these
Speaker 1: guys are complaining that we're calling them a cover band.
Speaker 1: You know. Let me tell you one disgusting bit of information.
Speaker 1: We did a Guess Who reunion the real band with
Speaker 1: Backman and me and Donnie McDougall and Bill Wallace. It
Speaker 1: was actually the real band and we were touring. We
Speaker 1: got to Philadelphia. This was around two thousand, I guess,
Speaker 1: or maybe a little later. We got to Philadelphia and
Speaker 1: I was handed a Live at the Paramount album Guess
Speaker 1: Who Live at the Paramount, and this guy wanted me
Speaker 1: to sign it. One of the fans wanted me to
Speaker 1: sign it. It's a double album. When you open it up,
Speaker 1: there's individual pictures of each of us inside. I opened
Speaker 1: the album up, I went to sign my picture and
Speaker 1: it was already signed by Cale's lead singer at the time,
Speaker 1: named Terry Hattie. I went to sign my own picture
Speaker 1: and it was signed by Terry Hattie, who had had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the Guess Who records. That broke
Speaker 1: my heart and it made me angry. Well, the guys
Speaker 1: signing my picture, and I know, I know that Cale
Speaker 1: and Peterson have sanctioned that, because Cale probably even encouraged it.
Speaker 1: He probably said, look, you're the singer signed the singer's picture.
Speaker 2: To the degree, you know, and you weren't a band
Speaker 2: with these guys one time. Why are they doing this?
Speaker 1: Well, I would imagine it's just cash, you know, cash grab.
Speaker 1: Cale and Peterson never wrote any of the big songs.
Speaker 1: Randy and I and Kurt Kurt wrote some of the
Speaker 1: big songs and Kurt and I together. But there it's
Speaker 1: a cash grab, Bob, It's totally a cash grab. They
Speaker 1: are scrambling for every dollar they can get. And now
Speaker 1: that they know there's gonna be trouble, I don't know
Speaker 1: how they're gonna get booked because more and more people
Speaker 1: are finding out that it's a fake band, it's a
Speaker 1: cover band. And now Peterson is all angry. He's angry
Speaker 1: and threatening me and Bachman. I guess he's threatening to
Speaker 1: sue me for defamation for saying they're a cover band. Goodness, gracious,
Speaker 1: what are you supposed to call them? Okay, since you
Speaker 1: file the lawsuit.
Speaker 2: What's been happening for you? Have you been hearing from
Speaker 2: the press, You've been hearing from fans? Well, it's very positive.
Speaker 2: People are on our side. They don't want to go
Speaker 2: and see They think they're going to see the guys
Speaker 2: that did American Woman and These Eyes and the big
Speaker 2: big songs, Share the Land and clap for the Wolf Man.
Speaker 1: They're not. They're not going to see those guys. And
Speaker 1: what's happening now is a lot of the promoters don't
Speaker 1: want to have anything to do with this. I think
Speaker 1: there's a backlash. This has a they don't own the songs,
Speaker 1: they didn't write the songs, they don't publish them, they
Speaker 1: don't own them, and they have stolen the resume of
Speaker 1: those of us who did.
Speaker 2: Do you at this late date, if you win the lawsuit,
Speaker 2: do you want to go out under the name Guess who?
Speaker 1: No? I don't think so. I think it's you know what.
Speaker 1: I think it's who knows? You never could tell. Randy
Speaker 1: Bachman and I might have plans in the future, but
Speaker 1: Randy and I each have a solo career. So it's
Speaker 1: not so much Bob getting the name for ourselves. It's
Speaker 1: stopping them parading around as if they're the original band.
Speaker 1: They are a cover band and nothing more. Okay, I
Speaker 1: think we've established this and you're obviously upset, as anybody
Speaker 1: deservedly would be. What's going on with you right now
Speaker 1: other than the lawsuit? Well, I'm well into a new album.
Speaker 1: I've had the same band now for many, many years.
Speaker 1: It's a tight band. It's great. I've got the best
Speaker 1: songs I've had in years, where about two thirds of
Speaker 1: way finished, two thirds of the way finished on a
Speaker 1: brand new album. I'm very excited about it, and now
Speaker 1: that all this is coming to light, I'm getting the
Speaker 1: attention of my fans again that I've had all along.
Speaker 1: And also I have a second poetry book that was
Speaker 1: just published, so I have two books of poetry out now.
Speaker 1: I have some gigs coming up. I'm doing a show
Speaker 1: in Hawaii, I think within about a month, and I'm
Speaker 1: doing another show in California.
Speaker 3: And we're re releasing some of the original albums, so
Speaker 3: we'll see, you know, We're trying to get the public
Speaker 3: aware of the fact that this is a bar band,
Speaker 3: a cover band using the recordings of the real guess who.
Speaker 1: And once the public knows for sure, I don't think
Speaker 1: there'll be that many shows anymore for them. They're they're
Speaker 1: masquerading as the guys that made the records, and they're
Speaker 1: not well.
Speaker 2: As I say, certainly emotionally, I have no idea what
Speaker 2: the legality of all these deep issues is. But emotionally
Speaker 2: your one hundred percent right. This has happened before. I
Speaker 2: think you will certainly devastate their business, if not completely
Speaker 2: eradicate it. But at this point in your life, what
Speaker 2: keeps you motivated to write and continue to make new music?
Speaker 1: Well, Bob It's what I've always done. You know, I've
Speaker 1: been recording, making records since I was sixteen years old.
Speaker 1: I'm seventy five now, well over fifty years in the business.
Speaker 1: It's what I do. And I still have some great
Speaker 1: new songs. The people that are working on my new
Speaker 1: album and the people that have heard the song so far,
Speaker 1: I think it's the best songs I've written in years.
Speaker 1: So that's what I hope. I just hope to get
Speaker 1: the focus back on me. I'm the real guy that
Speaker 1: sang and wrote all these records. You know. We can't
Speaker 1: have these guys anymore going out and calling themselves the
Speaker 1: guests who without saying it's a tribute or a cover
Speaker 1: band's that's my motivation. So you mentioned.
Speaker 2: Earlier that you own the songs. You you still own
Speaker 2: the songs?
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yes, Silele Music has all the publishing and
Speaker 1: that's your company. That's my Yes, Chileele Music is my
Speaker 1: company and it owns all the songs, and these guys
Speaker 1: have hijacked everything.
Speaker 2: So in this craziness of the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: were people and paying all this money for songs. Has
Speaker 2: anybody approached you to buy your songs?
Speaker 1: No? I haven't thought about selling my songs, really selling
Speaker 1: the catalog. I haven't really thought about it too much.
Speaker 1: The here's the problem. They have used the songs to
Speaker 1: promote their shows for years without the appropriate licenses. So
Speaker 1: they just give me the middle finger when we try
Speaker 1: and get take ahead on some of that stuff. They
Speaker 1: basically tell us to fo You know, well, as I said.
Speaker 2: I think we've we've really nailed that down. But you know,
Speaker 2: you started in the sixties when most people signed away
Speaker 2: the publishing. How are you smart enough to keep the publishing?
Speaker 1: Back then, we didn't have it off the bat our
Speaker 1: producer Jack Richardson had off the bat But then I,
Speaker 1: way way later, I went to lawyers and I managed
Speaker 1: to get my songs. I managed to get the guess
Speaker 1: who songs and now shel Aley Music has had them
Speaker 1: for years. But it was a fight. It was a fight, Bob,
Speaker 1: it was It was a fight.
Speaker 2: So did the fight Was that more about rights or
Speaker 2: did you have to buy them back?
Speaker 1: No, it was more about rights, and it was about
Speaker 1: Nimbus nine I think going under and Nimbus nine, I believe,
Speaker 1: went bankrupt and they had owned the songs at the time,
Speaker 1: and everything went up on the chopping block, including their
Speaker 1: recording studio, and I was just you know, listen, I
Speaker 1: came along and said, look, I'm going to get my
Speaker 1: songs back. And I got them back and I have
Speaker 1: owned the songs ever since.
Speaker 2: So you know, there's a lot of money in owning songs.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, how's the income from all those songs? Does
Speaker 2: that leave you comfortable?
Speaker 1: Well, it's good. I mean it pays my bills. You know.
Speaker 1: I don't count on it totally for everything. I still
Speaker 1: like to go out and work. I do live shows
Speaker 1: all the time. Cover band limits my shows with the
Speaker 1: promoters because they fulfill the need for the guess who
Speaker 1: in the United States, they can hire them cheaper than
Speaker 1: they can hire me. They're a cover band, basically cashing
Speaker 1: in on million selling records they had nothing to do with.
Speaker 2: Okay, So where do you live now?
Speaker 1: I live in Moosejaw, Saskatchewan, the prairies of Canada. It's
Speaker 1: beautiful and we're having a lovely autumn. There's no snow yet,
Speaker 1: so it's almost December and there's no snow.
Speaker 2: Most people in America in the United States are ignorant
Speaker 2: as to the landscape of Canada, where is Moosejaw. Mousjaw
Speaker 2: is in Saskatchewan. It's right in the center of the country.
Speaker 2: It's our province is Saskatchewan, and we are between the
Speaker 2: provinces of Alberta and Manitoba. It's very central. It's right
Speaker 2: in the center of the country.
Speaker 1: How many people live in Moosejaw About thirty thousand and
Speaker 1: thirty five thousand. It's small. I like it.
Speaker 2: And then how far to the next biggest city.
Speaker 1: Well, Regina is about half an hour away, and it's
Speaker 1: about half a million, I guess.
Speaker 2: And what do you like so much about living there?
Speaker 1: I missed, you know, I lived in la for years
Speaker 1: and years. What I missed was the changing of the seasons.
Speaker 1: If you're born and raised in the Canadian prairies, there
Speaker 1: are four distinct seasons. I missed that in California. The
Speaker 1: first year I was there, I saw Christmas lights on
Speaker 1: palm trees and it was a little strange for me.
Speaker 1: But I do you know, I'm a Canadian prairie boy
Speaker 1: basically at heart, and I feel comfortable with the four
Speaker 1: changing seasons. So I like it here very much.
Speaker 2: What a people in the United States not understand about Canada.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I think a mayor Ferkans know more
Speaker 1: about Canada than they ever have before because of the Internet.
Speaker 1: I believe we've lived in the shadow of the United
Speaker 1: States for so long. So we are very much influenced
Speaker 1: here by television from the States, by movies from the States,
Speaker 1: by music from the States, the radio. We're basically very
Speaker 1: very much influenced by the United States. And I think
Speaker 1: Canada is I mean, it's it's much smaller. You know,
Speaker 1: the population in Canada is only about thirty million, thirty
Speaker 1: five million. There are more people than that in California alone,
Speaker 1: So it's hard for Americans to understand how big Canada
Speaker 1: is with so few people.
Speaker 2: So where did you grow up?
Speaker 1: I grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, right in the Prairies.
Speaker 2: So you're growing up in the fifties, you know, needless
Speaker 2: to say, that's pre internet, it's preed color television. What's
Speaker 2: it like growing up in Winnipeg in the fifties. I
Speaker 2: lived alone with my mother and grandmother. My father was
Speaker 2: no good and he left when I was about a
Speaker 2: year old. I grew up with my mother and grandmother
Speaker 2: in Winnipeg in the fifties and let me tell you, Bob,
Speaker 2: we never locked the door at night. It was like
Speaker 2: leave it to beaver with wheat fields. It was safe.
Speaker 2: There was no I mean, there's always a little bit
Speaker 2: of crime, but it was.
Speaker 1: Very, very safe and wholesome. And I do remember life
Speaker 1: before television. I remember listening to the listening to the
Speaker 1: football and baseball games on the radio, and I was
Speaker 1: glued to the radio as a kid because I loved
Speaker 1: the music and what music was that as a kid well,
Speaker 1: as a kid, I loved Fatz Domino, of course early Elvis,
Speaker 1: but even before that, my mother had seventy eights, so
Speaker 1: before I ever went to kindergarten or grade one, I
Speaker 1: was listening to my mother's records of Bing Crosby, Dinah Shore, Guy, Lombardo,
Speaker 1: Glenn Miller. I loved music from the time I was
Speaker 1: old enough to crank up our old seventy eight record player,
Speaker 1: and I knew very early the magic of records, recordings
Speaker 1: freeze time. I knew when I was a little kid
Speaker 1: that when that record finished, you could pick up that
Speaker 1: needle and put it back to the beginning and hear
Speaker 1: the same thing over again. And I always wanted to
Speaker 1: make records when I was a tiny kid.
Speaker 2: And when did you pick up an instrument?
Speaker 1: My mother started me on piano when I was five,
Speaker 1: and I took lessons till I was about fourteen or fifteen.
Speaker 1: Never got my teachers degree, but the piano lessons taught
Speaker 1: me the mathematics of music, which made me want to
Speaker 1: be a writer. And then it led me to learning
Speaker 1: how to play a little bit of guitar, a little
Speaker 1: bit of saxophone, a little bit of flute. The piano
Speaker 1: was great for learning other instruments.
Speaker 2: Tell us about the mathematics of music.
Speaker 1: Well, the mathematics. I mean that I learned about the
Speaker 1: mathematics of music from taking the lessons. So you have
Speaker 1: to learn about one, three, five, four, nine, a flat thirteen,
Speaker 1: a flat seven. You have to learn all that stuff
Speaker 1: in order to shape your chords, and learning about the
Speaker 1: chordal frequencies helped me as a songwriter. Learning the mathematics
Speaker 1: of music was the greatest thing I ever did.
Speaker 2: And if I put a piece in front of you today,
Speaker 2: how's your sight reading today?
Speaker 1: Oh no, no, Bob, I was never I was never
Speaker 1: a good site reader. I've seen guys sit down and
Speaker 1: read rochmaninoff and Beethoven. I can't do that. I could
Speaker 1: read a little bit when I was still taking lessons,
Speaker 1: but that's something you're either gifted with that or you're not.
Speaker 1: And I was never gifted with the good site reading.
Speaker 1: I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2: So you're taking piano lessons. What's going on in school?
Speaker 2: You're a good student, bad student? You have friends, don't
Speaker 2: have friends.
Speaker 1: Well, I was a fairly good student up until I
Speaker 1: got into a band. I got into my first band
Speaker 1: when I was thirteen, just turning fourteen, and after that,
Speaker 1: that's all I could think about. I was obsessed with
Speaker 1: being in a band. And I was in a band
Speaker 1: before the Beatles hit. And then once I was in
Speaker 1: a band and the Beatles hit, then all came that
Speaker 1: British came, all that British invasion music, the great music
Speaker 1: from England, the Beatles, the Stones, the Kinks, the Zombies,
Speaker 1: the Dave Clark Five, Billy Jay Kramer and the Dakota's
Speaker 1: Jerry and the Pacemakers. I was singing all those songs
Speaker 1: by the time I was fourteen or fifteen, and I
Speaker 1: was obsessed with making it. Wanted to make it in
Speaker 1: a band. So when you were before the Beatles. What
Speaker 1: kind of music was your band playing? All We were
Speaker 1: doing stuff by Richie Allens. I loved Richie Allens. We
Speaker 1: did some Buddy Holly stuff. We did walk right In
Speaker 1: by the rooftop singers. We did some Gene Pitney songs,
Speaker 1: we did some Bobby v songs, all that stuff that
Speaker 1: came before the British invasion. We were right in on that.
Speaker 2: And how did you become aware of the Beatles?
Speaker 1: I think it just exploded in the world, you know.
Speaker 1: I think what really made the world more of it,
Speaker 1: more aware of the Beatles than anything, was that night
Speaker 1: they appeared on Ed Sullivan for the first time, and
Speaker 1: then everybody knew. After that, it was all we talked
Speaker 1: about at school. It was the topic of conversation with
Speaker 1: every kid I knew at school about the Beatles. The Beatles,
Speaker 1: the Beatles, the Beatles. They changed everything for musicians.
Speaker 2: And being a pianist when you were playing in these bands,
Speaker 2: did you just sing? Did you have a musical instrument?
Speaker 1: What did you do? I stood up and played the
Speaker 1: upright pianos that were in all the churches and schools
Speaker 1: and community clubs. I stood up and played piano, and
Speaker 1: then I bought a cheap sax, a cheap Sea Melody sax,
Speaker 1: and I learned how to play sacks. Now we were
Speaker 1: trying to do things like Johnny and the Hurricanes and
Speaker 1: the Champs and stuff like that. And then after a
Speaker 1: while somebody told me that the fingering was the same
Speaker 1: on the flute. So I picked up a flute and
Speaker 1: learned how to play flute. A little bit of guitar,
Speaker 1: but basically I was a pianist, and the piano helped
Speaker 1: me with my music. You know, piano is a great
Speaker 1: It's a great foundational instrument for learning other instruments and
Speaker 1: for learning how to write write songs.
Speaker 2: Okay, after the Beatles comes the Dave Clark five and
Speaker 2: Mike Smith is playing an organ that was a big deal.
Speaker 2: Did that affect you? Inspire you say, hey, I want
Speaker 2: to get a portable organ like that.
Speaker 1: Not really, because it was a Farfisa organ and it
Speaker 1: was never the It was never a big Hammon B
Speaker 1: three with that rich organ tone. I always wish that
Speaker 1: Mike Smith had played more piano. I liked his piano playing,
Speaker 1: but I never liked that far Fisa organ all that much.
Speaker 1: But I will tell you this, I loved the Dave
Speaker 1: Clark five and I loved Mike Smith as a vocalist.
Speaker 1: I thought he was fantastic, the power and the guts
Speaker 1: that his vocals had, and they wrote. They wrote some
Speaker 1: great songs. I mean, glad all over and because tremendous
Speaker 1: stuff anyway you want it, bits and pieces. Those were
Speaker 1: big records. Absolutely.
Speaker 2: Now when did you realize you could sing?
Speaker 1: Well? I here's the thing I was. My mother got
Speaker 1: me into the church choir. I was raised Anglican, and
Speaker 1: I went to an Anglican church in North End, Winnipeg,
Speaker 1: and I ended up in the church choir for three years.
Speaker 1: That was pretty good vocal training. And then when I
Speaker 1: got to grade ten at Saint John's High, they were
Speaker 1: doing Trial by Jury by Gilbert and Sullivan. I auditioned
Speaker 1: for the male lead tenor role and got it. So
Speaker 1: I got the lead role in Trial by Jury. And
Speaker 1: then the following year they were doing HMS Pinafore. I
Speaker 1: auditioned again and I got the lead tenor role in
Speaker 1: HMS Pinafore. So those two lead roles were really huge
Speaker 1: in making me comfortable performing in front of people. I
Speaker 1: was already in a band, the Devrons, my first band.
Speaker 1: But that was real vocal training, those two operettas, and
Speaker 1: they were year long projects. We didn't do the operettas
Speaker 1: in front of the people until May, but we started
Speaker 1: rehearsing around October, so they were year long projects. And
Speaker 1: that was basically between the church choir and the two operettas.
Speaker 1: That was the real vocal training that I had. And
Speaker 1: you finished high school. Never did finish, Bob. I got
Speaker 1: halfway through grade eleven and the Devrons were starting to
Speaker 1: take off locally in Winnipeg, and I just one day,
Speaker 1: I just said, I'm going to devote the rest of
Speaker 1: my life to music. I was seventeen when I left
Speaker 1: high school, and I've never regretted it because because of
Speaker 1: the music career.
Speaker 2: Okay, you were a singer, you were the lead in
Speaker 2: the play the Beatles hit. I have to think you
Speaker 2: were a pretty popular guy.
Speaker 1: Well, I will tell you this, and I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to toot my own horn, but we had fans in
Speaker 1: Winnipeg that were just incredible fans. They had a network
Speaker 1: of people in their fan club, They had cards printed,
Speaker 1: they came and took pictures of us endlessly. We were
Speaker 1: treated like big stars. We didn't even have any records
Speaker 1: out yet, but we were treated like we could have
Speaker 1: been treated like one of the group from Liverpool. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. They came and stole They came and stole
Speaker 1: a bird bath out of my backyard one time. They
Speaker 1: also came and stole the numbers off the front of
Speaker 1: our house one time. My mother was furious, but she
Speaker 1: kind of laughed that she thought it was part of
Speaker 1: being popular. We were very popular as teenagers.
Speaker 2: And why was it called the Devrons.
Speaker 1: Well, that was one of the guys in the band
Speaker 1: had that name. It was nothing to do with me.
Speaker 1: I just they were already an instrumental band. And one
Speaker 1: of my best friends from school was in the band,
Speaker 1: and I went with him to practice one day and
Speaker 1: I just kept saying, you guys, do you ever think
Speaker 1: about getting a singer? Hey, you guys want to try
Speaker 1: a couple of vocal Hey, you guys ever think of
Speaker 1: getting a singer? And eventually I kind of weaseled my
Speaker 1: way into the band.
Speaker 2: And the Devrons did they just play in Winnipeg or
Speaker 2: did they go out from there?
Speaker 1: Well, we played a little bit around Manitoba, just around Winnipeg,
Speaker 1: and maybe a little bit around Manitoba, but we never
Speaker 1: we never hit it nationally. We did cut two records
Speaker 1: in late sixty five. We cut two records. They were
Speaker 1: only ever played in Winnipeg. But we were thrilled to
Speaker 1: have records on the radio. And were you making any money?
Speaker 1: Not really, I mean not money that you would speak of,
Speaker 1: but we were bringing home decent salaries every week at
Speaker 1: some point in the Devrons, we were probably making more
Speaker 1: than our parents were because none of us was from money,
Speaker 1: but we were bringing in, you know, a couple hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a week each in the in the as teenagers
Speaker 1: way back in the sixties. That was a lot of money.
Speaker 1: So what was the dream at that point? I guess
Speaker 1: the big dream for any band at that point was
Speaker 1: to make it like the Beatles. You know, the Beatles
Speaker 1: were the idols of everyone in bands. I guess the
Speaker 1: dream was to have, you know, to be in the
Speaker 1: magazines and have your pictures circulated everywhere, and be on
Speaker 1: the radio and have million selling records. We wanted to
Speaker 1: have gold records. So you're in the Devrons, you cut
Speaker 1: a couple of records to get played in Winnipeg. Are
Speaker 1: you saying this is gonna go. Are you saying, wait
Speaker 1: a second, this is not the right thing for me. Well,
Speaker 1: I was very happy in the Devrons up to a point,
Speaker 1: and then I got a magical phone call. I was
Speaker 1: still seventeen years old. Bob and the Guests who phoned
Speaker 1: me and asked me if I would like to be
Speaker 1: in the band. They were already successful with a record
Speaker 1: called Shaken all Over, which had hit in the States,
Speaker 1: and at that point they were doing fairly well in Canada.
Speaker 1: So when I was asked to join, I was only
Speaker 1: seventeen years old. I said yes, in spite of the
Speaker 1: fact that it was very tough on the other guys
Speaker 1: in the Devrons. A chance like that's only comes maybe
Speaker 1: once in a lifetime. So I said yes. And I
Speaker 1: was seventeen, and I knew I was going into the
Speaker 1: Guess Who. Why did they want you? Well, we had
Speaker 1: all done a show together, the Devrons, the Guess Who,
Speaker 1: opening for Jerry and the Pacemakers in nineteen sixty five
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg, and we were, you know, the Devrons, we
Speaker 1: were still teenagers. This was at the height of the
Speaker 1: British invasion. Nineteen sixty five. Jerry and the Pacemakers come
Speaker 1: to Winnipeg, all the way from Liverpool. They had inch
Speaker 1: thick guard ropes up to keep the crowds back from
Speaker 1: swarming the stage. It was a huge night. Vrons went
Speaker 1: on first. There were twenty thousand people there. The guess
Speaker 1: who were next? The guess who saw me that night,
Speaker 1: And they liked the way I performed in front of
Speaker 1: a big crowd. Was the biggest crowd that we had
Speaker 1: ever played in front of. They liked the way I sang,
Speaker 1: and a few months later they decided to ask me
Speaker 1: into the band. And what were you going to do
Speaker 1: in the band? What did they envision your roles being? Well?
Speaker 1: At that point, Bob Chad Allen was still in the band,
Speaker 1: the lead singer that had sung Shaken all Over, and
Speaker 1: he was their main singer. I was asked to join
Speaker 1: because their piano player had quit and gone back to university.
Speaker 1: I was asked to join basically as a piano player
Speaker 1: and background singer and harmony singer. And when I first joined,
Speaker 1: Chad was still there and I was only singing about
Speaker 1: three songs a night, but they liked my strong voice.
Speaker 1: They that I could scream like Eric Burden and Paul McCartney,
Speaker 1: and we were. You know, we were still doing the
Speaker 1: songs from the Hit Parade at that time. We didn't
Speaker 1: have our own hit records yet. So they liked my
Speaker 1: singing and they thought I was young and energetic, and
Speaker 1: I guess I filled the bill at the time. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're seventeen.
Speaker 2: Years old during the Devrons who were just playing in
Speaker 2: Manitoba Winnipeg area. The Guests who was a national act.
Speaker 2: So then you're going on the road and going across
Speaker 2: country at age seventeen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I, uh, well, didn't really go across the country yet,
Speaker 1: but when I had I turned eighteen. And then we
Speaker 1: left for that first tour nineteen sixty six, and it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a big tour. It was mostly we played
Speaker 1: in the province of Saskatchewan. We played every single night,
Speaker 1: We did four hours a night. I was doing all
Speaker 1: the singing. By this time, Chad Allan had left and
Speaker 1: I was doing all the singing before we go. Why
Speaker 1: did Chad Allan leave? Chad Alan left to go back
Speaker 1: to university and he had a trouble being in front
Speaker 1: of crowds. And let me tell you this, if you
Speaker 1: have a trouble being in in front of crowds, don't
Speaker 1: go into show business. You know that's the last place
Speaker 1: you should go. But anyway, Chad Allan left and that
Speaker 1: left me as the lead singer and piano player. Okay,
Speaker 1: you're the lead singer piano player playing all around Saskatchewan. Yes,
Speaker 1: what happens next? Well, we were going broke. We went
Speaker 1: to England to try and sneak in through the back door.
Speaker 1: Nineteen sixty seven. We went to England, the whole thing
Speaker 1: fell apart. We were supposed to have a tour and
Speaker 1: a recording contract. Our manager wasn't really looking after us.
Speaker 1: We get over there, there's no tour, there's no recording contract.
Speaker 1: We were broke. We barely had enough money to come
Speaker 1: back to Canada. We get back to Canada. We're broke,
Speaker 1: we're almost breaking up. And then CBC Television offers us
Speaker 1: a weekly, a weekly show. So we did weekly television
Speaker 1: for two years and that saved the band, and it
Speaker 1: paid our living expenses and our paid for our guitars
Speaker 1: and amps, and we kind of got out of debt
Speaker 1: because of the television show.
Speaker 2: Okay, so what was the television show and what did
Speaker 2: you exactly do on the television show? Well, we did
Speaker 2: the songs of the Hit Parade every week for two years.
Speaker 2: We did almost eighty television shows in two years, all
Speaker 2: in local CBC studio Winnipeg, and what we were doing
Speaker 2: was highlighting the songs from the Hit Parade every week
Speaker 2: and we had to learn and it was tremendous for
Speaker 2: our musical abilities because we had to learn ten or
Speaker 2: eleven new songs every single week for almost two years.
Speaker 2: So we learned to play all different styles and genres.
Speaker 2: And for me as a singer, it was great because
Speaker 2: I was imitating all the singers like Paul Jones from
Speaker 2: Manfred Mann, and Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Mick
Speaker 2: Jagger and Billy J. Kramer and Jerry Marsden from Jerry
Speaker 2: in the Pacemakers. I was whenever we would do him
Speaker 2: Marvin Gay, I would imitate. I would imitate Stevie Wonder,
Speaker 2: whatever songs we did, I imitated the singer and that
Speaker 2: helped me with the vocal style.
Speaker 1: Believe me. And this was a national show, Yes it was,
Speaker 1: and we we we were getting fan mail from right
Speaker 1: from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island, right across Canada. And the
Speaker 1: whole show was the guess who playing it was us
Speaker 1: and that Chad. Now weird strangely enough, Chad Allen ended
Speaker 1: up being the host of the show the first year,
Speaker 1: so it was kind of like he was he was
Speaker 1: kind of like back in the band for half an
Speaker 1: hour a week. But that didn't that didn't really last.
Speaker 1: What what happened was, here's here's the magic moment for me.
Speaker 1: We were doing all kinds of shows, shows about what
Speaker 1: was on the hit Parade, and our producer Larry Brown
Speaker 1: at the time, our producer said, listen, I understand you
Speaker 1: and Randy are writing some songs. Why don't you You've
Speaker 1: got a national showcase here. Why don't you do a
Speaker 1: couple of your original songs on one of the shows
Speaker 1: and we'll see what happens. So one of those songs
Speaker 1: that we did was these Eyes. And ironically, Jack Richardson,
Speaker 1: who ended up being the producer of the guess who
Speaker 1: he was watching the show that day. He believed so
Speaker 1: much in the song that he contact at us and
Speaker 1: put the wheels in motion to take us to New
Speaker 1: York to record our first album, Wheatfield Soul.
Speaker 2: Okay, a couple of things you're playing on the show
Speaker 2: or you're touring to or just playing on the show.
Speaker 2: Not much touring, because once we're on the shows, it
Speaker 2: takes a whole week to get the next show together.
Speaker 2: We didn't tour much during the season, but when summer came,
Speaker 2: when the season ended, we would tour in the summer.
Speaker 1: Yes, okay, you're the front man of like being this
Speaker 1: on television every week. Yes, you have to be nationally famous.
Speaker 1: Well I was put it this way. I was recognized
Speaker 1: an awful lot on the street. You can't be on
Speaker 1: television every week for two years and be anonymous. I
Speaker 1: was recognized an awful lot.
Speaker 2: Okay, But there were a lot of things going on
Speaker 2: that young people were not a we're of the Beatles,
Speaker 2: were smoking marijuana, ultimately taking LSD. All these acts had
Speaker 2: a lot of sexual peccadillos.
Speaker 1: Was it like that for you? Well, not in the
Speaker 1: early days, not on the television days, but once we
Speaker 1: started touring, we were like any other band with big records.
Speaker 1: There were always groupies around. There were always girls chasing us,
Speaker 1: and we became kind of like jewelry, you know. We
Speaker 1: though they could brag to their friends that that they
Speaker 1: had been to a party with us or whatever. But
Speaker 1: it's no different than any other band that was successful
Speaker 1: in the hippie days. How did you write These Eyes? Well,
Speaker 1: Randy had part of it. And the strange thing is,
Speaker 1: Randy had that piano intro boom boom, dum boom boom,
Speaker 1: and he played that for me and I thought, my goodness,
Speaker 1: that's that's very clever for a guitar player to come
Speaker 1: up with that. But he wanted to call it these Arms,
Speaker 1: and I said, nah, let's call it These Eyes. And
Speaker 1: then I came up with pretty well all the lyrics
Speaker 1: after that, and I came up with that bridge and
Speaker 1: these are They've seen a lot of love, but they're
Speaker 1: never going to see another one like I had with You,
Speaker 1: which which kind of like an emotional part of the record.
Speaker 1: But Randy and I had pieces and one morning I
Speaker 1: was still, you know how long ago it was, I
Speaker 1: was still living at home with my mother and grandmother,
Speaker 1: and Randy came over to our house one Saturday morning
Speaker 1: and he started playing that piano riff and I started singing,
Speaker 1: and about an hour and a half later, the song
Speaker 1: was finished and it changed our lives forever. How did
Speaker 1: you come up with the lyrics? Oh, I'm I'm the
Speaker 1: lyric guy. Usually I've I've always written lyrics. I've written
Speaker 1: poetry since I was in school. I just I banged
Speaker 1: out the lyrics pretty quickly, to tell you the truth,
Speaker 1: and it was finished. Is that how you normally write
Speaker 1: lyrics pretty quickly? Yeah? I don't. Actually, As far as
Speaker 1: writing songs in general, I don't stress over it too much.
Speaker 1: If it doesn't happen within the first half hour of
Speaker 1: forty five minutes, I'll just throw it away and go
Speaker 1: to something else. I don't. Some people will work for
Speaker 1: weeks on a song. I've never been one of those people.
Speaker 1: I just when it hits me, I run to a
Speaker 1: keyboard and I write. And if it doesn't hit me,
Speaker 1: I don't find force it. I really don't.
Speaker 2: Okay, you go to New York with Jack Richerson to
Speaker 2: make a record an album? Actually, how does that go?
Speaker 1: Well, here's an interesting thing too, that nobody really knows.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a record deal. Jack came up with
Speaker 1: the money to produce the record himself. Somehow. There's a
Speaker 1: rumor going around that he mortgaged his house to do it.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's true. And Jack's gone now
Speaker 1: and his wife is gone, so we can never really
Speaker 1: ask them, but it made a great publicity story anyway
Speaker 1: that he mortgaged his house to take us. But he did.
Speaker 1: He somehow came up with the money. We had no money,
Speaker 1: and he flew us to New York, put us up
Speaker 1: in hotels, and took us to A and R studios.
Speaker 1: And believe it or not, the engineer on those sessions
Speaker 1: was Phil Ramone, who went on to be a monstrous
Speaker 1: producer engineer himself, but he was the engineer. Jack Richman
Speaker 1: was the producer. We did the whole album, which included
Speaker 1: these Eyes, the whole album in about five or six
Speaker 1: or seven days, and that was it. And that was
Speaker 1: my big experience in recording in New York. I think
Speaker 1: I was still twenty. I couldn't even legally have a
Speaker 1: beer yet, but we were recording a big record in
Speaker 1: New York City. I was thrilled. I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: a little kid from the North end of Winnipeg making
Speaker 1: a record in New York City. How could you not
Speaker 1: be thrilled?
Speaker 2: Okay, the process was not instantaneous. You finished the record,
Speaker 2: what happened? You flew home to win a bag? How
Speaker 2: long until Jack made a deal and the record came out.
Speaker 1: Well. He went around to many different companies and we
Speaker 1: were turned down by a lot of companies. Finally he
Speaker 1: got to someone at RCA and OURCA heard These Eyes
Speaker 1: and they said that's a hit record. We want this band.
Speaker 1: So they signed us to TINKA two or three, two
Speaker 1: or three album deal. Anyway, we had our recording contract.
Speaker 1: We were OURCA recording artists. Then These Eyes took off
Speaker 1: like crazy. And then the vice president of at the time,
Speaker 1: he was ahead of A and R, A guy named
Speaker 1: Don Burkheimer, came to Randy and me because he knew
Speaker 1: Randy and I had written These Eyes, and he said,
Speaker 1: please give us another one like These Eyes. Well, Bob,
Speaker 1: it was nineteen sixty nine. Everybody wanted to be led Zeppelin.
Speaker 1: We didn't want another ballad, but we did it anyway.
Speaker 1: We wrote Laughing and it too went right through the roof.
Speaker 1: That was our second gold record in a row, so
Speaker 1: we knew something was happening. At that point, we really
Speaker 1: knew something was happening. We were flown down to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: We appeared on American Bandstand with Dick Clark. Dick Clark
Speaker 1: presented us with gold record for These Eyes. I mean
Speaker 1: This was a pretty big deal for me, and I
Speaker 1: was still only twenty one at this point.
Speaker 2: Okay, for those of us who lived through it, there
Speaker 2: was starting to be FM radio, but not in every market.
Speaker 2: AM radio was everything.
Speaker 1: These Eyes was a gigantic kit in addition to being
Speaker 1: a great record. What was it like? The record comes
Speaker 1: out and it's a hit, what's going through your mind? Well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you a very brief story that Randy Bachman
Speaker 1: and I were in the limo together driving into New
Speaker 1: York back to do another session or something. These Eyes
Speaker 1: had a hit. It was on the radio. We're in
Speaker 1: the limo together and the driver has the radio on.
Speaker 1: On comes These Eyes and we're going across the big
Speaker 1: Try Try Try Fiber Bridge whatever it's. Yeah, we're looking
Speaker 1: at We're looking at the skyscrapers and the the UH
Speaker 1: Empire State Building and the beauty of New York. The big,
Speaker 1: big New York is right in front of us. These
Speaker 1: Eyes finishes on the radio, and the disc jockey comes
Speaker 1: on and says, yeah, These Eyes, that's that great Canadian
Speaker 1: record by the guests who from Canada, and Randy and
Speaker 1: I looked at each other. Here we are looking at
Speaker 1: New York City looking at the Empire State Building and
Speaker 1: we're hearing the song we wrote. We were absolutely thrilled.
Speaker 1: That's a moment, Bob, I will never ever forget. I
Speaker 1: was twenty one, just a white Anglican boy from the
Speaker 1: North End of Winnipeg and here we are in one
Speaker 1: of the meccas of pop music in the world. We're
Speaker 1: looking at the skyscrapers and these eyes is playing. I
Speaker 1: would re under hypnosis. Someday I'll go back and relive
Speaker 1: that moment over and over and over again. It was tremendous.
Speaker 1: It was just tremendous. It was like dreams having all
Speaker 1: come true. Why was the album named Wheatfield Soul? I
Speaker 1: came up with that one. We used to go to
Speaker 1: Toronto and play, but we were never there very long
Speaker 1: and it was a struggle. This was at the beginning.
Speaker 1: We hadn't had success yet, we hadn't even had television
Speaker 1: shows yet, and Toronto was a big R and B
Speaker 1: town and we weren't an R and B band. We
Speaker 1: were just a four piece rock and roll band. Toronto
Speaker 1: was all big bands with horns and silk suits and
Speaker 1: R and B. And they used to say, oh, you Hicks,
Speaker 1: you hicks from Manitoba or in town again, huh? And
Speaker 1: I one day I said, yeah, but we've got we
Speaker 1: Field soul and everybody liked it. And that's where the
Speaker 1: album title came up. Everybody liked that when I came
Speaker 1: up with that, So that's what we called the album.
Speaker 1: And I think it's a good album title. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good title. It is a good title. But
Speaker 1: why is the next one canned Wheat? Well, but we
Speaker 1: wanted to stay with the wheat field thing, so they did.
Speaker 1: They did a cover of put us all on can
Speaker 1: you know hand labels and canned wheat, and we wanted
Speaker 1: to stay with the wheatfield thing. We were starting to
Speaker 1: be identified as the guys that came from the wheat.
Speaker 1: You know, Manitoba is known. Manitoba and Saskatchewan could feed
Speaker 1: the whole world if it weren't for politics and money.
Speaker 1: There's enough wheat comes out of Manitoba and Saskatchewan to
Speaker 1: feed the entire planet. So we were starting to get
Speaker 1: that reputation as wheatfield guys. So second album canned wheat.
Speaker 2: Okay, people have no idea how busy you are when
Speaker 2: you have a hit record. You got to do all
Speaker 2: this publicity. Goodness, you gotta go to the radio stations.
Speaker 2: What about the money? Are you seeing any money? Are
Speaker 2: you asking any questions? What's going on with the money?
Speaker 1: Well, we were pretty ignorant at the time about publishing.
Speaker 1: We had no idea that the production company Nimbus, Jack
Speaker 1: Richardson's company, they were they were collecting all the money
Speaker 1: from the airplay and the publishing. We lost a lot
Speaker 1: of money at the beginning. I don't know if it
Speaker 1: was millions, but it was very hefty chunks before we
Speaker 1: knew anything about publishing. And then Randy read this book
Speaker 1: under his own volition. It was called The Business of
Speaker 1: Music or This Business of Music, right billboard book, I think, yeah.
Speaker 1: And Randy read that cover to cover and he started
Speaker 1: understanding that the songwriting is a whole other income stream.
Speaker 1: So he taught me a bit about that, and then
Speaker 1: from from that point on we were a little more
Speaker 1: curious about where the money was going and how did
Speaker 1: you write? Laughing, laughing, that's an interesting story. We had
Speaker 1: played a bunch of shows on Vancouver Island and you
Speaker 1: have to take a ferry over from Vancouver to Vancouver Island. Well,
Speaker 1: we had done three shows on the island. We drove
Speaker 1: to the ferry terminal. The first ferry leaves at six
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. We got to the terminal about
Speaker 1: six o'clock. We had to wait a half hour. At
Speaker 1: the ferry terminal, we're sitting on our old highway bus,
Speaker 1: getting ready to get onto the ferry. Randy picks up
Speaker 1: a guitar starts strumming some chords. I start singing, coming
Speaker 1: up with lyrics. Before we got on the ferry at
Speaker 1: six pot thirty, laughing was finished. We finished it in
Speaker 1: about half an hour, and it was a half hour
Speaker 1: very well spent because that was our second gold record
Speaker 1: in a row. Okay, did you know it was a
Speaker 1: hit when you wrote it? We kind of liked it,
Speaker 1: but we You know, Bob, you probably know as well
Speaker 1: as anybody you've talked to enough people, you never really know.
Speaker 1: You never really know when you've written it until it's released.
Speaker 1: It's like a kid leaving home. You never know if
Speaker 1: that kid's going to be successful until he leaves home
Speaker 1: and tries well. With releasing a record, you never really
Speaker 1: know until you release it. But we felt good about it.
Speaker 1: And Dn Berkheimer, the guy that had begged us to
Speaker 1: write another one in the vein of these eyes, and
Speaker 1: we didn't do it. We really didn't want to do
Speaker 1: another ballad. As I said, it was sixty nine. Everybody
Speaker 1: wanted to be led Zeppelin. But when Laughing took off,
Speaker 1: it really took off, and the flip side of laughing
Speaker 1: it became a two sided single because the other side
Speaker 1: was undone, which I still think is one of the
Speaker 1: best songs Randy Beckman ever wrote. So that was a
Speaker 1: two sided hit for us.
Speaker 2: Okay, On kenned whet. No Time is the opening track,
Speaker 2: but it's also an American woman.
Speaker 1: How did that happen? Oh, you're a guy that listens
Speaker 1: to records, Bob, I'm impressed. On the Canned Wheat album.
Speaker 1: No Time was just long and it had too much
Speaker 1: extended soloing and we hadn't perfected it, I guess, to
Speaker 1: the point where it could be a single. But Jack
Speaker 1: Richardson always thought it was catchy. He loved the guitar riff,
Speaker 1: the own very catchy, and Jack Richardson suggested that we
Speaker 1: re record it, cut it down to about three and
Speaker 1: a half minutes, more like a single time, And when
Speaker 1: we re recorded it it was in the Chicago studios
Speaker 1: of RCIER, which were much better studios than where we
Speaker 1: had done Canned Wheat. So time I became all of
Speaker 1: a sudden it was a commercial song. They released it,
Speaker 1: it was a smash hit record. So that was our
Speaker 1: third hit record in a row.
Speaker 2: Okay for those people were paying attention. As you say,
Speaker 2: led Zeppelin was becoming a big deal coming out in
Speaker 2: sixty nine.
Speaker 1: Whatever. American Woman to the casual observer seems like a
Speaker 1: big change. It's much more of a hard rock album.
Speaker 1: What was going on in the mind of the band. Well,
Speaker 1: when we actually did the song American Woman, we kind
Speaker 1: of jammed it on stage one night. Randy came up
Speaker 1: with this great riff and I just started singing over it,
Speaker 1: and that's that's where it came from. But when we
Speaker 1: did the vocal for American Woman, I mean, I was
Speaker 1: never quite happy with it. I wanted to be Robert Plant.
Speaker 1: I wanted to shriek like he did, like a banshee.
Speaker 1: When that first Zeppelin album came out, I almost quit
Speaker 1: the business, went back to school. I said to myself, Hell, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not a I'm not a singer. That's a singer.
Speaker 1: Robert Plant I could never do what Robert Plant did,
Speaker 1: so I almost quit. But I was trying my best
Speaker 1: when we did American Woman, I was trying to scream
Speaker 1: like Robert Plant, and I was always disappointed. I never
Speaker 1: quite quite made it to where I wanted it to be. Now.
Speaker 1: The irony then of this is Robert Plant was in
Speaker 1: Toronto years ago. He was on the air with a
Speaker 1: guy named Jian somebody. I remember. This guy did a
Speaker 1: little John Gomeshi jeon, that's right, Gian Gomeshi, and and
Speaker 1: he was interviewing Robert Plant and the subject of Burton
Speaker 1: Cummings came up, and Robert Plant went on and on
Speaker 1: about what a what a hell of a singer I was,
Speaker 1: and uh. He even mentioned a deep cut called Ballad
Speaker 1: of the Last five Years, which even my biggest fans
Speaker 1: I've hardly ever heard, Robert Plant knew it because he
Speaker 1: must have been listening to deep cuts. He said, oh,
Speaker 1: Ballad of the last five years, great song, Burton Cumming's
Speaker 1: great singer. And I was like, I heard this, and
Speaker 1: I was a foot off the ground for about a month.
Speaker 1: I couldn't believe that my absolute idol as a singer
Speaker 1: was complimenting me, so I'm very lucky in the fact
Speaker 1: that people have heard me way beyond what I would
Speaker 1: have imagined and dreamed of. I really am well.
Speaker 2: I know Cameron Crowe and the photographer Neil Preston, they
Speaker 2: think you're the best rock vocalist ever.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Cameron Crowe, We go back so far.
Speaker 1: He was just a kid. He was the wonder kid
Speaker 1: of Rolling Stone at that time. He was still a teenager,
Speaker 1: but he liked us, and I guess he was asking
Speaker 1: the powers that be at Rolling Stone at that time,
Speaker 1: can I go do the interview with the guess Who?
Speaker 1: Can I do another article on the guests Who? Cameron
Speaker 1: was very kind to us, and when he did that
Speaker 1: movie Almost Famous, I think he wrote that and had
Speaker 1: a lot to do with it. And there was a
Speaker 1: whole scene in there where a guy had a Guess
Speaker 1: Who shirt on and he talked about the Guess Who.
Speaker 1: And it was very very flattering to me that Cameron
Speaker 1: crow had included us in that film.
Speaker 2: You know, Okay, from the outside, it looks like the
Speaker 2: American Woman album is consciously a harder rock album. Did
Speaker 2: you guys feel that you were definitely going in that
Speaker 2: direction or he didn't feel that way, you're just making
Speaker 2: another Guess Who album.
Speaker 1: No. I thought we were getting harder. I thought it
Speaker 1: was getting to be more rock and roll. I really did.
Speaker 1: There were There was a hard blues song on there
Speaker 1: called Humpsy's Blues, where I was trying to scream really hard,
Speaker 1: and there were there were less put it this way
Speaker 1: or less ballads on American Woman. There was less soft music.
Speaker 1: It was a harder album in general. And there is
Speaker 1: one cut I still like on American Woman called Talisman,
Speaker 1: which was a poem I had written. When I first
Speaker 1: heard the word talisman, it was from the Classics Illustrated Comics,
Speaker 1: and I think it was by Sir Walter Scott. But
Speaker 1: I had never heard the word talisman. I didn't know
Speaker 1: what it meant. It means a lucky charm or a
Speaker 1: good luck charm. So I wrote this poem one night
Speaker 1: and Randy loved the words. So he came up with
Speaker 1: this beautiful guitar riff. This it's a very a modal
Speaker 1: scale almost, and it fit, and he worked at it
Speaker 1: for a while and made it fit the rhythmics of
Speaker 1: the words I had written. I still like Talisman to
Speaker 1: this day, and it's just back and Cummings, it's nothing
Speaker 1: to do with the other guys.
Speaker 2: And how does No Sugar Tonight New Mother Nature come along?
Speaker 1: Well, Randy had No Sugar and I had New Mother Nature.
Speaker 1: And for some strange reason, they were both in F sharp,
Speaker 1: which is a ridiculous key for a piano player. It's
Speaker 1: all black keys. I never would have sat consciously and
Speaker 1: written something in F sharp, And for some reason Randy
Speaker 1: had written No Sugar in F sharp, so the songs
Speaker 1: were in the same key. Jack Richardson had the idea,
Speaker 1: why don't we mesh the two songs together? And that worked.
Speaker 1: That ended up being seven minutes though, so then behind
Speaker 1: my back, Jack Richardson scooped No Sugar Tonight out and
Speaker 1: just put it on the flip side of American Woman.
Speaker 1: Probably probably a good idea commercially, although it broke my
Speaker 1: heart that my song was gone. But in the long
Speaker 1: run it ended up making American Woman and No Sugar
Speaker 1: a double sided single, and that sat at number one
Speaker 1: in Billboard for three consecutive weeks. A double sided single,
Speaker 1: not many people can say that. Bob Okay, Randy Bachman
Speaker 1: then leaves the band. What was going on there? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I was, I guess, more of a hippie
Speaker 1: than Randy liked, and I was starting to experiment with
Speaker 1: various substances and partying a little more. And Randy at
Speaker 1: that point, he was a devout Mormon, he had converted
Speaker 1: to Mormonism. He didn't really like the whole rock and
Speaker 1: roll lifestyle, and we just had a bunch of disagreements.
Speaker 1: So next thing we knew, he was gone, and we
Speaker 1: got Kurt Winter and Greg Lescue, the two best guys
Speaker 1: we could think of back in Winnipeg. We wanted to
Speaker 1: recruit guys from back home, so we got Kurt Winter
Speaker 1: and Greg Lescue from Winnipeg, and from that point on,
Speaker 1: I think we were a little bit more of a
Speaker 1: hard rock band because we now had two guitar players,
Speaker 1: two electric guitar players.
Speaker 2: Okay, how did you and Randy get along in the band?
Speaker 2: Before he realized he wanted to lead a cleaner life
Speaker 2: and leave, well, you guys friends, or was always fullure.
Speaker 1: We were pretty good friends for a long time. We
Speaker 1: wrote songs together, and we turned each other on to
Speaker 1: different music. You know, I turned him onto The Doors,
Speaker 1: which he never really liked. The Doors. He turned me
Speaker 1: onto Georgie Fame, which made me a better singer overall.
Speaker 1: Over the years, I listened to Georgie Fame a lot.
Speaker 1: It helped my phrasing, it helped my understanding of just
Speaker 1: being a bit more of a complex singer. So Randy
Speaker 1: helped me and I tried to help him. We turned
Speaker 1: each other onto a lot of different styles of music.
Speaker 1: But eventually it was time for him to leave, and
Speaker 1: we kind of all knew it, and it all happened
Speaker 1: very fast. Next thing we knew, Greg and Kurt were
Speaker 1: in the band. Next thing we knew we were flying
Speaker 1: to Washington to play at the White House for Tricia
Speaker 1: Nixon and Prince Charles, who's now the King. So it
Speaker 1: was a very very fast summer in nineteen seventy. Okay,
Speaker 1: slow that down. How did you end up playing at
Speaker 1: the White House? And what was that experience? Like? Well,
Speaker 1: American Woman was such a monstrous record, and I think
Speaker 1: Tricia Nixon really liked it. So she asked her dad
Speaker 1: or whoever, I guess, whoever was putting on the event,
Speaker 1: can we get I guess who? I love that song
Speaker 1: American Woman. So there we were asked to play at
Speaker 1: the White House. Now we had a manager at the
Speaker 1: time who should should have had his ass kicked because
Speaker 1: it was the stupidest idea in the world. He told
Speaker 1: us we shouldn't play American Woman because it might offend
Speaker 1: the White House, and we'll make a big publicity gimmick
Speaker 1: out of it to say that we were asked not
Speaker 1: to play American Woman. Well, the whole thing backfired on us.
Speaker 1: First of all, we got dumped on by Rolling Stone
Speaker 1: and the underground press for even playing for the Nixons
Speaker 1: because that was not a popular administration. So at all backfired.
Speaker 1: And we were never asked not to play American Woman.
Speaker 1: That was our manager's stupid idea. We should have done it,
Speaker 1: but we didn't. So that was that. Okay, did you
Speaker 1: meet Tricia Nixon? Did you meet Richie? Yes? Absolutely didn't
Speaker 1: meet Richard Nixon, met Tricia Nixon, met Prince Charles. His
Speaker 1: sister Princess Anne was there. Lear the heir to the
Speaker 1: lear Jet fortune. I mean, this was a This was
Speaker 1: a party of luminaries. There were some serious, serious money
Speaker 1: people there, but it was the White House. You would
Speaker 1: expect that, you know. I'll tell you one thing was
Speaker 1: interesting about it, Bob. There was all virtually no security
Speaker 1: going in. We were in a limo, two different limos,
Speaker 1: and all they did was sweep under it with the
Speaker 1: metal detector for about ten seconds, and away we went.
Speaker 1: Today you can't even get within a block of the
Speaker 1: White House, But in nineteen seventy there was almost no security.
Speaker 1: But don't forget it was way before terrorism had reached
Speaker 1: hijacking proportions. You know, it was way before nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: before all of that stuff. But I remember the security
Speaker 1: was very lax. There was a guy took us around
Speaker 1: a tour, showed us all the old paintings, and they
Speaker 1: took us all over the White House anywhere we wanted
Speaker 1: to go. It seemed pretty lax to me. Pretty fascinating though,
Speaker 1: So Randy Backman leaves the band. Is there anything that
Speaker 1: goes through your head? Hmm?
Speaker 2: I wrote the songs with him. This may not be
Speaker 2: good for me.
Speaker 1: Well, the music gods supplied me with another writing partner,
Speaker 1: Kurt Winter, and Kurt Kurt wrote bus Rider, which was
Speaker 1: a big record for the guests who but he also
Speaker 1: wrote hand Me Down World. Hand Me Down World was
Speaker 1: the follow up to American Woman, the follow up single,
Speaker 1: and to this day those lyrics are very very strong.
Speaker 1: Don't give me no hand me down, shoes, don't give
Speaker 1: me no hand me down love, don't give me no
Speaker 1: hand me down, world, I've got one already. Those lyrics
Speaker 1: are still powerful today and it's fifty five years later.
Speaker 1: So we were lucky that Kurt said yes joined the
Speaker 1: band because I instantly had another writing partner.
Speaker 2: But the hit after that, Share of the Land, you
Speaker 2: wrote alone.
Speaker 1: Yes, I wrote that alone, and that album Share the Land,
Speaker 1: was the biggest album the Guests who ever had now,
Speaker 1: partly I'm sure because it was on the heels of
Speaker 1: the American Woman album. But Share the Land itself, the
Speaker 1: song itself became almost like a bit of a hippie
Speaker 1: anthem back then, like the young Bloods had had get
Speaker 1: together and it was that feeling of the hippie days,
Speaker 1: you know, and Share the Land was right at that
Speaker 1: at the proper moment, the September of nineteen seventy, you know,
Speaker 1: when everything was leaning towards the New Musical Revolution and.
Speaker 2: Back to the land movement too. Okay, the years go by,
Speaker 2: you have to continue to have great success in Canada,
Speaker 2: not as much big success.
Speaker 1: In the US. Are you aware of that? Are you
Speaker 1: just so busy work and everything's great? No, I was aware.
Speaker 1: I mean I had a big single called Stand Tall
Speaker 1: under my own. Wait before we get to we don't
Speaker 1: get to Stand Tall yet because we have all these
Speaker 1: other hits, you know, hang on to your life. Albert Flasher,
Speaker 1: Rangelers Slasher. Yeah, Albert Flasher was kind of a fluke
Speaker 1: because it was the B side. We had a song
Speaker 1: called Broken, which I thought was pretty good, but as
Speaker 1: I hear it now years later, the vocals sounded like
Speaker 1: I was trying too hard. So for some reason one
Speaker 1: of the radio stations flipped it over and Albert Flasher
Speaker 1: the B side, became quite a big hit record for us.
Speaker 1: So I was very happy about that. And then what
Speaker 1: about Clap for the Wolfman. Clap for the Wolfman was
Speaker 1: a monstrous single for us. We had been on Midnight
Speaker 1: Special six or seven times. I think must have been
Speaker 1: doing something right to get asked back all those times.
Speaker 1: And during all those visits I became quite friendly with Wolfman.
Speaker 1: He was a fascinating guy. He was a radio legend,
Speaker 1: you know, he was Everybody knew who Wolfman Jack was.
Speaker 1: And we were going to do the record with me
Speaker 1: imitating the Wolfman, and you know, just throwing in a
Speaker 1: few lines here and there between verses. Now here again
Speaker 1: Fate stepped in the music, God smiled on us again.
Speaker 1: Wolfman Jack happened to be in Toronto the same time
Speaker 1: we were recording Clap for the Wolfman. He was there
Speaker 1: m seeing a car show a show. We got a
Speaker 1: hold of him. We said, look, we've got a record
Speaker 1: that's about you. Would you come and put your voice
Speaker 1: on it? And he was very hesitant at first, he
Speaker 1: didn't want to have anything to do with it. So
Speaker 1: we got in a cab, went over to his hotel,
Speaker 1: went up to his room, played him the song first
Speaker 1: time he heard the first verse, and he loved it.
Speaker 1: He said, when do you want me in the studio?
Speaker 1: He was so he was flattered and happy and thrilled.
Speaker 1: And I think he knew that it was going to
Speaker 1: be a big, big deal for his career too, so
Speaker 1: he was glad to come in do his ad libs
Speaker 1: and has saved me for trying to imitate his voice.
Speaker 1: And it worked out great. I think it worked out great. Okay,
Speaker 1: since you had so much interaction. What was the Wolfman
Speaker 1: like as a guy? Oh, he was a great guy.
Speaker 1: I you know, he knew everybody. That's one thing. He
Speaker 1: had known d Eddie and you know, all the heroes
Speaker 1: I had when I was a kid. He had he
Speaker 1: had learned about the He mceed rock shows way way
Speaker 1: back before it was popular to MC rock shows. So
Speaker 1: he had met a lot of my heroes. And he, boy,
Speaker 1: he really knew the stuff. He knew what had charted
Speaker 1: from every year, from every decade. He was a great guy.
Speaker 1: I liked him very very much. We got along great.
Speaker 2: So how do you decide to leave the guests who.
Speaker 1: Well, we got Dominic Trojano in as a guitar player,
Speaker 1: and that was the biggest mistake ever because he was
Speaker 1: a jazz guy. He wanted to be a fusion act,
Speaker 1: but he liked the money from the rock and roll singles.
Speaker 1: He liked the money from AM radio, but didn't want
Speaker 1: to play AM music. So that was a bit of
Speaker 1: a quandary for him. So I after a while Troyano,
Speaker 1: you know, he and I wrote a few good songs together,
Speaker 1: but it was never the same. Once Troyano was there,
Speaker 1: it was more like a fusion band wanna be fusion band,
Speaker 1: and I just didn't want to I didn't want to
Speaker 1: fight anymore about where the band was going in the
Speaker 1: direction of the band, so I just decided one time,
Speaker 1: it was a autumn of nineteen seventy five, and I
Speaker 1: called a meeting and I said, look, boys, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try it as a solo artist. And that was it, okay,
Speaker 1: since really it was your band. Did you ever think, well,
Speaker 1: maybe I'll get rid of Dominic. No, I think by
Speaker 1: that point, see, I'm one of these guys. I don't
Speaker 1: like a lot of personnel changes in bands, even going
Speaker 1: back to the Beach Boys, when David Marx was gone
Speaker 1: and Al Jardine was there. I looked at this and
Speaker 1: I said, this isn't the Beach Boys. What's going on here?
Speaker 1: Where's David Marx. I didn't want to be one of
Speaker 1: those bands that had had a history of fifty guys
Speaker 1: in the band. So I thought, at that point, we've
Speaker 1: had enough guys, enough co writers, enough guitarists. I'm going
Speaker 1: to try it as a solo artist. And we had
Speaker 1: known Neil Young since we were all teenagers, and we
Speaker 1: had seen him leave Winnipeg and watched him rise to
Speaker 1: fame in the Buffalo Springfield. So I saw that as
Speaker 1: maybe I could follow his steps, you know, hopefully I
Speaker 1: had some kind of a hope as a solo artist.
Speaker 1: So that was it. There was no more Guess Who.
Speaker 1: After nineteen seventy five, Well didn't they continue a little
Speaker 1: bit without you? They tried for a while. Cale went
Speaker 1: and got Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall, who had been
Speaker 1: in the band for a while, and he went out
Speaker 1: as the Guests Who. And we didn't do much about
Speaker 1: it at the time because Kurt was still there, Donnie
Speaker 1: was there, and Donnie sings very much like me, so
Speaker 1: it was, you know, more of a more of a
Speaker 1: representation back then. But we're still talking almost fifty years ago,
Speaker 1: you know, a long time ago. And then I guess
Speaker 1: when he when he registered the name. You see, it
Speaker 1: had never been called the Guess Who until I came
Speaker 1: in and we did the It's Time album. There were
Speaker 1: two albums before that that I wasn't on, but it
Speaker 1: just said Guess Who. They were still called Chad Allan
Speaker 1: and the Silvertones. Chad and the Silvertones. So the first
Speaker 1: time it was ever called the Guess Who. I was there,
Speaker 1: and it was sixty six on an album called It's Time. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you hook up with Richard Perry? I signed,
Speaker 1: I got out of my RCA contract act with the
Speaker 1: guests who an RCA, and looked around Los Angeles. My
Speaker 1: manager at the time knew that Richard Perry was the
Speaker 1: producer at the time. I mean, he had done the
Speaker 1: Pointer Sisters, and he had done Your So Vain by
Speaker 1: Carly Simon, one of the biggest records ever, and he
Speaker 1: had done Leo Sayer and he was a really, very
Speaker 1: very much choice producer at the time, in demand. So
Speaker 1: they somehow hooked me up with him. I went and
Speaker 1: had dinner with him and played him some of my
Speaker 1: songs at the piano. He loved it. He particularly loved
Speaker 1: stan Tall and I'm Scared, two of my songs from
Speaker 1: this debut solo album. So I ended up working with
Speaker 1: Richard Perry, a legendary producer.
Speaker 2: Okayh'd you end up on Portrait Records, which was part
Speaker 2: of Epic.
Speaker 1: Well, I was offered a contract with Columbia, and I
Speaker 1: guess I was technically signed to Columbia already, and Columbia
Speaker 1: was launching a new label kind of like RCA launched
Speaker 1: Red Seal, so this would be kind of their an
Speaker 1: offshoot Prestige label, and they were gonna call it Portrait Records,
Speaker 1: and they told me if I signed with Portrait, I
Speaker 1: would be the first artist ever with a release on
Speaker 1: Portrait Records. So that sounded good to me. I got
Speaker 1: a big billboard up on Sunset Strip. Stan Taal was
Speaker 1: the first record ever on Portrait, and all of that
Speaker 1: got me extra promotion, I think, so it was a
Speaker 1: good thing.
Speaker 2: What was the difference being on Portrait as opposed to
Speaker 2: being with RCA.
Speaker 1: I had a little more, a little more individual attention.
Speaker 1: RCA was very busy, still busy with Elvis and Jefferson
Speaker 1: Airplane and Harry Nilson and RCA had a million, a
Speaker 1: million acts, you know, And I thought maybe I was
Speaker 1: getting better individual attention as being opposed to opposed to
Speaker 1: being lost in the shuffle. Okay, so your work with
Speaker 1: Richard Perry, you own Studio fifty five right there by paramount.
Speaker 1: He's a meticulous guy. He is not a guy who
Speaker 1: cuts a record in one day. So I could what
Speaker 1: was that experience like for you? Well, it was exhausting,
Speaker 1: and yet I could see his method. But he made
Speaker 1: me sing certain songs thirty forty times and then he
Speaker 1: would end up keeping half of take six and half
Speaker 1: of take eight, you know, but I can understand that's
Speaker 1: that's the way Richard works. So I just I went
Speaker 1: along with his methods. But it was exhausting. But I'll
Speaker 1: tell you this. It's it's interesting how Richard works because
Speaker 1: he's a hit record maker and he's very, very concerned
Speaker 1: with the lead vocal all the time. So I watched
Speaker 1: when we were recording everything, you know, everything would be
Speaker 1: on whatever tracks they were, and then when all the
Speaker 1: recording was done, when it was time to start mixing,
Speaker 1: Richard would move the lead vocal down to track number
Speaker 1: one and just sit down there on the fader of
Speaker 1: number one and ride the vocal throughout the rest of
Speaker 1: the song. That that's the way Richard made records. And
Speaker 1: who can argue with his track record He had some
Speaker 1: tremendous successful records. And oh and he did Barbara Streissan,
Speaker 1: the Pointer Sisters, Leo sayre uh yeah, and your Solvain,
Speaker 1: which is one of the biggest records ever. And here's
Speaker 1: an interesting thing. I don't know if you even know this,
Speaker 1: but you would know this, Bob. But if you listen
Speaker 1: carefully to your Solvain. It's Mick Jagger doing background vocals
Speaker 1: with Carly Simon. But until somebody tells you that, until
Speaker 1: somebody tells you that, you would never really listen for it.
Speaker 1: Once you listen for it is as clear as a bell,
Speaker 1: Mick Jagger backing her up on your Solvain. Absolutely. So
Speaker 1: you make a record with Richard and you have a
Speaker 1: huge hit with Stan Tall Yeah, and uh, and we
Speaker 1: had another one, I'm Scared, which we all believed in,
Speaker 1: but it didn't quite click in the States the way
Speaker 1: it did in Canada, but Richard loved it anyway. I
Speaker 1: still love the song. It was my mother's favorite song
Speaker 1: I ever wrote, So it was Uh. I was pretty
Speaker 1: proud of that first album. And we also did a
Speaker 1: takeoff on Randy Bachman's you Ain't Seen Nothing Yet because
Speaker 1: it had just been the number one in Billboard, and
Speaker 1: I did a big band version of it with horns
Speaker 1: and everything and kind of a kind of a sarcastic
Speaker 1: jab at Randy. But Randy was still impressed with the
Speaker 1: version we did. How did you.
Speaker 2: Feel about Randy having that incredible success with bto Oh?
Speaker 1: I was happy for him. I had known. See, here's
Speaker 1: the thing Bob. I had known Fred Turner for years.
Speaker 1: He was another local Winnipeg boy. We were all in
Speaker 1: rival bands when we were teenagers. And Fred Turner long
Speaker 1: before Bto. He was in a band called the Pink
Speaker 1: Plum and he impressed me as a singer because there
Speaker 1: was a there was a record called stand By Me
Speaker 1: and Spider Turner. I think as the artist, if my
Speaker 1: memory serves me, and Spider Turner did stand by Me,
Speaker 1: but he imitated a lot of different singers throughout Bennie
Speaker 1: King and some other people. And one time when I
Speaker 1: was a teenager, I saw Fred Turner do the Spider
Speaker 1: Turner version of stand By Me and did all the
Speaker 1: vocal imitations during it. So I was always impressed with
Speaker 1: Fred Turner. I figured he would make it someday.
Speaker 2: So ultimately you continue to have success in Canada but
Speaker 2: less success in the US. What's going through your mind?
Speaker 1: I just you know what. I always kept plowing ahead.
Speaker 1: I said, as long as as long as I've got
Speaker 1: new songs and as long as I'm hitting my notes,
Speaker 1: long as i want to get back in the studio
Speaker 1: and do another album, I'm going to keep plowing ahead.
Speaker 1: So it hasn't been a disaster for me in the States.
Speaker 1: It's just my biggest problem has been this fake guess who.
Speaker 1: You know, people think I'm still with the band people.
Speaker 1: A lot of people still think Randy's with the band,
Speaker 1: and it's just not true.
Speaker 2: Okay, But going a little bit slower, you end up
Speaker 2: working on a movie, Melanie, How.
Speaker 1: Does that happen? Oh? Yeah, Well, the producer, Peter Simpson,
Speaker 1: was from Canada. He had known of my history and
Speaker 1: they needed a guy to play this burned out rock
Speaker 1: and roll star that makes a big comeback meets a
Speaker 1: girl from the backwoods and everything turns out okay. And
Speaker 1: that when they were casting for the guy that I played.
Speaker 1: They they came to me pretty early in the casting
Speaker 1: days and said would you be willing to do this?
Speaker 1: And I said, well, I'm not an actor, but I'll
Speaker 1: give it a shot. You know, I'll do the best
Speaker 1: I can. I'll promise you I'll give you my very
Speaker 1: best attempt. And they let me write the songs for
Speaker 1: the movie and I had a nude scene, which was
Speaker 1: very embarrassing and kind of strange to do, but overall
Speaker 1: it was you know, I could never have been an actor.
Speaker 1: You act for two minutes, you sit for six hours,
Speaker 1: you act for three minutes, you sit for four hours.
Speaker 1: I could never ever have done that, and I don't
Speaker 1: have the chops anyway. I'm not a you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not Robert de Niro or Lawrence Olivier. I never had
Speaker 1: those chops. But it was an interesting experience and I'm
Speaker 1: all the better for it knowing how good you have
Speaker 1: to be to be a movie person. So as the
Speaker 1: years go by, often on you work with Randy Bachman,
Speaker 1: what would cause you to get back together with him?
Speaker 1: There were tremendous offers for Bachman and Cummings because everybody
Speaker 1: knows that we were the guys that wrote these I
Speaker 1: as an American woman, et cetera, et cetera. There were
Speaker 1: tremendous offers for us everywhere, and we just decided, Okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's go out and see Let's go out and
Speaker 1: see how this works. And I believe it was nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty seven or eighty eight when we first did the
Speaker 1: Bachman Comings, first Backman Comings tour, and it worked out great.
Speaker 1: It was fun to be with him again at that point,
Speaker 1: But you've.
Speaker 2: Continue to work with him off and on. Is it
Speaker 2: usually generated by offers.
Speaker 1: What motivates that? A lot of times it's generated by offers,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times it's just the fact that
Speaker 1: you know, I we have a tremendous two hour show.
Speaker 1: When you start doing the Guess Whose stuff, and then
Speaker 1: you do the bto stuff, and then you do some
Speaker 1: of my solo career. It's two hours of hit records
Speaker 1: that everybody knows hard when you get tremendous offers to
Speaker 1: do that, and we know what the reaction is going
Speaker 1: to be from the fans every time. It's tremendous. And
Speaker 1: we end the night with taking care of business, which
Speaker 1: is kind of an anthem in itself, you know, between
Speaker 1: American woman taking care of business, share the land, clap
Speaker 1: for the wolfman, stand tall, let it ride, no sugar.
Speaker 1: You know, it's two hours of hit records. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: nice to go and do that. And how did the
Speaker 1: two of you get along? Now? Oh? We get along fine.
Speaker 1: We've teamed up together to stop this Guess who nonsense,
Speaker 1: So we're fine right now. Okay, Prior to COVID, the
Speaker 1: two of you were planning to go out, yes, and
Speaker 1: what happened. COVID shut everybody down. And I will tell you,
Speaker 1: This bob the worst of my worst two years of
Speaker 1: my adult life. And then when I tried to come
Speaker 1: back after lying around for two years, I had no chops.
Speaker 1: A singer has to sing all the time. You can't
Speaker 1: be I've said this before, but I'll say it again.
Speaker 1: You can't be a marathon runner and lie around off
Speaker 1: and on on your couch for two years and jump
Speaker 1: up and run your twenty six miles. It's not going
Speaker 1: to happen. We did a Backman coming show shortly after
Speaker 1: the COVID shutdout was over. We played in Winnipeg and
Speaker 1: it was a big deal. They made a big deal
Speaker 1: of it. Backman and Cummings returned to their hometown and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand people there, and I couldn't hit my notes.
Speaker 1: It was so embarrassed. I was devastated. We filmed the
Speaker 1: whole thing with five cameras. It's all unusable unless I
Speaker 1: go in and do post sync and re record all
Speaker 1: my vocals. I had no vocals. I had no vocal chops.
Speaker 1: Broke my heart. But fortunately now I've worked and worked
Speaker 1: and worked at it and done something. We did a
Speaker 1: lot of touring this last summer. We did over thirty shows,
Speaker 1: and my chops are finally back. I'm starting to sound
Speaker 1: like Burden the singer again. Okay, you are a rock star.
Speaker 1: Rock stars there's a lot of things. They frequently have
Speaker 1: multiple marriages, multiple kids. How's your personal life worked out.
Speaker 1: I'm divorced. I am living in moose Jaw with my
Speaker 1: full time spouse. One of the reasons I moved to
Speaker 1: moose Jaw I had had enough of the big city.
Speaker 1: I like the small city. And my spouse that I'm
Speaker 1: with now is perfectly supportive of me musically and career wise,
Speaker 1: and I'm happy to be in a small town again.
Speaker 1: And I'm you know, I'm quite enjoying life right now,
Speaker 1: except for this guess who debacle.
Speaker 2: So the woman you're now married to, did you meet
Speaker 2: her in la or did you meet her in Canada?
Speaker 1: I met her at we're not married yet, we're common
Speaker 1: law yet, but we probably will. I met her actually
Speaker 1: she came to one of my shows in Canada, and
Speaker 1: later there was a sit around talk, you know, a
Speaker 1: bunch of fans of five or six, eight, ten people
Speaker 1: got together. We started talking. I saw her again. We
Speaker 1: started emailing each other, and she knew all about my career.
Speaker 1: And we just you know, sometimes you just click with somebody,
Speaker 1: You just instantly click. And Carrie and I have been
Speaker 1: together now for seven years and that's you know, that's
Speaker 1: longer than a lot of people stay together. So I'm
Speaker 1: quite happy right now. And do you have any children? No,
Speaker 1: no children ever. I've never wanted kids. And people say, well,
Speaker 1: why is that? And you know, when I was young,
Speaker 1: it was the career. I was on the road all
Speaker 1: the time. And at the beginning of the Guess Whose Success,
Speaker 1: Randy had his first two kids and he never saw
Speaker 1: them grow up. We were on the road all the time.
Speaker 1: He never saw their first step, he never heard the
Speaker 1: first word. And that was enough for me to know
Speaker 1: I didn't want that. I and you know what, I
Speaker 1: don't have unlike most people, I don't have a burning
Speaker 1: desire to have kids. Everybody says, well, what's wrong with you? Well,
Speaker 1: how about nothing's wrong with me. I just it's not.
Speaker 1: It's not for everybody. Kids are not for everybody. It's
Speaker 1: as simple as that. There's nothing wrong with me as
Speaker 1: far as not wanting having kids.
Speaker 2: So do you think the perception of you in the
Speaker 2: Guess Who would be different if you were from the
Speaker 2: States instead of Canada.
Speaker 1: No, I honestly don't, because look at Nickelback, look at
Speaker 1: Shanaiah Twain, look at the people, look at Brian Adams
Speaker 1: lover Boy people have come out of It doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I don't think it matters where you come from. What
Speaker 1: I really believe is what matters are the records that
Speaker 1: you cut and how they get treated at broadcasting level.
Speaker 1: And I've one of the ones I've I've been very lucky.
Speaker 1: The songs I've sung and written or co written have
Speaker 1: never gone away. I still hear these eyes, I still
Speaker 1: hear sharing the Land, I still hear clap for the
Speaker 1: wolf Man. It's fifty years later, and I'm still hearing
Speaker 1: those songs that came out of my head and came
Speaker 1: out of my mouth. Now, you know, you talk about
Speaker 1: songwriting royalties, there's also a record royalties. This is a morass.
Speaker 1: Do you get any record recording royalties or do they
Speaker 1: still say we don't know your money? What's going on there? Well?
Speaker 1: These days, I guess a lot of the streaming, a
Speaker 1: lot of the money is streaming, and a lot of
Speaker 1: the money is performance on the radio. I think only
Speaker 1: the only Taylor Swift is really selling records, and she's
Speaker 1: breaking all the Beatles records, so good for her. But
Speaker 1: other than Taylor Swift and a couple of rappers, I'm
Speaker 1: not so sure how many physical copies are being sold. Although,
Speaker 1: as you would know, Bob, there is a huge resurgence
Speaker 1: of vinyl. So we're we're we're repackaging and and and
Speaker 1: reproducing a lot of the vinyl guess who albums with
Speaker 1: the with the real people on there by the way,
Speaker 1: So in terms of legacy, as you say, these records
Speaker 1: are never going away, Well stop there for a minute.
Speaker 1: How did did you know that Lenny Kravitz was going
Speaker 1: to cover American Woman. We had no idea, but uh,
Speaker 1: that came about because of Mike Myers having grown up
Speaker 1: in Canada. He was a huge fan of mine. I've
Speaker 1: known Mike for a while, and Mike had done that
Speaker 1: movie and they were going to use Lenny Kravitz's version
Speaker 1: of American Woman for the for the ending titles, like
Speaker 1: the ending credits, and he just went in and did
Speaker 1: a bang up version of American Woman. And that's as
Speaker 1: far as he knew, as far as he told me
Speaker 1: one time, as far as he knew, it was just
Speaker 1: going to be for the ending credits, but then his
Speaker 1: record company liked it so much they put it out
Speaker 1: as a single. And this is how big the single got, Bob.
Speaker 1: They had a bunch of Lenny Kravitz's greatest hits albums
Speaker 1: out in the market. They recalled a lot of them
Speaker 1: back in so they could repress them with American Woman included.
Speaker 1: So the irony here we are again talking about musical irony, Bob,
Speaker 1: Lenny writes all his own stuff, biggest hit of his career,
Speaker 1: American Woman irony again. So do you care about legacy?
Speaker 1: Do you care if your songs are remembered? Yes? I do,
Speaker 1: but I want them to be remembered by the guys
Speaker 1: that recorded them. I don't want some cover band going
Speaker 1: out there claiming taking the accolades for stuff we did
Speaker 1: decades ago. And by the way, some of these guys
Speaker 1: in the cover guess who the guess who cover band
Speaker 1: were barely born when those records were made. So it's
Speaker 1: just a travesty. It's a perfect word. It's a travesty.
Speaker 1: I don't see how you don't ow ultimately succeed in
Speaker 1: this action. And we're getting the word out. I think
Speaker 1: the word's gotten out pretty well already, Burton. I want
Speaker 1: to thank you for taking the time and telling your
Speaker 1: story to my audience. Thank you very much for having me, Bob,
Speaker 1: and I really appreciate the outlet to let people know
Speaker 1: what a problem this is. I appreciate very much. And
Speaker 1: you're very famous. I knew all about this and I
Speaker 1: was a little bit nervous talking to you today, So
Speaker 1: thank you very much for being kind, and thank you
Speaker 1: for understanding the situation. Bob. Yeah, you know, it's happened before,
Speaker 1: usually with older generations. It's really sad. In any event,
Speaker 1: till next time. This is Bob Left stands