Guess Who’s Singer Reclaims the Name

By Bill Forman

Hearing the classic-rock hits “These Eyes” and “American Woman” for the first time, many listeners would be hard-pressed to guess they were both by the same band. While the first sounds like the kind of British Invasion ballad that would bring teenage fans to tears, the latter evokes the raw power and borderline banshee vocals of early Led Zeppelin.

Burton Cummings, the chameleonic singer, songwriter and keyboardist of The Guess Who, will play those signature songs on his current “60th Anniversary Hits Tour.” Fans are also likely to hear Guess Who favorites like “No Time,” “Laughing,” “Clap for the Wolfman,” “Hand Me Down World,” “Share the Land” and lots more.

When it comes to the band’s fondness for British rock, Cummings recalls how he and guitarist/co-writer Randy Bachman were glued to their radios as kids growing up in Winnipeg, Canada. 

“I would get up at nine every Sunday morning to hear ‘Deno Corrie Presents Music From Around the World,’” said Cummings of the Winnipeg radio personality who is credited with being the first DJ to play a Beatles song (“Please Please Me”) on North American radio. 

“We would hear stuff by Cliff Richards & the Shadows, from England. We’d hear Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, who were also from England,” he said. “The radio was what encouraged us to become songwriters.” (The Guess Who went on to record a cover of Johnny Kidds’ 1960 hit, “Shakin’ All Over.”)

Guess … Who?

As it turns out, Cummings’ current 32-date American tour is only one of his reasons for fans to celebrate these days. Another is the release of A Few Good Moments, Cummings’ first solo album in 16 years. 

While many musicians who’ve been at it as long as he has can’t hold a candle to their past accomplishments, Cummings’ songwriting and vocal abilities remain undiminished on the 17-song release. Granted, he doesn’t use his “American Woman” voice much these days, but Cummings and his current bandmates have played together for more than a decade and have no problem pulling it off live.

Fall 2023 also saw the reissue of Cummings’ past solo albums on CD and vinyl. Among them is the eponymous 1976 debut album that included the Top 10 single “Stand Tall,” which was kept from the No. 1 position on Billboard’s Adult Contemporary chart by the Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love.”

But when Cummings and his band perform at Luther Burbank Center on Tuesday, Jan. 21, it won’t be as The Guess Who. Cummings and Bachman only recently regained control of The Guess Who trademark after settling a protracted dispute with the band’s other surviving members, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson.

Their lawsuit, filed in 2023, claimed that Kale obtained the trademark in 1986 without their knowledge or consent. It also alleged that the group continued to perform as The Guess Who, even after Kale retired in 2016 and Peterson rarely performed with them.

Throughout the complaint, Cummings and Bachman refer to their former bandmates not as THE DEFENDANTS, which is standard practice, but as THE COVER BAND. It’s a nice jibe, but Cummings says it wasn’t about that.

“We just got tired of these people pretending they were the guys that cut the records,” he said. “You know, they would go to meet-and-greet parties with copies of our albums in their hands. It was silly. So this is not about satisfaction and revenge or anything. This is simply about what’s right.”

Now that Cummings and Bachman can tour as The Guess Who, how soon is that likely to happen?

“I don’t know,” Cummings said. “Randy’s very into the Bachman Turner Overdrive legacy, and he’s out there with his son, Tal. And I have my own band, so I’ve got my own way to rock. It may happen and it may not. We’ll see what the future brings. But in the meantime, I’m very happy with my band and my new album.”

‘American Woman’

Either way, Cummings won’t be able to leave the stage without performing “American Woman,” the band’s biggest hit. But the lyrics, which he first improvised onstage, caused controversy.

“We had been touring the States a lot on the strength of ‘These Eyes’ and ‘Laughing,’” Cummings recalled. “We would play five cities a week, and we noticed how the American girls seemed like they were more in a hurry to grow up, to wear more makeup and wear sexier clothes than the girls back in Canada. 

“So we were playing two shows, and they’d start the second show without me. But when I heard Randy playing that riff, I just ran out onstage and started making up whatever came out of my head,” he added. “And so I’m looking out at the crowd and I’m thinking, ‘Canadian woman, I prefer you,” but what came out of my head was ‘American woman, stay away from me.’ It was never meant to be political.”

It could be thought of as a Canadian answer song to the Beach Boys’ “California Girls,” he said, although those “I don’t need your war machines / I don’t need your ghetto scenes” lines did stand out.

“Those were me just trying to make things rhyme on the spot, like one of those Bob Dylan moments, you know, stream of consciousness,” Cummings said. “The Vietnam War was at a bad point of escalation right then, so that’s what came out. And all those factors combined made it a No. 1 record. Very strange, very sweet. I’ll tell you this much, man: We sure didn’t see it coming.”

Burton Cummings continues to perform his many hits and material from A Few Good Moments on this current tour, and is delighted by the responses he’s getting.

“One of the things that every singer hopes to hear is that they still sound like they did on the records,” Cummings said. “And that’s been my goal for decades. I’m coming up on 77 years old, and people are still telling me, ‘Hey man, you still sound like the Burton I grew up on.’ And I’m really happy to hear that.”

Burton Cummings and His Band play Tuesday, Jan. 21, at Luther Burbank Center for the Arts, 50 Mark West Springs Road, Santa Rosa, at 7:30pm. Tickets $65 and $110 plus fees. lutherburbankcenter.org.