“Sparkle someone else's eyes”
- American Woman/The Guess Who
I love to hear the backstory of how songs come into existence. Here's one about how a broken guitar string birthed a classic.
I think a good many rock and roll nerds are aware that Randy Bachman was the founder of two enormously successful bands, The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Phenomenal. Bachman was born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. Coming of age in the late fifties, early sixties, he was, like many young fellows at the time, an aspiring rocker. A side note: He happened to be friends with another guitar playing kid his age from Winnipeg, Neil Young.
In 1964, Bachman was in a band called Chad Allen and the Expressions. Due to some legal concerns about the use of the name “Expressions” they ended up just putting the name “Guess Who” on a single they were sending out to radio stations in hopes of getting airplay. The name stuck.
In 1966, a keyboard-playing singer named Burton Cummings joined the band and that was the key ingredient. By 1969 the songwriting team of Bachman-Cummings had scored three big hits, These Eyes, Laughing, and No Time.
Like all hard-working rock and rollers, then and now, they were constantly on the road, banging away in support of their albums. In Randy Bachman's memoir, Vinyl Tap Stories, he tells how one of the band's legendary songs came to be.
I remember we were booked to play a gig in Kitchener, Ontario, in the late summer of 1969. But it wasn't a concert like the ones we were doing in those days, with just one set. This was a dance like in the old days, where we'd play three sets of dance music. We were excited because we could play our Beatles, Doors, and Animal songs. So we'd been on stage for a while when I broke a guitar string on my Les Paul. In those days I didn't have a spare guitar or a guitar tech to change it for me. I had to do it myself. So I said to the guys, “We have to take a break.” The guys left the stage and I stayed there to change my string and tune it up. We would sometimes signal each other that the break was over by one of us going up on stage and starting to play the first song of the next set. We'd all recognize the number and come on stage and join the others. I started to play a chord pattern, “dum dum dadada dada dada dada dum dum dadada dada da dum,” and Garry Peterson and Jim Kale came onstage and joined right in behind me on the riff. We were looking to jam a bit. I started to solo over their rhythm then went back to the riff again. We just kept going and going and really digging it.
Burton Cummings was outside the arena having a cigarette when someone said to him, “Aren't you playing with the band?” He looked up and didn't recognize the song, so he ran up onstage yelling at me.
“What are we doing?”
I replied, “We're jamming in E. Play something.”
Burton grabbed his harmonica and played a solo, then picked up his flute. Then he did a piano solo. I took another guitar solo. He came towards me on stage and I yelled at him, “Sing something!” As he stepped towards the microphone, the first words he uttered were “American woman, stay away from me.” Right off the top of his head. He sang it maybe four times, I soloed again, he sang it again, and we ended the song.
The place went absolutely nuts.
And, Ta-Da!… American Woman! They fleshed out the rest of the lyrics shortly after, but the embryo of the song appeared out of nowhere. A classic was born by way of mystery, magic and a broken guitar string.
One last thing, Neither The Guess Who or Bachman-Turner Overdrive is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That tells you everything you need to know about that bogus outfit.