THE GUESS WHO Guitarist RANDY BACHMAN Talks Classic "American Woman" - "It Was Written Live On Stage; I Broke A String And Was Tuning Up My Guitar" (Video)
June 8, 2018, 6 years ago
Lead guitarist and founding member of The Guess Who, Randy Bachman, came by the boom 97.3 studios to play "American Woman" on vinyl Randy talks about how the song came to be in a curling arena in Kitchener, Ontario and how what started as a tuning of a guitar turned into a massive hit for the band.
In an interview with Randy Bachman in Songfacts, he called the song "an anti-war protest song," explaining that when they came up with it on stage, the band and the audience had a problem with the Vietnam War. Said Bachman: "We had been touring the States. This was the late '60s, one time at the US/Canada border in North Dakota they tried to draft us and send us to Vietnam. We were back in Canada, playing in the safety of Canada where the dance is full of draft dodgers who've all left the States."
Burton Cummings (vocalist) insists "American Woman" has nothing to do with American pride. "What was on my mind was that girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous," Cummings told the Toronto Star in 2014. "When I said 'American woman, stay away from me,' I really meant 'Canadian woman, I prefer you.' It was all a happy accident."
