LYRICS
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Handwritten lyrics and notes appearing on this page
are courtesy of Burton Cummings.
** Please click on
the image for a large, readable PDF
version of the lyrics that will open in
a separate file. **
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These Eyes
Randy actually started
These Eyes by himself, apparently
in Regina, so he says. He
had that piano riff, and everyone
always thought that was mine, but
no. I was impressed that a
guitar player would come up with a
piano riff that cool, but he
wanted to call the song These
Arms and I thought These
Eyes was better. And
the only words he had were the
first couple of lines. That
fast part in the middle that keeps
going up a whole step was
mine. We wanted something
dramatic for the center, so there
it was. This is the only
sheet of paper where these words
were written down during the
writing. We threw it
together in about a half hour,
once we sat down at my mom's piano
on Bannerman.
Burton Cummings 2012 |
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Laughing
| Randy and I actually
threw the song together on our old
highway bus, waiting for the ferry
from Vancouver to Victoria.
But later that day or the next, we
got together to finalize it and
Randy told me to write down the
words ... and here's that piece of
paper. I can see now that we
didn't change very much ...
there's nothing crossed out and
re-vamped. The song happened
very quickly and effortlessly. |
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No Time
The very first
scribblings of No Time.
I see now that the lyrics changed
very little on the subsequent
recordings. Sometimes the very
first initial idea is the best way
to go. Sometimes songs can
get ruined by "overworking" or
"over thinking" them. As
time flies by, I'm more grateful
than ever that I saved all this
stuff. This is the original
draft of no time, scribbled down
on Bannerman at my mother's old
piano. Randy was there
beside me on the piano bench.
We were truly co-writing
this...and once again, as with
Laughing, I see that we didn't
change much later for the official
recording. Once again, nothing is
crossed out and rewritten.
Burton Cummings 2012 |
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No Sugar Tonight
| Very old piece of
paper i found in one of my
binders. It's both Randy
Bachman's and my writing, and
we're working on the very first
basic stages of No Sugar
Tonight. There aren't
many of these tidbits still around
which show both Randy's and my
handwriting on the same page ... a
few, but not many. Burton Cummings 2012 |
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New Mother Nature |
Share The Land
Originally titled 479 College Avenue
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Hand Me Down World |
Broken
(The Best of the
Better)
Word ideas for Broken,
quickly scribbled down while Kurt
was playing guitar riffs and
chords for a "bed". Funny,
now I see that the words didn't
change much from the very first
jot-down.
Burton Cummings 2012
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Orly
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Hang On To Your Life
Let Me Sing A Tune
It says April 11, '73
so that means I scribbled this
down on Handsart Ave. This is the
original entry, yellowed with age,
but I personally still like.
Burton Cummings 2011
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Albert Flasher
I finished Albert
Flasher while still in Honolulu
with my "brains kicked in".
Must be true, it says so right
there in the margin in my own
handwriting. I'd written the name
Albert Flasher down on a
tiny piece of paper in Los
Angeles. When we got to Hawaii, I
found it again and scribbled down
these words. I'd been using that
piano lick as a "warm up" for my
fingers for at least a year (much
like Ed Norton on the Honeymooners
would "warm up" with Swanee
River) before I ever thought
of using it in a song.
Finally, after the "Hawaiian
altercation" I was motivated to
finish it, or at least to
try. This is the only place
I ever wrote down the lyrics for Albert...glad I got rid of "MIT MOT MAJOR" and
"FOON CREAM TAKER"...
Burton Cummings 2012
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Do You Miss Me Darling |
Runnin' Back to Saskatoon |
Life In the Bloodstream |
Sour Suite |
Animals
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First stages of Runnin' Back to Saskatoon, scribbled
down in New York airport, waiting
for flight to Paris. Feb 13, 1972.
No "home grown/Hong Kong" part
yet, and it's not called Saskatoon.
Kurt's nickname was "LAERTIS" and
that was shortened to
"LAERT". And I thought of it
as "Laert's Guitar Lick" ... just
rambled on about gas stations and
libraries and hospitals and stuff.
Burton Cummings 2011 |
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| It says March 27,
(1971?) Florida so I guess that's
where I scribbled this, but I made
up most of those words in
Nashville one night in a studio
jam with Kurt on drums. |
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| Long before the ROAD
FOOD album was recorded, I was
working on a song with silly
lyrics called Animals.
It ended up being part of Attilla's Blues, after we added stuff
that some of the other guys came
up with. We mashed some pieces
together, and I think it was
Wallace that suggested we call it
Attilla's Blues because it
was a "song for the masses".
Not quite sure what that means
today, forty years later ... |
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