1972 ... four days in the making ...
started getting drum sounds on a Monday,
and we turned over the mixed masters that
Friday ... one of my favourite guess who
albums ... Kurt and I really "knitted" a
few good ones on here ... Heartbroken
Bopper, Get Your Ribbons On, Back To The
City ... and I had one of my better songs
here for the first time "Guns, Guns,
Guns"...
ROCKIN' REMEMBERED
Well, Rockin' was so fast it's a blur as
far as the actual recording of the
record. Man, I wish that had been
filmed, but there was no portable way of
capturing career travels in 1972.
Lil does all of that now ... the "life
capturer".
Rockin' began about noon on a Monday, as I
recall, and on Friday afternoon of that
same week we turned over master mixes to
RCA. Four days, including final
mixes ... wow ... I've heard of certain
singers being thrilled at getting an
entire verse of a final vocal in a week's
time ... el-a-tive-ray ...
Rockin' was the last one we did in
Chicago. Up there on the 12th floor
on North Wacker Drive right across from
the opera house. We'd stay at the
Executive House by those twin marina
towers, and walk along the river where
Capone's boys dumped things, turn left on
Wacker eventually and down the block to
the studio ... I always liked that walk
... real Chicago feel.
Kurt and I wrote the songs for Rockin'
without even thinking about it.
Heartbroken Bopper ... Kurt had the
other guys playin' the lead riff with him,
and Leskiw's part too. But they were
playing it on the off beats ...
syncopated. Good riff, played
stupidly, taking away from its own
power. It was I who suggested to
make it a caveman two and four. Just
play the riff and not be falsely
fancy. The world knows we can
probably play it in syncopation, but we
don't have to do it to prove that.
Just let it rock ... and we did.
I had a specific guy in mind when I sang
those words ... a guy who had ditched high
school even younger than I had, and went
right to work in a car wash. His
image in my mind's eye forged those words
about the bopper who didn't quite "make
it". Irony is, he's very successful
now, later in life. You'd never
believe the depths and heights and all
that space in between.
I remember having to ask our producer,
Jack Richardson about, "summa cum
laude". I remembered that it was a
phrase denoting very high distinction and
high praise, but I'd forgotten exactly
what it was and how to say it
correctly. We had to stop and look
it up in an old book with real paper
pages. It was 1972. We weren't
able to google it. There were no
computers. So "summa cum laude" it
became and everybody who really liked the
song really liked that reference.
Ribbons was truly a split writing
deal. Kurt would sometimes get the
guys goin' on Chevrier before I even
showed up. It wasn't that I was late
all the time, it's just that Kurt lived
only about a hundred yards down the street
from the studio. So he'd be there
way more than the rest of us.
I come in one day and they're doin' "get
your ribbons on, honey, get your ribbons
on ..." that whole deal is goin'
already. It's in C. I always
liked the climb from C to F to AB to BB to
C. So I told Kurt I liked it and
also told him it should go somewhere else
... another key for the verses. So I
came up with all that silly "vestibule"
stuff ... just rhythmics, that's all I was
chasing ... not writing the Taming of the
Shrew ... just rhythmics more than
anything. And why the hell was the
guy's girlfriend Angela joining the
football team anyway? And what
exactly was it that Angela's parents were
saying to him as he wiped his feet out in
the vestibule? I guess we'll never
know ...
The factory song ... out in the back of
our little world within walls on Chevrier,
there was a huge beet factory ... I guess
a refinery. Not that I ever asked a
hundred questions about it ... it belched
out this snow-white smoke for hours
sometimes, and when the sky was Manitoba
prairie blue, as it is so often, the sight
was beautiful. As horrendous as the
actual event of the pollution was, it
still had visual beauty, if you could
divorce the thoughts of toxins from the
visual. Kurt had those nice guitar
lines all worked out with Leskiw ... and I
had that whole "sad eyes" and "green
frame" and "islands" thing done way before
this. But I'd never had anything
really decent to go around those three
verses ... and Kurt had worked out some of
those nice harmonies on "smoke beet
factory". And there it was.
And one day Kale says ... hey man, how
about callin' it Smoke "Big" Factory?
And being the wannabee hippies we sorta
were, Kurt and I put his name under
it. That's the only reason his
name's there ... for that one word. The
song is really Kurt's and mine ... that's
a true story. I still like the
harmonies, the vocals. And for a brief few
moments at the end, Leskiw and I are
actually playing nicely off each other ...
not bad piano feel on the end out.
Arrividerci Girl was something I
almost made up on the spot at home.
Finished it off the night of a taped
studio after-show jam in Nashville around
1971, with Kurt on drums ... just tryna be
Fats Domino. Simple as that.
It's in G, although I don't know if I
could sing it like that in G today in
2011. I actually do play a hint of
the piano solo from Arrividerci Girl
at the instrumental vamp at the beginning
of American Woman these days on
stage. Oh brother. Actually I
still like this cut, just the feel of it.
Guns ... well it's always been a
favourite. Probably the best bass
Jim Kale ever played on any Guess Who
record, and Kurt and Greg just meshed so
nicely. Kurt's garbage can alley way
fuzz and Greg's teardrop wah wah sluggin'
it out against each other ... it's one of
the most superb moments on all of the RCA
Guess Who albums.
Running Bear ... live off the
floor. No overdubs. When we
did it, it was largely for fun, not really
thinking it would kick off side two.
When Johnny Preston's version hit the
airwaves in Winnipeg, I was 11. It
was 1959 and Running Bear had
rocketed to number one on the CKY
charts. That same winter I got to
travel up north with our Olympic rink
hockey team to Bissett, which is actually
an entry point to Nopiming Provincial
Park. Back then it seemed like the
"far north" to me, but as I look on the
map today, it's not really that far up
there. And I had one of those CKY
top fifty lists with me in my coat pocket
and I was showin' it to Ken Fedoruk on the
bus and Running Bear was in the number one
slot. So it was always special to
me.
Jack, our producer, thought we were silly,
but there was starting to be visits with
the white lady and he couldn't really
control the material or the writing
anymore. Not that he ever did, but
let's just say, back in the days when
Randy and I were doing all the writing, we
were probably more likely to take any kind
of "direction" from Jack, than Kurt or I
would ever have been ... truthfully.
Back to the City was another real
co-writing product. Kurt had that
whole first verse about "sailor and the
soda sunlight" ... chords, words,
riffs. It was a great place to
start. But I'd been kinda screamin'
that "beware of lies" thing around 89
Lansdowne for a while. Both pieces
were in A, so I just sang it once before
his soda sunlight verse and he liked the
way it fit. So there we were ... I
wrote the second verse of lyrics,
mirroring the cadence and rhythms of his
first verse. "Tinker tailor sailor
mailer" ... I wanted my line to be taken
as "mailer" meaning Norman Mailer, the
author. But I don't think anybody
did ... oh brother ... who cares?
Nashville Sneakers. Kurt and
I both bought sneakers from this place in
downtown Nashville that sold shoes to
hospital orderlies and nurses. Kinda
"extra supportive" stuff, which back in
1971 was not "all the rage". Our
sneakers were dye-washed brown and beige,
patches of colour like on a cow ... that's
all it took to bring on those
lyrics. I'd been fiddling with that
chord progression, slipping the home key
back and forth from C to G for a while in
89 Lansdowne. Just sang
gobbledeegook rhythms about a blue cougar
and washin' yer sneakers and leavin' 'em
out in the sun to dry. Wasn't
exactly writing War and Peace ... more
interested in "feel" than anything else on
that cut. Still kinda like listening
to Nashville Sneakers once in a
blue moon.
Herbert's A Loser ... it's mainly
there because Greg was kickin' up a fuss
about not gettin' more of his songs on the
record. Geez ... it never
stops. Everybody thinks they're
George Harrison. Harrison would have
been a strong leader in any other
band. But with JL and PM there, come
on ... consider the reality. Anyhow,
Herbert's is not a bad cut ... and
Greg actually encouraged me to do a bit of
harp playing there. Personally, I
think it's the best harp I've ever played
on a studio cut. Soaked the harp
that day in lukewarm water and played it
through a very thin felt cloth. Greg
sings this quite cool ... credit where
credit is due ... but the ending went on
way too long. As my friend Mort "the
brove" Broverman said to me the day after
the big Luxton School reunion ... "Well,
it's never perfect". And he's right
... wise stuff, brove.
Hi Rocker I must admit was my
idea. The piecing together of stuff,
making it a little theatre piece.
MacLean and I were constantly, and I mean
constantly, listening to the Firesign
Theatre, so I wanted to do more "fantasy"
stuff all the time. I remember
showing Kurt Don't You Want Me for
the first time and he loved all that stuff
about burning the crops and killing the
sister, cause it was all innocent sounding
melody and simple community club
rock. But this musical voice was
threatening all these outrageous
things. Jack and Brian managed to
overspill some echo to link the musical
pieces and I out and out stole the ending
vocal shenanigans from Fats Waller.
RCA had sent me several archival albums of
Fats Waller and he ended one of his albums
with that "bong a zing, rotten ditten doo
doo dong ee dong, this is the end of the
record ..." Stole it immediately.
So there you have it. Rockin'
slightly remembered. Many have asked
about #10 and that's another thing
entirely ... we can revisit that another
time.
Be well, people.
Burton
Cummings 2014
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