A$# 012 Guess Who | American Woman

With this album in 1970, The Guess Who really hit their stride. It was the apex - and the end - of the classic Bachman / Cummings / Peterson / Kale lineup era, and of the Bachman / Cummings songwriting collaboration.

They'd already scored big in both Canada and the US with singles from their first two RCA albums. But the Prairie guys wanted to put out an album that would really deliver a consistent tone and feel - whereas Wheatfield Soul and Canned Wheat had presented more of a pastiche of song styles.

From the powerhouse title song opening the album to its reprise at the end, the album is a masterful, cohesive work of Canuck rock.

The song American Woman became a rock anthem here in Canada, and went to no. 1 in the US too. What had begun as a jam at a concert in Kitchener, Ontario morphed into a swipe at American political and social developments.

The group revisited two songs recorded earlier - No Time and When Friends Fall Out - making them sound even better than their originals. No Time was also a hugely successful single. Of course there's also the famous No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature, a melding of a Randy song with a Burton song; the medley has become a classic rock staple.

In addition to these three big tracks, there's lots more too. There's no filler on American Woman. There's the introspective Talisman, the cool instrumental 969 (The Oldest Man), and two more excellent numbers, 8:15 and Proper Stranger.

The Guess Who were really on a roll. But then Randy left the group. The Guess Who enjoyed another five years of success, and Randy topped the charts with BTO. What would have happened if this lineup of the group had stayed together, though? Of course we won't know, although they had actually started on the follow-up to AW, with seven songs that were released later as The Way They Were. (It's the only glimpse we get of what might have been; and it's a great glimpse too.) And we have been fortunate to have several Bachman / Cummings rapprochements over the years, both within Guess Who reunions and outside of the group.

The bonus track on the disc is a cut recorded during the AW era, Got To Find Another Way. But its inclusion on the 2000 AW remaster was not the first-ever release of the song. Burton rerecorded it for his 1977 album My Own Way To Rock, and Randy played guitar on it, during one of the aforementioned Bachman-Cummings rapprochements.

Track listing:
1. American Woman
2. No Time
3. Talisman
4. No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature
5. 969 (The Oldest Man) [Instrumental]
6. When Friends Fall Out
7. 8:15
8. Proper Stranger
9. Humpty's Blues/American Woman (Epilogue)
plus bonus track on CD:
10. Got to Find Another Way