Apparently Saturday night, Oct. 30th, TRX used a CD of Burton Cummings live to simulate a "live concert event", fooling many listeners into logging on and listening to the 1997 "Up Close And Alone" CD. Apparently this was not an attempt on TRX's part to trick people into listening; however, their notice of the concert didn't give much of a clue as to its source. This really stirred up a hornet's nest among BC fans.

This is, according to the TRX folks, a standing tradition of a "fantasy" concert concept, and just meant to be an enjoyable experience where you play along with the concept. OK, I get it now, and no further scorn shall be heaped! But, to TRX and all others, be up-front and we'll get it, and we'll probably go along for the ride.

Next time, it would really be special to hear a well-done bootleg tape, of which I'm sure there are many available through clientele of the BC fan club.

By JOHN KENDLE

It's on hold for now. That was the word yesterday on a pending Guess Who reunion, according to a story by Sun Media reporter Paul Cantin. Lorne Saifer, Burton Cummings' manager, told Cantin Wednesday the group had agreed only to keep talking about a reunion after a summit meeting held prior to the band's induction to the Prairie Music Hall Of Fame last Sunday.

Cummings, Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Gary Peterson have been discussing a reunion tour since they played four songs together to close the Pan Games in August. Interest in booking the act has been expressed from all corners of the globe but, as Cantin pointed out, there's a lot of baggage to clear out of the way before the four men play onstage again.

Still, the quartet seemed friendly and happy enough at last weekend's awards show and at a Hall Of Fame reception at The Keg before the big event, Bachman and Cummings were happily signing autographs and posing for pictures. (Saifer and Bachman manager Marty Kramer, meanwhile, spent much of their time in deep conversation and, at one point, took a walk around the parking lot, seemingly in animated discussion.)

While teetotaler Bachman didn't attend the post-show bash at the Skyview Ballroom in the Ramada Marlborough hotel, his three former bandmates held court at a table near the bar for most of the evening and Kale spent much of his time chatting with Greg Leskiw, the SwingSoniq guitarist who was one the two guitarists drafted into the Guess Who when Bachman left in 1970 (the other was Kurt Winter).

But the Guess Who's reunion fortunes may have been foretold by an incident outside the Walker Theatre after the Hall Of Fame induction ceremonies. Clutching their brand new Plexiglas trophies, with a wheat sheaf encased within, the four band members were hustling into their vehicles with their managers when -- according to Cummings, who was telling the story at the post-show party -- Saifer pulled open a car door and knocked Bachman's trophy out of his hand.

"It shattered into bits on the ground and Lorne was saying 'It's OK, it's OK, I'll get you another one, Randy.' "Can you believe it?"

Given this band's history, a tale like that is easy to swallow.

A reunion? That's the story to believe only when it happens.

 Saturday, October 9, 1999

Nothing resolved at Guess Who meeting

By PAUL CANTIN Senior Reporter, JAM! Showbiz

The proposed reunion of Canadian rock legends The Guess Who is on hold for now pending further meetings and negotiations, says Burton Cummings' manager.

Speaking from his Los Angeles office Wednesday, Lorne Saifer confirmed that Cummings and fellow Guess Who founding members Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Gary Peterson met with Saifer and Bachman's manager Marty Kramer at a Winnipeg hotel for several hours Saturday. The band was in town for the Prairie Music Awards.

When the meeting was over, they emerged with nothing more than a promise to keep talking about a reunion tour. "As of now, we have not agreed to anything. That's the most honest way you could put it," Saifer told JAM! "At this point, there is nothing on the books. There are no confirmed dates they are going to do. We are going to look at it a little further down the road." The complex personal and financial issues surrounding the group need to be resolved, and that will take time, he said. "There are all kinds of things you need to look at. There is physical, emotional, legal and there is financial. They all have to be visited and you have to say: 'What is it going to take to do this right?' That's why there is no answer yet."

Offers have been streaming in from across the globe, and in the wake of the quartet's four-song reunion at this summer's Pan Am Games closing ceremonies -- as well as Lenny Kravitz's hit cover of "American Woman" and rapper Maestro's sampling of "These Eyes" -- interest in the group is at a high. "There's lots of offers. There's lots of interest, from everywhere," Saifer said. "Australia, Europe, Japan. There is all kinds of interest in the band." "But (the members of the Guess Who) are all different entities. They all have different needs and desires and goals and careers. So we'll see. All the things have to come together to make it right for everybody. And we'll address those issues in the not-too-distant future."

He also dismissed suggestions that relations between the group members have been frosty. "There is no animosity between anybody. There were only six people in the meeting: The four members of the Guess Who, myself and (Bachman's manager) Marty Kramer. They were very amiable meetings and very open discussions," he said. But Bachman recently told Billboard magazine's Canadian correspondent Larry LeBlanc that before any reunion, he intended to ask Cummings to relinquish publishing rights to songs co-written with his bandmates. Saifer said he was familiar with Bachman's comments but was adamant song publishing is not an issue in the reunion talks. "There are no outstanding issues. (The publishing matter) was resolved three or four years ago," Saifer said. "It has been resolved. It is that simple. It has been resolved a long time ago. The resolution was that Burton has the copyrights. The courts decided that." When asked how to interpret Bachman's comments, Saifer said: "I don't know. You'll have to call him and ask him." Contacted at his B.C. home yesterday, Bachman was terse: "I have no comment."

Bachman told Billboard he also intended to lobby for the group to release a double-disc of Guess Who rarities and a DVD live compilation. There had also been vague talk of returning to the studio to work on new tunes, but said Saifer: "I think the first thing that has to be addressed is whether there are going to be any dates done."

Meanwhile, Cummings, whose '70s solo catalogue was recently reissued on CD, will be taking a stroll through his back pages next month. Saifer confirmed the singer will appear on a 90 minute "Intimate and Interactive" special on MuchMoreMusic, Nov. 1.

On the heels of Burton Cummings' CD release, there's talk of a band tour

By JIM SLOTEK

Toronto Sun

It would be considered rude in some circles for a man to go rooting in another man's shoulder bag. But Burton Cummings can be forgiven his impetuousness.

The erstwhile frontman for The Guess Who has just had his entire '70s solo oeuvre released on CD for the first time by Sony, and he hadn't even seen the album covers. Spotting them in my bag, he made a grab. "Wow, look at these!" His eponymous solo album following the breakup of The Guess Who featured Burton on the cover wearing a lounge-lizard-era patterned suit made of velour and a shirt whose lapels had the wingspan of a pteranodon.

Does he still have the shirt? "No, and I don't have that suit either," Cummings says, staring at the image of his '70s self. "This is ridiculous. I would never show up anywhere like this. This was 23 years ago, and I was a little bit of a victim of management...," he says, continuing to stare and then breaking into a grin, "... and a victim of fashion too, lemme tell ya!"

'70s look is back

I don't have the heart to tell him this would be a retro-hip outfit today. Life is confusing enough for those of us over 40.

The eras are close enough to almost overlap, but Cummings' second career -- marked by schmaltzy but likeable, feverishly rendered radio hits such as I'm Scared, Break It To Them Gently, and My Own Way To Rock -- happened before the era of CDs. And although all but the last few Guess Who albums are available on disc, Cummings' albums haven't been.

"The first time I ever saw a CD, I was co-hosting the Junos with Alan Thicke. We were doing our intros and he held one up and he said, 'Folks, this is the new wave of recorded music.' I remember, it was the Toto disc, the red one with Rosanna. And I said, 'Hey! Lemme see that.' "

These are heady times for a guy whose heyday coincided with Pierre Trudeau's. The money still trickles in every time someone covers or samples one of Cummings' hits (Lenny Kravitz doing American Woman, Maestro riffing on These Eyes). Cummings has been touring heavily with his one-man, one-piano show, he's in the early stages of recording an album with Alanis Morissette producer Glen Ballard, and there were rave reviews for The Guess Who's reunion set to close the Pan-Am Games in Cummings' home town of Winnipeg this past August.

"Yeah, that went pretty well," he says. "Twenty minutes before we went on, it finally dawned on us that there were about 300 million people watching, and I was pretty nervous. But once we plugged in and got going with No Time, it was so great. And the reaction from the crowd was amazing.

Rehearsal filmed for special

"We rehearsed three days and everything was filmed (for a future TV special) -- the original confrontation, all the backstage stuff, the initial meeting. The four of us (Cummings, Randy Bachman, Garry Peterson and Jim Kale) had not been in a room together for years."

Um, did he say confrontation? "Oh, I didn't mean anything by that," he says, understanding the reference to longstanding rumours of bad blood between the band members. "We had no more or less friction among the four of us than any other rock 'n' roll band. The publishing battles, the split-up, the personnel changes -- it sells papers, and that's it."

In fact, he has fielded offers for the band to tour North America and Japan next year. "We'd have to put together a two-hour show. It's all a matter of logistics, a lot of money involved."

Credits made them rich

Not that that's his concern, or Bachman's, since they share songwriting credits on the classic Guess Who hits.

"Randy's very wealthy and I've done okay. Jim and Garry are in a different position. There's a different income stream for the guys that wrote the song. That's just a fact of life."

As he tells it, his main motivation is a chance to do justice to the hits.

"I've seen people do their hits like into a gumbo of a medley at almost twice the speed of the recorded tracks, and it's almost like they wanna get them out of the way.

"But that's not the reason people come to those shows. I was raised on 2 1/2-minute singles by Sam Cooke and Fats Domino. Those 2 1/2-minute songs are signposts in people's lives."

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The Guess Who

Originally: Allan & The Silvertones, Chad Allan & The Expressions. Cummings replaced Allan as lead singer, 1966. Hits: Shakin' All Over (with Chad Allan), These Eyes, American Woman, Laughing, Undun, No Time, No Sugar Tonight, Share The Land, Hand Me Down World, Albert Flasher, Clap For The Wolfman, Dancin' Fool.

Burton Cummings albums (available on Sony Music): Burton Cummings, Dream Of A Child, Woman Love, My Own Way To Rock.

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Tuesday, September 28, 1999

By KAREN BLISS -- Jam! Music

TORONTO -- Burton Cummings is holding out for Glen Ballard to produce his next solo album.

The former Guess Who singer has met with the man whose production and songwriting contribution to Alanis Morissette's "Jagged Little Pill" helped the Canadian native sell an unprecendented 29-million albums worldwide.

"I've just had some meetings with Glen, who is possibly the hottest producer in the world right now," says Cummings, who lives in Los Angeles where Ballard is based. " 'Jagged Little Pill' is in the Guinness Book Of Records already. Here's this 22-year-old girl from Ottawa, comes along in one album, surpasses Barbra Streisand, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Annie Lennox, all the great divas of pop music, outsells them all. That's astounding. "I've known Glen for a while," Cummings continues. "Glen has been around for many, many years. He worked with Richard Perry (producer of Cummings' first two solo albums) on all The Pointer Sisters' records during the years. He's done some tremendous work. He's got a tremendous track record. Plus, he plays piano and guitar and he's a writer. It's a perfect marriage, I think."

Cummings was in Toronto last week to promote the reissue of his first four solo albums -- 1976's "Burton Cummings", 1977's "My Own Way To Rock", 1978's "Dream Of A Child" and 1980's "Woman Love" -- on CD. He is currently between record deals but has written some 50 new songs in which he believes. "If you pare all that down to the best 10 or 12, I think I've got a pretty good shot at one more kick at the cat," he says.

"(Glen) would produce this and he would kind of polish up some of the songs that he thought needed some work. There's one song in particular that he really likes. It's a song about gambling called 'Black Jack Fever.' And he thinks it's a smash record. I'm in the door already with Glen," Cummings adds. "He's so busy. This is the guy who's sought after from all corners of the globe. The very fact that he would meet with me is quite flattering to me, and I would love to work with him, so I've been a little hesitant in pursuing other producers. I will be patient to work with Glen."

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Thursday September 23, 1999

By KAREN BLISS -- Jam! Music

Below, Burton Cummings talks about the bonus tracks on each album reissue:

BURTON CUMMINGS (1976):

"Blossom" (demo) - I originally heard it done by Georgie Fame, one of my favourite singers from England. I don't think he wrote it. I don't even know where the song came from, because BMI asked me who's the writer and I said, 'I couldn't tell ya.' They had to do a search on their computer.

"I'm Scared" (demo) - It ended up being a pretty big hit record for me. Before I ever had signed with CBS, I had written that song. I wrote that song when I was still in The Guess Who, actually. Then, when I left The Guess Who, there was this tiny little studio in Winnipeg, on the third floor of an old Victorian house. It was called Road Studios and I would spend every night there, from one in the morning 'til eight in the morning, for weeks and weeks, after I left The Guess Who because I didn't know where my future was going and I hadn't signed a deal yet. And out of those sessions came that version of 'I'm Scared.' It's just piano, bass and drums. It's very naked. But there's a certain innocence to it that I really like, almost more than the finished record, 'cause the finished record had a big 20-voice choir and 30 strings and we used about 46 tracks. This is just a little 8-track piano, bass, drums and vocals thing.

MY OWN WAY TO ROCK (1977):

"Lay It On The Line" (live) and "Charlemagne" (live) - They were supposed to be part of a live album, which got scrapped eventually because some of the drumming was not up to snuff. You can fix everything, except drums. You can't fix drums because drums are the foundation of every cut, so that was supposed to be a double four-sided vinyl album and it never surfaced. But those are culled from different sessions, some in Hamilton, some in Los Angeles, and some in Detroit. There's still a pile of stuff from those sessions that have never came out. I have about 30 live tracks, and we were going through some of those and the two that they picked sounded pretty decent, so we decided to put those on My Own Way To Rock. Those two fit well with the feel of My Own Way To Rock, whereas the first album was more syrupy and softer. My Own Way To Rock was a bit more kick-ass album, so they actually fit better on there.

DREAM OF A CHILD (1978):

"Sweet Nothin's" - I had always loved the Brenda Lee song. Unfortunately, the version that's here is not quite as finished as it should be. We were going to have a wailing sax solo and some guitars along with the sax and we never got around to doing that in the original sessions, and that was way back in the '70s. But the vocal was pretty good and the feel was pretty good. It's an old Brenda Lee song from 1959 or 1960. (Ed. note: It was 1960.) I remember seeing her do it on the Ed Sullivan Show when she was about 12 or 13, this tiny little girl with this big voice, sort of like Alannah Myles, a real screamer, this girl. And so I liked the vocal. It's kind of a funky version. It's just a little bit bare. But it's not bad.

"Wild Child" - That was a song I wrote during the big disco era of the late-'70s, when most of the music was just horrendous, I thought personally. It was all just tripe. And yet, for some reason, I wrote that in that era, and it's kind of like a dance tune, but not really. But we heard it again and the vocal was pretty good. It's about this young, would-be groupie girl who goes to a concert and tries to impress the singer and then he flies off and that's the end of that. It's very innocent and naive, but that was a whole other era on Earth, on this planet (laughs). I'm not trying to make these things the hippest of the hip. I just want them to be an honest representation of a certain era in my life and a certain era in music. That's the reason we picked that one.

WOMAN LOVE (1980):

"Vocals On The Boat" - It actually was a flip side of a single at one time, which I liked very much. That's my favourite of all the bonus tracks. It was perfectly finished. I wouldn't have changed anything.

"Daddy's On The Road" - Here again, it's not quite as complete as it should be, but the groove is cool. The music track is almost like The Doors. It's Wurlitzer piano on vibrato and a really vibrato-laced guitar. It's just about a rock 'n' roll family that travels. My friend Ian Gardiner and I wrote that one time, and that would have been on the Heart album, but for some reason, we ran out of room. CDs hadn't come along yet, where you could put 76 minutes on one CD. You were really limited to about 28, 29 minutes on one side of a vinyl album, so we squashed as much as we could and couldn't put everything that we'd recorded on. So those two are probably the two best bonus tracks, "Daddy's On The Road" and "Vocals On The Boat".

MICHAEL CRABB - The Arts Report (email)

The Guess Who blazed the trail for other Prairie bands that followed after them. WINNIPEG - The Guess Who will be the first band inducted into the new Prairie Music Hall of Fame. The organizers of the inaugural Prairie Music Awards made the announcement yesterday.

J.P. Ellson, the president of the Prairie Music Alliance, says it's about time the members of The Guess Who were recognized for blazing the trail many other Prairie bands would later follow.

"They were the first band from the Prairies," says Ellson, "That made people sit up and notice."

Burton Cummings, the lead singer of The Guess Who, says he will be at the Prairie Music Awards in October and there's even talk the surviving members of the group may perform, just as they did for the closing of the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg.

Organizers of the Prairie Music Awards hope the new event will help build a better profile for musicians from the great plains just as the East Coast Music Awards have for musicians from Atlantic Canada.

Offers are pouring in - from Cuba, from Japan, from the United States of America. Hundreds of millions of people all around the world caught the Guess Who playing the closing ceremonies at the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg.

Singer Burton Cummings says he's game to take it all the way to a full-blown reunion.

"I'll be the first one in line if the guys really want to put a two-hour show together and go out on tour," he says, on the phone from Winnipeg. "I'll do it. Absolutely."

While acrimony between Cummings and band founder Randy Bachman kept it from happening before, the Pan-Am Games was obviously the catalyst for them to bury the hatchet and focus on what's really important.

"I hadn't had much contact with the other three guys, so I didn't know how everyone's attitudes would be," Cummings says. "Randy and I have had better luck than Jim (Kale) and Garry (Peterson) since the Guess Who days, and there's always a little bit of animosity or jealousy, and it happens in every single band. Not everybody can write all the songs. There's a difference in income, a difference in lifestyle, and I didn't know really how it would all be. But once the four of us were on the stage at the rehearsal hall, all that was swept aside. It was very fun for all of us.

"The music is God. That's the most important thing. All the other stuff is secondary. We were all very friendly again and all the old nicknames started surfacing."

(Burton is "Butch" and Randy is "Biff," by the way). "For a while we felt 19 or 20 again."

Meanwhile, expect a documentary on the Guess Who reunion by Christmas. Aside from the gig itself, the four days leading up to it were filmed - the first meeting, the rehearsals, soundchecks and so on.

On the fan interest for a Guess Who reunion, Cummings is confident. He laughs, "Yeah, I think we'd draw a few people."

Note: Burton Cummings' first four solo albums, remastered and featuring bonus tracks, will be reissued Tuesday, Sept. 21.

Undun no longer?

Guess Who? Pan Am triumph stokes rumours, hopes of reunion

By RANDALL KING -- Winnipeg Sun WINNIPEG -

Guess Who's back?

After a brief but explosive reunion at Sunday night's closing ceremonies of the Pan American Games, Burton Cummings, Randy Bachman, Jim Kale and Garry Peterson -- the Guess Who? -- are talking about extending their one-shot reunion and taking it on the road.

"I really think this is going to go on further," Cummings said as he made his way into radio station CKY-58 to help DJ Gary (Big Daddy) MacLean spin oldies yesterday afternoon.

"There are some offers on the table, especially from the States and Japan, and why not?" he said. "If it's fun. If you're middle-aged and you can still have fun, that's the deal."

"It was a magical moment for us," Bachman, 55, told a fan yesterday morning as he prepared to board his plane at the Winnipeg International Airport.

Cummings, 51, admitted he had a bout of nerves before going in front of the sold-out stadium audience, who stayed in their seats despite a sudden downpour immediate prior to the Guess Who's brief but electric four-song set.

"I was so terrified, I really was scared," he said. "At about 8:15 p.m. last night, you wouldn't have wanted to be me. Every butterfly in the prairies was in my stomach."

For Cummings, there was a lot riding on the show, the first time the band has played together since 1983.

"It just meant so much for us to be good," he said. "We were all born and raised here. We're a Winnipeg band and we just wanted to go on and be good.

"And from all the reports I hear, we were pretty good.

"I'm very happy, very relieved, and now its back to work as usual," he said as he lugged a box and a shopping bag of records and CDs into the Polo Park radio station.

MacLean said Cummings was visibly invigorated by the gig.

"I've known him for 30 years and I've never seen him as stoked after a show as he was (Sunday) night," MacLean said yesterday before going on the air.

MacLean said he interpreted Cummings' bowing down in worship during one of Bachman's guitar solos as a sign that "they've buried the hatchet" over an old animosities. On the air, Cummings said the media blew the much-discussed rivalry out of proportion in their coverage of the reunion.

"Most of the baggage everyone was talking about was just in the press," he told MacLean. "It was more the press's idea that we would fight with each other. There were no fights. There was no animosity. There was no bitterness. We were just four guys pretending to be 19 again.

"(It was) like we were back at the North End 'Y.' "

Drummer Peterson, 54, who also appeared on MacLean's afternoon show, agreed.

"All the stuff I read in the paper this morning about 'getting them together for a tour is going to be like getting the Middle East together.' That is as far from the truth as it could possibly be," Peterson said.

Bassist Kale, 55, contacted at his Winnipeg home, qualified the conjecture of a reunion.

"It would be very premature to say yes or no, but it's more than just a rumour," said Kale, who officially owns the name Guess Who?

"There's a lot to be discussed," he said, adding Sunday's show was "a really, really great time."

Cummings told MacLean yesterday that if the Guess Who? does tour again, he'd like to start it off at the Can-West Global Stadium.

"I understand Sam Katz ... built a nice place where the Goldeyes play, and it seats around 15,000 or 16,000. That would be perfect, I think," he said on the air. "What better place to rehearse for a two-hour show but our hometown of Winnipeg? We would put the show together here and do it for the first time in public here."

Cummings says he envisioned "a full two-and-a-half-hour show including some (Bachman Turner Overdrive) stuff, some Burton Cummings stuff and all the Guess Who stuff. All those good songs.

"I've got a very strange feeling that it won't be the last time we play together now," Cummings said.

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