Upon first listen, The Guess Who’s 1970 hit “American Woman” seems like your standard, blues-driven, braggadocious rock ‘n’ roll fare. The narrator sings to the titular subject, expressing his disillusionment toward her and his insistent desire to leave her. “American woman, stay away from me / American woman, Mama, let me be.”
But if one were to dive a little deeper into the origins of this Canadian rock band’s biggest career hit, one might imagine a vision of Uncle Sam instead of an anonymous American woman. Suddenly, lines like “Don’t come hangin’ around my door / I don’t want to see your face no more,” seem like responses to the bearded personification of the U.S., clad in a star-spangled hat, arm outstretched, saying, “I want you.”
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When The Guess Who were confronted with that image at the Canada-U.S. border in 1968, they turned around and left. And while they might have been leaving with fewer shows, they also gained an idea for a song that would later define their entire musical legacy.
The Guess Who’s “American Woman” Was an Anti-War Anthem
By focusing on the “no-good woman” archetype, The Guess Who’s “American Woman” fit seamlessly into the rock ‘n’ roll canon of the day, which featured countless songs about girls, mamas, and low-down women. However, the 1970 hit was far more political than some people realized. “People would ask, ‘What do you have against American women?’” Bassist Jim Kale told Uncut. “The American woman was the Statue of Liberty and all that she represented. As younger, idealistic men, our position was anti-war.”
This anthropomorphizing of the Statue of Liberty came about after The Guess Who tried to cross into the U.S. from their native Canada to play a string of shows in Texas. “The Vietnam War was raging in 1968,” Randy Bachman recalled. “Crossing into the U.S., the guy at the border told us to go to a white building with an American flag over it. He said, ‘Do you know what that is? It’s the Selective Service building. If you go in there, you will be drafted. They’ll put you into uniforms, and you will be fighting in a jungle in three months.’”
When the band pushed back, saying the border officer must be pulling their leg, the officer insisted. He told them that his own son was drafted a year and a half earlier, and he died in combat six months after that. “Rather than go to Texas, we turned around and came back to Canada,” Bachman said. The band might not have made their Texas dates. But the seed for their future hit song was planted.
The Band Played a Curling Rink Instead
With no shows to play and a free calendar, The Guess Who started calling around to see where in Canada they could put on a show. They booked a set at a curling rink in Kitchener, a couple of hours outside of Toronto. When the band returned to the stage for their second of two sets, they couldn’t find their keyboardist, Burton Cummings. They decided to start jamming on-stage so that Cummings would hear and make his way to the performance area.
The riff that they started to expand upon became the basis for “American Woman”, with the main refrain improvised on the spot as well. The Guess Who released the track in March 1970 with a B-side of “No Sugar Tonight”. “American Woman” peaked at No. 2 on the Canadian rock charts and No. 3 on Billboard Mainstream Rock.
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