Taking that trip back to 1970 can be a tricky thing. It wasn’t always a sunny day with one glorious tune after another pouring from the radio.
I was reminded of that the other night as I watched “The War at Home,” a 1979 documentary about the anti-war movement in Madison, Wisconsin, in the late ’60s and early ’70s. There was nothing sunny or glorious about cops clubbing student protesters.
The war in Vietnam was a constant presence then, even for a seventh-grader in a Wisconsin town along Lake Michigan. My weekdays went something like this: Get up, watch the CBS Morning News, go to junior high school, come home, watch the CBS Evening News, have dinner, listen to the radio until turning in for the night.
The war dominated those newscasts, yet the radio allowed you to escape from it all. Nothing heavy there, save for two songs.
Forty years ago this week, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young dreamed of bombers turning into butterflies and getting back to the garden.
That week, millions of Americans also embraced a song that declared:
“I don’t need your war machines. I don’t need your ghetto scenes.”
“American Woman” by the Guess Who endures, a great song on so many levels. Think of the song and you think of Burton Cummings spitting out angry lyrics and Randy Bachman grinding out freaky guitar fills. True enough, but the pulse, the cadence, the urgency of the song comes from Jim Kale and Garry Peterson, who drive the whole thing on bass and drums, respectively.
What’s it all about? Bachman explained it this way in a 2008 interview on the Gibson guitar website:
“A lot of people thought ‘American Woman’ was addressing the woman on the street, but it wasn’t at all. The band had witnessed all the desolation going on in America, where there were hardly any young men in any of the towns we went to. They had all been drafted. We would see 18-year-old guys at the airports, with their buzz cuts and their uniforms, with their fathers telling them how proud they were, and their mothers and sisters in tears. It was heartbreaking. So instead of singing ‘Uncle Sam, stay away from me,’ or ‘Richard Nixon, stay away from me,’ it was ‘American woman.’ … Fortunately, by the time radio and the government understood that the song was an anti-war song, it had already reached No. 1.”
The outrage vented in “American Woman” hasn’t diminished a bit. It was there when Lenny Kravitz cranked out his terrific cover in 1999. (That video with a smoking hot Heather Graham didn’t hurt, either.)
It was there when Bachman and Cummings got back together and did it as an acoustic blues shuffle in 2007. Enjoy.
“American Woman 2007,” Bachman Cummings, from “Jukebox,” a 2007 Canadian import. This is the only Guess Who cover on an album full of vintage rock covers.
Speaking of lyrics: Everyone loves “Vehicle” by the Ides of March, which was at the top of the charts with “American Woman” at this time in 1970.
But think about it. This is a song about “the friendly stranger in the black sedan” who winds down the window and leeringly asks “Won’t you hop inside my car? I got pictures, got candy. I’m a lovable man, and I can take you to the nearest star.”
That chorus — “I love ya, need ya, want ya, got to have ya, child” — a little obsessive? What played then as a passionate guy might play today as a stalker. Could you get away with that today?
AM, Then FM 
Once you mentioned “Vehicle,” it made me think of another unique song to come out of the ’70s, “Timothy” by The Buoys. Written by Rupert Holmes and released in 1971, it was a song about cannabalism during a mining disaster. Holmes, who had his own hit with “Escape (The Pina Colada Song),” was inspired to write it while watching an episode of “The Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr.” I wonder if ‘ol Rupert was sampling the wine much like Mr. Kerr?
Love the new look! And I’ve wondered several times how “Vehicle” would play today. But those horns are so intoxicating . . .
I love the new look too, and the song selections. Good stuff.
I have to agree with Whiteray about “Vehicle”– not sure how those lyrics would play today but man the horns on that kicked serious ass! Now I’m in the mood to listen to a horn-laden 70s two-fer of “Vehicle” and Chase’s “Get It On.”
Because of those powerful horns, I absolutely love “Vehicle” by the Ides of March. Just a few weeks ago, I played “Get It On” by Chase as a “Friday Forgotten SuperHit” on my radio show on SuperHits 106 (Dubuque, Iowa). A few weeks before that, I played “Evil Woman” by Crow.
Jeff might remember a band called “The Bowery Boys” that toured around Wisconsin circa 1969-1971. They included band memeers who would later form “Clicker.” Last year, someone sent me a CD copy of songs by the Bowery Boys and Clicker that included their version of “It’s For You” which featured a blazing horn section. Great stuff!