Rock icons Cummings, Bachman among inductees to Songwriters Hall of Fame
TORONTO (CP) – They’ve been festooned with awards through the last few decades, but rock icons Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings agree their latest honour is the big enchilada – having their songs recognized as timeless pieces of Canadian history.
In a ceremony Tuesday night, the pair joined a list of inductees into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame that included Quebec artist Claude Leveillee and ragtime pioneer Shelton Brooks. “I have never been as proud to be a Canadian as this evening,” Cummings said.
“To me this is right at the top of the list,” Cummings said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
“You know gold records are beautiful and everything but they are (awarded) for sales. But the songwriting award itself, this is where it all starts.”
Cummings and Bachman, who performed an extended version of The Guess Who hit No Sugar, were given their award by another music legend, Gordon Lightfoot, who said Cummings and Bachman “could be considered the foundation of the rock scene here in Canada.”
In a joking tribute to his partner Tuesday night Bachman said of Cummings “he was born to be wild and I was born to be mild.”
Earlier, Bachman, fresh from rehearsing The Guess Who song No Time with Cummings and a band consisting of stars Tom Cochrane and Jeff Healey, said: “Somebody told me way back when I was a teenager learning to play guitar… ‘There’s always going to be a younger, faster guitar player, but if you can write good songs… that song will come back and last forever.’ ”
A case in point is their famed hit American Woman, which has recently seen a revival in films such as the Oscar-winning American Beauty. Rocker Lenny Kravitz covered the song in the Austin Powers comedy The Spy Who Shagged Me, making it a hit again around the world, a fact some found curious since Kravitz is an American, singing a song perceived to be anti-U.S.
But Cummings reiterated what he has said in the past, that the song was not meant to be a political metaphor. Instead, he said, it really was about women.
“We had been touring the States incessantly and then we came back to Canada and as I looked out from the stage the girls just seemed to be younger and fresher (than Americans),” he explained.
“So my thought process was not American woman, stay away from me, but Canadian woman I prefer you to the American woman.”
But he admits the lines about war machines and ghetto scenes could be construed to be political, yet he dismisses them as being largely “gobbledygook.”
Nonetheless, Cummings and Bachman are happy about their success with the song.
This is the second year for the fledgling Hall of Fame.
It currently exists only as a website, but the stated aim of the non-profit organization is to honour the accomplishments of Canadian popular music songwriters. The Canadian Music Publishers Association and the Songwriters Association of Canada are also involved.
Buffy Sainte-Marie put in an appearance at the gala after flying in from her home in Hawaii to sing her antiwar anthem Universal Soldier.
That song was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
The show gave Bachman and Cummings yet another chance to relive their heyday.
But Cummings noted their songs are being kept very much alive as movies continue to assemble soundtracks using hits of yesteryear. Cummings joked about seeing 1999’s American Beauty.
“I tell people this is why Kevin Spacey (news) got the Oscar, because when he gets in the car and lights up a big joint and starts driving away, he pushes the cassette deck in and American Woman comes on. I was sitting alone in a theatre and I floated about a foot off my seat,” he said.
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