BURTON CUMMINGS And RANDY BACHMAN Open Up About Reclaiming THE GUESS WHO Name

In a new interview with Tom Power, host of "Q" on Canada's CBC Radio One, lead singer Burton Cummings and guitarist Randy Bachman spoke about their upcoming tour together as THE GUESS WHO for the first time in 23 years.

After settling a trademark lawsuit with two other members of the band in 2024, the pair will tour their native Canada starting on May 26 at the Avenir Centre in Moncton, New Brunswick. The tour will visit Halifax, Laval, Toronto, Hamilton, London, Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Calgary and Edmonton and wrap with festival appearances in Ottawa and Vancouver. Prior to this tour, THE GUESS WHO will perform on January 31 at the OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino in Niagara Falls, Ontario.

As principal songwriters of THE GUESS WHO's early hits, Bachman and Cummings helped propel the band to international success with songs such as "These Eyes", "Laughing", "Undun", "American Woman", "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" and "No Time". Their 1970 album "American Woman" reached No. 1 in Canada, and the title track became the first Billboard number one hit by a Canadian group.

Three years ago, Bachman and Cummings filed a lawsuit accusing a band calling itself THE GUESS WHO — led by original drummer Garry Peterson — of falsely advertising "a group of hired musicians who have been touring and recording using the band's name." In September 2024, it was announced that Bachman and Cummings had settled their long-running dispute with former bandmates Peterson and Jim Kale.

Asked by Power how it felt for them to finally reclaim THE GUESS WHO name, Burton said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "Well, first of all, Randy and I were both very upset with what the fake band had done. At first, it didn't bother me so much, but it went on and on. We kept thinking it would end, and the fake band went on and on and on. And Garry Peterson, I think, was sanctioning a lot of that. And it was just — enough was enough already. So Randy and I, we got together and we decided, 'Look, this has to stop.' He has kids and grandkids and they were seeing online THE GUESS WHO, and they were kind of wondering, 'Well, is Randy gonna be there tonight? Is my grandfather gonna be there?' And this fake band, they used to actually take our albums to meet-and-greets after the shows and sign their names on our pictures. So we had — for me, anyway, and I can't speak for him, but I know he feels a lot of the same things — I had just had enough. I said, 'Whatever it costs, let's get the best lawyers. Let's stop this.'"

Randy chimed in: "We would get fan mail but after the fact. But because of COVID and everybody getting their own phones, we would get things like, 'We just drove 300 miles with our family and our grandkids to hear this song they've been hearing all their life, and here are these guys on stage saying how they wrote 'These Eyes' and 'American Woman'. They weren't even alive when you had to hit songs.' And they would send us the clips… They did own the name. They had copywritten [sic] and trademarked the name. We couldn't do that, but we got them on false impersonation, fraud — they're fraudulating [sic] the fans, using [Burton's] voice and songs we wrote to promote the show."

Burton added: "See, that's another thing. They used our real records to promote their fake shows. And that singer, whatever his name was, the blonde, he was walking around like it was his band. You know what he said in an interview one time? They were talking to that singer, and he said, 'Well, what's the matter? I've been in THE GUESS WHO longer than Burton was.' No, you've been in a GUESS WHO cover band longer than Burton was in the real GUESS WHO. See, they got to the point where they believed it was their stuff."

Circling back to how he felt when they were able to reach an agreement with the two other members of THE GUESS WHO about who would carry on with the name, Randy said: "Well, it was, like, 'Finally it's over.' It wasn't over. It took months and months. We had to go to the web site and shut down web sites and get passwords. And you had to go and find all the trademarks and all the filings, which had changed over the years, and null and void them. And then us started over again as the team was BACHMAN-CUMMINGS. So there was an over. But I've gone through a couple of divorces — I hope you never have to go through that — but it's never over until it's over. It's like Yogi Berra said, 'It ain't over until it's over.' We decided to finally go to mediation in L.A. and not leave the room until it was decided. 'Cause I'd go to divorce, you can do an agreement and so-and-so is supposed to provide something, the next day they don't, and you don't have a divorce. And then six months go by and it costs you more money. The lawyers make a lot of money doing this stuff."

Burton added: "Let me say one thing about what he mentioned — the mediation. This is unbelievable. A lot of people have a hard time believing this is true. We went and started mediation one morning at 9:00 a.m. We were in the same room. You know what time we left that same room? 6:00 a.m. the next morning. We were arguing and fighting that whole time, with two sets of lawyers — from nine in the morning till 6:00 a.m. the next morning.

Randy continued: "And we would take a break and say, 'Let's pass out,' and we'd sleep for 10 minutes, like on an airplane. 'Let's take a bathroom break' and we'd go back in and hammer and hammer and hammer and hammer away."

Kale reportedly registered THE GUESS WHO as a trademark in the United States in 1986, without Bachman and Cummings's knowledge or consent.

In their original suit, Bachman and Cummings argued that Kale's iteration of THE GUESS WHO was engaging in false advertising, attempting to boost ticket sales by giving the impression that Cummings and Bachman were still part of the band. They also noted that Kale had not performed publicly with the band since 2016, while Peterson appeared "infrequently."

In 2023, at the height of his legal battle with Kale and Peterson, over THE GUESS WHO name, Cummings — who owns his publishing rights — took the extreme and unprecedented step of terminating his performance license agreements with his performing rights organization, which meant sacrificing royalties but effectively preventing Kale's GUESS WHO from performing the band's hits at concert venues. (The vast majority of concert venues in the U.S. have licensing agreements with performing rights organizations which allow them to host live performances of any music in the catalogue of those performing rights organizations.)