By the summer season of 1973, Grand Funk Railroad was an undeniably profitable rock band: They’d bought out Shea Stadium in a fraction of the time that the Beatles did, had six albums underneath their belt and no plans to decelerate anytime quickly.
However there was additionally one thing unsavory at play throughout this era: a lawsuit filed by former supervisor Terry Knight, whom they’d fired in early 1972. Knight claimed there was a breach of contract, and he additionally disputed the band’s rights to their title. Grand Funk fought again.
“It was a really robust time for us,” drummer and singer Don Brewer informed American Songwriter in 2020. “He was attempting to drive us into oblivion. It was sink or swim time.”
In the end, the band settled with Knight out of courtroom. They saved the rights to their title, whereas he obtained copyrights and writer’s royalties to each Grand Funk Railroad recording made between March 1969 to March 1972. It won’t have been truthful, however it was over.
Grand Funk pushed on. Then an argument broke out between Grand Funk and their early-1973 touring mates Humble Pie over the deserves of British versus American rock music, in keeping with Dave Marsh in The Coronary heart of Rock & Soul. Marsh stated Brewer listed off a sequence of earlier rock greats earlier than asserting: “We’re an American band!”
Impressed, Brewer penned the music of the identical title shortly after. However this, Brewer countered, was not correct. Grand Funk and Humble Pie have been pleasant.
Humble Pie drummer Jerry Shirley additionally disputes this account, including that the 2 bands weren’t even taking part in collectively at that time. “Don is totally 100% appropriate. This story by no means occurred,” Shirley tells UCR. “It’s a complete fabrication. He says it proper: We have been nice associates – and, by the way in which, we did not tour collectively in 1973. We had completed working collectively in 1971.”
The actual inspiration, Brewer stated, got here from the band’s day-to-day life.
“We have been on planes on a regular basis, flying into these cities,” he recalled. “I keep in mind I am wanting down on the floor as we’re coming right into a metropolis and that thought got here to my thoughts: ‘We’re coming to your city. We’ll allow you to social gathering it down‘ – as a result of that is what we’re doing; that is what this band does.”
Hearken to Grand Funk Railroad’s ‘We’re an American Band’
Brewer then added extra lyrics in regards to the trials and tribulations of life on the highway: “Booze and women, preserve me proper / So long as we will make it to the present tonight.”
Up till that time, Brewer had caught largely to drumming. He’d be credited as the only songwriter on “We’re an American Band,” on which he additionally sang lead vocals.
The composing credit score additionally later got here into dispute when former bandmate Mark Farner informed Mojo that he performed a key function in crafting the music.
“I wrote the music to that,” Farner stated, “and I gave him that music. The drum lick and the whole lot, that was my thought for that – all of the chord adjustments, musically, that was my creativity. However I gave it to him as a result of he got here to me and stated, ‘Hear, man, I by no means wrote a music all on my own, do you assume I may simply have this?’ I stated, Yeah, you’ll be able to have it.'”
Both means “We’re an American Band” acquired a lift from the manufacturing work of Todd Rundgren, who had been introduced in to “assist us make that transition from FM underground to a extra hit format sound,” Brewer stated.
It labored. Launched on July 2, 1973, “We’re an American Band” went to No. 1 on the U.S. chart, and the album of the identical title went to No. 2 on the Billboard 200.
The primary time Brewer heard it on the radio whereas driving his automobile sooner or later, he needed to cease for a second. “I pulled off the aspect of the highway and I cranked it up,” he informed American Songwriter. “And I simply sat there and I couldn’t imagine how good it sounded on the radio. It simply had that factor – and that is once I knew, that’s a success file. That is what hit file appears like.”
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