The Guess Who’s Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman are opening up about the lawsuit that helped them get back the rights to the band’s name.
In October 2023, they filed a suit that accused former bandmates Jim Kale and Garry Peterson of tricking fans into thinking Cummings and Bachman were still performing with The Guess Who, when they were actually getting a “cover band.”
In a new interview with the Q with Tom Power podcast, Cummings says they filed the suit because they were “very upset with what the fake band had done.”
“At first, it didn’t bother me so much, but it went on and on … it was just enough already,” he said.
The pair said it wasn’t just that other people were playing their music under The Guess Who name. They said those musicians would say they wrote the band’s classic tunes like “These Eyes” and “American Woman,” would use Guess Who records to promote their shows and would even sign their names on the band’s albums.
Cummings noted, “They got to the point where they believed it was their stuff.”
“We decided to finally go to mediation in LA and not leave the room until it was decided,” Bachman said, with Cummings noting that during the mediation the two sides “were arguing and fighting that whole time.”
They settled the case in September 2023, and the first thing Cummings wanted to do was put a band together with Bachman. “He and I knew we could put together a tremendous show,” he said. “I knew right away, I said, ‘This is gonna be fun.'”
Cummings and Bachman are now set to return to the stage as The Guess Who, with their first show on Jan. 31 Niagara Falls, Ontario. They will also kick off a Canadian tour on May 26 in Moncton.
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