The feud between the old and the newer Guess Who members has finally ended.
In the original lawsuit, former members Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman called the current touring group nothing more than a ‘cover band.’ This caused plenty of feuds and lawsuits, but it appears that it was the only way to end the ‘fake band.’
“It was painful, but we’d have done it indefinitely just to stop that fake band from taking over our history,” Cummings recently told The Rolling Stone. “They took over streaming sites; they were using old photos of me and Randy. It gets me going thinking about it, but that’s over. It’s a painful success. It cost a lot of money with lawyers and I gave up a lot of publishing money, but we finally won this terrible battle.”
“If there is a group out there calling themselves the Guess Who, it’s going to have the lead singer who wrote the songs and the guitarist who made the riffs,” he continued. “It’s going to have Bachman and Cummings in it. I say ‘if’ because we don’t know. Randy has a lot of bookings and I’ve got solo gigs. What we do know is that Randy and I are happy because there isn’t a fake Guess Who out there anymore.”
Bachman co-founded The Guess Who in 1966 and co-wrote many of their hits like ‘No Time’ and ‘American Woman’ with Cummings before leaving in 1970 to start Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
The band broke up in 1975, but original bassist Jim Kale and drummer Garry Peterson later got back together without Cummings and Bachman. Kale also got the rights to the band’s name.
In October, Cummings and Bachman sued Kale and Peterson in Los Angeles federal court over the use of the band’s name for touring and recording. Cummings and Bachman said in a press release that the current lineup, which only includes Peterson from the classic band, was using the band’s name, their photos, and their music without permission.
Cummings also pulled the rights to the songs he wrote for the band. His legal actions took away the copyright permission for the band to perform songs like ‘American Woman,’ ‘These Eyes,’ and ‘No Time’ at their concerts. This caused The Guess Who to cancel a series of concerts.
“I’m willing to do anything to stop the fake band; they’re taking [Bachman and my] life story and pretending it’s theirs,” Cummings said in another statement. “They’re not the people who made these records and they shouldn’t act like they did. This doesn’t stop this cover band from playing their shows, it just stops them from playing the songs I wrote. If the songs are performed by the fake Guess Who, they will be sued for every occurrence.”
The details of the new settlement aren’t public, but Cummings and Bachman confirmed they sorted out shared trademark rights with Kale and Peterson after a lengthy mediation in Los Angeles.