Burton Cummings Takes Drastic Step to Stop “Fake” Guess Who

The Canadian band Guess Who has been producing chart-topping hits like “American Woman,” “Share the Land,” and “These Eyes” throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s. Now the original members of the band are long gone and a newer version of the band is currently touring all over the world. The current touring version of the band does not have one single original member. So now, those original members are taking some action and charge of their tracks. Burton Cummings, one such original band member of Guess Who is taking some seemingly drastic steps to stop the new version of the band from performing his songs on tour and earning from them.

Cummings is the Canadian band Guess Who’s founding singer and lead songwriter who filed a lawsuit along with the band’s original guitarist Randy Bachman in October. He argued that the current version of the group is just a cover band that uses the group’s original songs in ads so that they can give hope to audiences that the original line-up is performing. Along with the two original band members, another two members, Guess Who’s original bassist, Jim Kale, and drummer Garry Peterson are also named in the lawsuit against the new version of the band.

Now, according to a new report by Rolling Stones, Cummings has decided to take further drastic measures to stop this from happening. According to the report, Cummings has decided that he would terminate the performance rights agreements on his songs. This means the current tourist version of Guess Who will not be able to perform classic hits like hits like “No Time” or “American Woman,” etc. On top of that, these tracks cannot be performed by anybody for that matter. In fact, the venues that Guess Who’s new version has booked could face legal repercussions as well. “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 to Rolling Stone. “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,” he continued.

According to the music site, this is indeed a rare move, given the fact that most songwriters do not own publishing rights in the first place. Cummings has both so he is able to take such drastic measures now.

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