50 years on , “ Spinning Wheel ” still pays the rent Besides being an anthem that rallies generations around a cause , another indication that a song is great is when its royalties still provide the writer an income 50 years later . “ Spinning Wheel ,” says David Clayton-Thomas , the day after the U . S . inauguration of Joe Biden , “ is still paying the rent !”
Flash back to the late 1960s in Toronto . Yorkville ’ s folk scene was at its peak . Wandering the streets of this hippie haven , one might see Neil Young , Joni Mitchell , and Steppenwolf ’ s John Kay sipping coffees at venues like the Penny Farthing . This is the milieu that fuelled Clayton-Thomas ’ muse . The songwriter had a band called The Bossmen and they had a No . 1 hit record (“ Brainwashed ”) in Canada on Roman Records . Despite this commercial success , he was still playing the same folk clubs in Yorkville , as well as bars along Yonge Street like the Friars Tavern and Le Coq D ’ or . Unfortunately , Roman Records filed for bankruptcy , and Clayton-Thomas was plotting what to do next . “ Not even with a No . 1 hit record was there a recording industry in Canada at that time ,” he recalls . “ It wasn ’ t even going to buy us a cup of coffee !”
The songwriter signed with Arc Records , who gave him $ 500 to cut a few songs . “ Apparently they wanted another ‘ Brainwashed ,”’ Clayton-Thomas says . “ Instead , they got ‘ Spinning Wheel !’ They were horrified ! ‘ This sounds like jazz , we can ’ t sell jazz !’”
Disenchanted with the Toronto scene , he packed his bags ( along with the demo ARC rejected ) and headed to the Big Apple . “ Even with a number-one record in Canada , I figured it would be better to starve on the streets of New York .”
Clayton-Thomas started gigging at the clubs in Greenwich Village , which is where Blood , Sweat & Tears discovered him . When they were putting together their first record , the songwriter played “ Spinning Wheel ” for Fred Lipsius , the band ’ s saxophonist and chief arranger . “ He flipped !” Clayton-Thomas recalls . “ Those guitar lines should be horns . It was basically the same song I had written a couple of years before in just 15 minutes in my basement apartment in north Toronto and it went on to sell millions of records .”
What inspired the original writing of this seminal song ? Like “ Rise Up ” decades later , “ Spinning Wheel ” captured the zeitgeist of the late 1960s . Clayton-Thomas was inspired by Bob Dylan , the first songwriter he heard who was writing rock ‘ n roll songs that addressed the problems of the day . “’ Spinning Wheel ’ was a protest song in a way , but it was framed inside a happy , bouncy melody ,” he explains . “ A lot of people didn ’ t realize that until after a few listens , then they would go , ‘ Hey , wait a minute , there is a message in here .’”
“ In the late 1960s , everybody was getting caught up in all these movements … revolution was going on ,” he adds . “ I was telling people that everything is going to come full circle , don ’ t get carried away with these movements . And , we saw that , we went in a span of five years from anti-Vietnam War protests to Ronald Reagan . The whole thing flipped on its head . The tune turned out to be prophetic .”
“ No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature ” Artist : The Guess Who Writers : Randy Bachman & Burton Cummings Year Written : 1970 Year Inducted : 2005
Fast Facts :
• ` “ No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature ” is one of five Guess Who songs inducted into the CSHF , the others being : “ American Woman ,” “ No Time ,” “ These Eyes ,” and “ Hand Me Down World ”
• ` It ’ s the last hit single by The Guess Who that Randy Bachman played on
• ` It ’ s been covered by The Shirelles , Bang , and Widespread Panic
Songs , according to Burton Cummings , are “ a valued commodity .” The 73-year-old lead singer of The Guess Who knows a bit about what makes a song great and its value to society . As a writer , he and his songwriting partner , Randy Bachman , were influenced by Buddy Holly , Ritchie Valens , The Beatles , and famed partnerships in song like Thomas and Shuman or Bacharach and David . “ They were all heroes to us ,” Cummings says . “ Randy and I would always say to each other , ‘ Man , wouldn ’ t it be something to be like one of those songwriting teams ?’ We never achieved their level , but some of the songs we wrote have never gone away , so that says something .”
One song that never left and still lingers is actually two songs in one : “ No Sugar Tonight / New Mother Nature .” Bachman
The Guess Who circa 1969
penned “ No Sugar Tonight ”; Cummings wrote “ New Mother Nature .”
“ Randy had most of ‘ No Sugar Tonight ’ and I had ‘ New Mother Nature ,’ Cummings recalls . “ For some reason they were both in the key of F #, which is not a common compositional key . We first showed each other these songs and discovered the symbiosis one morning at my grandmother ’ s house in Winnipeg where we gathered to collaborate . Later , when we went into RCA Records ’ studio on North Wacker Drive in Chicago to record American Woman , producer Jack Richardson suggested squashing them together .”
The inspiration for “ New Mother Nature ” came to Cummings in a pot-filled haze .
“ I was hanging out with this band from Toronto , the Rifkin , who changed their name to Buckstone Hardware . Their bass player was named Jocko . That is where I got that name and line in the song (“ Jocko says yes and I believe him ”).
PHOTO : RCA VICTOR
CANADIAN MUSICIAN 39