Left to right: Bachman, Peterson, Cummings and Kale appear on stage at the Juno Awards in Toronto on the night of Monday, Nov. 2, 1987, as the Guess Who were named to the Juno Hall of Fame. (Tim Clark/The Canadian Press Picture Archive)
The manager of the current Guess Who lineup, Randy Erwin, said they’re willing to sit down with Cummings to negotiate, but whether or not that happens is “up to him.”
“It’s devastating,” he told CBC News over the phone on Saturday.
“[My] biggest concern is for Jim and Garry, the owners of the Guess Who trademark, and the band members and everybody else that’s associated with the … performance of this band to be able to make a living and continue to work.”
Several shows in Florida and Alabama have been cancelled since the band found out about the terminated agreements last Saturday, on a day they were expected to perform, Erwin said.
Since it was a weekend, they weren’t about to contact Broadcast Music, Inc. (BMI), the performance-rights organization the band had an agreement with, to see if the songs had to be pulled or not.
“It’s been, you know, damage control. We’ve been in contact with the venues for shows that are supposed to be occurring and consulting with our legal team,” Erwin said, adding that about 70 or so shows are already booked for 2024.
Like Einarson, he said Cummings’s approach is novel.
“In my 50-plus years in this industry, I’ve never seen somebody weaponize the actual copyright,” he said.
‘Doesn’t feel right’
Einarson said other artists might now run into similar problems.
“It really opens up a whole floodgate of, you know, possibly a lot of negativity happening and a lot of artists who discover that they can’t perform anymore because someone else is preventing them from doing it,” he said.
Erwin said it’s not only the band members who will take a financial hit. Merchandise companies, venues that have shows booked, promoters and venue staff will also lose out.
“A lot of people are being harmed by this,” he said — including Cummings. “He makes money every time we’re out there working.
“It just doesn’t feel right.”
Einarson said he thinks there’s an element of jealousy in Cummings’s move.
“It’s not being motivated by money,” he said. “It’s really about this very personal thing.”
He also doesn’t buy Cummings’s claim that fans are being duped into thinking they’ll see him and Bachman in concert.
In the 1960s and 1970s, “no one ever knew who was in the band. It wasn’t Burton Cummings and the Guess Who,” said Einarson.
“That’s one of the things that hurt Burton’s solo career when he went out on his own after the Guess Who, was a lot of people said, ‘Well, who’s he?'”