“American Woman” #1 5/9/1970

Once in a while a hit will come from odd circumstances. The Guess Who was doing a small club gig in Ontario when Randy Bachman broke a string. He developed the iconic riff while re-tuning his guitar and the others rushed back onstage to join in; lead singer Burton Cummings improvised lyrics on the fly. A guy in the crowd was secretly recording the show so the band refined the song from his tape. Cummings later said the words reflected how American girls seemed to mature and become jaded far quicker than Canadian girls, and wasn’t meant as a knock against the US. Hey, this just plain rocks. The album version here has a minute-plus preamble edited from the single.