Intro hey everybody Welcome to the bottom line I'm Michael Nolan tonight we're going to talk about one of my favorite bands in rock and roll of course I'm talking about my second favorite Canadian rock band of all time the guess who now last October Burton Cummings and Randy Bachmann both sued the current lineup of this band you know the lineup that's out there touring right up until well a couple of days ago we'll get more into that as we go along in tonight's video but Burton has been around the block a few times hasn't he and he knows that when you got to take a giant out sweep the [Music] leg all right so how did this whole How It Started thing start with the Guess Who anyway well you have to go back ways to the year 1977 when Canadian TV wanted to feature them as a special artist on TV their former basist and I say former basist because in 1972 he was actually fired from The Guess Who but he kind of came out of the woodwork and asked both Randy Bachmann and Burton Cummings if he could use the name with replacement members for that television show now there doesn't seem to be too much debate as to whether that was true or not the original agreement was he could use the name for that one specific show but evidently Jim wasn't happy with that and he did some digging you see and he found out that the band name the Guess Who had not been trademarked and so he did some quick uh rearranging and trademarking himself and he had control and rights to the band name now he would later bring on Gary Peterson the drummer and the only member who currently has anything to do with the band on stage and from what I understand he's not even doing that anymore but Jim is evidently still behind the scenes doing all the hiring and firing for the band and and guess what he has called them he has called them nothing more than trained monkeys so it's not like he has any respect for these guys other than them providing a means for him to continue to make money in a band that he had very little to do with other than co-writing the song American Woman all right so first of all what I want to do is read just a couple of quick excerpts from uh this article that is covering Burton cumming's latest move uh it starts off by saying though the lawsuit is still ongoing duh no kidding Cummings has opted to terminate certain rights agreements on his songs to stop the Guess Who from performing them in concert now there is a lot to this first sentence first of all what is it that Burton Cummings is doing well in the next paragraph it says it's a complex strategy that breaks down something like this virtually every venue in the country has an agreement with performance rights organizations these are commonly known as Pros these The Guess Who organizations collect royalties on behalf of songwriters whenever their work is performed by ending the agreements pertaining to his songs coming has made it impossible for the current version of The Guess Who to perform the material in pro- aligned venues and that's what I meant when I said they were touring until quite recently they've taken a bit of a Hiatus to kind of look over the lay of the land and see what they're going to do because uh you know what folks nobody cares about these guys that are performing they only care that somebody's up there performing the old Hits From The Guess Who but notice what it says in both of these sentences in this uh article by Corey Irwin it says first of all opted to terminate certain right agreements on his songs to stop who the Guess Who the writer here is referring to these monkeys as the Guess Who he does so in the very next paragraph that I read didn't he so evidently Burton Cummings has got his work cut out for him folks there is no doubt about that uh the man is doing everything he can to curtail them and the Very person who is interviewing him who wrote this article Who quotes him consistently throughout the article refers to the band that is touring as the Guess Who you see that's the problem and the power of a brand name and it's been getting that way for a long time I've made many videos on Foreigner calling them nothing more than a tribute ban you know just like these clowns I mean these guys aren't the lead singer these guys aren't the songwriters for that band hell one of them was even fired from the band the same sneaky ass guy that found out that the band's name wasn't tradem marked and selfishly trademarked it for himself you know now that John Fogerty has got the rights to his songs back he might consider doing this to Credence Clear Water Revisited but this is the nature of jukebox tours and I've always been dead set against them now if you've got like one or two members left and they're traveling you know the fairground circuit I have no trouble with that you get to see him for you know a buck or two or it's included into your ticket into the fairgrounds but this is Major venues were talking about major money being denied to the true progenitors of what was truly The Guess Outro Who all right folks that's the video for tonight I hope you enjoyed it if you did please give me a thumbs up that always helps with the uh YouTube algorithm giving the every video basically a wider audience and if you haven't subscribed to this thing we call the tribe oh man that is so easy all you have to do take a finger and hit that subscribe to the tribe button tap that top Bell icon you got to do that otherwise you won't be notified of all my future videos all right I'm Michael Nolan this is the bottom line and like I always say the bottom line as I see it but the true bottom line is always in the comments and it's what you folks have to say on the matter because it's in the comments where we are the tribe [Music]