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Burton Cummings finally found someone he can work with - himself.
Due to an "ugly" legal battle over publishing rights, he's not likely to work with former Guess Who partner Randy Bachman again, much less talk to him.
A stint with Ringo Starr's All-Starr Band yielded no new partners. And recording sessions with the Knack and members of Elton John's band were scrapped for being "too heavy." Besides, Cummings has said that he likes being the guy who calls the shots.
So, with the release of his 32nd album, Up Close And Alone, the 48-year-old showman has taken the concept of "going solo" to its ultimate level.
Like the title suggests, the album features nothing but Cummings' voice and barrel-house piano stylings on a parade of classic hits that have fuelled his career for more than 30 years. They're all here: Songs like Stand Tall, Clap For The Wolfman, No Sugar Tonight, These Eyes and, as a bonus, his comic version of Rod Stewart's Maggie May, as might be sung by Gordon Lightfoot (au., 342K).
Cummings never dreamed that an album project would result from the solo tour he launched two years ago more on a whim than anything else. But during an interview yesterday, he says the concerts just "snowballed.
"The response was fantastic," he says. "I didn't really know if I could hold a crowd's attention through a whole evening. It's one thing to do a telethon alone at the piano and do two or three songs, but to actually go into the public forum again all by yourself ... I had my reservations. But suddenly it started snowballing. The crowds got bigger and the next thing I knew, I did the Brockville Riverfront Festival last summer for 28,000 people. No opening act, no band. I did Oakville 10 days later - 22,000 people there. I did the CNE in Toronto, there was about 18,000 people there.
"All of the sudden, I was drawing these huge crowds just sitting alone at a piano. No pretense, no gimmicks. My gimmick is that there are no gimmicks."
Cummings admits the songs themselves have a lot to do with it.
"I guess these are songs that people have kind of grown up on and listened to so many times. The airplay I get in this country is still stunning to me. Radio's been very, very good to me.
"I don't dwell on it a lot, but once in a while it slaps me in the face that somewhere, no matter what time of day or night it is, one of my records is being played. I don't know how to even perceive that, except that I guess I've done something that means something to a lot of people. It's not all been a waste of time."
While his voice isn't any worse for wear - as he proved to the crowd at an in-store performance in A&B Sound yesterday afternoon - Cummings isn't fighting his age, unashamedly revealing some curmudgeonly opinions.
He says he "just didn't get" the punk scene in the early '80s, he's not a huge fan of rap music, and he has some choice words for the music video, a selling tool not yet dreamed of when he was hired - at the age of 17 - by the Guess Who in 1965.
"I don't like what video has done to rock 'n' roll," Cummings says. "I think you're supposed to close your eyes and see your own pictures. If I hear a new song on the radio, that's fine. But if I hear a new song for the first time accompanied by a video and then I hear it later on the radio, what do you think I'm seeing in my head? I'm seeing those stupid images of some director's idea of what I'm supposed to see. I'm sick and tired of these would-be Francis Coppolas trying to make their foray into the film industry through a three-minute piece of rock 'n' roll video. Enough already!" He sighs, adding, "I guess it's my middle-age showing through."
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