Writer: Don Brewer
Producer: Todd Rundgren
Recorded: Early 1973 at Criteria Studios in Miami, Florida
Released: Fall, 1973
| Players: | Mark Farner — guitar, vocals Don Brewer — drums, lead vocals Mel Schacher — bass Craig Frost — keyboards |
| Album: | We're An American Band (Capitol, 1972) |
“We’re An American Band,” the breakthrough single for Grand Funk Railroad (GFR), hit Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 29, 1973.
The album We're An American Band peaked at Number Two on the Billboard 200 and sold over a million copies.
The group caused a stir by posing naked on the inside sleeve of the album, a photo that also appeared on ads for the album.
According to drummer Don Brewer, the song came from a suggestion of the group's road manager. “He kept saying, 'Why don't you guys write songs about being an American band? That's what you are. That's what you're living.' That's what went off in my mind one day when sitting at home–'We're an American band.' Being the great guitar player that I am, I took all three chords that I knew and started playing them, and out came 'We're An American Band.' That was the line and that just hit in my head.”
Brewer says the anecdotes in the lyrics are all true–to a point. “They were, how could I say, over-exaggerated incidents that, yes, they were embellished, definitely taken to the limit. They were sparked by things on the road.”
Brewer says the group really did play poker with blues legend Freddie King. “That stuck in our minds so strongly because he had this band out on the road, and he'd be paying them every week. He'd make them all play poker with them so he could win his money back. They were always broke. I thought that was great.” Brewer says Grand Funk lost, too.
Of the “chiquitas in Omaha,” Brewer says, “That's basically, 'Gee, that line sounds good.' That basically came from the hotel thing. We weren't major partiers in hotels, but we had our times. That just came from the idea of being in a hotel someplace, having the scene going on, having a good time and you've got the house detective, always trying to run everybody out of the place, and you want people to stay.”
