Chords for Kurt Winter Tribute w\ Bill Wallace and John Einarson Interview Clips

[A] _ He [Em] was a guitarist with the legendary Winnipeg [A#] rock band, The Guess Who.
[E] Kurt Winter died on the weekend at the age of 51.
Back in 1970, he replaced Randy Backman as the band's guitarist.
[N] In a moment, Glenn will talk to rock historian John Anerson about Winter's role in Winnipeg's most famous rock and roll band.
But first, here's Kai Hasselries with a look back at Winter's life.
_ [Em] _ _
_ _ [B] Rock and roll, _ _ I'm a hard, _ _ _ _ sweet, pretty, _ rock and roll. _
We had a [D] string of hit records, but we absolutely, positively wanted someone from Winnipeg to replace Randy.
We wanted the soul of the band to remain Manitoban.
[E] In _ 1970, Burton Cummings picked two local guitarists to replace Randy [A] Backman.
One of them was Kurt Winter.
Winter stayed with the band for four [B] years and [G] helped write some of their biggest hits.
Kurt's writing with Burton kept the band going for a whole extended period of time.
And if you look at the records they had, there was like Hammy Down World, Bus Rider, Share the Land.
These are all singles.
Rain Dance, _ _ Clap for the Wolfman, Running Back the Saskatoon. _
And _ I'd say a lot, I'd say most of these tunes wouldn't have happened without Kurt.
Bill Wallace was a lifelong friend of Winter.
He [A] says instant [D] stardom [A] didn't change him.
He just thought of [D] himself as a guy, right?
He wasn't out after a lot of publicity.
But he was _ recognized by his peers, by people like Joe Walsh and Eric Clapton,
who'd actually listened to the records and said, this guy's pretty good.
[G] _
Don't give me [F] no hand-me-down [C] _ [F] shoes.
[F#] _ _ [G] _ _ [F] In 1974, [C] Winter left the band.
[F] Wallace [F#] says he [G] spent his last years [F] in bad health.
I think [B] he'd overextended his liver about 15 years ago through _ _ constant rock and roll abuse.
Wallace says he hopes his friend isn't [E] forgotten by Guess Who fans.
I mailed the fax into [B] the radio stations _ [Em]
yesterday, and it sort of _ outlined what Kurt had done.
_ Kurt wrote these tunes, _ he co-wrote these tunes, and there was a big long list of hits there.
And the guy on the radio yesterday said that he didn't realize that Kurt had done that much,
and probably wouldn't have given him as much attention, _ having just thought the way he did,
having probably thought that Burton wrote all the material.
_ [F] _ _ [Em] _ _
_ [A] Kurt _ [Bm] _ [G#] Winter was not the most famous member of the Guess Who,
but he was one of the [G] most influential members of the group.
And we're going to learn more about that man now through the eyes of the man who penned this book,
local rock historian John Anderson joins us now in the studio.
Hi, John.
Thanks for coming in.
What kind of guy was he?
He was a very easygoing, affable guy.
I don't think Kurt knew a stranger.
Everybody loved him.
He _ had this ordinariness about him that endeared him to a lot of the fans of the band.
They saw him as an ordinary guy that sort of walked out of the audience, stepped on stage and played.
He wore the same clothes on stage that he wore off stage.
He was just a really nice, easygoing guy.
How did he become involved in a big group at the time, the Guess Who?
[E] Well, he sort of evolved through a number of bands in Winnipeg from the mid to late 60s,
bands like the Gettysburg Address and the Syndicate before that, [N] to a band called Brother.
And at the time, Brother were probably by 69, 70 one of the most influential bands in the local music scene here at the time.
And then when Randy Backman left the Guess Who very abruptly in May of 1970,
really right at the pinnacle of their success with American Woman, the single,
at number one in the charts across North America and around the world,
the Guess Who turned back to Winnipeg.
They could have picked up any journeyman guitar player from anywhere around the world.
They were the number one rock band in the world at that point.
But they turned back to Kurt and another Winnipeg guitarist, Greg Leske,
and really plucked them from almost _ obscurity of the local Winnipeg music scene.
And within a matter of weeks, they were standing on some of the biggest stages in the world.
What did he do for the band's sound, _ the band's influence in years to come?
Well, up to that point, the Guess Who had really had a lot of pop single success.
But they wanted to move towards more FM, more progressive acceptance from that kind of audience,
because that was happening at the time.
And Kurt brought a much harder edged guitar sound to the band,
more so than Randy Backman who had a more pop orientation.
And, you know, at that point, the Guess Who could have dropped the ball.
I mean, they could have floundered.
But it's Kurt that steps in.
He's an experienced songwriter.
He comes in with a back catalog of songs.
And he's able to work well with Burton and rejuvenate that partnership that he had had with Randy Backman
and take off from there.
Some incredible songs, too, came out of that collaboration.
Hand Me Down World, when Kurt came in with that, Bus Rider, _ Broken, _ Rain Dance,
Do You Miss Me Darling, Clap for the Wolfman.
Now, how did a man who had very humble beginnings,
how did he adjust to what was enormous fame?
Well, you know, it didn't change him a lot.
It's funny.
He did the first tour with the Guess Who.
And on that tour, they played the White House and they played, you know,
the former Expo 67 site man in his world and tour the biggest arenas in the United States.
And he took the same clothes with him.
He didn't even take a suitcase. _
_ The money, the fame, the adulation never really went to his head at all.
And he maintained humble beginnings.
He bought a very modest house in Fort Garry on Chevrier Boulevard
that was immortalized in the So Long Vanityne album cover.
And I guess his other sort of _ accoutrement of fame was to buy a big white Cadillac convertible
he drove around town in.
But he was just the ordinary Joe.
And he never lost that.
Was there any downside to the fame?
Well, I think that like a lot of rock musicians from the 60s and 70s,
he succumbed to a lot of the excesses that are there,
a lot of the _ recreations that are there of the rock star lifestyle.
Like what, for instance?
Like alcohol and drugs.
And I think that it eventually got the better of him.
What about at the end, in the last few years?
In the last few years of the Guess Who, I think that there,
certainly in the last year of the Guess Who, there were some problems.
And I think Kurt kind of lost interest in the band.
And the band kind of lost interest in him, too.
So when he parted company in June of 1970, it was a mutual parting at that point.
Kurt just kind of lost interest.
[E] What did he do after that?
Not a lot.
Actually, that's the sad part, I think, about [N] Kurt's life and his career.
He was so talented.
He had so much to offer.
Yet when he left the band, I mean, ostensibly it was called a retirement,
_ he was still in his 20s.
He still had a lot to offer.
But he really just dabbled in music.
He had a few bands of friends around Winnipeg,
and they played a few gigs here and there and did some recording.
And he went out on the road a bit with Jim Kael's version of the Guess Who
in the late 70s.
But his heart wasn't really in it anymore.
He really didn't want to perform and didn't want to play.
And that's sad.
In a few words, what is going to be his legacy?
_ Kurt really changed the sound of the Guess Who.
As I said, he brought that harder edge to the band.
He brought a whole new audience to the band.
[Em] And he brought that whole image that the band cultivated through the 70s
of being ordinary guys.
And it was the time when glam rock was happening
and makeup [F#] and platform boots and all that.
And the Guess Who took the other extreme by just T-shirts and sweatshirts
and lumberjack jackets and all of that, which was very much Kurt.