“We’re An American Band”
One of the great cowbell songs in rock, it also tells stories about real people
“We’re An American Band” is the shorter song and big hit Grand Funk Railroad needed in 1973. The song reached #1 on the charts, becoming the band’s first chart-topper. The previous album had not sold well, radio stations were moving away from longer 5-7 minutes songs, and they knew they needed to adapt or die, so when they were touring and writing new songs, their manager suggested writing a shorter song about what they were doing. So they did.
Produced by Todd Rundgren, “We’re An American Band” has a lot of references to real life events and people, including Connie Hamzy, a famous groupie known as “Sweet Connie.” Some of her rumored conquests include John Bonham, Keith Moon, Huey Lewis, Peter Criss, and Bill Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas. This song made her famous, and in 2010 VH1 ran a special about her life. According to Hamzy, she didn’t have “the whole band,” as stated in the lyrics — guitarist Mark Farner was a holdout.
Freddie King was the opening act for Grand Funk Railroad during the tour. A great Blues guitar player from Texas, he would make the band play poker with him every night.
From these two real people, we get:
- “Sweet Sweet Connie was doing her act”
- “Up all night with Freddie King, I’ve got to tell you, poker is his thing”
This is one of the best cowbell songs in rock. Farner came up with the idea and had drummer and lead singer (on this song and only a few others for the band) Don Brewer get six different cowbells so they could pick the one with the best sound. They ended up picking one and adding some duct tape so “it doesn’t go ‘cink, cink, cink,’ it goes ‘cank, cank, cank,’” according to Farner.
Enjoy!