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I’m a drummer, and not a great guitar player, but I can pick and diddle around out on a guitar. We would stay up all night playing poker with Freddie. So I wrote the song around that line and came up with the other things that were going on while we were on the road at the same time, like the young chiquitas in Omaha and sweet sweet Connie.Īnd i came up with the line about staying up all night playing poker with Freddie King, the great bluesman: Freddie actually was opening the Phoenix Tour for us, and it was true. I remember I’m looking down at the ground as we’re coming into a city and that thought came to my mind: “ We’re coming to your town, we’ll help you party it down.” Because that’s what we’re doing that’s what this band does. We were on planes all the time, flying into these towns. I decided I was going to try to throw my hat into the ring and do some of the writing and singing. So we’re flying into all these towns on a tour and we’re being sued by our manager and it was feeling like if we don’t come up with the records, we’re going to go bye-bye. All of the songs had to be three minutes long and they had to have commercial value and they had to have a hook and so forth and so on. It was sink or swim time.Īt the same time radio was changing from being FM underground to now a new hit format. Don BrewerĭON BREWER: We were going through a major lawsuit with our former manager, Terry Knight, and he was suing every town we were playing in, disputing the fact that we owned the name Grand Funk Railroad.

The real story from the source, Don Brewer, is here, in his own words. Then, with great intensity, he declared, “ We’re an American band!” And went off and wrote the song. Don Brewer stood up, as the story goes, and started yelling out the names of the great American rock stars, such as Jerry Lee Lewis, Buddy Holly, Little Richard and Fats Domino. After a show, the bands were drinking in a bar when an argument grew heated about which was best, American or British rock & roll. According to one oft-repeated account, the song emerged when Grand Funk and the British band Humble Pie were on tour together in 1973. The story behind the song has been the subject of some dispute, which we’re happy to straighten out. Rocking, anthemic and rooted in American pride, it’s become a rock standard, recorded and performed by a remarkably vast range of artists, including Rob Zombie, Garth Brooks, Poison, Phish, Kid Rock, Village People, Rascal Flatts and many more. Produced by Todd Rundgren, it was the band’s first number one single.

Written and sung by Don Brewer, drummer of Grand Funk Railroad, it came out in 1973 on the album of the same name. It’s one of the most iconic songs in rock & roll history. Songwriter-Drummer Don Brewer on the Origins of a Rock Anthem