Former Guess Who friends are now bitter enemies

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This article was published 24/11/2012 (4726 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG — Jim Kale is the last man still playing from the original band that gave birth to the Guess Who. He preceded Burton Cummings, Garry Peterson and Randy Bachman.

Plus he owns the Guess Who name.

Cummings has recently used an interview about the release of a new solo album to gratuitously attack Kale and Peterson for continuing to tour under the storied band name.

“What they’ve done to the name is a disgrace,” Cummings said.

Kale was stung by Cummings’ comment.

And to think, once upon a rock-’n’-roll dream, Cummings and Kale spent five years together as roommates.

“Mostly because we both liked to drink,” Kale says with a smile.

But the smile abruptly disappears.

“He used to go on about how he wanted to be friends when we were older.”

They were destined to get older, but after Kale shrewdly registered the Guess Who name when Cummings left the band, they were also destined to be bitter enemies.

“If it were up to him,” says the almost 70-year-old Kale of the nearly 65-year-old Cummings, “I’d be living at the Harbour Light (mission).”

“Cummings signed off on the name in 1977 … and he hasn’t stopped his pissing and moaning ever since. What the hell do you think I was going to do, start a scrapbook? Here I was with a whopping Grade 10 education and I don’t have a trade and I’m too old for a paper route. I gotta make a living.

“He launched a solo career, I spent the next 20 years in the back of a van.”

In a letter to the Winnipeg Free Press, noted Canadian producer Dan Donahue also wonders why Cummings is so bitter.

“That Kale wound up in possession of the Guess Who trademark is hardly something I’d be inclined to hold against the guy. Both Bachman and Cummings had ample opportunity to ensure the brand was in fact registered. And given that they both left the band voluntarily, I wonder why on Earth these age-old grudges persist,” Donahue wrote.

“From my own experience, Kale was a most approachable fellow. As a young musician seeking guidance in an industry I knew next to nothing about, he was always kind and encouraging towards me. I still give thanks for the warmth he extended my way.

“Sadly, far too many entertainment stars fail to understand that their popularity flows from the people they’re all too often inclined to dismiss, as if somehow their fame has nothing to do with those who have made them both wealthy and influential.”

Over the years there have been reunions under the Guess Who banner — including one that Kale was paid for, but didn’t play in — and in 2005, Cummings and Bachman launched a court action to take back the name, but to no apparent end. And then, as Canada Post was preparing to reunite the original Guess Who on a stamp, Cummings makes more negative comments about his former bandmates.

“That really got to me,” Kale says.

Kale says if Cummings and Bachman really want the Guess Who name back, all they have to do is pay him and his partner Peterson.

But pay them big.

He knows that’s not going to happen, so he’ll keep on playing.

“I’ll have a band of trained monkeys out there just to piss him off. I’m prepared to be that petty … I’m really, really sick of it. I’d love to take the high road, but I’m not going to. I’m his karma.”

» Winnipeg Free Press