How the CBC Saved The Guess Who From the End of Their Career Before Their First Big Hit: “Everything Fell Apart”

For all of the countless artists and bands who have “made it,” there have been even more who threw in the towel before they ever got their big break. Long before they landed hits like “American Woman” and “No Time”, The Guess Who was nearing the moment every aspiring artist dreads: realizing that this music schtick isn’t working, and it’s time to hang it up.

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To add insult to injury—as these realizations often do—the moment of painful clarity came on the heels of a minor success. The Guess Who entered the British charts with their single, “His Girl”, in 1967. Looking to chase this success, the Canadian rock band traveled to the U.K. to promote the single. But once they got there, the track quickly slid off the charts, leaving The Guess Who broke, jobless, and on the cusp of calling it quits.

That is, of course, until they got a call from the CBC.

The CBC Saved The Guess Who’s Career in the Eleventh Hour

The Guess Who spent some time in the U.K. trying to make ends meet, squeezing into a tiny studio apartment and sleeping four to a bed. But the musicians were effectively treading water until the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation threw them a life raft. “The music gods smiled on us,” The Guess Who’s Burton Cummings told the CBC decades later in 2026. “The CBC needed a house band for a weekly show.” But there was a problem.

“You had to read music to get the gig,” Cummings explained. And unfortunately, the only one in The Guess Who who could read music was the percussionist, and that was drum tablature, not musical notation. At a time when going out and buying countless hit records to learn each week’s music was out of the question, the band had to hope they could fake it to make it. Luckily for them, when they arrived “very nervous” at their CBC audition, the music they were given was “I’m a Believer” by The Monkees.

They knew that one. Cummings said the band went to “read their music” and “we pulled it off.” Randy Bachman added, “Larry Brown, the producer, came out and said, ‘You can’t read an effing note, can you?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘But you got the gig. Not only you play the music, you sound like the record.’”

Thanks to The Guess Who’s lucky break with the CBC, they had the lasting power to go on and produce their own hits that other house bands could try to replicate, including “American Woman” and “No Sugar Tonight”.

Photo by Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images