Randy Bachman tells CBS News about the surprise reunion with his "American Woman" guitar
CBSN
Tokyo — The song "American Woman" is a rock anthem and one of the biggest hits to come out of the 1970's. In 1976, however, guitarist Randy Bachman of The Guess Who discovered that the guitar he used to write the classic — and a string of other hits — had been stolen from his hotel room.
The theft haunted Bachman for almost 50 years, but as CBS News senior foreign correspondent Elizabeth Palmer reports, when two musicians embraced on a stage in Tokyo last Friday, it was a happy ending to the story that started 46 years ago.
After recording his hit with The Guess Who, Bachman went on to found Bachman Turner Overdrive. He was well on his way to becoming a rock legend when, in 1976, his first and favorite guitar, a Gretsch, was stolen from the hotel.
The story of America can be told through the lyrics of folk music – songs of the Great Depression, the civil rights era, and the social revolutions of the 1960s. As folk singer Pete Seeger put it in 1967, "A song isn't a speech; a song is not an editorial. If a song tries to be an editorial or a speech, often it fails as a song. The best songs tell a story, paint a picture, and leave the conclusion up actually to the listener."