“Absolute favourite”: the John Lennon song Burton Cummings hailed as a masterpiece
Canada‘s Burton Cummings is either the man responsible for syrupy soft rock numbers in the late 1970s or for fronting the hard rock outfit The Guess Who, whose 1970 hit ‘American Woman’ places him in the pantheon of Canuck songwriters who gifted the USA’s countercultural songbook with some of its essential pieces—along with Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Still touring and personally active on social media, Cummings can often be spotted sharing some of his favourite songs with the world. “One of my absolute favourite John Lennon songs after The Beatles,” he revealed in a 2020 Facebook post. “This was from Walls and Bridges, 1974…his vocal tone and phrasing are superb, without even mentioning the songwriting…well, it’s John…what can you say…”
All four Beatles started the 1970s strong following the band’s demise. Paul McCartney’s debut was Billboard‘s number-one album for three weeks despite the critical underwhelm; ‘My Sweet Lord’ saw George Harrison bag the first number-one single out from the gang; Ringo was enjoying commercial success with his rock ‘n’ roll standards covers. Continuing the lyrical self-dissection and political radicalism—regardless of his sometimes mushy theories—that began in earnest toward The Beatles’ end, Lennon and his Plastic Ono Band would cut some of their most acclaimed work on his new band’s eponymous debut, and on the follow-up Imagine.
Yet, Lennon’s critical standing would start flailing. Following fatigue from the political flexing and romantic soap opera between him and his wife, Yoko Ono, Lennon started to lose direction in the shadow of Wings’ Band on the Run, while even Ringo was riding high on the UK albums chart. Starting an 18-month separation shortly before the recording of Mind Games and jumping between Los Angeles and New York for a hedonistic fling with personal assistant May Pang, Lennon’s hard drug and keen booze intake would spark a friendship with fellow debaucher Harry Nilsson.
So what was Cummings’ “absolute favourite” Lennon song?
Following infamous drinking sessions and hard partying, Lennon managed to find the time to produce Nilsson’s Pussy Cats, the sessions yielding the infamous A Toot and a Snore in ’74 bootleg when McCartney and Stevie Wonder stopped by Burbank Studios to indulge in some impromptu jamming.
Returning the favour, Nilsson helped pen ‘Old Dirt Road’, a ruminative ballad urging life’s wayward drifters to adopt a “what will be will be” approach and trust the dusky path will lead to one’s intended purpose. Eventually featured on 1974’s Walls and Bridges and later rerecorded for Nilsson’s Flash Harry, the pair’s country-lite stroll signals a desire to return to normalcy after the party dies down.
Led by Lennon’s first American number-one solo single ‘Whatever Gets You thru the Night’, Walls and Bridges would win commercial favour but serve as his last album for six years, embarking on a hiatus from music and entering a chapter of sober family man, rekindling his marriage to Yoko and raising their baby son Sean. A pivotal record that oversaw creative and personal transition, ‘Old Dirt Road’s’ humble universalism has won fans from Cummings and beyond in the world of rock.
