Grand Funk Railroad was up against the wall, and in dire need of a hit record.
"We were lucky to have sort of a semi-hit ("Rock 'N' Roll Soul") off (1972 LP) The Phoenix Album, but we knew that the next record had to be something big or the career was going to go down the toilet," remembered the band's drummer, Don Brewer, to Songfacts. "There were lawsuits flying all over the place, it was a very tumultuous time period. I remember lots of discussions in the back of cars going, 'What are we going to do next?' Our manager kept saying, 'Why don't you just write songs about what you do: you're out here on the road, you're going to this hotel, you go to different places, there's people, you come into town...'"
Having come up in the late 1960s free-form hard rock scene, Grand Funk Railroad was used to rocking out: "We were kind of riding along with the FM underground situation, so we were able to make 7-minute, 9-minute songs and we'd get the airplay because that was the in thing to do - we could get whole albums played," Brewer recalled. "As we moved into 1972, FM underground radio was beginning to be very commercial, so they were looking for songs that were 3 minutes 30 seconds long. We needed to go that way."
That's when the drummer/singer took the band's new manager's words to heart.
"So the thought came into my mind, 'We're coming to your town, we'll help you party it down.' That's really what we were doing - we were coming into town and we were the party. That's where the line came from, and the next thought I had was, 'We're an American band.' It wasn't to wave the flag or anything, it was just simply what we were. It was a true description and it kind of rolled off my mind. I went home and worked on the concept for a while and picked up a guitar; I'm not really a great guitar player, I can play tow-finger chords and that kind of stuff. I worked out the chord structure and I brought it in to rehearsal one day and there you go - we just let it go from there. It had a mind of its own."
Released on July 2, 1973, the tune had the good mind to rock up the charts, going all the way to #1 on the Hot 100 for the week of September 29, 1973. The album, We're an American Band, released on July 15, 1973, peaked at #2 for two weeks in a row in September 1973. The album that kept Grand Funk Railroad from #1? The Allman Brothers Band, Brothers and Sisters.
"The time was right, it was the summer heading for the 4th of July. We'd really come off of about a year of publicity in Rolling Stone and other music mags with publicity flying over our lawsuits with Terry Knight," Brewer explained. "There were a lot of things going on where as long as we came up with something that was very commercially viable, it was going to hit, and this came and really took it over the top. We enlisted Todd Rundgren to work on the album - we wanted that commercial appeal Todd could give us with FM radio - he really understood what the sound of the time was. When he came in, the magic was there. We recorded in Miami, one thing was leading to another and it was all snowballing and happening for us. The fact that the song was so good, and so commercially good just added to it."
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