Chords for how to play "American Woman" on guitar by the Guess Who | guitar lesson | Acoustic INTRO

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ Alright, so [E] American Woman from the Guess Who?
This was released in 1970 and you know this is such a great song.
Such a cool lick and I always really liked the beginning to the intro of it with the acoustic guitar.
It's just super cool and of course it was made a big hit again in the 90s by Lenny Kravitz
but _ [E] _ one of the neatest things about this song is that the Guess Who?
They wound up playing some [F] curling rink in Ontario and _ Randy Bachman, the guitar player,
broke a string and he was changing his string and he got the string changed and when he
put the new string on he [Bm] just [Em] went_
_ [B] _ _ Right?
He just kind of went into this lick out of nowhere and the singer, Burton Cummings, basically
was like, what was that?
Do that again, that's good.
So they started jamming it and Burton Cummings started singing and you know, apparently the
first words out of his mouth were American Woman, right?
And that's where the song came from.
It basically came from breaking a string right out of the ether on stage, right?
So that's the essence of the song and it's crazy because for the Guess Who?
That went on to being a number one hit in the US, _ which is like a super big deal for
a bunch of guys from Winnipeg, Manitoba, right?
And what's even stranger is that shortly after it became a hit, Randy Bachman quit the band
because of basically fundamental beliefs.
He was converting to being a Mormon and the rock [Em] and roll lifestyle thing just didn't
work for him.
So anyway, strange story about this song.
But okay, today I'm going to do two parts on this lesson.
Today we'll do the acoustic intro.
Next lesson will be the lick and the solo, which is to me one of the best solos ever
written in rock and roll.
Just awesome.
Anyways, today the intro.
So the intro kind of [Dm] sounds like this, [C#m] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[C#m] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _ _
right?
Kind of sounds like that.
And [F] that's where I was kind of coming from when I first started to learn this.
Because even though I've listened to it for 40 years, I've never actually learned [Dm] it,
right?
_ So I'm hearing that [Cm] and [G] _ I'm hearing this, _ _ _ right?
[A#] But I'm also hearing this, _ _ [B] _
_ that note there, _ [F#] _ _ [Cm] _
_ [G] _ _ right?
And I'm trying to figure out all these ways to do this in the key of G because you see
a lot of people play it in G, right?
_ _ And of course, it's not in G.
It's in open G, right?
_ And just a word of advice to anybody who's figuring out stuff on guitar.
If you're working something out and it's not making any sense, _ if you spend more than five
minutes on it, it's probably in an open tuning.
So I'm going to put this guitar into open G now and you'll see that playing this in
open G is so easy and it sounds so good, okay?
So just give me [E] one second and I'll tune this [D#] thing up. _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ Okay, so we're now in open [D] G and that's going to be D on the low E [G] string, G on the [D] A string.
_ [G] The D, the G and the B stay the same and the high E comes down [D] to a B.
So open G, right?
And we're not going to use this E string which is often the case in open G.
You just basically never use that string.
_ They say that Keith Richards, when he played a lot of open G stuff, would actually take
that E string right off the guitar.
[G] We're just going to use the five strings from the A down.
_ And what is really like, you know, tricky in G, in open G, it's a piece of cake.
So the song actually starts like this.
_ So we're just 12th fret harmonic.
We're just going to hit that with our finger because this is all finger pick, _ _ _ like so,
_ right?
And then we've got the intro which is just going to be like if you played a G bar chord.
[Bm]
It's just _ those notes there, right?
Be like [D] G4, _ _ _ [Dm] B3, [G] E3.
We [Bm] just slide it down and we pick that with our three fingers [F#] to _ _
[G] _ _ open, right?
And you know, like in open G it's just a piece of cake.
So that's how we start. _ _ _
[Gm] _ [A] _ _ Now we're going to [G] go, _ _ _ _ we're just hammering on there to D.
_ _ _ _ _ _ [F#] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Gm] _ _ [G] _ _ Okay?
And it does that for a while and then he changes it and he goes, _ _
[A] _ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ okay, which again, you know,
in standard tuning, that's like, how do you do that?
But in open G it's a [C] piece of cake.
It's just barring on the fifth down to the third, right?
Just the G, B and E string.
_ [G] _ _ So [C] it's _ [G] _ first finger, third finger, whatever finger you want. _
[C] _ _ [G] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
_ While we're pumping that A, that A string, right?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [A#] _
_ [G] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ Right?
So we're always pumping that A.
And doing the little hammer on in between.
And then as it progresses, he's going to go, _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ right?
So that's just a slide up, again, just a bar.
_ _ _ [Dm] Tenth fret to the twelfth fret, E and B string.
[F#m] _ _ [G]
Keeping the A pumping, right?
_ _ [C] _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ That's when he's spelling out the name. _
_ _ _ _ _ And that eventually ends _ like this, _ _ _
_ [Gm] _ _ [A] right?
And we get back into the first [G] part, right?
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
[Gm] _ [A] _ _ [G] _ _ _ _
Right?
And that's it.
That's all there is to that intro.
So once you get it into the right tuning, like I said, it's really easy and it sounds great.
And it feels really good too, right?
So.
_ All right.
So I'll do part two.
We'll get into the main lick and we'll get into that really awesome solo and little lead _ _ hook line.
Anyways, like I said, I hope you get something out of this.
Hope you enjoy playing it.
And we'll talk