Garry Peterson has played drums for the band that would eventually be called The Guess Who since day one, with "day one" seeming to be 1961ish... Ironically, the band was using the name Chad Allan & The Expressions when they released their single, Shakin' All Over, which worked its way to #1 on the Canadian charts in 1965. The band was basically forced to change their name to "The Guess Who" as an unintended consequence of their record label releasing the single in secretive packaging that simply asked "Guess Who?" The identity stuck, and the band went on to provide a legendary soundtrack for the turbulent late-sixties through the mid-seventies. Classic anthems including These Eyes, American Woman, Laughing, Undun, No Sugar Tonight, No Time, Hand Me Down World, Share The Land and Clap For The Wolfman made The Guess Who the most successful Canadian band of the era, and arguably the best-known classic rock group ever to emerge from Canada.

One of the most legendary -- and bizarre -- events in rock history occurred in the early seventies, when the band was invited to the White House to perform a show for President and Mrs. Nixon, and The Prince Charles of Wales. Legend has it that Mrs. Nixon requested the band not play the song American Woman because of its controversial overtones. Assuming that the Nixons didn't spend much time listening to rock and roll on 102.3 WHFS at the time, our guess is that Prince Charles was the biggest fan of the three.

XMFan.com would like to thank Garry for spending several minutes with interviewer Anthony Nunez. It's quite obvious that Mr. Peterson loves life, music and football -- and is perfectly willing to talk about all three.


XMFan: Thanks for taking the time to chat with the satellite radio fans.

Garry: "...the wave of the future."

XMFan: Oh, do you have a satellite radio in your home or car?

Garry: I have Sirius... I love it, because not only do I get to hear the talk channels and the NFL, but the music side of it is being programmed so I'm hearing songs I haven't heard in thirty years.

XMFan: This brings up a point I was going to mention later, but so much of the music that was popular in the past has fallen by the wayside over the years. Many of your songs have stayed right in the forefront, however.

Garry: The large labels are interested in repackaging the hits over and over again. Often, the "meat" of bands is on albums that have never been heard by most people.

XMFan: As satellite radio fans know, this newer method of broadcasting has indeed gone much deeper with their play lists.

Garry: It's the new FM... Like the FM of the 1960s and 70s.

XMFan: Let's talk about young Garry Peterson for a second or two. Where did you find the music you listened to and what did you like?

Garry: Well if you know my history, I started playing the drums in 1947.

XMFan: Right, you were three years old.

Garry: Two. (God-damned Wikipedia...) My dad started me with it, and I have no memory of playing at that age. It's like walking -- most people don't remember when they started to walk. Well I don't remember starting to walk, and I don't remember learning to play drums -- it's been with me all of my life.

My background comes from jazz and big bands. When I was in grade school I started playing with the Manitoba High School Orchestra... I wasn't in high school, because I was just nine years old. It was there I learned to like classical music, while at the same time, I was out in the country playing country music. So to answer your question, I basically like all good music. I just downloaded Floyd Cramer's Greatest Hits from iTunes onto my Mac. I also loaded Joey DeFrancesco, who is a jazz artist, and The Meters, who are R&B. I enjoy listening to world music from all the different countries, because all of it can be learned from and borrowed to fit into your music.

XMFan: Is it safe to say that your dad was a musician?

Garry: Yes, he was a drummer... But he was also a machinist at Air Canada. So by day, he was a mechanic, and by night, he was out playing his music -- so he worked quite hard.

XMFan: Did you ever have a "Plan B" if things didn't work out with music?

Garry: No, I didn't, but when the band initially broke up in 1975, I went into my father-in-law's hotel business. I took hotel management courses and worked there for a few years. Then I did general insurance in Winnipeg with a friend of mine for a few years and was totally away from music.

My son was born in 1976, which was during the period I was away from music, and it was my intent to do something that would give me a "normal life." I was there every day the first six years of my child's life, which are of course the formative years. Eventually, I started playing with the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, which kind of brought me back. My first wife was also telling me I needed to play again. But I'm very happy things worked out that way -- I absolutely wouldn't change it for anything.

XMFan: Who knew that President Nixon was a rock and roll fan?

Garry: I didn't know it. When Oliver Stone did the movie Nixon, they showed him dancing with his wife in a hotel room somewhere. It looks to me like he was dancing more of a foxtrot than a rock dance... He seemed a little conservative for us.

XMFan: Maybe it was Prince Charles' request to see you?

Garry: Who knows? I guess it's possible.

XMFan: You guys basically spent all of 2008 on the road. How does that suit you?

Garry: It's not all that much... I think we're going to wind up with about 60 dates this year, which was actually our goal. We basically play weekends, which means we usually get home during the week. So it's more or less three days home and three days on the road. I'll admit it's a little difficult to get into the home scene for three days then to transform into the road scene, going back and forth all summer. But it's what we have to do to play for our fans, which are the lifeblood of this band, and it's our goal to keep them happy.

XMFan: Speaking of home, how long have you lived in North Carolina, and what was the tie-in for moving there?

Garry: I've been there since 1991, and I moved there because of my second wife. It wasn't a far stretch, because North Carolina is a beautiful state. There are mountains, the ocean, and I love to play golf -- it's a golf mecca. But she was the main reason I moved there.

XMFan: As an added bonus, you can probably go out and eat dinner or go shopping at Wal-Mart without being harassed too much.

Garry: I don't think it would have been a problem anywhere, because The Guess Who was never an entity that got, say, a Led Zeppelin kind of adoration, probably because we lived in Winnipeg during the formative years of the band. Maybe if we had gone through the whole L.A., New York or London "machine," things would have different... We would have had a higher profile.

Even to this day, when people hear the name The Guess Who, they'll say, "We sort of know that band. Which songs did they have?" When you tell them the names of some of the songs, their eyes get big as saucers. For some reason, the public at large just never got the connection between the band and our many hit songs and records. It probably wasn't publicized in the proper way, but I guess that has both a good side and bad side. Like you mentioned, we were rarely interrupted while trying to eat.

XMFan: The personality of The Guess Who is of the band overall, rather than one or two celebrity members...

Garry: Sure, and that's why it's still successful today. The music has lived on and is why people continue to go to our shows. As long as we deliver the music properly, they're satisfied. It's bigger than any single individual, which is what I think.

XMFan: During all your years of travel, have you ever found yourself in a scary situation... Whether it was a foreign country or a particular venue?

Garry: My personality would preclude me putting myself in a situation like that. But we were in Chicago during the Democratic National Convention in 1968, which was pretty wild. Early on we were pretty naive about things going on in the world, but did see several events firsthand during the period of the Vietnam War. We saw soldiers come back from the war that were so screwed up -- from both the drugs and what they had mentally endured over there. Seeing this is actually what prompted the creation of the song American Woman. We weren't passing judgment on anyone, but were sort of confused because we were able to go back home to our safe "Beaver Cleaver" type lives in Winnipeg.

XMFan: You always hear how bands have certain chemistry -- there's the visionary who creates the songs but can't balance a checkbook, then there's the guy who's the peacemaker, and so forth. It seems to me that you've always been the one to kind of hold things together, not just literally as a drummer, but as a band member overall.

Gary: I'd like to think I've been a catalyst for the band. You know, when they wanted us to do the first reunion and needed different parties to come together -- at this point they were ready to kill each other -- they came to me because I could swing back and forth between both camps. If you look, you'll see that I've played with everyone in the prime of their careers. Why is that? I'd say it's one of these two reasons: Either I'm great -- because they always took me -- or it's because I work cheap. It's one or the other, so you can decide. (Laughs) But you can look back and see the common denominator of this band.

XMFan: You already hinted that you have a Mac laptop. Are there any other things you can't live without on the road?

Garry: I've been a PC guy most of my life, and being an artist, I'm certainly more artistic than technical. But our lead singer, Derek Sharp, is like a Mac wizard and got me into the Mac system. I'm just a couple of months into it, but loving it -- because for a guy who's not very technical, it's easy. So right now I have my Mac Pro on the road, along with my little Bose speakers that are very portable... Small speakers with an amazing sound. And my iPhone. Of course, these things also allow you to do business. I'm quite the movie buff, so I like to watch them during my travels. All these things help make the road much more tolerable for me.

XMFan: Favorite movies?

Garry: I'm kind of weird, because I like the classics like The Ten Commandments and El Cid with Charlton Heston, and old John Wayne and Humphrey Bogart classics. But I also like movies like The Birdcage, which I thought was very clever. Some of the newer movies to come along are obviously great, and just like music, I guess I like a variety.

XMFan: What else do you like to watch?

Garry: I'm an avid -- AVID -- football fan. I'm so glad that this weekend I get to come home on Saturday, and my wife and I can spend all day Sunday watching games. She'll cook something nice, like a nice chili or a Mexican meal, and we'll sit in our pajamas and watch all the games.

XMFan: And you root for...

Garry: The Carolina Panthers.

XMFan: Your guys are playing the Bears this weekend. I think Carolina probably has about a 50-50 shot against Chicago.

Garry: Chicago's coming to Carolina. I think we'll win that game, although Carolina hasn't hade a great home record the past few years. If Jake Delhomme stays healthy, it'll be a big plus. (Wouldn't you know that Carolina went on to beat Chicago with a fourth-quarter comeback led by Jake Delhomme)

XMFan: If you put on an instructor's hat and gave advice to a beginning percussion student, what general advice would you give?

Garry: Kids today that want to be musicians have a wealth of resources available... American schools are great for music programs. Be in the school band, the college band, or whatever band you can be in. Listen to all the music you can and try to appreciate the different styles of music. Learn your instrument from both a technical point of view, which includes schooling, and a practical one, which is more of the listening to music and learning to play by ear. Play along with whatever you can.

It's so much easier now because of the information available to anyone who wants to learn. All I could really do when I learned to play back in Winnipeg was play along with the radio or buy the records.

XMFan: What are some of the brands you like to use on stage?

Garry: I'm a DW endorser. They're a California-based company that makes some of the best drums in the world... Sabian cymbals, Regal Tip Calato drumsticks, Aquarian drumheads. Joyful Noise is a unique snare drum company out of Colorado that is owned by a friend of mine, Curt Waltrip, and the metal drums they make are very finely crafted (www.joyfulnoisedrumcompany.com). He's the cousin of race driver Darrell Waltrip, and donates quite a bit of money to charitable organizations.

XMFan: Your website (www.theguesswhocafe.com) gives lots of good info about the band, and it looks like it's constantly being updated with your tour dates?

Garry: Yes, the dates are always up there. We really don't shut down for the year -- the year always shuts down on us. Many of our dates are outside, and around January, February, and March there aren't many places outdoors and our dates thin out. But we really never shut down.