The Guess Who - Albert Flasher Lyrics & Meanings

Cover art for Albert Flasher lyrics by Guess Who, The

by raywood

6y ago

Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glamour_Boy) quotes Burton Cummings (2016) as saying, "I felt very threatened when David Bowie came along, because it all changed. Music took second or third place to the appearance, and then theatrics came into Rock n Roll." The lyrics to the Guess Who's "Glamour Boy" convey that sense of threat or resentment toward Bowie, whom Wikipedia describes as the inspiration for that song.

According to SeattlePI (https://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/blogcritics/article/Book-Review-Lick-Me-How-I-Became-Cherry-Vanilla-1000457.php), Bowie was the "most famous conquest" of one Kathleen Dorritie (a/k/a Cherry Vanilla), who started out as a band follower but ultimately became a major figure who was "instrumental in bringing Bowie and his music to the States." Cummings had an affair with Dorritie, who was four years older than he, but then it seems she decided Bowie was the hotter ticket.

In "Albert Flasher," Cummings is describing that breakup. He says he was a workshop owner, but he also says Baby was a workshop owner. In other words, they were co-owners. Cummings never owned an actual workshop. He didn't even own The Guess Who. But plainly he was its principal figure. For a brief time, in his mind, he and Dorritie were co-owners of the band, in the sense that John Lennon and Yoko Ono were co-owners of the Beatles: obviously, they weren't, and yet her presence, decisions, and behavior could have a profound effect on how "the business" fared. Cummings seems to have recognized that Dorritie had ambition -- that, if she stuck around, their business (and their romance) might really go places.

He offered himself to the world as any small business owner does: he put himself on the market -- that is, in the gulch for the people -- and he offered his wares and services for sale. He portrays himself as putting in his time, in industrial terms (i.e., as a diesel fixer), just as Joni Mitchell later sang about a man who was "stoking the star-maker machinery behind the popular song."

But trouble was about to strike. About this, we know several things. First, Michael was a moonbeam maker. We don't know who Michael was, but a moonbeam maker is most likely someone who makes up an impossible story and gets people to go along with it. This evidently happened in Cummings's "high school," which is probably an allusion to his junior status vis-a-vis Dorritie. He was like the high school kid who is taken in by a fantastic story foisted by adults who are using him.

So Cummings was a diesel fixer, but then a diesel fixed him. Some weasel betrayed him: something in the music business screwed him over. The situation is fairly clear: "Baby and me were ripe for the picking," and then they ran into Albert Flasher.

As others have pointed out, Cummings got the idea for the "Albert Flasher" name from an "Alert Flasher" sign. Albert Flasher -- a suitable name for someone whose presence meant "Watch out!" or "Danger ahead!" -- seems to have been the weasel who took advantage of the fact that he and Dorritie were ripe for the picking.

Of course, that could have been any number of people. But it is not likely that Cummings wrote a song about some obscure record-business merchant or lawyer. The timing, the resentment of Bowie as a performer, the fear of Bowie's star power, and his loss of Dorritie to Bowie all suggest that, for Cummings, Albert Flasher was none other than David Bowie.

As for Cummings's feelings about Dorritie, the Wikipedia article about "American Woman" quotes Cummings as saying that that song (also released in 1970) was not about politics, as many have speculated, but was rather a reaction to his feeling that "girls in the States seemed to get older quicker than our girls and that made them, well, dangerous."

Albert Flasher is a summary of the reactions of a journeyman musician who was doing his job, when suddenly some slick performer swooped in, took his girl, sucked all of the oxygen out of the room, and made him look and feel like a loser by comparison.

The effect on Cummings may have been profound. By the end of 1971, Bowie was only getting started on his eventual status as one of the world's best-selling musicians, whereas The Guess Who was on a downward slide from which it would never recover.

David Bowie was threatening enough, to Cummings, to merit the lyrics of "Glamour Boy." "Albert Flasher" is the companion piece in which Cummings expresses raw resentment toward Bowie's theft of the woman, and of the dream she sketched out, that would never be his without her.

Song Meaning