Betcha dollars to doughnuts Burton Cummings was trying his hand at channeling his own little "Penny Lane". This would make sense: I heard an old recording of (perhaps) a pre-Guess Who band led by Cummings doing a cover of "Penny Lane"... which is still one of the greatest songs written in the English Language, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, I think we can all think of other examples of this. I think Elvis Costello's "Waiting for the End of the World" is Costello trying to write his own "When I Paint My Masterpiece" (Dylan).
But... Back to Cummings: I think he took a cue from Penny Lane and decided he wanted to follow suit; he wanted to write a love song to a place--or, in Cummings's case, a smattering of places over a pretty broad area.
Betcha dollars to doughnuts Burton Cummings was trying his hand at channeling his own little "Penny Lane". This would make sense: I heard an old recording of (perhaps) a pre-Guess Who band led by Cummings doing a cover of "Penny Lane"... which is still one of the greatest songs written in the English Language, as far as I'm concerned.
Anyway, I think we can all think of other examples of this. I think Elvis Costello's "Waiting for the End of the World" is Costello trying to write his own "When I Paint My Masterpiece" (Dylan).
But... Back to Cummings: I think he took a cue from Penny Lane and decided he wanted to follow suit; he wanted to write a love song to a place--or, in Cummings's case, a smattering of places over a pretty broad area.