• Writer: Don Brewer
• Producer: Todd Rundgren
• Recorded: Early 1973 at Criteria Studios in Miami
• Released: Fall 1973
• Players:
  Mark Farner — guitar, vocals
  Don Brewer — drums, lead vocals
  Mel Schacher — bass
  Craig Frost — keyboards
• Album: We’re An American Band (Capitol, 1972/1995)
• Also On:
  Caught In The Act (Capitol, 1975)
  Grand Funk Hits (Capitol, 1976)
  Hits (Capitol, 1977)
  The Best Of Grand Funk Railroad (CEMA, 1992)
• “We’re An American Band,” the breakthrough single for Grand Funk Railroad, hit Number One on the Billboard Hot 100 on September 29th, 1973.
• The album We’re An American Band peaked at Number Two on the Billboard 200 and sold over a million copies.
• The group caused a stir by posing naked on the inside sleeve of the album, a photo that also appeared on ads for the album.
• According to drummer Don Brewer, the song came from a suggestion of the group’s road manager. “He kept saying, ‘Why don’t you guys write songs about being an American band? That’s what you are. That’s what you’re living.’ That’s what went off in my mind one day when sitting at home — ‘We’re an American band.’ Being the great guitar player that I am, I took all three chords that I knew and started playing them, and out came ‘We’re An American Band.’ That was the line and that just hit in my head.”
• Brewer says the anecdotes in the lyrics are all true — to a point. “They were, how could I say, over-exaggerated incidents that, yes, they were embellished, definitely taken to the limit. They were sparked by things on the road.”
• Brewer says the group really did play poker with blues legend Freddie King: “That stuck in our minds so strongly because he had this band out on the road, and he’d be paying them every week. He’d make them all play poker with them so he could win his money back. They were always broke. I thought that was great.” Brewer says Grand Funk lost, too.
• Of the “chiquitas in Omaha,” Brewer says, “That’s basically, ‘Gee, that line sounds good.’ That basically came from the hotel thing. We weren’t major partiers in hotels, but we had our times. That just came from the idea of being in a hotel someplace, having the scene going on, having a good time and you’ve got the house detective, always trying to run everybody out of the place, and you want people to stay.”

FAST FORWARD:

• Grand Funk broke up in 1976, but Brewer and singer-guitarist Mark Farner reunited, with another bassist, from 1981 to 1983. They were reunited with bassist Mel Schacher in 1996.
• In the fall of 2000, Farner declined an invitation to return to the group again. He’s instead touring and recording as a solo artist, while Brewer and Schacher have taken a version of the band on the road with journeyman vocalist Max Carl, former Kiss guitarist Bruce Kulick, and keyboardist Tim Cashion. Farner has criticized his former bandmates on many occasions since then.

Brewer and keyboardist Craig Frost have both logged time with Bob Seger‘s Silver Bullet Band.