A-side "American Woman" Format 7-inch single Length 4:54 | Released March 1970 (1970-03) Genre Rock | |
Recorded 1969 at RCA Mid-America Recording Center, Studio B, Chicago, Illinois | ||
"No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature" is a song by the Canadian rock band The Guess Who. It was released on their 1970 album American Woman, and was released on the B-side of the "American Woman" single without the "New Mother Nature" section. The single was officially released as "American Woman/No Sugar Tonight" and peaked at #1 on the RPM magazine charts (three weeks) and #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. In Cash Box, which at the time ranked sides independently, "No Sugar Tonight" reached #39.
According to Randy Bachman, the inspiration for the song arose after an incident when he was visiting California. He was walking down the street with a stack of records under his arm, when he saw three "tough-looking biker guys" approaching. He felt threatened and was looking for a way to cross the street onto the other sidewalk when a car pulled up to the men. A woman got out of the car, shouting at one of them, asking where he'd been all day, that he had left her alone with the kids. The man suddenly was alone and his buddies walked away. Chastened, he got in the car as the woman told him before pulling away: "And one more thing, you're getting no sugar tonight". The words stuck in Bachman's memory.
Bachman then wrote a short song in the key of F♯ called "No Sugar Tonight". When he presented the song to Burton Cummings and the record company, he was told that the song was too short. Bachman and Cummings expanded the song by adding to it a song Cummings had written that was also in the key of F♯, "New Mother Nature". The song was originally written without the "in my coffee" and "in my tea" wording. The band was ordered to alter the lyrics to make the sexual connotation less obvious, though urban legends persist that "no sugar tonight in my coffee" alludes to veiled LSD references, possibly bolstered by the later lyric "a bag of goodies and a bottle of wine". Bachman is well-known for his anti-drug lifestyle.
The song was covered by The Shirelles on their "Happy And In Love" album released in 1971.