Walk Like A Man (You Can Call Me Your Man)

Album: We're An American Band (1973)
Charted: 19
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Songfacts®:

  • Grand Funk drummer Don Brewer wrote this swaggering rocker and sang lead. Says Brewer: "It was just another song we were jamming on in the rehearsal studio, and those lyrics came to mind. I started singing, 'Walk like a man, call me your man.' It came out of jamming along and coming up with chord changes that seemed to sound right with it."
  • The Four Seasons had a hit in 1963 with a song called "Walk Like a Man," which prompted a lawsuit against Grand Funk. As a result, the title of Grand Funk's song was changed to "Walk Like A Man (You Can Call Me Your Man)."

    As Bob Gaudio of The Four Seasons explained, you can't copyright a title, but the Grand Funk song took it too far with the lyric "Walk like a man, and talk like a man."
  • This was the follow up single to "We're An American Band," which was also written and sung by Brewer and became their first #1 hit. Grand Funk was a huge concert draw at the time and sold lots of albums. Most critics hated them, but the publicity seemed to have a positive effect on their record sales.

Comments: 3

  • Rock Brook from BrooklynThey knew they had this MACHO looks and true male disposition in a decade where Glam Rock brought ambiguous figures neither woman nor man.
    As everyone knows today, Farner and the boys are very religious and anti drug people, and they were so in the 70s.
    Protest Songs where the "right thing" and they took their chance, although them, denying today, they did this song to make guys "talk like a man"!.
  • Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn November 18th 1973, "Walk Like A Man" by Grand Funk* entered Billboard's Hot Top 100 chart at position #90; and nine weeks later on January 20th, 1974 it peaked at #19 {for 1 week} and spent 12 weeks on the Top 100...
    It reached #16 on the Canadian RPM Singles chart...
    The record was preceded and then succeeded by the band's only two #1 records; "We're An American Band" peaked at #1 on Sept. 23rd, 1973 for 1 week...
    Then a month after "Walk Like A Man" fell off the chart "The Loco-Motion" entered at #82 and on April 28th, 1974 it reached #1 for 2 weeks...
    * The band charted thirteen 13 times as 'Grand Funk Railroad' and six times as just 'Grand Funk'.
  • Thunderhardt from Derby, NyWalk Like A Man

    CHORUS
    Walk like a man, and talk like a man.
    Walk like a man, hey baby, you can call me your man.

    A little girl asked me what am I gonna' do,
    When I get old and blue and worn clear through?
    And I say by that time I ought to be in my prime,
    I'm gonna' strut like a cock until I'm ninety-nine.

    I'm gonna' ...
    CHORUS

    Sometimes I feel it's gettin' late.
    In life -- all that settlin' down can wait,
    'Till my routine days all seem the same.
    Right now, I've got to get on out, I've got to make my day.

    I'm gonna' ...
    CHORUS

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