At age 81, Randy Bachman tells me his career is at a renaissance.
Bachman’s beloved orange 1957 Gretsch guitar, stolen during a 1977 Bachman-Turner Overdrive tour, was finally returned to him. A documentary about him and the guitar, entitled Takin’ Care of Business, recently premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival, and he finished recording an album with his son Tal, which, he says, may be the first entire father-son rock album. He is going strong touring with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. The band’s website declares that the group “is officially back,” and 22 new concert dates in Canada were recently added for April and May 2025. And Bachman, the original lead guitarist of the Guess Who, says he and Burton Cummings, the original singer, regained the rights to the Guess Who name, and he hopes they will tour as the Guess Who during the next two years.
“I am in the eight-zero zone, but I see Neil Young, Jagger and Richards, Mike Love and the Beach Boys and Brian May in that zone, and we are all still rocking and rolling,” Bachman says (Young is 79; May 77). “We’re still rockin’ in the free world and too old to die young.”
With Winnipeg roots, Bachman and Young have been friends since teenagers, and Bachman was a musical influence for Young during his youth. Young invited Bachman to his 70th birthday party in Los Angeles, and Bachman told an amusing story about the occasion during a Bachman-Turner Overdrive concert I attended in September at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut.
For a birthday gift, what do you get someone as wealthy as Young, who has a barnful of antique cars, a barnful of model trains and a barnful of money? Bachman quipped. He then came up with a novel idea: It’s Young’s 70th birthday, so how does one steal the Route 70 highway sign in Winnipeg? Bachman thought better of the idea and instead asked a Winnipeg government official for a Route 70 sign. No replacement signs were available, and the signs were made by inmates, he was told. But, when he mentioned it was for favorite-son Young’s 70th birthday, the government official had one made. On the highway, the sign appeared small — like “a stick of gum” —Bachman said. He didn’t realize that the sign was massive — “the size of a garage door” — until he picked it up and wondered how he could bring it to Los Angeles. He tried to carry it on his airplane flight, but the flight attendants said it wouldn’t fit in a closet or anywhere else. When he said the sign was for Young’s birthday, the pilots came to the rescue and brought it into the cockpit. Young “went nuts” and loved the unique birthday gift, Bachman said, and brought Bachman to meet his guitar hero Stephen Stills. Bachman praised Stills’s guitar playing and then said, “You have no idea how many riffs I have stolen from you.” Stills responded, “Yes, I have.” Then, at the September Foxwoods show, Bachman said, “Here is one of them,” and he and Bachman-Turner Overdrive broke into the Guess Who hit “No Time.”
BTO played other Guess Who hits at the concert, including a blazing version of “American Woman.” At one point, Bachman, who sat at center stage with his guitar the entire show, pulled out a drumstick and used it to play his lead electric riffs before tossing the drumstick into the audience.
Bachman’s “No Sugar Tonight” and “Undun” were big hits for the Guess Who, and the songwriting team of Bachman and lead vocalist and pianist Burton Cummings scored major hits with “American Woman,” “No Time,” “These Eyes” and “Laughing.”
Bachman left the group in 1970, and Cummings subsequently wrote “Share the Land” and other Guess Who hits.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive released a self-titled debut album in May 1973, but a second album, Bachman-Turner Overdrive II, released in December 1973, propelled the group to stardom. It included two monster hits, “Let It Ride” and “Takin’ Care of Business.” The band’s original lineup was Bachman on lead guitar and vocals, Fred Turner on bass guitar and lead vocals and Bachman’s brothers, Tim on rhythm guitar and vocals, and Robbie on drums, percussion and vocals.
After Tim and Robbie died last year, Bachman announced a 50th Anniversary Tour. Fred Turner has battled health issues and occasionally joins the band. Besides Bachman, the current band consists of his 56-year-old son Tal on guitar, Mick Dalla-Vee on bass, Brent Knudsen on guitar and Marc LaFrance on drums.
“We sound as good as the original band,” Bachman tells me. “We sound like BTO — we are BTO.”
Bachman says he has photos of a 2-year-old Tal playing drums and being taught how to play them by Robbie. Before joining BTO last year, Tal was a singer-songwriter and producer who released two solo albums, including a 1999 hit single, “She’s So High.”
“He’s played drums, guitar and keyboard in my band and is one of the most talented musicians I know,” Randy Bachman says. “The good thing is he plays and sings like me. Like the Bee Gees, when people in the family play and sing together, there’s a certain continuity of tone and the way they say the words.”
Another father-son musical combination may always be on Bachman’s mind. In the mid-1990s, he was the lead guitarist in Ringo Starr’s All-Star Band, which included the Who’s John Entwistle, the Rascals’ Felix Cavaliere, Grand Funk Railroad’s Mark Farner, Billy Preston and Ringo’s son, drummer Zak Starkey.
“It was really special to play with a Beatle,” Bachman says. “I got to start many songs on guitar, including ‘Boys,’ ‘Yellow Submarine’ and ‘Photograph.’ The best thing was looking back during ‘Takin’ Care of Business’ and seeing Ringo playing drums with his son Zak. That was fantastic.”
The Guess Who “copied the greatest pop band in the world, the Beatles,” Bachman says. “There’s nothing wrong with being a good pop band. It’s better than being a good nothing band. We copied the pop music at the time — the Mamas & Papas, the Stones, the Beatles, the Hollies and the Beach Boys. We did it well and had our own hits. It evolved into something heavier, because I’m a guitar player who likes heavy riffs, and that was the sound of BTO – a pop music verse and a heavy chorus with power guitars.”
Bachman says he was very lucky growing up in Winnipeg. American bands would play nearby U.S. cities on tour and then play a Canadian show in Winnipeg.
“When I was 14 or 15, my aunt took me to every concert that came to Winnipeg,” he says. “I saw Ray Charles, the Mills Brothers, Brenda Lee, the Everly Brothers, the Champs, Billy Daniels, Tony Bennett, the Ventures, Johnny & the Hurricanes. Wow – that influenced me a lot. There was no security then at the concerts, so I met these people before or after the show. It was really something to see them up close, see the sweat in their armpits, see the acne on their face and see they are just like us – people who liked music and did a song or two that made it on the radio.”
Bachman says he and Neil Young “were very influenced in Winnipeg with the sound of the Shadows, a great British instrumental rock band. We tried to play and still play like Hank Marvin, the lead guitarist, with the same echo and the same tremelo or vibrato bar.”
Bachman attended Young’s show in Toronto this year. “It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen,” Bachman says. “He is back with Crazy Horse, and his guitar playing is fabulous.”
Bachman says he toured with Van Halen for 10 months, and Eddie Van Halen is the “most mind-blowing guitarist.”
“He is the most talented guitarist I have ever seen,” Bachman says. “He plays every style of guitar. People are only familiar with his rock-and-roll hammer-on, hammer-off style. I have seen him play jazz, classical and absolutely everything on guitar anyone would ever want. And he plays smiling, jumping around, laughing, with seemingly no effort, which shows you hundreds and hundreds of hours of practice.”
Bachman’s comments about Van Halen playing “absolutely everything on guitar anyone would ever want” made me think of BTO’s lengthy encore at Foxwoods in September. I had never seen an encore like it, and the audience probably got anything anyone would ever want.
BTO began the encore with their own song “Hey You,” and then the encore morphed into a medley of Free’s “All Right Now,” Steve Miller’s “Rock ‘N’ Me Baby,” AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long,” the Rolling Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women,” Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You,” T.Rex’s “Bang A Gong (Get It On),” the Rolling Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction,” Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” (written by George Jackson and Thomas Jones with uncredited lyrics by Seger) and, finally, back to “Hey You.”
After all that, BTO wasn’t done. They wrapped up the night with their own hit “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” a song written by Bachman with a stuttering brother in mind. Yes, during a renaissance at age 81, Randy Bachman has every right to sing: “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. B-b-b-baby, you just ain’t seen na-na-nothin’ yet. Here’s somethin’ that you’re never gonna forget. B-b-b-baby, you just ain’t seen na-na-nothin’ yet.”