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- [00:01]
Jeff Zito
Hey, Sal.
- [00:02]
Randy Bachman
Hank, what's going on? We haven't worked a case in years. I just bought my car at Carvana and it was so easy.
- [00:08]
Jeff Zito
Too easy. Think something's up? You tell me.
- [00:11]
Randy Bachman
They got thousands of options, found a great car at a great price, and
- [00:16]
Jeff Zito
it got delivered the next day. It sounds like Carvana just makes it easy to buy your car, Hank. Yeah, you're right. Case closed.
- [00:25]
Randy Bachman
Buy your car today on Carvana. Delivery fees may apply.
- [00:34]
Jeff Zito
Hey, it's Jeff Zito. Thanks again for checking out another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Iheart, or wherever you get your podcast. Please subscribe. We'd love a five star rating and please leave a review, past guests and episodes online@celebrityjobber.com and you can also follow on Instagram Celebrity Underscore, Jobberg podcast, or the YouTube channel, which is YouTube.com the sign celebrity jobber, also at Celebrity Jobber on Substack. So subscribe to Substack for some bonus content and a lot of other stuff. What would happen to these people if they didn't get their big break? If they weren't famous, what would they be doing, you know, and what was life and you know, like, what was life like before fame for some of these people? You know, most just held regular jobs and were regular people. We're about to hear a really incredible story. This guy is 80 years old and, man, he can tell a story and he's got a lot to tell. As you know, the guess who is back on tour. And I'm talking about the real band, Randy Backman and Burton Cummings back together on tour right now. Theguesswho.com for tour dates near you, we're going to talk about the beginning from when Randy was a little kid. I mean, all the way back to like 3 years old. That's where this story starts, believe it or not. You know, it's pretty huge to get a record deal and get a hit song with one band, let alone two. So it happened two times with Randy Bachman, first with the Guess who and then with Bachman Turner Overdrive. And what about jobs outside of music? What was Randy's first job or if he had several different jobs? We're about ready to hear the whole story from the Guess who and Bachman Turner Overdrive. The one and only Randy Bachman is my guest this week on Celebrity Jobber, the Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. If you like what you hear, please
- [02:45]
Randy Bachman
subscribe, give a five star rating and leave a review. Check out all our past episodes on Apple podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you pod.
- [02:53]
Jeff Zito
What if these celebrities weren't famous? What would they have become?
- [02:57]
Randy Bachman
What was their first job? We're about to find out.
- [03:04]
Jeff Zito
Hey, Randy. How's it going?
- [03:06]
Randy Bachman
Great.
- [03:07]
Jeff Zito
It's funny, you know, I usually. I have a term I usually call rock and roll time, and that's, you know, usually 15 minutes late. But here you are. Proven me, proven that theory wrong, two minutes early. Pretty incredible.
- [03:19]
Randy Bachman
I'll sign. I'll sign off and come back in 15. I won't disappoint you.
- [03:24]
Jeff Zito
Definitely not disappoint. Waiting to. To speak with you for a long time. And I do want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Is it true us Americans have been mispronouncing your name for over 50 years?
- [03:40]
Randy Bachman
Yes.
- [03:40]
Burton Cummings
But you've been mispronouncing everything for 50. You heard the song, you say tomato, tomato, potato, potato.
- [03:50]
Jeff Zito
Right?
- [03:51]
Burton Cummings
Backman, Bachmann.
- [03:52]
Jeff Zito
Okay, so you just. You just responded to Bachmann. No big deal. You didn't correct anybod. Want to make us feel bad? Is that what it was?
- [04:00]
Burton Cummings
Here's what I say. This is Randy Backman from Bachman Turner Overdrive.
- [04:05]
Jeff Zito
That's great, man. Tell me, what was it? Back in. In the good old days, when you were a young boy growing up in Canada, what made you want to get into rock and roll? What was it?
- [04:15]
Burton Cummings
Well, I grew up as a classical kid. I started classical violin when I was five. It was royal conservatories. You got to play Chopin and Tchaikovsky and all this stuff, and it was pretty good. And I turned, like, 14, and it's a very boring life because it's all classical and the world is changing. And I auditioned for a symphony orchestra, the Junior. Winnipeg Junior Symphony School orchestra, and realized I wasn't as good as the classical people there. And I wanted to break out. And so I quit. And the next day after I quit, I went home and said to my mother, I'm not playing violin anymore. I'm quitting. She said, what are you going to do? I said, I have no idea. The next day, I saw elvis Presley on TV. And I said, what is that? TV was brand new back then. This was like 19. This is the mid-50s in Winnipeg. Well, that's called rock and roll. That's called the guitar, and that's called Elvis Presley. That's insane. Everybody's screaming at the guy, what's going on? He said, well, that's what rock and roll. You do whatever you want. You can dance and Shake and scream and yell. I said, well, I want to do that. My cousins had a guitar. So I said, how do you play this? They showed me three things on the guitar I picked up and played it. And they said, how can you play this so easy? I said, well, on a violin all you play is melody. I've been playing melody since I was 5. I'm now 15, so for 10 years. So I can play. I can play lead on this guitar. It's just like a violin. They said, oh, you're a lead guitar player. I started a band. It was Chad Allen and Reflections. We became the Guess who. Here I am.
- [05:41]
Jeff Zito
Wow. Unbelievable story. And I heard there was a chance meeting with the legendary Les Paul where you tried to actually buy a ticket to go into a show, but you were too young.
- [05:53]
Burton Cummings
Well, this on the other side of Winnipeg, it was at a supper club, a nightclub. I didn't realize it and I didn't tell my parents I was going, you can't or else they won't let you go. Right? You're 15, right? Les Paul, Mary Ford had three songs in the top 10. Via con Dios and a couple others. How High the Moon and stuff like that. So I go, I get on the bus. I go to the other side of Winnipeg, which is a three bus transfers across town. And I go to the club. And it's like 5:30 at night. And I say, the guy I've come to see, the Les Paul, he says, you can't get in. It's a supper club. We serve alcohol here. Unless you have an adult with you and book a table, you can't get in. You're kidding. So I'm sitting out front, kind of disheveled, sitting at the bus stop. And a black Cadillac pulls up and the window rolls down. I'm sitting there holding a Les Paul and Mary Ford album. The window rolls down and says, hi, kid.
- [06:44]
Jeff Zito
Wow.
- [06:45]
Burton Cummings
And I look, Les Paul. He says, what are you doing? I thought I came to see your show, but I can't get in. He said, I'll get you in. Carry my guitar. We go in the back of the supper club. He said, you can't go out there. They won't let you go. But you can stay here in the kitchen. And so they had big swinging doors on the kitchen where waiters are going through with trays with food on. And swinging doors had big round windows so they wouldn't smash into each other and knock the trays out of each other's hands. And beside me backstage was five Ampex Tape Recorders all stacked up that he. All his music was on, and he controlled them all with a controller on his guitar. He called it the Les Pulverizer. And he had this Pulverizer switch that would start the tape recorders. And he would go explain to the audience, here's how I play rhythm. And he would play that. Here's how I play the lead. Here's how Mary Ford sang. Mary Ford. They walked around to each table and serenaded each table like you would do with a mariachi band, right? And it was amazing.
- [07:37]
Jeff Zito
Wow.
- [07:38]
Burton Cummings
When the whole thing was done, and I'm so. I'm beside his safer, but all I see is rear end and Mary. And he's wearing a tuxedo, and Mary Ford's wearing, like, a white prom dress, you know, big frilly dress. And their son Gene is playing drums. He's keeping rhythm going. So I see the whole show that way. When it's all done, he comes back, his whole disc. And he hands me his guitar and he wipes his brow. He goes. He does his encore. And that was that.
- [08:00]
Jeff Zito
Unbelievable. And then I hear, years later, you run into him again.
- [08:04]
Burton Cummings
I'm with bto. I'm opening with for Van Halen, and we're in New Jersey outside of New York at the Nassau Coliseum. And Les Paul comes in to say hi to Eddie. And he comes up to me, and Sammy Hager is in the band at that time. Les Paul comes up to me and he says, do I know you? And I said, rancho Don Carlos. Oh, kid, do you remember that lick? I said, yeah. He showed me the lick and How High the Moon? He said, I'm playing at the Iridium Club tomorrow night. Come on down. So I go down to the Iridium Club. He calls me up on stage. We play How High the Moon? He says to me, let's do one of yours, kid. I go, what? Yeah. Don't you. I said, yeah. I play Taking Care of Business. And Les Paul played guitar with me. And then I went a few years later, I go to Neil Young's birthday in LA at the Troubadour. And Neil comes up to me. He says, you know that story you told about Les Paul? And I go, yeah. And he says, you don't realize I was at that show. And I said, really? He said, yeah, but my mother booked a table. I sat at the front table. I saw Neil. I saw Les Paul's fingers play. You saw his rear end as he was walking around.
- [09:02]
Jeff Zito
Unbelievable. Were your parents musical, Randy?
- [09:05]
Burton Cummings
No, but they did everything to get the kids out of the ghetto. So I had violin lessons and my son. My brother had accordion lesson. My other brother had drum lessons. And we became the heart of Bachman Turnoverdum. When we added up my buddy Fred Turner, after the Guess who, I went and started a band with my brothers. We became the three Bachmanns and the. And the Turner. And my brothers have now passed away. I'm the last surviving guy and I continue on as BTO Celebrity Jobber.
- [09:32]
Randy Bachman
The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito.
- [09:35]
Jeff Zito
So you won a singing contest at three years old. By five years old, you started playing classical violin. And I asked you if your parents were musical people. You said no, but they did all they could to get the kids out of the ghetto. What did you mean by that? Number one. And number two, what did your parents do for work?
- [09:56]
Randy Bachman
My mother was a mother. She had four sons. Believe me, a big job, four boys is a big job. And, you know, it's an ad hill. And my dad was a. An optician, you know, eyeglass guy. Because my parents were not well off. We did live in a ghetto, was a Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish kind of ghetto where all the poor people lived on the other side of the train tracks. Whereas Winnipeg, with downtown, with the, I don't know, the more British or the more upper class, you needed a way out. I was either playing hockey, stopping pucks or shooting pucks, shooting hoops, hitting home runs, playing an instrument, being an actor, being an athlete, excelling at something to get you out of there. Or else you're going to stay there and marry your high school sweetheart and have four kids and go to the same game and the same old same old, same old, same old. For some people, that's really good. Sometimes I long for that. There's a nice thing about the comfort zone of that. And then part of me wants to join the rock and roll circus and go around the world, which is what I did.
- [11:02]
Jeff Zito
So what kind of music were your parents into?
- [11:05]
Randy Bachman
The music they would play and they would go and see that would come to Winnipeg would be the Benny Goodman Orchestra, Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, you know, when they were teenagers, when they were 20 or something, whatever. But they'd always play this music in the house on. On 78s. And they always had a great guitar solo. Like Charlie Christian or something is playing the guitar solo in Grand Slam. And I lear off the bat. It didn't know who it was, doesn't say who it is on his 78. And I would just kind of get that in my head. Yeah, so that. That's kind of what happens.
- [11:33]
Jeff Zito
So if I was to say school really wasn't your thing, would that be accurate?
- [11:38]
Randy Bachman
Well, it was my thing until about grades through eight or nine. I was an A student, A plus student. I did everything perfect. I mean, literally everything. I'm playing violin because my parents had to scrape up the money for my lesson, which is like $2 a week. This was like big money for them. My dad was making 50 bucks a week then. So for me to take that money and get a lesson, a lesson, I literally had to practice every morning, half an hour. Violin, 7:30 in the morning before school, and when I came home after school at 4, before I could change it to my play jeans. Because then you had good jeans you wore to school and play jeans you were at home. Yeah, I had to practice another half an hour. So I practiced an hour a day. Violin at the age of five. And it becomes a part of your routine, becomes music. Music is mathematical, it's physical, it's brain to fingers, coordination, everything like that. And on a violin, what do you play? Lead. It's a lead instrument. Like a flute, like a piccolo. You're playing the lead. I get invited to join or audition for the Winnipeg Junior Symphony. 85 kids are auditioning. This is on the other side of Winnipeg, the uppity side where Neil Young lives. It's at his high school, Crescent High or Calvin High. That was it. And I go there. Now I've been playing. I'm 14. I've been playing for, like, for nine years. We're playing a piece, auditioning, as we get into the piece, as a Mozart piece. I'm. I'm auditioning for second violin, which is a big deal because first violin takes over when the conductor's not there, and the second, like, then leads to everything else and it gets to a certain part of the song and there's tap, tap, tap, and everybody stops playing. The conductor says, Bar 32, second violin. It's a. It's an E flat. Let's take it from the top. I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know what bar 32 is. I don't know what an E flat is.
- [13:34]
Jeff Zito
Lost.
- [13:35]
Randy Bachman
I had a teacher that. She would put a sheet of music in front of me, Chopin or something, or Mary Had a Little Lamb or whatever. She'd play it first and she'd say, okay, now your turn. And I would play it because I had heard it in my head. So I learned to play by ear. So now what I'm trying to play with the symphony, junior symphony. And he said, let's take it from the top. We go to the top, we go to bar 32 again, which I now real. I know where it is. I didn't know there was like eight bars. Eight bars? Eight bars. I didn't know what he meant.
- [13:59]
Jeff Zito
Right.
- [13:59]
Randy Bachman
And we get to it again. I play the same note and he says, stop. Second violin. Can you play an E? Yes. It's an open string on the violin. Can you play an E flat? I'm stumped. How can you go any lower than an open string? Mathematically, I don't realize that on the string before that you go da da, da, da, da, da, da. And you go up the next string. At that moment, I don't do it. I say no. So, like, there's 80 kids laughing at me. I pack up my violin, I'm in tears. I got a little 6 cent bus ticket. I go home, the other side of Winnipeg. Takes me an hour to get home on the bus. I go in the house. It's like now, it's now noon on Saturday. My mother says, well, that's it. Are you in the symphony? I go, no, I'm never playing again. What do you mean? I thought I can't play violin. Yes, you can. Well, I can't play with the other kids. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm never going to play it again. They were all laughing at me. So she, she figures I'll get over it. I say, I've never touched watching it again. The next day her sister comes over. Her sister's 10 years younger than her. She's my cool hip aunt who's like maybe 18 or 19. And they together watch Elvis on television. We have a little black and white tv. They're watching this little thing and they're screaming in our living room. My father's going, oh, that's disgusting. I'm going, what is that? Why is this green black, though? He's shaking his hips? What does that mean? Like, I'm a violin player. You stand a certain way and you play what's on the page. And they go, well, that's called rock and roll. That's called Elvis Presley. And that's called the guitar. And I go, I want to do that. It's wild. I want to go wild. Because classical violin, when you adjudicate it a couple of times a year, and it's Royal Conservatory, you have to stand a certain way. You can't rest your elbow like the country Guys, the Cajun guy. You have to stand a certain way. It's all upstroke and downstroke. You got to play everything perfectly. And I wanted to do something wild.
- [15:39]
Jeff Zito
So is that when you made the move to guitar?
- [15:42]
Randy Bachman
I had two cousins chipped in to get a guitar. So one of them would use it Saturday from noon to noon, and then the other one, we use it Saturday from noon to noon. So they took turns. They were both going away fishing. And I said, can I borrow you? Can I borrow your guitar? I wanted to play guitar. I just saw Elvis on tv. I wanted to learn to play that. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So they loaned me the guitar, which I still have on the wall to this day. They go away for the weekend. I listen to the radio. I could play whatever's on the radio at the time, which is 16 tons, 6. Tennessee Ernie Ford, I Walked the Line, Johnny Cash, Hound Dog. There's beginning of rock and roll and rockabilly. Carl Perkins doing Blue Suede Shoes and stuff like that. They come home after two days and they say, well, okay, what have you learned? And I start to play everything. They go, what? How did you figure this out? What are you playing? He said, I don't know what I'm playing. I find a note. I hear it in my head. I find it, I play it. And they go, well, that's pretty amazing. Can you play a chord? And I go, what's a chord? It's a bunch of notes that are in harmony. So, yeah, I can go, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I can play. Yeah, yeah. I started to play lead guitar, like,
- [16:40]
Burton Cummings
out of the blue.
- [16:40]
Randy Bachman
Then you learn the chords to back up what you're. Then I heard from my brother that the best band in town in Winnipeg, the top teenage band who played all the high school dances. And in Winnipeg at the time, this is like the early 60s. All the way through the 60s, the drinking age was 21, so nobody went to nightclubs. Everybody went to a high school dance. When there's a high school dance, There was not 150 kids there. There was 450 kids. Everybody who was 20 or 21 who couldn't go to the clubs came to the high school dance. So we had kids from 14 to about, like, 24, all there dancing together. And if you couldn't dance, a bigger chick would take you and teach you. You stand here and do this, and I'll twirl around. You'll look cool. And then you slow dance with them. You get them to bear Hug you, waltz around the floor. But that was. That was the scene there. So all these bands were playing and playing and heard the top band in town, Ellen and the Silvertones, who changed their name to Chad Allen and the Reflections needed. Needed a guitar player. And my brother was working with Jim Kale, who was the bass player in the band. He said, you want to go on audition for this band? I said, yeah. He said, learn this. They gave me an EP, which is, you know, a four song 45 with four songs by the Shadows and it was man and Mystery, Kon Tiki and four instrumentals. And so I'm learning the rhythm and I go to my first rehearsal with them. The lead guitar player is playing the lead. He breaks a string and I finish playing the lead and I go, what, you can play this? Yes. Can play the. All the lead. I can play all the rhythm lead. Would you want to be the new lead guitar player? I said, okay, great. That's why I came. I'm. I play a lead instrument, right? And then we got the song Shaking all over from Johnny Kidd and the Pirates in England, which is number one in 1961 in England. We're in 1963, 64, Winnipeg and shake all over was a heavy riff, guitar riff and bass, real heavy. Which inspired John Paul Jones and John Deacon and all the other guys who. And John Entwistle, all the other guys who became bass player were inspired in England by Shaking all over to record this song with one microphone and we send it into a record label in. In Toronto, Quality Records, and they say, we love this song, it sounds very British. But you can't use the name Reflections. A band called Just A Song, Just Like Romeo and Juliet was out by the Reflections. We want to release this. It sounds very British. And there was the mystery at the time that Joe Meek had recorded Telstar in his building in the hallway with this thing. And it was the number one instrumental around the world. And that Joe Meek had recorded this at a party with guys from the Stones and the Beatles and the Fentones and everybody all playing together at his party. And they couldn't put their name on the record because they're with different bands with the Stones, with other labels. So Quality Records wanted to put it out and just put out a white label that said Shaken all over and Guess who. Because we couldn't use the name Reflections, we couldn't find a name. Meanwhile, find a name. Okay, we're just going to put Guess who on that. And as people are writing in that, you might. Because to Try to find a new name for a band then in the 60s was really, really tough. Every butterfly and every bird was taken up by the doo wop, the orioles, the sparrows, the ravens, on and on. And then the girls named the Shirel, the Crystal, the Ronette. They were all used by their names. We couldn't find a name. So they put out 50 CDs, 50 45s, to 50 radio stations with Guess who on it and Shake All Over. That's it.
- [19:48]
Jeff Zito
Wow.
- [19:49]
Randy Bachman
It goes to number one. Everybody's phoning in the radio station. Well, I heard from my cousin, it's Brian Jones on guitar. I heard it's George Harrison playing bass for the first time. And it becomes this urban myth that who are the guests? Who? And we're phoning radio stations going, it's me, it's us. It's Randy backwards. No, it's not. It's Brian Jones playing the guitar.
- [20:09]
Jeff Zito
Wow, I didn't know that.
- [20:11]
Randy Bachman
That goes to number one in Canada. It gets leased by Scepter Records in New York City. Scepter Records is owned by Florence Greenberg. Her partner is Paul Cantor. They're really tight, Jewish, smart people. They're in the music business there. They're a block from the Brill Building. They have Scepter Records and Scepter Studios. On Scepter Records is the Kingsman. Louie Louie, Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown. The songwriters are Ashford and Simpson, Bacharach and David. They're pitching songs to Dion. Work all day long. We're there hanging out, recording our album. So we have this mentorship by Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson and Burt Bakker. And how they would. These guys are wearing penny loafers. They're out of. They're just out of Juilliard, wearing T shirts and penny loafers with real pennies in the loafers, right? And all that stuff. And they're there playing Message to Michael and everything for Dion work. And we're hearing all this stuff. It's really, really inspiring. We get asked to do the Kingsman Louis Louis tour, 1965. We've got shake on all over. We've got one hit song. But we are a radio band. Most bands, when you're starting, you play what's on the radio. You copy what's on the radio, right? But we get asked by Florence Greenberg, who wrote Soldier Boy and manages Shrells. Could I back the Shirelles? Could we back the Crystals? Could we back the run at the three or four chicks who sing their demos with a studio band. And when they get on the radio. There's no band. There's just the three girls, right? So can we. Can we play the do Run Run? Can we play He's a Rebel? Of course we can. We sound like the record. So we went out at the guest and we would open the show with Shaykhan all over, back to Crystal, the Ron Anthony, sing their hits, and then we'd close it gave go shake all over, like 40 minutes later.
- [21:49]
Jeff Zito
Oh, wow.
- [21:50]
Randy Bachman
We got to meet and tour. And for us, being from Winnipeg, and we're all white, and we're all either Ukrainian, Polish or Jewish, and a black person is a hero to us. It's like Joe Louis, the boxer, the champion of the world. He's black. Ray Charles, he's black. You know, B.B. king. The black guys are like superheroes. So us backing the black chicks was a thrill. It was phenomenal. Except it's now the mid-60s and everywhere we go, there's a race riot, Okay? A black guy dances with a black chick and gets in a fight. We're told if a fight starts, never stop playing that song. Play that song forever. Till the police come in. Because if you stop playing, they're going to notice there's a skirmish and the whole place would be in a mad fight. Black against white, whatever, right? So we're touring with the. With the Shirelle, like I said, the. The. The Pop Staples, the Staples Singers, okay?
- [22:40]
Burton Cummings
We're.
- [22:41]
Randy Bachman
We're touring with the Staples Singers. We're both in two station wagons. We pull in to get gasoline or thing, and the guy comes up with a shotgun. He shoots it in the air and he goes, you can come in here, you can't. He points at our car and they can't. So we say, what do you want? We go and bring them hamburgers out from a Howard Johnson's or something. For us, this was amazing. And then you play New York, Chicago, Minneapolis. There's race riots in your dance, and you gotta keep playing the song until the police come in and break it up. We went through that whole thing. It was quite an amazing thing. But in the tour, on the tour with the Kingsman, Dion and the Belmonts, I mean, the most. The greatest duo wop band, I mean, hurt. Hurt was hurt. Hurt. Da da da da. All his big run around Sioux, that was it. Were all the big hits at the time. And the Kingsman, Louie Louie and King, Jolly Green Giant, everywhere. This is a rock and roll summer, right? We come home after that summer, the lead singer, Chad Allen, wants to quit the band. Nobody knows who he is. We're called Guess who. That was the time of the Abbott Costello. Who's on third? Who's on first? Watts on second. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but who's on first? Yeah, you're right. No, what's that whole thing? And every time they say, who are you? Where the. Then the who started up shortly after that. And then the Wonder who came up with Frankie Valli in the Four Seasons. And then question mark and the mysterious. There was all these Abbott and Costello jokes going on. Oh, I bet our lead singer said, I'm leaving. I'm going. I'm going back to school. We went back to University of Manitoba. When we left town that summer, the next band taking our place, fighting to take our place, was Neil Young and the Squires, Burton Cummings and the Devrons, Fred Turner and the Rock and Devils. I still see those guys today. I was at Neil's birthday party in November. I still see Fred Turner. I'm touring with Burton Cummings as the guess who. The four of us guys that made it out of Winnipeg, out of the ghetto. We got out and then. So I go to my dad and I say, I want to go see this band called the Devarons. The lead singer, supposed to be really good. He's been playing piano since he was five. I've been playing instruments since I was five. I don't want a guy to learning an instrument. I want a guy who knows his instrument, who can just hear a record and play it right. I said, his name is Burton Cummings. He goes, oh, I went to school with his mother, Rhoda. Let me give her a call. He calls Rhoda Cummings. I go over to my dad, takes me to see Rhoda and she says, okay, I know you're a big brother. You got three younger brothers. Burton is 17. He cannot play with you, but I will sign his contract if you will promise to pick him up before a gig or rehearsal and then bring him home after. I don't want him hanging out with all his friends, getting high and getting drunk and all this stuff. So I say, okay, I'll be a big brother to him. And Burton joins the band. We start to write together. We take the summer and go to Regina, and at that point we see Joni Mitchell for the first time. She just married Chuck Mitchell. Her name's Joni Anderson. She marries Chuck Mitchell. We see them play. I meet a woman there who I marry. I go to her house to pick her up for our first date. I sit down, I write the beginning to these eyes. It's Originally called these Arms because I'm waiting for her for our first date. I'm in a room with only a piano and a plant and a couch. There's no radio, no tv. I sit at the piano and I go boom, boom. These arms long to hold you. I'm trying to sing to her upstairs, right? She's not ready. We're missing our date. And when I show it to Burton Cummings, you go, that's a great beginning. But let's make these arms long to hold you. The second line. And let's get a better first line, okay? These eyes cry every night these arms long to hold you again. Then let's get to the Thomas Wayne thing, which was so called Tragedy. The hurt is on Me because it's. We're in Winnipeg learning the English language, but we're getting stuff that's on stuff from Chicago, New York, and we're getting black language like the Hurtins on Me. You never heard that before, right? Put in a song like the Hurting's on Me and I'll Never be Free. That was like really big deal for us, you know, so. And every night we listen to WLS and wnoe, which is New Orleans and Chicago, with a little rocket radio, with a thing like this. A little earphone you put in your ear. There was no speaker, so you could go to bed. You plug this thing into your wall, go to bed and put in your ear, and your parents would think you were asleep. You're laying there and listening to WNOE Chicago. You're hearing blues records. Because at night Dick Biondi would be playing blues, like buddy guy, B.B. king and all this stuff. Howlin Wolf and everything. You never heard this in Winnipeg. It was like a country rock town, the middle of the wheat field of the plains. So we had a great growing up. And there was 100 bands in Winnipeg working at that time because of all the high schools and all the bar mitzvahs and all the community centers, and you couldn't get in a nightclub until you were 21. The celebrity jobber Podcast with Jeff Szdo. The Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Zito
- [27:01]
Jeff Zito
so Chad Allen leaves the band, goes back to college. You go to college, majored in business administration. Did you have any clue of what you were going to use that degree for?
- [27:15]
Randy Bachman
I already knew I was a musician. I didn't want a normal job. I hated normal jobs. I had a couple. My dad got me a couple of jobs.
- [27:23]
Jeff Zito
What were they?
- [27:24]
Randy Bachman
Well, he was an optician, which a dispensing optician. So they actually would make your glasses. They would carve them in a machine, right? With water and all this stuff. So you'd go and pick a frame, you send them the frame. They take out your things that aren't prescription. They then put them in a machine that traces them. They put them in a. You deliver. So I got. I was 14. You get a bus pass. You get on the bus free. You take all the prescriptions to the optician. They grind the glasses. Then you take it back in a little briefcase on the. To all the doctors, the eye doctors downtown who then give you your glasses with your new prescription. They polish them up. So I did like two runs in the morning, two runs in the afternoon of that I hated. I made 20 bucks a week. I'd go out on a Friday night, make 20 bucks playing a high school. So my dad, the money doesn't make sense. Here I'm working my tail off from seven in the morning till five or six at night. I go and play two hour dance. I get the same amount of money. This went on for my whole life. But when I wanted a guitar, a certain guitar, I went and worked. I had a paper route. I mowed lawns or three houses of pretty rich people. I get 10 bucks a lawn. I worked at a car wash from 6 in the morning till 6 at night every Saturday for 10 bucks, working 12 hours for $10. And then go home and have a shower, go to my gig and make 20 bucks playing a high school. I made more money playing in the band for less time, right? So I pretty much knew my destiny. I didn't want to get another normal job where your paycheck's $22 after a whole weekend. And they deduct money for unemployment insurance and for something that. What do you. I'm okay. That kind of thing. So it didn't make any sense. My dad got me a job selling shoes. Bata shoes, which probably doesn't even exist. They were bata shoe store. And because I was the new young guy and I'm like 14, they gave me the old farm ladies that came in and we're talking babas, big legs, legs like telephone poles, calluses on their feet and I'm trying to fit them or. Or they'd give me the new hot chick that came in who sits down and you're looking at these legs and they've got a short skirt and they're putting their feet up and you've got their feet and you're. You're pretty uncle. So I was like, God, you normally, you normally get an erection, right? And you can't stand up. You're in the, you're in the shoe store. You can't stand up and go get the other shoes. I mean, it's like unbelievable. So I went and started that at 5 o'.
- [29:43]
Burton Cummings
Clock.
- [29:44]
Randy Bachman
At 7:30 they gave me a break for 15 minutes. I'm supposed to work till 9. I left at 7:30 and never went back. I got on a bus with my guitar, went to my gig, played, made 30 bucks, came my, came home that night. My dad said, what happened? You didn't go back to work? I said, I hated it. He said, well, here's your paycheck of $12. They took off three bucks. I said, look, dad, I made 15 bucks. I made 20 bucks. I'm going to make 20 bucks tomorrow night. I'm making more at the bang. He said, you win.
- [30:08]
Jeff Zito
Got it. So they were pretty supportive of, of your musical dream.
- [30:14]
Randy Bachman
Yeah, well, when you're poor, you can't neglect good honest money, right? I wasn't selling dope, I wasn't stealing. I was going playing. I was using the music lesson they gave me that they paid for for five years. I wasn't playing violin, but I'm playing it on guitar.
- [30:29]
Jeff Zito
Right.
- [30:29]
Burton Cummings
You hear that?
- [30:30]
Randy Bachman
We hear my solo in American Woman. It's like I'm playing a viola, you know, a cello. Like I'm playing, I'm blowing the instrument.
- [30:39]
Jeff Zito
That's interesting. So, so when you're telling this fantastic story about, you know, join the time you joined the band, all, all the way until American Woman hits number one back in 1970, was there a moment, like a monumental moment? Because you gave me a lot of them when you told that story. But is there one moment that you can think of between the time you started in the band, the time American woman hits number one in 1970, was there a big break, a moment that changed everything for you to where success was on its way?
- [31:21]
Randy Bachman
Well, I've had a lot of people say to me, what is the path to success? And I say, failure, failure, failure, failure. Keep going, failure. Keep going. And then suddenly you don't fail in your success. You keep doing it and doing it until you get better than the other guy, the other guy who laughed at you or beat you up and you got your little violin, you're going to your violin practice and they call you a sissy. They're the guys who come to your dance later when you're rocking and rolling and they say to their girlfriend, oh, I went to school with him. He's my high school buddy. Yeah, you're the guy who used to beat me up. You know, that kind of thing.
- [31:54]
Jeff Zito
Right.
- [31:54]
Randy Bachman
So I remember grade one. I start. I'm five and a half when I start grade one because of the age difference. And this is up in Winnipeg. And they do. And there's 40 kids in each class. There's a lot of kids in each class. So in the first day of school, they do a seating plan. So the teacher will have a sheet of paper in front of her. And it's row one, desk one, desk two. So she knows your name is Iris Smith and you're Johnny Jojo. And what's your name? What does your dad do? And what do you want to be when you grow up? My name is Randy Bachman. My dad's an optician. I'm a musician. But what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm a musician. Yes. What do you want to be when you grow up? I run home. It's the first day of school. My mother's doing the laundry. We lived a block from. I lived a block from the school. I go in the house, it's like 10 in the morning. She says, what are you doing home? I just left you at school. I said, I'm quitting. She said, what do you. You can't quit school. It's the first day of grade one. I said, I keep answering the question. I keep getting it wrong. She said, what's the question? It's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I say, I'm a musician. I've been playing violin for like a half a year now. I've been singing, you are my sunshine and beautiful brown eyes. I am a musician. She said, okay. She takes my violin. We go back to school. She says to the teacher, he is a musician. I play Zardust by Chopin or something. The class all applauds. I'm accepted as a musician. I knew my whole life I was going to be a musician. I didn't like working. I didn't like school. But I was good at school until I discovered guitar. And then I didn't practice an hour a day. I practiced four and five and six hours a day. I would take it to bed and sleep with it. I wake up in the middle of the night and play it. I had a record player where I wouldn't even turn on the volume. I just hear from the needle. I'd hear Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, you know, all this stuff that I'd get Records from Chicago. We'd go on tour. I went to the radio stations. Everything they threw away, they'd give to me. They only played like pop music and little bit of country. They'd throw away all the R and B stuff they got. So, I mean, I have this obsession with learning all the music I could learn and to try to be like the moment I saw Elvis on tv, then that got relives. Later on the same Ed Sullivan show with the Beatles that get relives. Later with the Beach Boys that get relives over and over. You as a nobody. A truck driver, a kid from Liverpool, a kid from west colonial Winnipeg, from the North End. You can be an Elvis, you can be a John Lennon. You could be a Brian Wilson. You could be it. These guys have proven it. So you go out and you prove it and you fail. And you fail, and you fail. How do you write a hit song? I've been asked that question a million times. It's really easy. You write a hundred songs and if you're lucky enough to have one out of there, guess what? You're a one hit wonder, right? If you have two, if you have three, you're an accomplished songwriter. You keep trying and trying. And I also learned this recently. Everything that happens in your life, it doesn't happen to you. Because if it does, you're a victim. It happens for you. Changing that one word to that happened for me. I'm going to get over this. I'm going around that guy. I'm going to crush that guy. He said no again. He threw me out. He won't let me go out with his daughter or he won't let me do this or that. I'm going around this guy. And you go around the obstacle and so you learn that it happens for you. So you become stronger and your dream becomes more defined in your head and you begin more focused, more focused, more focused. And screw the world. This is what I'm going to do. So Chad Allen left the band. The band broke up. I had a meeting. Burton Cummings joined. A week later, the Guess who was resurrected. New lead singer. A punk four years younger than us. When you're 19 that somebody's 14, they're a punk, right? Okay, sure. But I liked his punk attitude, you know, like, you know, and he was like. He could sing Danny Boy. He could also sing host of the Rising sun, you know what I mean? He could scream and he could sing ballads. He had a beautiful Irish voice and. Which also had the roughage of Eric Burdon at the time. Or Stevie Winwood, who was brand new with the Spencer Davis Group. Then we went to England in 67. We had a record that made the top 20 in Billboard. It was called His Girl. We're so naive and stupid. We got on a plane with new equipment and new suits. We were 40 grand in the hole.
- [35:54]
Jeff Zito
Oh, man.
- [35:55]
Randy Bachman
We flew to England with no contract. We walked into King Records, owned by Philip Solomon, who also owned the pirate radio station there. He was the head of the British mobs, whatever you want to call them, and he offered us a weekly salary and he said we would be the next Beatles. So this is 1967. So we're there with Burton Cummings, Jim Kale, me and Gary Peterson. And the four of us are there, and he offers us a certain amount of money, 400 bucks a week. We're going to be the new Beatles. He's going to send us on tour in Australia and over the everywhere the Beatles went. Okay, great. So is the 400 a week each? No, it's 400 a week for the four of you.
- [36:27]
Burton Cummings
Oh.
- [36:28]
Randy Bachman
How about record sales? What do we get per record sale? What don't you understand about 400 a week? That's the deal. Take or leave. You have no contract here. You have no gigs. You can't even pay for your hotel. You've got four rooms in a hotel. What are you going to do? I didn't even need to talk to the band. We walked out.
- [36:46]
Jeff Zito
You didn't?
- [36:47]
Randy Bachman
No, we walked out.
- [36:48]
Jeff Zito
A lot of kids wouldn't do that.
- [36:50]
Randy Bachman
We walked out. We had nothing. If you got nothing, you got to give it all away. Whatever you're going to get, you're going to be giving it away. This guy controlled the pirate radio. He owned the radio, the record label. He owned everything.
- [37:01]
Jeff Zito
So what did you do?
- [37:02]
Randy Bachman
I get the band together. I say, okay, we got to get out of our hotel rooms. We've got four rooms at the Regent palace there in Piccadilly Circus. Let's all move into one room. They have a little tiny bed there. Let's push them together. We'll sleep this way on the beds. Okay, four of us. Can you guys go out all night? We stay home all day. We'll sleep at night. You guys sleep during the day. We'll trade this room, and then with your room, you've got free breakfast in England, the full breakfast. So we made friends with all the maids, so when they would collect a breakfast tray, you hung a thing on your door. Full breakfast or you just want oatmeal or whatever for two Solid weeks. We stayed in one room. We ate bacon sandwiches for two solid weeks. So they'd bring us all the bacon on. The toast in England is cold anyways. Like, the butter doesn't melt on it. It just stayed there like.
- [37:43]
Burton Cummings
Like lard.
- [37:44]
Randy Bachman
We ate bacon sandwiches for two weeks. We hung out there. We went to Mills Music, which published Shaken all over. And so we met Tony Hiller there, who was the main president. He said, you guys are a great band and you, you're. You're smart enough to walk out. Philip Solomon, good for you, because he's a crook. He shot that. Me shot that. Everybody else, I'm doing a session a couple days. You want to come and be the band? I'll give you a chart, just a chord chart. You play the chord and if you want to sing the demo, great. I've got two songwriters, but I can't pay you. But if you bring two of your songs, record four songs, you can have them. All, right? They're just demos for me, but you want to take them back to Canada and say you recorded in England so you're not a complete failure. So we go in there. They give us two songs this time long ago, Ms. Felicity Gray. I write a song overnight called there's no getting away from you and Burton and I don't know what to do. We get Neil Young's song they that he had just played for us called Flying on the Ground is wrong. We were on the Buffalo Springfield first album we record. We're the first band to record a Neil Young song other than Springfield or Neil Young. We record Flying on the Ground is Wrong. We go then home, home to Winnipeg, broken. No gigs, nothing. But four songs that we sent to Quality Records in Toronto. They go, this is great. You sound like the Beatles. You sound like the Fortunes. This song, this time long Ago is a great song. Flying on the Ground is a great song. It's Neil Young, blah, blah, blah. This whole thing. After that the song came out, we had a big fight with our management. And I said, you guys said that there was no contract, no guarantees, no money. We're now 40 grand in the hole. We don't know what to do. We've got to break up. I've got to go and sell shoes or get a job as a messenger boy again or start mowing lawns, right? We walk out of this management deal. He tells us to fo. No one's ever told us this. We're like 18, 19 years old. We've not even heard this language. And we get out And I say to the band, well, I can't think of anything more guys I'd like to be in a band with than you guys. So now that we've broken up with our manager, let's. Let's just see what happens. Let's go back on the circuit. And two days later, I get a call from a guy named Larry Brown who's producing a weekly TV show in Canada called Let's Go. It's on every single day of the week at 5 o'. Clock. So every kid in Canada is watching this. On Monday, it's from Halifax. The band there is Ann Murray and her band. Then it goes to Ottawa, Montreal, the band there's JB and the Playboys or who become MASH. McCann goes to Toronto. The host of the Toronto show is Alex Trebek, who's from Jeopardy. Right now. Alex Trebek, Sure. Okay. And the band there is, you know, another hip band comes to Winnipeg. It's us. Goes to Calgary at the Stampeders, it goes to Vancouver. It's the Chessmen, who become Chilliwack. So this show in 1967, 68 on CBC every single day from a different city. We were on every Thursday. But he says to me, we want you to play the Hit Parade. And when we know you could play it really good, can you read charts? And I said, of course. Of course we can't. I can't read music. I say to him, who's doing the charts? He said, oh, a guy named Bob McMullen. I said, okay, I know Bob. Bob McMullan doesn't know. I'm not supposed to know this because we're supposed to show up Monday and they're going to put charts in front of us and we have to play four songs because we're backing up other singers. And we're also doing what we our own song, the rest of the hit prayers.
- [40:40]
Burton Cummings
It.
- [40:40]
Randy Bachman
We're backing up different singers. And so Bob McMillan says, yeah, I've done Daydream Believer. I've done Solitary Man. I'm doing Last Train to Clarksville and da da. So I say to Burton, we got to get some money. Gather all your drink bottles. Then if you collected Coke bottles, you got 2 cents a bottle. We take down a hundred, couple hundred bottles. We get enough for a dollar. We buy two 245s and learn them. So we go in Monday morning and they put the chart in front of us and we go, duh duh, da da da da da da da da da da. The producer comes out of the room and he Goes, you can't read a note, can you? I said, what do you mean? He says, you have the chart upside down.
- [41:19]
Jeff Zito
Hilarious.
- [41:20]
Randy Bachman
I say, okay, you got us. We can't read a note. He said, yeah, but you were exactly what I want. You sound like the record. So if you could just do this, write yourself a courtshirt, you can learn it. You've got the gig. We got that gig for two years. It went on for 35 weeks a year with repeats in the summer. So suddenly we're in every household in Canada every Thursday, and everybody from Halifax to Victoria, there it is about the guess who in Winnipeg. Burton Cummings becomes an expert singer. I become an expert guitar player because I'm now copying Hendrix and Cream and Glen Campbell, who's playing all the Beach Boys. Old Burton now copies Mick Jagger, Steve Winwood, Ray Charles. We're copying everything and we're doing it perfectly. That was like the Beatles stopping, going on the road and going to Abbey Road every day and recording and recording and recording and recording. So in that period of time, in two years, Wild, we do like 70 shows where we're playing hit songs over and over and over and over. And finally the producer came and said, if you guys can write your own songs that are good enough to fit in between Ruby Tuesday and Lady Madonna and I Get around, you will put your own songs on the television show. So in the middle of this half hour show, we're doing the Hit Parade. We put in a new song and we put in no time. We put in these Eyes songs. We're writing. A guy in Toronto who does commercials for Coca Cola, Jack Richardson hears these eyes, calls us up and that's a hit song. I'll mortgage my house, I'll take it to New York, to Phil Ramon Studio in our studios, and we'll record an album. Write a whole album. So we write a whole album. And on there is these eyes. And then from that on, it's boom.
- [42:55]
Jeff Zito
That was it. That was the big break. That was the moment that changed your lives.
- [43:01]
Randy Bachman
The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito.
- [43:05]
Jeff Zito
Celebrity jobber, a two parter here. Randy, at the height of your success in 1970, number one single, you leave the band. I wanted to know why you left the band. Was it health reasons? Was it what the other guys were getting into that you weren't quite on board with? I wanted to know why you decided to leave Number one. Number two, what did you do in the three years between when you left the Guess who and when BTO became something?
- [43:39]
Randy Bachman
Well, the reasons I Left. You stated them all. We were all going different directions. We started when we were teenagers. When you start to turn 20, 21, you have different ideas on politics, religion, music, girls, dope, drinking, whatever, all that stuff. But what really, with a catalyst was every single night after the gig, I'd have a gallbladder attack. And I didn't know what it was, but you just get this pain right in the middle, like somebody turning a knife in your chest and you're vomiting blood both ends. You're sitting on a toilet and throwing up in the bath of blood. And my roadie would take me into the hospital and they'd say, okay, we need to keep you overnight. We'll give you some stuff to drink, We'll X ray your insides and see what's wrong. And my roadie would say, well, we got to drive 200 miles to play Pittsburgh. Then we got to drive to Cleveland, we got to drive to Toledo. We're on the road. We had five days off. I said, I gotta go home. Went home to my doctor, drank the barium, found out I had 12 or 14 gallstones. That was the pain. Every time after the gig, you'd have a greasy cheeseburger then or something and a Coke. And then your gallbladder starts up. She said, you need to have a gallbladder thing and I'll schedule it for August. What do you mean August? This is like. This is like. This is April. I need this now. He said, well, unless you're in emergency, you're scheduled for like middle of August. I can be an emergency. I'll just go and have a Coke and a cheeseburger right now. Don't do that. I said, look, I've got to go back and play one more gig with this band and we've hit number one. We're probably going to be taking a break. We've been on the road for months and months and it's at the Fillmore east that I've got to play the Fillmore East. And he said, okay, all you can eat is lettuce, saltine crackers with no salt, sugar free jello and skim milk. Can you do that? Yeah, I said, I could do that. Talk about weight loss diet.
- [45:23]
Jeff Zito
Oh, man.
- [45:24]
Randy Bachman
And so I took that, I went and played the Fillmore with the Guess who was my last gig, May of 1970. Came home, waited, had to leave town because suddenly the number one band, I'm. I'm the idiot. I leave the band or I got thrown out. Whoever said what? So I go on and I produce A couple of bands, because I've had the experience now in England, recording with Tony Hiller, recorded Regent Sound there. I recorded Phil Ramon at A and R, recorded at Hallmark in Toronto. And I've got this, I don't know, credibility that I know what I'm doing there. And learning from Phil Ramon, I'm telling you, is like probably the best thing in the world that could ever happen to anyone. And I find myself at like 11 o' clock every night wanting to do something. You gear up for your whole gig on stage, which is starting 8 or 9 o' clock or 10 o', clock, and you go on and you have this energy. It's your football game, it's your Friday night football or Monday night football week. And finally my wife said to me, you got to start another band. Because I was going crazy every single. Because all my life I had practiced and recorded and played and practiced and recorded and played. Nobody in Winnipeg will play with me. I'm the loser who quit the band. The number one band in the world.
- [46:28]
Jeff Zito
Wow.
- [46:28]
Randy Bachman
So I go to my three younger brothers who I, you know, taught to play. My brother Robbie played drums on pots and pans with wooden spoons and those round Ogilvy Quaker Oats porridge. We'd cut those in different things and put them together. And those are his Tom Toms. We cut the Bray Belt album with no drums. I had a borrow set of drums for Robbie. He was used to playing pots and pans and was Neil Young who came back to Winnipeg. He had left Buffalo Springfield. He didn't know what to do. He just had a solo album coming out. He said to me, just do whatever you want, but don't try to copy the Guess who. And I didn't. You can't beat Burton's voice. You can't beat the momentum you've got of American Woman in no Time. And all these years had hit after hit after hit, and they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You can't compete with that, so do something different. I said, well, I love the Springfield. I love vocal. I got a pedal steel, a violin, an accordion. I did two country rock albums called Brave Belts. Neil got me the deal with Moosson and Reprise Records. So I'm down in la, I'm doing that whole thing and I do two albums for them. I'm into the third album and putting out my own money. They call me back and say, we've hit the bottom line. We can't accept your third album. We're gonna have to let you go And I go, oh, really? And so we don't have the record deal. I got my couple of brothers and I also got Fred Turner in the band at the time because he's a great vocalist as well. And I've got the third album cut, Brave Belt 3. I send it to 22 labels. This takes me a year and a half. Then you sent out an album on seven and a half inch reels. And I get passed on by everybody. Got beautiful letters of pass from Jack Holt, Elektra with a butterfly from A and M from Herb Alpert with the trumpet in the middle, that the A and the. And the M. And I've got all these wonderful letterheads saying, we pass. You're not right for our band at the time. I'm ready, like to call it quits and go and sell shoes again.
- [48:16]
Jeff Zito
No.
- [48:18]
Randy Bachman
Suddenly I get a call. It's from Charlie Fash, F, A, C, H from Mercury Records in Chicago. And he says, you remember you had a meeting with me last year? I said, yeah. What I told you about your band Bray Belt is to put your name on it. Nobody knows what BR belt means. Put your name Backman on there. Guys look for a name they recognize. If you've written some hits, you've been in a band, you got to mention that. So use the name Backman, okay? Instead three Backman's in A Turner, he says, okay, call yourself Backman Turner. So at the time, there's Seals and Crofts and Brewer and Shipley, two guys with mandolins and acoustic guitars doing folk music. We call ourselves Backman Turner and people are booking us in coffee houses. We're showing up with amplifiers because Fred can now sing like John Fogarty. We're doing Creed and the Clearwater, the Stone, the Beetle, and our own originals. I stuff. We're blowing these little coffee cups off the table when everybody passes. Charlie Fat called me, says, remember you had the one. You had the meeting. I told you, when you're sending out your new record, write your name on the front in red Sharpie. Don't use black Sharpie. And I said, charlie, I've got it right here. This is your Mercury letterhead. You passed on our album in January. He said, oh, that was Bud Scopa. He took over my office for a while while I was at Meet Em in Cans and first a Nam show, then Meet them then cans. And we got a new budget in February. So I'm back now with my new budget and I was clearing off my desk. All the tapes that came in are going into the Trash one didn't get into the can, it fell on the floor. It had Backman on it and read, I'm playing it right now. And in the background I hear, give me your money please. Which is side one, cut one, he's put on reel one. He said, is the whole album like this? Well, yeah, it's a new kind of heavy pop rock and roll. I'm trying to reinvent myself. Going nowhere with two country rock album like. Like Poco's gone flying. Breeder Brothers are gone. It's like a passe thing. The birds are gone, flying, you know, Sweetheart of the roadie. It's all over. It's going to heavier stuff. And he said, well, I'm flying to LA on Saturday. I'll play this from A and R Media. I want to sign you. We just lost Ryb. I'm taking my chance. I'm signing Rod Stewart, who just left the Faces, and I'm signing you. He calls me Saturday morning and he says, you got a deal. How much you got in the album? I said, I got about 90 grand in the album. Paying guys salary so they don't get another day job. I want them to practice every day me. And he said, well, I can't give you that, but I can give you a three album deal over five years and I'll give you like 75 in albums. You can recoup your money from that, okay? And I said, okay, that's a deal. We sign. We sign it. It comes out, nobody plays the album. It's too new, it's too heavy rock. It's like nobody understands what we're doing yet. We get a call from Scott Shannon. Oh, right. Who's a program director in St. Louis, Missouri.
- [50:51]
Jeff Zito
Oh, okay. So this is before Tampa, this is before New York. This is in his. In his hometown. This is when he was a young kid.
- [50:58]
Randy Bachman
This is Casey Radio with a pig with the headphones. Casey Radio. And he says, my name is Scott Shannon. I'm the PD here. We are having a rock and roll weekend where we're going to play the Girl Can't Help It, Rock her on the Clock Clock and Hard Day's Night or something like that. And we just lost our band. So it's at a drive in movie theater. Everybody will be driving in their car. They'll have beer, they'll have hot dogs. And we're going to have a stage with bands playing. And when it gets dark, we'll play the rock and roll movie. It's a long weekend and if you guys will come and play. You've only got eight songs out. Everybody will know every song. We've got two. We're going to play one of your songs in every rotation. I can't pay you any money. I said, forget the money, we'll come. We go to a truck stop in Detroit and Charlie Thatcher said to me, get a new name. I'm not putting Bray Belt on this album. And you can't be called back when Turner is too much like Seals and Crofts that had Diamond Girl. Remember all those hits they had? And one took over the line with Brewer and Ship. So we're playing at the truck stop in Detroit and I say to Fred Turner, look at this. A magazine called Overdrive. Look at the fold out in the middle. It's not a naked chick, right? The inside inside of a guy's truck with leopard skin. And he got a little stereo and he got a little lunchbox. I said, this is a great name for an album. Fred said, it's a great name for the band. Our music is all overdrive. So all I have is a napkin. So I write down on the napkin, because napkins are like this right there in those tall foam thing. I write down Backman, then Turner and Overdrive under it so I can't write it. Outside was between the cash register and I'm paying. I called Charlie Patch the next morning and say, I got a name for the band. Bachman turned to Overdrive. He goes, wow, that is so strong. Strong syllables. It's way too long. I look at the napkin, I go, how about bto, man? That's it. Chicago was CTA then, probably still Natural csn, you know what I mean? And REO Speedwagon was just coming out and initials were like the elo, like the big thing. So all this happens synergistically at once. We play for Scott Shannon, and then from there, from St. Louis, we start to get played in New Orleans. We start to play, the sister stations start to play. It becomes a hit album. We hook up with Don Fox, who runs the warehouse in New Orleans. He has to come down there and play Mardi Gras for a whole week. And we're playing with other brand new bands who no one's heard of, who are the Doobie Brothers, Peter Frampton, ZZ Top, who had only just put out Lagrange, and us, who got nothing out. We have no single dot. And then we came up with Let It Ride after that. And so we're still friends with all these guys. I just got to think, from Patrick Simmonson, congratulations, On your year of rock and roll, Burton Cummings. What are you doing the rest of your. The rest of the year of September on I'm with bto. I'm touring my Face off this year. This is like I'm. This is my dream. My two childhood bands that hit number one with both bands with album and single sold as many records with BTO that I did with Guess who in half the time. I then had to leave because of the circumstances of things fall apart and things don't hold. The center does not hold and. And here I am today.
- [53:44]
Jeff Zito
Wow.
- [53:45]
Randy Bachman
And now I'm back with both bands with both original guys touring for the fans.
- [53:49]
Jeff Zito
Yeah, it's incredible the guess who.com by the way coming somewhere near you. These guys are all, you know, full tour for my listeners in Detroit coming to Pine Knob in, in July, my listeners in New Jersey, there's a few different dates. One in Atlantic City, there's one in Home Dell this summer with the gu. Burton Cummings is back. You couldn't ever expect lightning to strike twice, Randy. And it, it did. And then 50 some odd years later, us Americans are still pronouncing your name wrong and calling you Randy Bachman. But we figured it out. At least I did the last time we chatted. So what an incredible story. And I'm so glad that you're not selling shoes.
- [54:41]
Randy Bachman
Me too.
- [54:42]
Jeff Zito
I think you are too.
- [54:43]
Randy Bachman
Me too.
- [54:44]
Jeff Zito
The guess who.com on tour with Burton Cummings and of course BTO will continue to tour. You have plans to continue that?
- [54:57]
Randy Bachman
Yeah, the last Guess who gig is August 23rd at the P E which is the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. And we've played there many times since the late 60s. I mean it was a big deal from Winnipeg to come play Vancouver because it was the west coast like we were farm guys like from Iowa. That's what Winnipeg is like. It's like Minnesota, North Dakota. No, it's going to be a really big deal. Then after that I'm with the BTO and we have plans to go to Japan and tour the states all down south. Because in the states in September and October all the state fairs are in ending.
- [55:31]
Jeff Zito
Right?
- [55:31]
Randy Bachman
I mean harvest, Harvest is later down south in Canada we have our Thanksgiving in October in the States it's in November. Right. Because the whole seasons are later. So we've got a lot of state fairs to play and gigs to play. September, October, November in the states as BTO.
- [55:46]
Jeff Zito
Randy. So awesome. Again, you're so gracious with your time. I really do appreciate it. Great luck. The rest of the way, send my best to Burton and until next time.
- [55:58]
Randy Bachman
All right, thanks, man. Bye bye.
- [55:59]
Jeff Zito
Thank you very much.
- [56:00]
Randy Bachman
Bye bye.
- [56:00]
Jeff Zito
I mean, I asked for 20 minutes, the guy gave me over an hour. I can't believe it. And just an incredible storyteller. I mean, what a vivid memory that he has. Father was an eye doctor, mother was a stay at home mom, four kids. And you know, from the time he was just a little kid, he considered himself a musician. I mean, classically trained violinists. Considered himself a musician at the age of 5 years old. When I asked, when I asked Randy about the big break, okay, he tells like a 16 minute story, but he doesn't jump around. It's in a perfect chronology where basically he's playing this hit parade, as they called it, or is this traveling show. They're playing a lot of different people's songs and it ends up becoming a television show in Canada. And they say, hey, if you have any of your own songs, we'll, we'll put them in between. One of those songs ends up being these Eyes, a guy in Toronto who does commercials for Coca Cola. Here's the song these Eyes calls up. Randy says this is a hit song. Mortgages his house, takes them to record an album. Of course, these Eyes is on the album. And that was it. That was the Guess who. And then, you know, for Randy, lightning strikes twice for this guy. He quits the Guess who because he's having health problems. And the other guys in the band are all going in different directions in life and politics, smoking, dope, whatever. Takes three years off, produces some other albums, and then forms another band with his brothers and Fred Turner, the very famous DJ Scott Shannon. Early in his career in St. Louis contacts, Randy says, hey, we had a band back out of a show that we're doing. We'll play your songs on the radio if you can come here and, and play a concert. So they play the show, the station plays the record, other stations start playing the record, they change the name from Brave Bell to Bachman Turner Overdrive. And as they say, the rest is history. Randy Backman has another number one album with another band. It's just an incredible story. And by the way, his first job was running errands for his father, who is an eye doctor. And then of course, he tells the story about, about selling shoes to mostly big farm ladies. But the occasional hot chick would come in with her nice legs and Randy would remember getting a boner and not being able to go into the back room to get the right size shoe for her. Oh, just awesome, man. Thank you so much for checking out another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Iheart, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Please subscribe. Would love a five star rating. And of course, if you could please leave a review, you can check out past guests and episodes online@celebrityjobber.com and don't forget theguesswho.com for tour dates coming near your town this summer. I think Randy Backman knew he was gonna be a musician from the time he was five years old. I don't think I know he told us, but he, he mentioned several times during the interview he needed to make this work because he did not want to go back to selling shoes. Ah, that was so great. Randy Backman from the Guess who and Bachman Turner Overdrive. And that'll do it for this episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next week. I'm Jeff Zito.
- [59:33]
Burton Cummings
Hi.
- [59:34]
Randy Bachman
This is Alex Canceroitz. I'm the host of Big Technology Podcast, a longtime reporter and an on air contributor to cnbc. And if you're like me, you're trying to figure out how artificial intelligence is changing the business world and our lives. So each week on Big Technology, I bring on key actors from companies building AI tech and outsiders trying to influence it, asking where this is all going. They come from places like Nvidia, Microsoft, Amazon, and plenty more. So if you want to be smart with your wallet, your career choices, in meetings with your colleagues and at dinner parties, listen to Big Technology Podcast. Wherever you get your podcasts.