“Classic” Rock, as a term, is a bit of misnomer. Rock isn’t a language that no one speaks anymore. Rock music is ageless, organic, hardworking, vital, and speaks a language that everybody understands, and sings along to.
That said, there is something about the music of the late ‘60s and early ’70s that defines guitar-based rock — a driving energy and unprecedented songwriting that really warrants the term “classic.”
You can ask Randy Bachman, who was at the forefront of the creation of the genre. He and his bands, like Bachman Turner Overdrive, helped define rock in the early ’70s. That sound, and those songs, are going rock Western Financial Place in Cranbrook when BTO comes to town Sunday, April 6. Time is going to stand still.
“I look back now, it’s like a whole genre,” Bachman said, on the phone from his home in Victoria, ahead of going on tour with BTO next month. “It’s like Blues, or Jazz. Classic Rock, it’s a thing all over the world.
And I’m so grateful for the blessing of having started — in the mid-60s with the Guess Who, and living through the wonderful period of time from about ’61 or 62,’ to the late ‘70s when Disco came in — 14 years of amazing Classic Rock.”
The early ’70s was a fertile, inventive time for music. “There was so much happening musically,” Bachman said. “And it was almost like people were waiting for BTO to arrive on the scene.”
A song has a unique power to grow beyond it’s original writing — an organic quality that leads it to take on a life of its own, to become something greater than its writer, and to exist outside the time it was created. This is perhaps nowhere more true than in the case of “Taking Care of Business.” The hit from BTO’s second album, released in December, 1973. That song in particular has achieved an almost mythological status.
“‘Taking Care Of Business’ has become universal," Bachman said in an interview with The Townsman. "It is used as a sports anthem … kids at summer camp sing it, high school bands play it, symphonies play it. Presidential candidates have used it for theme songs. The world record for most guitar players have played it …"
"Taking Care Of Business” took seven years to write, Bachman says.
“[I first] wrote it in the late ’60s, as ’White Collar Worker.’ It died. Because I was copying ‘Paperback Writer,’ And I threw away the choruses, just kept the verses. And [one night] we sang the new hook — “taking care of business’ — on stage live. And it was magical. The crowd went crazy, and they still go crazy every night.”
Bachman Turner Overdrive’s origin story is also legendary in the annals of Rock history. Bachman, of course, a founding member of The Guess Who, was already in the thick of Rock and Roll with that band, experiencing international success and hit songs, and the accompanying grind and all the turbulence that comes with that success.
“It was survival of the fittest, honestly,” he said. “I left The Guess Who — it was 1970 — it was not a great time in my life. To leave a band — punks from Winnipeg, who’d had a number one album and single in the world” [American Woman”].”
It was then Bachman developed a medical issue, and had to stay home in Winnipeg for three months.
“They went on without me. And suddenly I’m out of the band. And I want to start over, but I can’t compete with the magic voice of Burton Cummings, one of the greatest singers in the world. Still today.
“I didn’t want to be second-rate Guess Who. I can write Guess Who pop songs, but I didn’t want to do that anymore.
So Bachman formed a Country Rock band — Brave Belt.
“We all liked Country Rock, so I started a band called Brave Belt, doing Country Rock. Buffalo Springfield had broken up, Poco had broken up, the Eagles hadn’t quite started yet, they’re still backing Linda Ronstadt. Neil Young got me a deal with Reprise Record in L.A. I fly down there, I do two Brave Belt albums, they kind of like it, but it just doesn’t click. We’re not in L.A. playing the Whiskey a Gogo, we’re in Winnipeg, right? We’re too far away. And then they say, ‘we gotta drop you.’
“Then I had a guy in New York tell me having a name of a band that doesn’t do you any good. No one knows who this new band is. Use your name, it’s under all these records — ‘No Time,’ ‘American Woman,’ ‘She’s Come Undone … you gotta go with name recognition. Use the name Bachman.”
At this time, Bachman said, he couldn’t get anyone to join his band.
“Nobody would play with me, after leaving the Guess Who, the golden boys. So I had to go to my younger brothers [Robbie and Tal]. We start a band with Fred Turner, who I’ve known since I was 15 or 16. And we became Bachman-Turner — three Bachmans and a Turner.
“That was the early ‘70s. At the time there was Seals and Crofts, Brewer and Shipley ['One Toke Over The Line'] — two guys with guitars. So we go in as Bachman-Turner, people think we’re a folk act with two guys. We’re trying to get people up dancing. I’m trying to evolve out of Country Rock into something heavier, that people will dance to. And we’re getting nowhere, but we keep trying.”
Then, in an almost apocryphal story, Bachman picked up a trucker magazine at a Husky truck stop in Windsor, called “Overdrive. “A trucking term, but no one had ever used it in music,” Bachman said. He sought and got permission from the publisher to use the name Overdrive in the band.
“We called the label, we’re going to be called Bachman Turner Overdrive. They said, 'wow, those are three powerful words, but it’s too long.' I said, we can call it BTO. They said, ‘That’s it!’
BTO’s eponymous first album, was released in May, 1973. Shortly after its release, the band got a call from Scott Shannon, a programming director in St. Louis. Missouri.
“He said, ’I just got your album. I really like it. Nobody’s is playing it, but I think there’s something there. I’m doing the same thing with a couple other friends of mine — Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, Pat Johnson from the Doobie Brothers, Charlie Daniels, the Alllman Brothers. You guys come and play my drive-in movie theatre, we’re going to have a rock and roll weekend.'”
And so it happened. From there to New Orleans, and on tour with ZZ Top et al.
“Everybody thought we were a southern band. We’re getting no airplay in Canada. And then the second album comes out, and we hit it lucky, with ‘Let It Ride,’ and ‘Taking Care of Business’ — top 40 singles. And we’re selling millions of albums and millions of singles.
“And suddenly, we’re on top, and we don’t even know it. Because we’re on the road, 300 days a year in a station wagon, and we don’t know what’s going on in the world — there’s no MTV, there’s no news or internet. We’re struggling from gig to gig. And suddenly we hit number one again, with the Not Fragile album, and ‘You Ain't Seen Nothin’ Yet.”
“Three solid years on the road. Three hundred gigs a year. That’s what paid off. We worked and worked and worked.”
And the timing, after all, was right. The music was an idea who’s time had come.
“People were looking for something a little bit heavier,” Bachman said. “Zeppelin was coming out. Things were getting away from the Beatles, and Pop music. This is like heavy, heavy guitars, which became heavy metal. It was a great genre to be in. Heavy pop, and suddenly, heavy rock.”
The original BTO line-up of Randy Bachman, Fred Turner, Tim Bachman, and Robbie Bachman released two albums in 1973. Blair Thornton joined in 1974, in place of Tim Bachman, and this line-up released four albums between 1974 and 1977, including two that reached the top 5 in the U.S. pop charts.
As the '70s moved into the '80s, through changing times and changing personnel, BTO released several more albums. The band disbanded in early 1980, reunited some year later, took a hiatus in the early 2000s. But their hit songs never went away.
And now, Randy Bachman has revived the band and is hitting the highway this year on a tour that hits B.C. in April. Joining Bachman are his son Tal Bachman on lead vocals and guitar, Koko Bachman on drums, Lance LaPointe on bass and vocals and Brent Howard on guitar and vocals.
Their aim is to electrify the crowd and see them get up and dance.
"The whole trick of our tour thing is people having fun and dancing," Bachman said. "And if you can do that when you’re a kid — and we were back in the ‘60s and ‘70s — then you’re lucky.
"And to get to now, 50 years later, and playing the same 18 or 20 songs, and having everybody, of all ages, from five and six to 95, reacting to these songs — dancing, singing, playing air guitar, playing air drums, reliving moments of joy that are long forgotten, because nobody knows what the hell is happening tomorrow — playing this music just unlocks memories for everybody."
B.C. tour dates:
April 1: Save-ON-Foods Memorial Centre, Victoria
April 3: Abbotsford Centre, Abbotsford
April 4: SOuth Okanagan Events Centre, Penticton
April 6, Western Financial Place, Cranbrook
April 8, CN Centre, Prince George
More information on the tour is.
