Randy Bachman

by Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap Stories

  “Really?! What key’s it in?”

  “A,” I tell him and he looks stunned.

  “Hallelujah! Praise the Lord! I can play in A!” And he dropped to his knees.

  We did the same thing with “Stay Alive,” and Richard nailed it on the slower speed. Here he was, one of the original rockers, and he only knew a few chords. He was the master of three-chord rock ’n’ roll. The poor guy never knew about variable speed on tapes. When Little Richard came through Vancouver again a few months later, we all went to see him and presented him with a crown as the king of rock ’n’ roll.

  JOHNNY PAYCHECK

  BTO often played down in the southern U.S. at festivals alongside country music acts. There wasn’t much of a distinction between rock and the kind of rugged outlaw country music at these festivals in the mid 70s. We had a promoter out of Nashville who booked us on several of these kinds of shows. He’d pair us up with country acts and it was cool. We played with Hank Williams Jr., Sawyer Brown, the Allman Brothers, Willie Nelson, Wet Willie.

  We were booked at this one festival where Johnny Paycheck was also on the bill. I wanted to meet him and say hello for my friend Charlie Fach, head of Mercury Records, our label. Charlie told me I had to go meet Johnny because he’s a cool guy. “Take This Job and Shove It” became a working man’s anthem in the latter 70s and made Johnny Paycheck a star after years of paying his dues on the roadhouse circuit. Johnny joined the “Outlaw Country” movement that included Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and Kris Kristofferson. So I figured I’d go introduce myself. I headed over to where all the tour buses were parked for all the acts and spotted Johnny Paycheck’s bus. As I rounded the corner towards his bus, I heard this high-pitched growl and I stopped in my tracks. There, chained to the front of Johnny’s bus, was an ocelot. Apparently his tour bus had been robbed not long before that, and while everyone else hired personal security or bought guard dogs to bring along on the road to protect their belongings while they were onstage performing, Johnny had bought an ocelot. They’re like leopards. These are the most beautiful animals, sleek and gorgeous. But it growled again at me, so I left Johnny and his bus and his ocelot alone. I never did meet Johnny Paycheck.

  CAT STEVENS

  I first met Cat Stevens (born Steven Demetre Giorgiou) in England when we went there in early 1967. He was just a brand-new songwriter and scored a hit record by the Tremeloes with “Here Comes My Baby” not long after that. I didn’t see him for about ten years. I was in L.A. recording a solo album, Survivor, and staying at a place in Beverley Hills called L’Hermitage. I used to go up to the pool on the top of the hotel, and I’d see Cat Stevens there and we’d talk about music and songwriting. He seemed like a normal guy.

  A few weeks later, as I was finishing up the recording for the album, I was getting into the elevator at the hotel when the doors open and it’s Cat Stevens. He’s standing there and he had totally changed. He had cut his hair and was wearing robes. Apparently he’d been out surfing in Malibu, got caught in the riptide, and was dragged under. It’s happened to me and it’s a very scary sensation, as if you’re being held under water by some unseen demons. Cat thought he was drowning, and while this was happening to him he made a promise to God that if he would help him out of this, save his life, he would dedicate the rest of his life to God. He was washed up on the beach, and true to his word, he devoted his life to serving God.

  LAWRENCE WELK

  Me and Lawrence Welk? Go figure.

  Lawrence Welk, the schmaltz band leader with the bubble machine, owned a record label called Vanguard Records, and they had a publishing company. In the 70s I was invited to meet with their publishing company in L.A. because I had some songs and they wanted to hear them. So I go to their offices, a big multi-storey office building in downtown Santa Monica right near the ocean. I’m there at Lawrence Welk’s office on the twelfth floor or so. He owns the whole building. I look outside the window and there’s a balcony that goes all around the building. The Welk building occupies the entire city block. The balcony is enclosed in Plexiglas and the floor is covered in Astroturf, and on the Astroturf are little flags. Lawrence Welk had the whole balcony set out as a four-hole golf course so that he could go out there and play some golf, hitting the ball around the building. I’d never seen anything like it. We didn’t do a deal, but I was impressed with his building.

  THE POINTER SISTERS

  In the late 70s I was in L.A. recording my solo album, Survivor. Burton Cummings was recording a solo album at the same time and I was doing some recording with him. In the studio we were using the same backing guys, who later became Toto. They had started out as Boz Scaggs’s recording and backing band and were on his big hit “Lowdown.” So they were hanging out at Richard Perry’s recording studio, Studio 55, on Melrose Avenue. Richard was producing Burton’s album as well as people like Eric Carmen, Ringo Starr, Cher, and the Pointer Sisters. I was recording either with Burton or on my album during the week.

  On this particular weekend my kids had come down to join me. We were staying at a hotel right downtown in Hollywood and were going to go to Disneyland on Saturday for the day. So we all get up that morning and I foolishly take them to a place called Carl’s Jr. for breakfast. I wouldn’t recommend Carl’s Jr. for breakfast. It’s a fast-food burger place. After we eat, we’re in the car heading down Melrose to the freeway to get to Anaheim. From Hollywood to Anaheim is about a two-hour drive. Not long after we’re in the car, one of my daughters, who was three at the time, gets sick and throws up all over herself. I’m thinking, I can’t make her stay in these clothes all day at Disneyland; she needs to be cleaned up. We were on Melrose and I knew the security code to get into Studio 55, so I parked in front, punched the code, and went in.

  The Pointer Sisters—Anita, June, and Ruth Pointer—were recording at the time. They’d started out singing backup for many recording artists before launching their own successful recording career in the mid 70s. By the time I met them, they were already huge stars. They had sung on a track for Burton and on one of mine, so they knew me and saw me coming in with this little three-year-old. They said hello and asked me why I was there. I told them I’d dropped in to clean up my daughter who’d had an accident.

  “Let us do that. You’re a guy. We’ll take care of her.” So they took her by the hand to the bathroom, stood her up in the sink, and rinsed her and her clothes off. They were all mothers themselves and knew how to take care of a little kid. It was all just a normal thing, no star trips or anything like that. That’s my memory of the Pointer Sisters. Wonderful ladies.

  THE BEACH BOYS

  I could relate to the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson being in a band with his brothers because often in my career I had one or two of my brothers in a band with me. I became a big fan of the Beach Boys early on. Originally from Hawthorne, California, the Wilson brothers—Brian, Dennis, and Carl—plus cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine are an American institution. They were like the alternative Beatles, the American Beatles. In the 60s they captured teenage America’s fascination with surfing, cars, and girls. So imagine my thrill when years later I got to write songs with Carl Wilson of the Beach Boys!

  After I left BTO I had a band in the late 70s called Iron Horse. Carl Wilson heard our album and invited us to open for the Beach Boys on their tour. What was special about this tour was that Brian Wilson had just come out of therapy and was on the road with the band again, accompanied by his personal therapist, Eugene Landy. Most people know about Brian Wilson’s problems over the years.

  When we’d played Beach Boys songs in the Guess Who, I’d sung the high parts. I loved doing that. So every night after Iron Horse’s set I would change my clothes and sit in the wings and sing along with them. I’d sing all my old parts in “I Get Around” and “California Girls.” But the real kicker for me was being invited by Carl Wilson to the Caribou Ranch in Colorado to write songs with him for the next Beach Boys album. For a kid from Winnipeg this was a dream come true
. Carl was such an easygoing guy and great to write with because we both respected each other as artists. He and I wrote a song called “Keep the Summer Alive,” and it became the title song of their next album. Now how cool was that? Fred Turner and I later had a band called Union and we recorded “Keep the Summer Alive” on our one and only album, On Strike.

  MASON WILLIAMS AND “CLASSICAL GAS”

  Back in the 60s when you picked up a guitar, you would play “Classical Gas.” That song was written by Mason Williams, who was a comedy writer on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. One day he got tired of trying to come up with funny gags or setup and payoff lines. When you write for a comedy show every line has to be funny, and that’s not always easy to do. So instead he picked up his guitar and wrote something he called “Classical Gasoline.” He played it for the producers of the show, and they liked it and decided to put a collage of images and visuals around it. This was the 60s, and Laugh-In was on TV with all these psychedelic images—amoebas, paramecia, and other weird things throbbing and moving across the screen—which was all part of the psychedelic movement at the time. So they put “Classical Gasoline” on The Smothers Brothers show basically as a backup or soundtrack to this psychedelic collage of visuals. But what happened afterwards was that people started requesting the song or asking where they could buy the record. So it was released as a 45 and ultimately went on to sell millions of records.

  A little while later Mason Williams came up to Canada to do a CBC television show taped in Toronto called Guitar. He wanted to have a number of guitar players on the show. He had himself, of course, and he had the great Canadian jazz guitarist Ed Bickert, who was born in Manitoba, and country picker extraordinaire Merle Travis. They were going to have the great Les Paul on the show, but Les Paul suffers from vertigo and couldn’t travel. When you have vertigo the whole world spins around and you can’t stand up. They have to strap you to a bed until you recover from a spell of it. So I got the call to be on the show.

  I flew in and met Mason Williams, and he taught me “Classical Gas,” which was very cool. He wrote it all out for me by hand and signed it; I still have it. And I can still play it, too. Anyway, it was pretty cold in Toronto at the time and Merle Travis stayed warm by drinking. He was pretty much inebriated the whole time we were in Toronto. When it came time to record the show, we were all playing alternate four- or eight-bar sections of “Classical Gas.” But when it came time for Merle’s section, he blew it. He was so overcome with “feeling so good” that he flubbed his part. So the producer stopped the show and started it again. This was all in front of a live audience, but this kind of thing can often happen and you just stop tape and start it over again. Someone breaks a string or something. Audiences are used to this.

  We started the song again and I could see that Merle was playing behind the beat. He was just not making it. So when it gets to his part and the camera is on his fingers, I could tell he wasn’t going to be able to play it, so I played it off camera for him. I can play that finger-picking style of his. I learned it as a kid from watching Lenny Breau. So they pulled back on the camera for a shot of Merle with everybody else as if nothing had happened. For all intents and purposes it looked like he was playing the licks. After the show he came up to me and said, “Thank you for doing that for me. You’re my little buddy. You saved me because I wouldn’t have been able to do it.” No one watching the show ever knew.

  Afterwards, Merle said he had a gift for me. He then gave me his spare Gibson Super 400 model guitar with his name in pearl lettering on the fretboard. It looked brand new even though it was decades old. I told him I couldn’t take it, but he insisted. So I took it back to my room at the Four Seasons hotel across from the CBC studios. The next morning Merle’s wife knocked on my door and asked for the guitar back. “He’s always giving that thing away,” she told me. I was happy to give it back, and it’s now in the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. But I have a great photograph with Merle and me that he signed, “To my little buddy, Randy. God bless, Merle.”

  HENRY MANCINI

  If Henry Mancini had written only “Moon River” he’d still be one of the greatest songwriters of the twentieth century. “The Days of Wine and Roses,” “Peter Gunn Theme,” “The Pink Panther,” “Charade,” plus dozens of movie scores including Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Great Race, Hatari!, The Thorn Birds, Darling Lili, and Victor Victoria earned Henry some twenty Grammys and four Oscars.

  In the 80s I had a song-publishing deal with Arista. Clive Davis had left CBS Records and started Arista Records and Music. So Clive said to me, “Why don’t you come out to L.A. and meet our team?” I flew out there and met Billy Michelle, who was the head guy at Arista music publishing at the time. Billy introduced me to his assistant. All I caught was “This is Chris M something.” I didn’t hear the last name. Chris was a real nice guy and showed me around the office. Then he asked me if I wanted to come over to his house for dinner. “Sure,” I said.

  As I’m driving up to his house, I notice a name on the mailbox: Mancini. I’m wondering if it’s just a coincidence. I get to the door, Chris answers, and he invites me in and says, “This is my dad.” And standing there is Henry Mancini. Chris Mancini was the son of renowned composer Henry Mancini. I was stunned. How many guitar players picked up a guitar when they were just starting out and played the “Peter Gunn” riff?

  Throughout the evening I’m flashing back in my head on all the great songs Henry Mancini has written: the theme from The Pink Panther, “Baby Elephant Walk,” “Moon River,” and on and on. One of the greatest composers of all time and I’m having dinner with him. After dinner Henry sat down at the piano. Clearly he was composing or working on ideas, so I wasn’t going to go up to him and say, “Duh, can you play ‘Moon River’?”

  SAMMY HAGAR AND EDDIE VAN HALEN

  While we were getting BTO off the ground again in the mid 80s, working constantly out on the road, my old friend Sammy Hagar called me out of the blue.

  “I’ve just joined Van Halen,” he announced over the phone.

  “We’re going out on the road and we really need a strong opening act. Will you open for us?”

  “For how long?”

  “Let’s road-test it for a week and see how it works out.”

  This was a terrific opportunity for us to get some high-profile exposure. Van Halen touring with a new lead singer would be big news.

  Sammy was a long-time BTO fan and had previously been writing songs with me at my home just across the border in Lynden, Washington. In 1986 he replaced David Lee Roth in Van Halen and they needed a kick-ass opening act on their first tour with Sammy as lead singer. So he said to me on the phone, “BTO just popped out of nowhere. We all love BTO. Every song the fans will love.”

  We’d been slugging it out on the road, travelling on the cheap for two years, when Fred needed to be at home with his wife and teenage sons. So we’d agreed to take some time off, and it was during that time that Sammy called me. It was a Friday and he needed an answer by Monday morning. The four members of Van Halen had unanimously agreed to BTO as their choice for opening act.

  Sammy said, “We need an opening act that will be so powerful that no one will be screaming, ‘Where’s David?’ You guys will get them rocking doing all your hits, bam bam bam, we’ll do a quick turnover and come out swinging and hit ’em hard so that no one will even remember David Lee Roth. But we’ve gotta have an answer by Monday.”

  After I hung up the phone I immediately called Fred, but there was no answer. I kept calling every hour, but nothing. Then one of his kids answered and told me that Fred and his wife had gone on a short vacation and wouldn’t be back until Monday or Tuesday.

  Monday morning arrived and I had to call Sammy back. My son, Tal, was a teenager then and a huge Van Halen fan. Eddie Van Halen was his idol. So he was over the moon that his dad might be touring with his heroes. As much as anything I wanted to do it to impress Tally that his dad was cool. At this point it w
as only for a week, nothing more, so I called Sammy that Monday.

  “Some of us are in, some of us aren’t,” I told him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I can’t get hold of Fred Turner.”

  “Who have you got?”

  “Me, my brother Tim who can play bass, and Garry Peterson on drums. But basically our lead singer is gone.”

  “Who sings ‘Takin’ Care of Business’?” Sammy asked.

  “I do.”

  “Who sings ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’?”

  “That’s me as well.”

  “Who sings ‘Hey You’?”

  “Me again.”

  “And who sings ‘Let It Ride’?”

  “That’s Fred.”

  “Okay, we’ll take you. Van Halen is coming without its old lead singer so you guys can come without your lead singer. Let’s give it a shot.”

  We went on to do the entire 5150 tour, over a hundred dates opening for Van Halen, and we had a ball the whole time. We travelled in a station wagon while they travelled in their luxury tour bus. And every night we rocked the biggest arenas across the States.

  During that same 5150 tour, I was really surprised one night as I warmed up in the dressing room playing my Lenny Breau/ Chet Atkins stuff when Eddie Van Halen popped his head in and asked, “How do you do that?” I would ask him how he did all his guitar tricks, too.

  One night we were in Knoxville, Tennessee. My phone rang at three in the morning. I’m in bed sleeping. I pick it up and the voice says, “Randolph?” Nobody calls me Randolph except my mother when she was angry with me.

  I said, “Yes?”

  “It’s Edward.” Nobody called Eddie Van Halen “Edward.”

  He tells me he wants me to come to his suite and gives me the number. We’re in the same hotel, but he’s got a suite. I’m in a room. This is Eddie Van Halen, one of the greatest guitar players in the world, so how do you say no? I went to his suite, and as I’m getting out of the elevator, I can see him sitting on the floor outside his door. He’s got an acoustic guitar with him and he’s playing. He tells me to pull up a rug, so I sit down and Eddie says, “I just heard that my best friend from school days died. Suicide. I can’t be there for him and his family because we’re on tour, but I’ll get back for his memorial service. These are my thoughts about him for tonight. Will you just sit here while I play this for him? I really feel his spirit here with me tonight.”