Randy Bachman

Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap Stories

Randy Bachman

VIKING CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2011

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 (RRD)

Copyright © Randy Bachman, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Manufactured in the U.S.A.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

 Bachman, Randy, 1943– Randy Bachman's Vinyl tap stories / Randy Bachman.

ISBN 978-0-670-06579-0

1. Bachman, Randy, 1943– —Anecdotes. 2. Rock music—Anecdotes.

I. Title. II. Title: Vinyl tap stories.

ML420.B113A3 2011   782.42166092   C2011-904612-1

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Contents

Introduction

Portage and Main

What's in a Name?

Lenny, Neil, and Me

The Story Behind the Song, Part 1

Randy's Guitar Shoppe

Close Encounters of the Six-String Kind, Part 1

Shadows and Reflections 

The Story Behind the Song, Part 2

Close Encounters of the Six-String Kind, Part 2

Conclusion

 

Randy's Favourites

Acknowledgments

Index

Introduction

Born and raised in a prairie town

Just a kid full of dreams

We didn't have much but an old radio

Music came from places we'd never been

Growing up in a prairie town

 Learning to drive in the snow

Not much to do so you start a band

And soon you've gone as far as you can go

 Winter nights are long, summer days are gone

Portage & Main fifty below

Springtime melts the snow, rivers overflow

 Portage & Main fifty below

—“PRAIRIE TOWN” BY RANDY BACHMAN

 

Radio was my lifeline as a kid growing up in Winnipeg in the 1950s. It connected me with the wider world outside our little prairie city and offered me my first introduction to rock 'n' roll and the guitar sounds and styles I wanted to play. Radio gave me my life's direction. It's been a constant for me no matter where I've lived.

Long before MTV, MuchMusic, the internet, or iTunes, teenagers tuned in to their radios to hear the message of rock 'n' roll. And I was one of them. Whether you grew up in a big city like Toronto or Vancouver or a little town in Saskatchewan
or Nova Scotia, I'm sure you can all remember the first time you heard rock 'n' roll on the radio. Growing up in Winnipeg, the first time I heard it was on the two local radio stations, CKY and CKRC. And because Winnipeg is located at the top of the Great Plains, I would go to bed at night with my little rocket radio and tune in to WLS in Chicago, WNOE in New Orleans, or places far away like Shreveport, Memphis, or Wichita that sounded exotic to a prairie boy. These stations played rock 'n' roll. The next day at school, the topic of conversation among my friends was along the lines of “I picked up Des Moines, Iowa, on the radio last night and they played ‘Rock Around the Clock'!” My parents would yell at me to turn my radio off and go to bed, so I'd take it under the covers and carry on with my nightly ritual. Just like kids nowadays surfing the internet, in the 50s I surfed the radio dial. I remember hearing Chuck Berry's “School Days” for the first time and being completely blown away. I'd never heard guitar like that.

But unlike most teenagers, I went from listening to the radio to being heard on radio, making records that would actually get played by a deejay. You can't imagine the thrill of hearing yourself on the radio for the first time.

Playing in a band in Winnipeg, I got to know many of the local radio deejays at CKY and CKRC, guys not much older than me like Doc Steen, Boyd Kozak, Dino Corrie, Daryl B., Jim Christie, PJ the DJ. They were cool because they got to talk on the radio and play records, the records I loved to hear. So even though I was playing in a popular band, making records, and becoming well known, I still envied them and their gig. (Who knows, they probably envied me for being in a band.) They got to spin the discs and do all the “platter chatter.” But I never dreamed that one day I'd be on the radio spinning those discs and sharing my stories.

In more recent years, I used to listen to
Finkleman's 45s
on CBC Radio when I was home on a Saturday night. Danny Finkleman was a fellow Winnipegger and often told stories about growing up
in the North End of the city, the area I came from. I'd met him once or twice at the CBC in Winnipeg when the Guess Who was the house band on CBC-TV's
Let's Go
back in 1967–68. But when I heard he was retiring, I thought to myself, “Why would anyone want to quit playing records and talking once a week for a couple of hours? Who wouldn't kill to have that gig?” So I told my wife, Denise, “What's so hard about doing what he's doing? I could do that. And I love to share my stories and experiences.”

Like a lot of events in my life, things just happen. No master plan or calculation; they just happen. I owe as much to serendipity as I do to premeditation in my career. Three of the biggest hits I've been associated with—“American Woman,” “Takin' Care of Business,” and “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet”—all sprang from happenstance, a moment in time. I've learned to accept that when opportunities present themselves, you have to grab them because they don't come around again. So I decided to take a shot at being a radio deejay on CBC. Trouble is, I had no idea how to go about letting the powers that be know that.

I wrote a letter to the CBC—no one specific, just the CBC— explaining my concept, and I gave it to one of the technicians when I was a guest on Stuart McLean's
Vinyl Cafe
radio show. He later passed it along to Jennifer McGuire, at the time the head of CBC's English-language radio programming. Here's what I wrote in the letter:

Dear CBC Radio,

I'm a big fan of CBC Radio. This past Saturday's show of
Finkleman's 45s
I noticed that Danny said he was retiring. I would love his time slot, and my proposal is that I play music from my own record collection and tell personal stories about the artist, song, etc. Instead of
Finkleman's 45s
you could call the show
Randy's Rockin' Records
or
Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap
, like
Spinal Tap
.

from Randy Bachman

Jennifer contacted me and thought the idea was terrific. So we arranged a demo of the show just to see how I would come across on the radio. At the first session I was all over the place, yelling “Whoa! Yeah, baby! Let's rock!” like Wolfman Jack, and speed-jiving like crazy. It was way over the top, and CBC producer Chris Boyce suggested I simmer down a bit. After all, it's an early evening show. When I was a kid in Winnipeg, CKY had a smooth-talking deejay named Richard Scott who spoke in this low, sexy, resonating tone to all the housewives every afternoon, cooing, “Hello, kitten. Relax. Light up a cigarette. It's just you and me.” So I tried that approach, but they thought it was too mellow. We did several more attempts at finding the right “voice,” pacing, and style for the show until we finally hit on the right formula. The trick was to tape the shows after dinner when I was a bit mellower and laid-back. No shrieking or hushed whispers.

Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap
debuted as a summer replacement show in 2005, and it was such a hit that the CBC ran it again in reruns over the fall and signed me to a contract to do the series beginning in 2006. After doing the show alone, I realized I needed some help. Denise came on board, answering all the emails and real mail we started getting, which makes the listeners and people who write in all feel like part of the
Vinyl Tap
family. Her mailbag segment has tons of fans. When we poll the audience about something like the first records they ever bought, Denise sorts out all the responses and then reads each person's little story. I then add facts about the music or performer. Denise also does the research, so that when I tell a personal story that relates to the music, she has already provided me with correct dates, names, places, etc. to put my stories into proper context. It all works organically and synergistically. Since the beginning, the format has evolved only slightly because it works as it is. Denise loves music and has her own eclectic musical tastes, which balance out mine. We complement each other very well, and it keeps the show moving at a good pace.