Randy Bachman (14 page)

“DOWN BY THE RIVER” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

“FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH” by the Buffalo Springfield

“A HARD DAY'S NIGHT” by the Beatles

“HEY BO DIDDLEY” by Bo Diddley

“I FEEL FREE” by Cream

“I WALK THE LINE” by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two

“JOHNNY B. GOODE” by Chuck Berry

“LET IT RIDE” by BTO

“LONG TRAIN RUNNIN'” by the Doobie Brothers

“LOTTA LOVIN'” by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps

“MR. TAMBOURINE MAN” by the Byrds

“OH BY JINGO” by Chet Atkins

“REBEL ROUSER” by Duane Eddy

“SHAKIN' ALL OVER” by the Guess Who

“SHAKIN' ALL OVER” by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates

“SULTANS OF SWING” by Dire Straits

“SUMMERTIME BLUES” by Eddie Cochran

“SUSIE Q” by Dale Hawkins

“TURN! TURN! TURN!” by the Byrds

“UP AROUND THE BEND” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

“THE WIND CRIES MARY” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

“WONDERFUL LAND” by the Shadows

“YOU CAN'T DO THAT” by the Beatles

Close Encounters of the Six-String Kind, Part 1

I'm a bit of a rock 'n' roll gadfly. I've been fortunate to be seren-dipitously at the right place at the right time to meet many of the movers and shakers in rock music. I've met many of my heroes or artists I respect as influences, and I'm often surprised that they know who I am. I've reminisced about many of those encounters over the years on
Vinyl Tap
. Here are some of the highlights.

GENE VINCENT

After Elvis Presley's success in the mid 50s, record labels went in search of Elvis clones, young rock 'n' roll singers with an edgy attraction. America's Gene Vincent was one of those early rockers who was discovered and launched as a post-Elvis teenage phenomenon. But he wasn't just a copyist; Gene Vincent had the goods. “Be-Bop-A-Lula” is his signature song, a true rock 'n' roll classic.

I remember reading in one of the Winnipeg newspapers that Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps were playing the Dominion Theatre downtown near Portage and Main. They'd be playing three consecutive days in a row in April. This would have been 1958. Needless to say, I wanted to be there for every show. It was
the closest I was ever going to get to Elvis. Gene Vincent had a guitar player in the Blue Caps named Cliff Gallup who became very influential. Jeff Beck even recorded a tribute album to Cliff Gallup. I would buy Gene Vincent records because they were so similar to Elvis—very simple chord structures but really wild stuff.

At the time back in Winnipeg I had a friend named Victor Zahn who owned an old army-brown Harley Davidson motorcycle he'd bought from army surplus. Victor used to ride around town on the Harley with me on the back. My parents would never let me own a motorcycle! When Gene Vincent came to town, Victor Zahn and I hopped on his Harley and drove down to the Dominion Theatre. At that time Gene Vincent had three songs on the Winnipeg record charts on both radio stations: “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Dance to the Bop,” and “Lotta Lovin'
.
” The Dominion Theatre must have held about eighteen hundred people, but that night there were maybe thirty-five people in the audience, including Victor and me. Gene and the Blue Caps came out and did the most incredible set.

It really was no big deal back then to go backstage and get autographs, so Victor and I went to meet Gene Vincent and his band. We were the only ones. I told Gene that it was too bad he was booked to play Winnipeg this particular weekend. He said, “What do you mean?” When you're on the road you tend to lose track of days. It was Good Friday and Sunday was Easter. Passover was around then, too. Back then Winnipeg was a fairly strict city with plenty of religious groups and denominations, so on Good Friday everything was shut down except for the theatres, I guess for all the non-Christians. Gene made a couple of phone calls and cancelled his Sunday gig, but he kept the Saturday gig, which I went to as well.

After Friday's show we were all standing around talking in the back alley of the theatre, and Victor went to get his motorcycle. As soon as he saw it Gene Vincent said, “I wanna ride it!” All the guys in his band are yelling, “No! No!” Gene had a brace on his
leg from breaking his shin bone in a motorcycle accident. But now that it was healed he wanted to get back on the horse. He wanted to get on the Harley. So Victor let him ride on the back for about twenty feet and then asked, “Is that enough?” Gene said, “No. I've gotta have a long ride on this motorcycle.” At that point we had to go home, but said we'd see them the next night.

We came back the next night and the band let us back in because we didn't have enough money for another night's tickets. We sat through the show and again there were very few people in the audience. Like the night before, they came out and played an incredible show as if the place was packed. Afterwards I asked Gene what he was doing now that he'd cancelled the Sunday show for Easter, and he said they were just going to hang around in the hotel.

“Would you like to come over to my house for Easter dinner?” I asked him.

And he replied, “Will your friend give me a ride on his Harley?” Again, the band is saying, “No, don't do it! You can't get on another motorcycle!”

So I went home and told my mom that we were having another seat at the table for Easter dinner, a musician friend of mine. That was no big deal to her because with four boys in the family, we were always bringing friends home for dinner. The next afternoon Victor pulls up in his Harley and, sure enough, there's Gene Vincent on the back. Unfortunately he couldn't stay for dinner because the guys in his band were freaking out about him on a motorcycle and he had to get back. But he gave me his blue cap and signed it, and I still have it. He signed it in ballpoint pen and the signature has faded. But that was my brush with Gene Vincent. He was a great singer, a nice guy, and pretty normal.

JOHNNY AND THE HURRICANES

Behind the Hudson's Bay Company store downtown was the Winnipeg Auditorium, which used to be a great place for concerts.
I remember seeing the Supremes there, wrestling matches, Ferlin Husky, Johnny Cash. We once opened for Eric Burdon and the Animals there, and Burton Cummings played an electric harpsichord that night on “His Girl” and “A Wednesday in Your Garden.” And I remember I saw Johnny and the Hurricanes from Ohio at the Auditorium.

They had a hit out called “Crossfire,” and in the Red River Valley they had a hit with “Red River Rock” with sax and organ playing the melody lines. Instrumental music was the big thing then; everybody loved it. Back in those days I'd take a notebook and a pen with me and would always try to get a seat in the front row so that I could watch the guitar players. I'd take notes on what they were doing, where they put their fingers on the neck, and how they did it, like “fifth fret slide to eighth fret on top two strings.” Then I'd go home and try playing it from my notes. Nowadays, kids buy or download videos of how to play guitar and specific solos, but there was nothing like that back then.

So when Johnny and the Hurricanes came to town I was there in the front row with my notebook. I wanted to watch how the guitar player, Dave Yorko, did the slide line in the middle of “Crossfire.” He had a beautiful red Gibson double cutaway with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. But every time it came to a guitar-lead part he'd turn his back to the audience. I couldn't see what he was playing. After the show I went backstage, hoping he would show me how he did his solos. But Dave Yorko wasn't a very nice guy. I thought that maybe if I was nice to him backstage he'd show me how he did his solos.

Then I heard Johnny, who went by the name Johnny Paris but was really Johnny Pucisk, tell someone that he couldn't get any decent Polish food in Winnipeg. It turned out that the guys in the band all had a Polish or Ukrainian background. So I said, “Hey, my mother's Ukrainian. Do you want her to make you some perogies and stuff?” and Johnny and the guys went, “Yeah!” So I went home that night and got my mother, who was
a Dobrinsky of Polish-Ukrainian background from the North End, to make up some perogies and holopchi, and I took them to Johnny and the Hurricanes, who were thrilled. As I'm giving out these cabbage rolls and sausages to Johnny, Dave Yorko is there, looking on hungrily. He was a Ukrainian guy, too. So I said to him, “Why do you turn your back when you take a solo?” and he replied, “Because I don't want anyone to see the solos I make up.” So I said, “If you just show me where you put your fingers on the fretboard, you can have some of this food.” So it became a tradeoff: He got some food, and I got to see how to play the guitar leads on the Johnny and the Hurricanes songs.

It was perogies that also led me to meet legendary movie actor/comedian Danny Kaye in the early 70s. BTO had recorded their first album at RCA studios in Toronto. We were still Brave Belt then, but
Brave Belt III
instead became
BTO I
. So when it came time to record the second BTO album, I checked out a studio opening in Seattle, just south of Vancouver. It was called Kaye-Smith Studios, but not after the 40s and 50s singer Kay Smith. The Smith was Lester Smith, a broadcaster who owned many radio stations, and the Kaye was actor and comedian Danny Kaye.

I went to the opening of the studio, and because Danny Kaye was Ukrainian Jewish they had knishes and perogies. Now, I could relate to that because my family was pretty much all Ukrainian, and in the North End of Winnipeg and West Kildonan where I grew up just about everyone was Ukrainian or Jewish. Most of my friends as a kid were Jewish. So what could be a better studio opening?! I met Danny Kaye that day and he was a really nice guy. It was a thrill for me, having seen his movies as a kid, although he had no idea who I was. He was very funny in person. I was impressed with his studio, and we ended up recording two BTO albums at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle.

BOBBY CURTOLA

It's fair to say that Bobby Curtola was Canada's first rock 'n' roll teen idol. He began his career selling his records from the trunk of his car and touring the country using local bands to back him up. Bobby was from Thunder Bay—back then it was called Port Arthur. He was a big Canadian pop star at the time, with several hit records such as “Fortune Teller” and “Three Rows Over.” They used to play his records on the radio in Winnipeg and I remember thinking, “Man, if someone so close to us can make it”—Port Arthur was about an eight-hour drive east—“then maybe I could, too!”

He even had his own record label at the time, Tartan Records. So when Bobby asked us, Chad Allan and the Reflections, to be his backing band, it was a big thrill and a big deal at the time. He was a great singer and wrote his own songs. He was a smart cookie. We played the Calgary Stampede and Klondike Days with Bobby. He even had a sponsorship deal with Coca-Cola, so we played the Coca-Cola Teen Tent with him. Bobby recorded the first Coca-Cola rock 'n' roll jingle, something the Guess Who did a few years later. But Bobby was the first. When we backed him up, the girls used to scream like crazy for him. Amazingly enough, recently we were in the Bay out here on the West Coast buying a watch for my daughter Callianne's birthday, and the woman who sold it to us said that she remembered seeing me playing with Bobby Curtola at the Teen Tent back in 1963. How's that for a memory!

LES PAUL

I remember in the late 50s hearing that the great Les Paul was coming to Winnipeg to play the Rancho Don Carlos out on Pembina Highway in the south end of Winnipeg. I'd heard all those wonderful Les Paul and Mary Ford records like “Vaya con Dios” and “How High the Moon” with all the multi-tracked guitars, and I loved what he did, although I didn't know how
he did it at the time. And every guitar player was well aware of Gibson's line of Les Paul solid-body guitars. I knew I had to see him live just to see how he was able to get those amazing guitar sounds. It was a two-hour bus ride from West Kildonan, and when I finally arrived at the club they wouldn't let me in. I was under age; the drinking age then was twenty-one and I was still a teenager. So I was sitting outside the Rancho on the lawn, despondent, when a big Cadillac pulled up. Out comes Les Paul, Mary Ford, and their son (who played drums). Les came up to me and said, “Hi, kid … What's the matter?” I told him I'd come across town on a couple of buses to see him but I was under age and couldn't get in. He talked with the manager, and I was then allowed to stand in the kitchen and watch the show through the big round windows in the swinging kitchen doors, with waiters coming back and forth with trays of food and drinks. But I got to see the show.

Right beside me in the kitchen, stacked on top of each other, were six single-track Ampex tape recorders with a giant cable going out to Les's Gibson Les Paul guitar. On his guitar below the Bigsby tremolo arm were a bunch of switches that he used to stop and start the tape recorders. I stepped out of the kitchen to watch Les as he demonstrated to the audience how he got his sound, this big multi-guitar sound. Nobody in the audience knew what multi-tracking was. They just thought it was some kind of magic. Les explained to them how he used his “Paulverizer” to work the tape recorders and play back what he had played. He'd then play live over that. I was amazed.