Randy Bachman (16 page)

Years later, Denise and I saw Van Morrison perform at Hampton Court Palace in the U.K. It looked like a medieval palace, and inside the castle court they have bleachers and chairs set up. We waited, and sure enough he did “Brown-Eyed Girl” at the end of the show. “Sha la la la la la la.” I borrowed that little bit of scat singing for the end of “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet” and “Hey You.”

Musicians will generally help each other out. I remember the time the Stampeders lent the Guess Who a helping hand.

I've known the guys in the Stampeders for many, many years and have played a number of shows with them. They formed in Calgary and took their name from the annual Calgary Stampede. The group was a six-piece before moving to Toronto in the late 60s, where they trimmed down to a trio: Rich Dodson, Ronnie King, and Kim Burly. The Stampeders enjoyed a string of Canadian hit singles in the late 60s to early 70s, including “Sweet City Woman,” which went on to become a U.S. hit as well.

The Guess Who were booked to play with the Stampeders somewhere near Niagara Falls, Ontario. We were coming back from the States and crossed the border without any problems, but our equipment truck was held up and searched. We didn't know
until we got to the gig that we had no equipment. This was in the years before cell phones. So the Stampeders are up onstage rocking the place, and as their set ends Rich Dodson announces, “Thanks everyone. Now here's the Guess Who!” So we walked out onstage with no instruments or amplifiers. I told Rich what had happened and he took off his guitar and handed it to me. Then Ronnie handed over his bass and we proceeded to play using their gear. The problem for me was that Rich Dodson played a big double-neck guitar like Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin—a six-string and a twelve-string—and it was so heavy that my shoulder hurt throughout the set. But we made it through thanks to our friends the Stampeders.

MOE KAUFMAN AND HAGOOD HARDY

In the 1960s, radio was great because the hit parade was very eclectic. You could have the Beatles' latest record followed by Frank Sinatra, Simon & Garfunkel, Bobby Goldsboro, the Doors, and the Tijuana Brass. It wasn't “narrowcasting” to a specific demographic like it is today. It was all just music. It was the same with the players in town: jazz and country guys mixed with rock 'n' rollers.

When we went to Toronto in the fall of 1967 to record in a proper studio, we encountered a bunch of musicians, big studio cats and CBC players, who were classically trained. Plus they were all serious jazz musicians. Here we were, a bunch of prairie punks, rock 'n' roll kids. Even though we'd had music lessons as kids—Burton Cummings has grade 12 piano, I had grade 7 or 8 violin, Garry Peterson had been taking drum lessons since he was three and had played in the Winnipeg Junior Symphony—we were kind of ostracized from these players. They were elitists and we were hicks. But two of those guys did become friendly, and talked with us like we were “cats” just like them. One of these guys was Hagood Hardy; the other was Moe Kaufman of “Swingin' Shepherd Blues” fame. That was a very cool song, basically just a
blues song on flute. Moe was a very sweet guy. I remember, as a kid seeing him on TV playing three saxes at the same time.

When Hagood Hardy introduced himself to us, Burton and I said, “Wow, is that your real name?” We used to collect odd names. We'd be in hotels in some city or town late at night after the TV had gone off air, and we'd read through the phone book for weird-sounding names. Hagood told us that his name was real and explained its origin.

We came home after the sessions and then got asked to do an album with Jack Richardson, who'd produced the earlier sessions in Toronto. Burton and I both wrote a song about Hagood Hardy. Burton's was better than mine, so when we went back to Toronto we recorded it. The chorus went, “Heygoode Hardy.” That appeared on an album called
A Wild Pair
, which was one side by us, all original material, and the other side by Ottawa's Staccatos, who later became the Five Man Electrical Band. But we became friends with Hagood Hardy, and every time we went to Toronto we'd hang out with him and Moe Kaufman. Who knows, maybe in their younger years they played rock 'n' roll, so they were able to relate to us.

Hagood went on to write and record his own music. He wrote a commercial for Salada Tea called “The Homecoming” that went on to become the theme of a movie of the same name and a big hit. I was at the Juno Awards in the mid 70s when BTO were winning all sorts of awards, and it was really cool to see Hagood also winning awards for his own songwriting.

CHET ATKINS

When the Guess Who recorded our
Wheatfield Soul
album in New York and signed with RCA, the label had this thing they did, and I'm sure all the record labels did this in the 60s. They would sit you down and ask you a bunch of questions, likes and dislikes, favourite this and that. All sorts of questions like that for
their promo bios they would put together and send out to radio stations or teen magazines. “What's your favourite colour? What's your favourite food? Your favourite car? Who are your musical influences?” That kind of stuff.

It was 1968, and so most guys would say their musical influences were Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, or the Stones. But when it came time for my question-and-answer session and I was asked who my musical influences were, I replied, “Hank B. Marvin, Lenny Breau, and Chet Atkins.” Lo and behold, who should I meet soon after in the RCA building but the man himself, Chet Atkins, who thanked me for mentioning his name in my bio. He was an executive with RCA and so he knew about our signing with the label. I said that it was an honour to meet him, that I wouldn't be the guitar player I was without having learned from his records and from Lenny Breau, and that I even had a Gretsch Chet Atkins 6120 guitar like his. We also talked about Lenny Breau, since Chet had already heard Lenny play.

Back in Winnipeg I'd sort of become the go-to guy for other guitar players who wanted to learn to play Chet Atkins–style. I'd learned it from spending almost every day at Lenny's house watching him. But Lenny was too busy to teach anyone, so I would take what I learned from him and teach other guys. I had five or six students who used to come to my house on Luxton Avenue one at a time and take lessons. But my biggest regret was lending these guitar players my Chet Atkins albums because I never got them all back. They were gone and were all out of print by then. This was long before CDs. So I mentioned that to Chet in passing, then thanked him for meeting me and influencing me, and went home. That was it.

Not long after that, packages started arriving, one a week for months and months. They were Chet Atkins albums from all over the world. Brand new, still sealed in shrink wrap. He'd gotten every one of his albums where he could find them around the world through RCA's various distributors and sent them to me. I
still have them, all unopened, still sealed. Forty or fifty albums. He's a great guy and truly the country gentleman.

When my original orange Gretsch 6120 guitar was stolen in Toronto in the mid 70s and I was desperate to find it, I got a call from Chet Atkins asking me if it was the same guitar I'd shown him years before. I told him it was. He asked for my address and a few weeks later a Gretsch “Atkins Axe Special” model arrived at my house. What a generous man! A few weeks after that, Chet was playing a concert with the Vancouver Symphony and I took the guitar down to the show and had photos taken of him and me with that guitar. He was a very special man.

GORDON LIGHTFOOT

Sometime in the fall of 1967 the Guess Who were playing Montreal and we had a night off. It was a Tuesday night, and we heard that Gordon Lightfoot was playing a small club. We'd seen him once before at the Riverboat club in Toronto, but this was a bit more intimate. So Burton Cummings and I were there at a table in this tiny club when Lightfoot comes out. There was hardly anyone in the audience because it was a Tuesday night. He was backed by Red Shea on guitar and John Stockfish on bass, just the three of them, and they proceeded to play three solid hours of original material, like “Pussy Willows Cattails,” “Canadian Railroad Trilogy,” “Did She Mention My Name,” “Early Morning Rain”—all his great songs. Burton and I sat there, stunned. The most amazing songs and incredible lyrics, hit after hit and non-hit album tracks, too. We just looked at each other and said, “Wow. If this guy from Orillia can write this many great original songs, we can certainly write our own original songs.”

That experience prompted Burton and me to go home to Winnipeg and start writing the songs that became the hits for the Guess Who and made us such a successful songwriting team. We even wrote a song about Gordon called “Lightfoot.” But the inspiration came from Canada's greatest songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot.

JUNIOR WALKER AND THE ALL STARS

In late 1969, Junior Walker and the All Stars, a Motown group, recorded a soulful cover version of “These Eyes,” adding a lot of saxophone and a whole new texture to our song. And besides giving a great R&B feel to the song, it actually saved Burton and me from a likely beating or worse. We were in Chicago for a gig, and afterwards I went to collect the money. As usual I had a bagful of small bills, three or four thousand dollars in ones, fives, and tens. I always figured it was safer carrying it in a grocery bag because it was less conspicuous than an attaché case. Those were like a neon sign saying “Money.” At about three in the morning, I got a phone call in my hotel room that Burton needed to be picked up somewhere. So I picked him up in the station wagon we'd rented. The bag of money had been stuffed under the seat until I could get to a bank the next morning.

I got lost on the way back to our hotel. We were in the black part of town. People were out in the streets drinking and partying, doors open, music blaring out. I drove around for a while and realized we were the only white people in the area. Being innocent Canadians, Burton and I entered a juke joint to ask directions back to the hotel. There was a party going on as we entered and sought out the bartender. Before we could locate him, though, several large black gentlemen accosted us.

“What are you doing here, Whitey?!”

Realizing we were in the wrong place, we tried to back out but were immediately encircled. Suddenly Junior Walker's version of “These Eyes” came on the jukebox.

“What are you guys doing in here?!”

“We're lost,” I stammered. “We're the Guess Who from Canada. We wrote that song.”

“No, you didn't. Man, that's a black group.”

“No, really, we wrote it.” At that point one guy goes over to the jukebox and looks at the record label.

“What's your name?” he asks.

“Randy Bachman.”

“And what's your name?” he turned to Burton and asked.

“Burton Cummings.”

He looked at the label again.

“You wrote that song for Junior? Do you know Junior Walker?!”

“Yes,” we replied in unison, terrified.

“Okay, well, you go out here, turn right, go down Cicero and that'll get you back downtown.”

We thanked them and beat a hasty retreat, managing to find our way back to our hotel. Thank you, Junior Walker.

STEVE CROPPER

Our album
Wheatfield Soul
was out, “These Eyes” was a hit, and we were still on the radio with “Laughing” and “Undun.” Junior Walker's version of “These Eyes” was out and we were booked to play in Memphis, Tennessee. The other guys were seriously getting into partying by then, but I'd get up in the mornings and do things. When we arrived in Memphis we passed the famous Stax-Volt studios on the way to the hotel. It looked more like a restaurant or grocery store than a recording studio. In fact, it had once been a movie house because it still had that marquee sign out front that said “Stax” in big black letters. So I asked the guys if they wanted to go with me the following day to visit the studio. They weren't interested, so the next morning I got up early to take care of the deposit from the night before and decided to try visiting Stax-Volt studios.

It was ten in the morning, so I phoned the studio, told them who I was and mentioned some of our hits, and received an invita-tion to come by. When I got there the front door was locked; it was too early. I peeked through the round windows into the lobby of the theatre, now a studio, and saw a janitor sweeping up. I introduced myself and he let me in. He told me his name: Rufus Thomas. It was a Saturday so I figured nothing would be going on, but I asked if I could look around anyway. He said sure, then
told me that there was a session starting in about an hour with Booker T. and the MGs. I thought, “Wow! ‘Green Onions' and all those great instrumentals.” The guitar player in the MGs was Steve Cropper and I loved his playing.

Steve Cropper arrived not long after and introduced himself. He knew of our records and asked me about some of the chords in “These Eyes.” He wasn't familiar with some of the major seventh chords we'd used. So here I am showing the one and only Steve Cropper the chords for “These Eyes
.
” That was an experience I'll never forget. He expressed interest in recording “A Wednesday in Your Garden” with the Staple Singers. I was thrilled with that. He was the man behind the funky Memphis soul sound of Booker T. and the MGs, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, and so many more. Steve Cropper is a unique guitar player with an immediately identifiable sound that has influenced everyone from Pete Townshend to rock/jazz fusion guitarist Jeff Beck, and me, too.

CHUCK BERRY AND JERRY LEE LEWIS

It was July 27, 1969, outside of Seattle in Woodinville, Washington. It was called the Seattle Pop Festival and I was with the Guess Who. “These Eyes” had already been a gold record and “Laughing” was on its way to the same. We hadn't recorded “American Woman” yet. The Seattle Pop Festival was three glorious days of sunshine and music, way, way better than Woodstock, but it wasn't filmed like Woodstock was. On the bill were the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, the Doors, Ike and Tina Turner, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Bo Diddley, us, and many more. It was an amazing weekend that I'll never forget.