Randy Bachman (19 page)

Randy recording
Vinyl Tap
at CBC studios in Vancouver, 2009.

 

Our piano player, Bob Ashley, had an old German Korting tape recorder, and he mentioned that if you turn the heads out— one is record and the other play—you could get an echo effect. Hank Marvin used an Echoplex in the Shadows. We didn't know what an Echoplex was; you couldn't buy one in Winnipeg back then. I begged and pleaded with Ashley and finally he let me use it. I had special patch cords made, and plugged my Gretsch guitar into his tape recorder and from that into Jim Kale's Fender Concert amp. I got the most incredible echo sound from that little homemade system. That became
my
sound. I remember Neil Young raving about my having a homemade Echoplex and sounding just like Hank.

I was so taken with the Shadows sound that I wrote my own Hank Marvin–style instrumental. I called it “Made in England.” We recorded it in early 1964 at Kay Bank studio in Minneapolis. I was so naive that I even sent a copy of “Made in England” to the Shadows in London. I thought it was good enough for them to record. Duh! I got a rejection letter in the mail on the group's own letterhead, four guys in silhouette, saying, “We received your record but unfortunately we do not feel it is appropriate to record at this time.” I still have the letter.

“SPRING IS NEARLY HERE”

In the 1990s I heard that Sting was organizing a tribute album to the Shadows and Hank Marvin on his own record label, so I sent his management a fax. In the fax I said, “I grew up with Neil Young, and Hank Marvin was our greatest influence. Neil Young went on to find fame with the Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and on his own. I was a member of the
Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Most of our solos are Hank Marvin–inspired. I would love to do a track on the album and I will try to talk Neil into it as well.” I received a reply fax the next day saying they'd love to have me and if possible Neil, too, on the album since we were such huge Hank Marvin fans. All these great guitar players like Brian May from Queen, Peter Frampton, Keith Urban, Mark Knopfler from Dire Straits, and Peter Green were going to be on it playing their favourite Shadows song. But the tracks had pretty much been recorded already; I'd heard about the project late. I was told there was room for one more track. All the good songs like “Wonderful Land,” “Man of Mystery,” “Nivram,” and “FBI” were already taken. I didn't know what to pick.

I faxed Neil to tell him about the album and he was onside right away. We fixed a date for me to come down to his Broken Arrow ranch in northern California to record. But record what? Before I left, Neil and I talked on the phone about which song we would do.

“Do you remember ‘Spring Is Nearly Here'?” he asked me. “I'd like to play that.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “Doc Steen used to play it on CKRC back in the 60s.”

The problem was that I couldn't find that song on
any
of my Shadows albums, and I pretty much had every Shadows album released in Canada. If we did try that song it would have to be from memory. So off I went to Neil's place. I even played a white 1964 Burns model guitar like Hank played in his latter years with the Shadows. I wanted to be authentic. I showed up with that at Neil's place and he freaked out.

Since neither of us had a recording of the song, we had to try and do it by memory. Neil closed his eyes and a few seconds later he started playing the melody. He hadn't heard the song since 1963 and never had the record. But as soon as he played the opening riff I suddenly remembered the song: “Oh yeah!” I joined in on
the rhythm and we got through the verses. Then Neil stopped and said, “I forget the bridge.”

“It's in C, so I'll go to a C7 chord and then to F.” Shadows songs were pretty predictable. We went through it again, and as I hit the C7, Neil went right into the original bridge. We were pulling these notes from each other's brains. So we had the verse and chorus, but we were still stuck for the intro and outro. We decided to make up an intro that we both liked. “Hank Marvin's not going to care,” Neil said.

We finished the recording in one or two takes. Neil likes things to be in the moment. He never likes to do take after take after take or to overdub. There were a couple of odd notes that I thought we should fix, but Neil said, “No! It happened. Pretend we're the Shadows playing live at some seaside resort in Brighton just like in those Cliff Richard movies.” So I left it alone and figured I'd fix them once I was back in my own studio in Vancouver.

The next day before I left, Elliot Roberts, Neil's long-time manager, took me aside and said, “We know you have plans to take the tape of ‘Spring Is Nearly Here' home and fix it up, but Neil feels strongly that this was a moment captured in time and nothing should alter it.” So I didn't. I left the mistake and sent the tape to Sting's manager, who later told me Sting loved the track and said we sounded like the Shadows live.

But I couldn't shake the thought that maybe it wasn't a Shadows song we'd recorded after all. I hadn't been able to find the song on any Shadows albums. Did they actually record “Spring Is Nearly Here”? Did Neil and I remember it correctly or had we recorded a Santo and Johnny song by mistake? So I called a Shadows expert, Richard Patterson, who'd been the drummer in an Ottawa Shadows-style band, the Esquires, back in the mid 60s, and left a frantic message on his answering machine.

“Richard, you have to help me. I can't find a Shadows song called ‘Spring Is Nearly Here' anywhere! Can you help me? Do you know that song?”

I took my teenage daughter Callianne to school, and as I walked back into the house I heard “Spring Is Nearly Here” coming from my answering machine. Richard had found the track! It turned out to be on a British album not released in Canada, and we pretty much had it right, pulling it from our collective memories.

The tribute album was called
Twang,
and when it came out it was great, but it was also obvious that none of us, all these great guitar players, could match Hank Marvin's sound. Although we all tried, there's only one Hank Marvin. We were all just imitators.

THE SHADOWS' REUNION

Despite my lifelong infatuation with the Shadows in general and Hank Marvin in particular, I'd never seen the band performing live. In their heyday they hadn't toured Canada and had broken up by 1990. In 2005 it was announced that the group was re-forming for a farewell tour of U.K. and European concert dates. I was not about to miss my one and only opportunity to catch my heroes live.

As soon as I heard about the farewell tour I emailed a friend in the U.K. and said, “Please, whatever you have to do, I need tickets to the Shadows' farewell show. If you have to camp out to get them, please do so. Don't worry about the cost; I'll pay any price. I'll even pay you to stand in line. I
have
to see the Shadows.” I rearranged my schedule to be in London a week earlier so that I could attend the show. I got four tickets and invited Neil and his wife, Pegi Young. They were all set to go, but then their son Ben had a minor accident, nothing serious, but Neil emailed me to say he couldn't go. I ended up telling him all about the concert when we hooked up later that year. He wanted to know all the details and what songs they played.

My friend had contacted the Shadows' manager, who arranged for me to go to their sound check that afternoon and meet them before the show. I had briefly met Bruce Welch before, at a banquet
for U.K. songwriters called SODS, the Society of Distinguished Songwriters, but not all the other guys in the band. When I went to the sound check I gave them a message from Neil who couldn't be there and introduced myself. Bruce, Hank, and Brian Bennett were there. I'd brought my very rare 1964 Burns-model white Hank Marvin guitar with me. I took the pick guard off it and got it signed.

I'd bought some old Vox amps, Vox AC 30s, like the Shadows used to use. One had “Hank Marvin—The Shadows” stencilled on the back. It had been one of Hank's original Vox amplifiers. So I brought the back of his amp with me along with a
Shadows 20 Greatest Hits
gold record award I'd bought off the internet. Being the consummate Shadows fan, I brought all this stuff with me to the sound check.

When they finished sound-checking they jumped off the front of the stage and came over and shook hands with me. Denise took a bunch of pictures and I said to them, “I'm a silly fan … would you please sign these?” Hey, I'm just a guy from Winnipeg. They signed the gold record, the pick guard, and the back of the amp. I was ecstatic. I'm a huge fan and love those guys.

Now I have my Shadows shrine in my house.

They were so sweet and wonderful to me, and talked to me like we were old friends. When it comes right down to it we're all musicians and normal guys, but in my mind I'm thinking these are the greatest guys in the world. I mean, I used to dream of meeting and playing with the Shadows one day. I knew all their songs, and told them how I got the gig with Chad Allan when he broke a string playing a Shadows song and I soared right into the lead without missing a beat. And how the lead lick in “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet” is basically the Shadows' “Wonderful Land” played inverted with an echo. They thought this was all fantastic. For me, it was like meeting Elvis. These guys were my original heroes. What was amazing, too, for me was that they knew my music and knew who I was.

Then Hank Marvin said to me, “Do you want to play my guitar?”

“What?!”

So he took me up onstage and handed me his fiesta-red Stratocaster that he's famous for, the Hank Marvin guitar.

“Here, go ahead,” Hank said. “Play it.”

Denise took a picture of me holding Hank's beloved Stratocaster. I was so nervous I didn't know what to play, so I didn't play anything. How do you play a Shadows song in front of Hank Marvin?

That night at the concert as they played all those great songs, I had tears streaming down my cheeks. My daughter Callianne couldn't understand why I was crying. I was seeing my heroes. Every great guitar player in the U.K. was in the audience and they, too, were feeling the same emotions. After the show I went to their dressing room and gave them all hugs and handshakes. It was the most wonderful feeling in my life meeting these guys.

POSTSCRIPT

In 2007 Burton Cummings and I entered a Toronto recording studio to lay down covers of some of our most cherished songs from our youth. It was a pet project motivated more by fun than anything else. Among the seventeen tracks on
Jukebox
is a version of the Shadows' “Man of Mystery.” We also tackled Cliff Richard and the Shadows' “Don't Talk to Him,” with Burton sounding very much like Cliff.

In the original recording of “Man of Mystery” there was a little mistake where the band played a minor chord and Hank went to a major chord. I corrected it in our recording. When I gave that version to Bruce Welch and Brian Bennett I told them I'd corrected the mistake Hank made on the original, and they replied, “Oh, thank god! We argued and argued with Hank at the time about that mistake, but he just said that was the one take, so it just stayed there.”

My Picks

“APACHE” by the Shadows

“DON'T TALK TO HIM” by Bachman and Cummings

“FBI” by the Shadows

“MADE IN ENGLAND” by Chad Allan and the Reflections

“MAN OF MYSTERY” by Bachman and Cummings

“ON THE BEACH” by Cliff Richard and the Shadows

“THE RISE AND FALL OF FLINGEL BUNT” by the Shadows

“SPRING IS NEARLY HERE” by Randy Bachman and Neil Young

“SPRING IS NEARLY HERE” by the Shadows

The Story Behind the Song, Part 2

When I left the Guess Who in 1970 I wanted to do something different musically. I didn't want to compete with my former band. Brave Belt was my post–Guess Who band, and instead of rock it was a country-rock experiment, an experiment that failed. People still expected me to be that rockin' “American Woman” and “No Time” guy. So I needed to rethink things. Bringing Fred Turner into the band was the key ingredient in the transformation from Brave Belt to Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or BTO. Not only did Fred have a great hard-rock voice but he also wrote songs that suited the way I thought we should be sounding.

“GIMME YOUR MONEY PLEASE”

We cut our first Bachman-Turner Overdrive album, 1973's
BTO I,
which was pretty much the
Brave Belt III
album, in Toronto. It didn't have any hit singles on it, but it got us a lot of FM radio play. One of the songs on it was written in New York by C.F. “Fred” Turner. We were in New York as Brave Belt and Fred was out for a walk. He turned a corner and there was a guy, with a knife and his hand out, who said to Fred, “Gimme your money,
please.” Fred gave him his money, came back to his room, and told me about it. It had been pretty terrifying, and he wrote the song about it. That was the song Charlie Fach, head of Mercury Records, was listening to when he called and told me we had a record deal after some twenty rejections. It's a great rockin' song that solidified our image: no-frills blue-collar rockers.