Randy Bachman (20 page)

“BLUE COLLAR”

But the cool thing about our
BTO I
album was that it wasn't all pile-driving rockers. Fred Turner's “Blue Collar” song was a real left turn and went a long way towards earning us respect as something more than heavy-riffing Canucks.

Fred had been walking in Regina really early one morning as the sun was just starting to come up and he saw these guys going to work. They were labour-type workers and they all had blue shirts on with blue collars, your typical labourer shirt. He came back to our hotel and wrote the song about how “you walk your street and I walk mine.” I was looking for a song to stretch out on and play some Lenny Breau/Jeff Beck–style jazzy guitar. So along with the ear-splitting, straight-ahead hard rock on
BTO I
, out comes this jazzy song, “Blue Collar.” I still have guitar players come up to me today and tell me how great it was in the early 70s in that era of hard rock to hear that song on rock radio.

We didn't use a lot of overdubs on BTO recordings. I wanted our records to sound like four guys playing live, no studio wizardry. We geared our music to the lowest common denominator, basic primal rock 'n' roll. Any embellishments would be noticed only after repeated listening because they were very subtle. We didn't use synthesizers or stacked voices, and if I added bits here and there they were less obvious but still important. For example, on “Blue Collar” I added a low piano bass note at the beginning of each chord that emphasized the chord. You don't hear it as a piano part, but if it wasn't there the chord wouldn't be as strong. It's a subtle but essential ingredient underpinning the structure and presentation.

“LET IT RIDE”

BTO I
established us as a strong band and all our touring was paying off. When it came time to record our second album,
BTO II,
in 1974, I started to focus on writing for the singles market. Charlie Fach at Mercury Records had told us that we had the album thing down well and that we should try writing some hit singles. He wanted us to write more commercial songs for the next album because he wanted a hit single. Mercury Records had tried editing some of the songs on
BTO I
down to singles length, but it really hadn't worked. Charlie said people like songs with a verse and chorus that they can all sing along to. So when we recorded
BTO II
that's what we were going for, and we succeeded. We really hit our stride on that album, and we started getting both FM and AM airplay. My focus after that became not extended album tracks but writing commercially good rock songs. I realized that's what I do best.

Between the two albums, we'd been touring constantly. Wherever the album was getting airplay we'd go there. On one occasion we were travelling through Louisiana when a truck cut us off on the highway. We got to the next truck stop and saw the truck parked there. Being polite Canadians, we thought we would tell this guy to watch his driving.

“You cut us off back there on the highway,” we told him politely.

He looked straight at us and replied, “Ain't no big deal. Just let it ride, buddy.”

We were like a truckers' band anyway, so we decided to write a song using the phrase “Let it ride.” We'd been touring with the Doobie Brothers, so the song kind of took on a Doobies' guitar feel.

I based the chords around a guitar pattern that I got from Antonin Dvorák's “Piano Concerto in D.” I was trying to be influenced by classical writers the way John Lennon had been. So I listened to Dvorák's “Piano Concerto,” which is very boring, but just as when I heard Bob Dylan in “Ballad in Plain D” say “She's
come undone,” I was about to turn off Dvorák when I heard this melodic pattern. I figured out chords for it, and it became the beginning to “Let It Ride.” It's very memorable, like a melody within the chords. From there it went into the ca-chunka chunka heavier part. The song really tricks the listener because it starts mellow then thunders into the rhythm. “Let It Ride” put us on the singles charts and at the forefront of harder rock guitar bands.

The album managed to capture that territory for us with two chart hits and one rock anthem. The melodic chording and sledgehammer verses of “Let It Ride” became the trademark sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. BTO was a guys' band. Fred Turner and I didn't look like pretty boys or models. We were the guys next door who took out your garbage, mowed your lawn, or delivered your newspaper. Because of our name and image, we did a lot of truck-driving songs: “Let It Ride,” “Roll on Down the Highway,” “Four Wheel Drive,” “My Wheels Won't Turn.”

Here's something most people don't know. BTO's secret weapon on many of our records was a gallon milk jug turned over and played in a galloping style. It simulated that Beatles bongo sound. Robbie played it, and we had two tones, one with the cap off and the other with the cap on. It's that gallop that's in “Let It Ride,” “Takin' Care of Business,” and lots of other BTO songs mixed under the track to give it that galloping effect, propelling the song along.

“TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS”

This is BTO's signature song and a bona fide rock anthem. Like “American Woman” three years before, “Takin' Care of Business” was born from an impromptu moment on stage and refined into a hit record in the studio. Talk about a song having legs: “Takin' Care of Business” remains the most licensed song in Sony Music's vast publishing catalogue and has been used in everything from movies to selling burgers and office supplies. And it never fails to bring an audience to its feet.

In Winnipeg, you drive to work. There are no commuter trains. When the Guess Who were recording
Wheatfield Soul
in New York in 1968 we stayed at the Gramercy Hotel in Manhattan, and I'd see all these people who worked in New York arriving by commuter train every morning. So I wrote a song I called “White Collar Worker” about all these guys taking the 8:15 into the city every day and going back home at night. And the girls were all trying to look pretty as they came to work each day. I had seen it in movies, a day in the life of your typical New York businessman.

“White Collar Worker” had the same verses as “Takin' Care of Business” played over about seven or eight chord changes. The lyrics had that Chuck Berry “Maybellene” or “Johnny B. Goode” storytelling style to them. The chorus was copied from the Beatles' “Paperback Writer,” where we stopped and sang “White collar worker” in harmonies just like the Beatles did. I tried “White Collar Worker” out in my basement on Luxton Avenue with Burton Cummings and Garry Peterson, but it was pretty terrible. They hated it, so the Guess Who never recorded it and I forgot about it.

So fast-forward a couple of years and BTO are playing a club gig in Vancouver. I'm on my way to the gig with my radio on and I hear a deejay on the radio say something like “This is Daryl B. on CFOX radio takin' care of business.” I thought that was a cool phrase. That night, Fred Turner blew his voice out after singing three sets a night all week long. By the last set he could barely croak, so he asked me to take over. After singing a few cover songs that I knew, out of desperation I thought of “White Collar Worker
.
” I couldn't shout out all the chord changes since there were so many, so I simplified it in my head and told the guys to play C Bb and F over and over. That allowed me to sing the lyrics in a more Chuck Berry way over a simpler chord progression. When we got to the chorus, I just sang “Takin' care of business” four times over those same three chords. We did another verse and went into the chorus, and out of the blue as the others joined
in singing “Takin' care of business,” I just answered each one with “Every day,” “Every way,” “It's all mine,” “And working overtime” followed by “Work out.”

When we finished the song people kept clapping, stomping, and shouting “Takin' care of business” over and over. So we picked up the tempo a bit and played it again. We knew we had something. After that we played it at other gigs and received the same response from audiences. We started closing our sets with it and the crowds wouldn't let us off the stage.

We couldn't record a song called “White Collar Worker” in BTO when we already had “Blue Collar
,
” so the title was no good. But I knew the verses were great: “They get up in the mornin' from the alarm clock's warnin', take the 8:15 into the city.” It's one of those songs you can't help but sing along to.

When we went into Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle to record
BTO II,
I gave Fred the lyrics to sing it. Instead he said, “I'm not going to sing it. You should sing it. It'll give me a break.”

I've never really thought of myself as a singer. What I am is a guitar player who sings. I don't have the greatest singing voice. It's distinctive, though, and over the years I've come to accept that I do have a voice.

In the studio we simplified the chords and tightened up the arrangement. I put the break in the middle to change up the monotony of the three chords over and over. As we were finishing the recording there was a knock at the studio door. I opened it and there stood this guy, six-foot-four, big beard like Fidel Castro, wearing army fatigues and holding a pizza.

“Did you guys order pizza?”

I told him we didn't but that maybe someone else in the building had. So off he went down the hall with his pizza and we went back to listening to the playback of “Takin' Care of Business.” It was about one-thirty in the morning. A few minutes later there was another knock at the door. I opened it and there's the pizza guy again.

“That song sounds like it could really use a piano. I'm a piano player. Give me a shot.”

It was late and we were ready to call it a night, so I said to him, “Okay, you've got one take.”

We played the track for him. He listened and wrote down the chords. Then he went out into the studio, sat down at the piano they had, and laid down this great piano part. One take. Then we all went home.

A few days later we played the song for Charlie Fach from Mercury Records and he flipped out. He loved the piano part and said it gave BTO a whole new sound. But we couldn't release it without paying the piano player and crediting him on the album. So I started going through the Yellow Pages alphabetic-ally, phoning all the pizza joints in town and describing this guy to them.

I finally tracked him down. His name was Norman Durkee and he was a classically trained pianist who worked with the symphony orchestra. In between gigs he delivered pizza. So we got hold of him, paid him double scale, and the song came out and made musical history. And part of its appeal is that piano part. Norman later became the rehearsal pianist for the L.A. Symphony.

I didn't think of “Takin' Care of Business” in terms of being a single, especially with me singing it. It was an album track. Fred Turner was our lead singer. But after “Let It Ride” was a hit and slipping down the charts, Charlie Fach told us he wanted “Takin' Care of Business” to be the next single. It was already getting airplay in some regions. The trouble was I didn't want it to be a single, and I told Charlie that.

“I sang it terribly. It's only an album track.”

But I couldn't deny the momentum that was there. “Takin' Care of Business” became a single because of radio demand. More than that, “takin' care of business” was becoming an American catchphrase. It had several meanings, whether for a guy and his
girl getting it on or for someone who just wants to get the job done. Everyone knew what it meant. Even Elvis used it as his catchphrase. It fit the band as well, these big Canadian lumberjack guys who take care of business. The song has gone way beyond the record charts and makes more money now than it did back then. But if I'd known that, I would have spent more time on the lyrics and replaced the first part of “If it were easy as fishin', you could be a musician” with “If you pass the audition.” Too late now.

“YOU AIN'T SEEN NOTHING YET”

So there we were. It was 1974 and we were getting ready to lay down tracks for our third album,
Not Fragile
. We had conquered both the albums and singles markets, FM and AM radio. The group was on a roll and about to turn a North American success story into an international phenomenon.

BTO was a bunch of brothers and a friend. Sounds kind of like the Beach Boys. It was all for one and one for all. We had endured the lean years and worked our butts off for the success we achieved.

Our albums had always featured eight songs, four on one side and four on the other, like wheels on a truck. When it came time to record
Not Fragile,
we had our eight songs recorded. But before we started recording the album I had what I called a work song that had a light part to get the rhythm and a heavy riffing part to set the balance. I used it as my testing song to see if we were getting the right balance before we tackled the real songs intended for the album. I was really just fooling around on that song. I took the opening jangly chord from Dave Mason's “Only You Know and I Know” and added some heavy chords on the chorus. As we played it to get ourselves into the recording mindset I started singing words. “I met a devil woman, she took my heart away.” I honestly don't know where I got the line “You ain't seen nothing yet” from or why I stuttered on those particular words, but when I did “B-b-b-baby,” everybody in the band sat up and got into it.
I figured I would keep it and work on it for a later album. We recorded it, but not with the intention of using it. It was just this silly little ditty and we set it aside.

My older brother Gary had a stuttering problem as a kid. He'd overcome it by the time he was an adult, but I used to tease him when we were kids growing up in Winnipeg. So as a joke I thought I would finish up the track and send it to him. Nothing more than that.

But I never did send it to Gary. When Charlie Fach came out to Seattle to hear the tracks for our third album he was concerned that while the album tracks were great, there was no obvious single that he heard. There was no “Let It Ride” or “Takin' Care of Business.” Our engineer, Mark Smith, suggested we play Charlie my stuttering song. The minute he heard those intro chords, he yelled, “This is a radio hit!”