Randy Bachman (25 page)

I got to the arena where they held the NAMM show early and went to where Joe was going to be playing. There were other guitar players there waiting with me. Joe arrives and I'm taken aback by how cranky he is. As Yogi Bear would say, “Sheeesh, what a grouch!” He was kind of short-tempered, curt and ordering people around. I remember at the time thinking, “Whoa, he could be a lot nicer to people.” But when he got up to play, the tenseness and the lines in his face melted away. He just transported himself, and everyone watching, myself included, to another place. It was magical. You forgot all about the grouchy guy.

I learned soon afterwards that Joe Pass had cancer and passed away not long after that show. I was humbled that I'd had that moment with him and felt bad about the way I'd judged him. You should never judge people in the moment because there may be other circumstances they're going through. I was touched by his playing and I miss him.

RITA MACNEIL

I was touring with my own band doing my “Every Song Tells a Story” show in 2002 and we were playing out in Cape Breton Island. This is Rita MacNeil's backyard. She's from Big Pond, Nova Scotia, and is a true Canadian superstar. There was a hush in the crowd just before we started and word came around that Rita and her son were in the audience. She's like royalty in Cape Breton Island. So we did the show and I was really hoping I would meet Rita afterwards. She's a great songwriter and a great Canadian. After our shows, once we've quickly towelled off, my band and I come out and sign everything people bring for us to sign: old vinyl albums or 45s, eight-tracks, CDs, photos, and maybe some of the merchandise we're selling after the show. It's kind of like the Garth Brooks thing or what Nashville country stars do: They stay until everyone's got what they have signed or posed for a photo with us.

Just as we're sitting down to start signing and meeting the fans, one of my band guys comes up to me and whispers in my ear.

“They've cleaned out the dressing room!”

Now that can mean one of two things. Either the janitor has come by and swept up in the room or we've been robbed. Unfortunately, it was the latter. Some thieves had snuck backstage, and as we were starting our signing session they'd cleaned us out of our valuables—backpacks, wallets, watches, credit cards, iPods, cameras. I'd checked out of my hotel just before we headed to the gig and I had all my valuables in a plastic Delta Hotel laundry bag. I'd just thrown it all in the bag and checked out. So when we went back to the dressing room, all that was left was this Delta Hotel bag with my stuff. I had to leave the table to deal with the police, who'd been called by the promoter. They were able to catch the guys, but by the time I got back out front to the lineup I was told Rita had left. So I missed meeting Rita MacNeil.

I saw her at the Juno Awards one year and she did her song about going down into the mines, “Working Man,” and brought out all these miners in their mining hats onstage to sing it with her. It was very reminiscent of the time I saw Paul McCartney do “Mull of Kintyre” and he brought out the bagpipers from the Black Watch. Rita brought them onstage in the dark, and when their lights came on it was a very moving moment for everyone in the audience. So Rita, if you read this, please come to my next show in Cape Breton because I would very much like to meet you.

THE SIMPSONS

I came home from a tour in mid 1999 to find a fax waiting for me from Sony Music, who controlled my song publishing. They were asking if I knew anything about
The Simpsons
television show wanting to license “Takin' Care of Business” and “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.” I faxed them back saying, “Great, let them use them.” I just thought they were probably going to have them playing in the background in Moe's bar. The next day a script
arrived for me from
The Simpsons
. More than the two songs, they actually wanted Fred and me to speak on the show.

So I read through the script and it was absolutely incredible. I called the producers to say I was in and they arranged to fly me down to tape my part. They treated me like I was Tom Cruise or something—a limo at the airport, a suite at the finest hotel. A very classy organization. They treated Fred Turner the same.

The director worked with me on how to deliver my lines. They record your vocal first, and as you do so they videotape you so that the animators can pick up on your body movements. You don't record your part with the cast because it's too distracting. I would have been totally gaga if the person standing beside me started talking in the voice of Homer Simpson. I later attended a table read with the entire cast and was dumbstruck. I couldn't have done it with them present.

The script required me to say “Hello, Springfield!” as if I was walking out onstage. So I said, “Hello, Springfield.” The director came over to me and said, “Are you playing for an audience of one person? You're on stage, it's a concert.”

I tried adding a bit more force. “Hello, Springfield!”

“Randy, there's twenty thousand people in the audience.”

“HELLO, SPRINGFIELD!!”

“Perfect. Give me three more like that.”

As the story line went, I come out and say “Hello, Springfield,” and Homer says to Bart, “Watch these guys, they're BTO!” and Bart says, “BTO?” So Homer tells him, “Yeah, they're Canada's answer to ELP. We didn't have a lot of time in the 70s so we only used initials.”

I did all my lines alone, and when I was done they gave me a big box of
Simpsons
merchandise for myself and my kids and sent me on my way.

The episode was titled
Saddle Sore Galactica
and aired February 6, 2000. In it, Homer Simpson's favourite band, BTO, are performing at the Springfield bandshell and Fred and I speak to Homer.

Just before Christmas that year I received a package by courier. It was a Christmas present from Homer Simpson with a card and a little shiny black shopping bag with a dog tag on the handle that read: “Merry Christmas, Randy Bachman,
The Simpsons
1999.” Inside was a Swiss Army stopwatch with
The Simpsons
on the face in a beautiful leather case with the words “Merry Christmas from the Simpsons.”

SMASHY AND NICEY

In the early 1990s the weekly British comedy show
Harry Enfield's Television Programme
featured a regular skit in which two over-the-hill deejays, Smashy and Nicey, play a newer record and then smash it, ending the skit by playing their favourite song, BTO's “You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet.” The skit was extremely popular and Smashy and Nicey became a phenomenon. All this was unknown to me.

I hadn't realized how much of an icon that song had become in the U.K. until I was flying from Germany to England in the mid 90s. The British flight attendant knew I was in a band but had no idea who I was or what band I was from. So she asked who I was.

When I said Randy Bachman, it didn't register with her.

“Bachman-Turner Overdrive?”

Nothing.

“What other bands have you been in?” she inquired.

“The Guess Who?”

A blank stare. “Any songs I might know?” she continued, still baffled.

“How about ‘American Woman'?”

“Sorry,” she smiled.

“‘Undun'? ‘These Eyes'? ‘Laughing'?”

“Unh, unh.”

“‘Takin' Care of Business'? ‘Let It Ride'? ‘You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet'?”

“‘You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet'?!” she exclaimed.

And with that she ran up to the pilot to tell him. He then proceeded to announce it to the entire plane and everyone fell over laughing because of the Smashy and Nicey skit. It's like Monty Python's “nudge nudge, wink wink” skit. Everybody knows it and loves it.

LENNY KRAVITZ

When I first heard that retro-rocker Lenny Kravitz was covering “American Woman” for the movie soundtrack to
Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,
I thought “Great!” I hadn't heard his version yet but I was excited because I like Lenny Kravitz. When he rocks, he has this incredible classic-rock sound, very Hendrix and Zeppelin. He's really into the old equipment and getting the authentic sound, as I am, using tube amps and an old board. He's become a diverse artist and in a Neil Young kind of way has charted his own course without trying to win favour with the latest pop trends. He has integrity.

When I received a copy of Lenny's version, though, I listened and kept waiting to hear my guitar riff, but it didn't come. “Did someone forget to mix it in? Was an amp turned off and no one noticed?” Then in came a lead guitar track playing a solo, a different kind of solo, so I knew they hadn't mixed the guitar out. I must admit that the first time I listened to it, I didn't like it. But after a few more listenings it started to grow on me and I realized the brilliance of Lenny's version. Other renditions of “American Woman,” and covers of some of my other songs by artists, have always been identical clones of the original. As a writer you're flattered, yet there isn't another personality in it, so you don't really need to listen to it more than once. But here was Lenny Kravitz leaving out my guitar line, adding a key change, and putting his own stamp on the song. It's his interpretation of “American Woman
,
” not simply a cover of it, and I appreciate that.

Lenny made “American Woman” contemporary. I'm continu-ally amazed that my songs have longevity to them and keep
reappearing. It proves that the music has transcended the genera-tions and decades. For a songwriter it's terrific, an ongoing tribute to what you created.

The re-formed Guess Who played the MuchMusic Awards show in Toronto with Lenny and his band. They were these black New York dudes who dug hard rock. Lenny was extremely gracious to us all and very cool. He wanted the Guess Who to begin the song and he would join in.

“You're the guys who created it and did it first, and we're copying you, so you should start it.”

“No,” we told him. “What you did with the song was incredible. You should start it, and in the middle solo we'll just ease in and take it over. Then we can jam at the end and you and Burton can trade lines back and forth.”

When we did it live it had so much energy, and the vibe between Lenny and us was incredible. He and Burton exchanged the vocal parts at the end back and forth, with Lenny mimicking Burton. That was definitely a highlight moment for us. What Lenny Kravitz did for our own status with contemporary rockers was extraordinary.

Afterwards, Lenny asked me for a Herzog to get that authentic “American Woman” guitar sound, so I asked Gar Gillies to make him one.

A while later I was getting a tour of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland and actor Denzel Washington was also there checking it out. When we were introduced, he was so excited to meet me that he picked up his cell phone and made a call. “Hey Lenny, you'll never ‘Guess Who' I'm standing with at the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame!”

BARENAKED LADIES

I remember in the 50s as a little kid watching this TV show called
The Millionaire
. This rich, eccentric guy named John Beresford Tipton—what a regal-sounding name that is—would send his
manservant or employee, whose name was Michael Anthony, to give some unsuspecting person a cheque for $1 million. Then it would show what they would do with the money. It was great to dream about that back then. We all used to play that game as kids: What would you do with a million dollars? Of course, for us back then $5 was a lot of money. You have to remember that in those days most parents were earning maybe $50 to $70 a week. As a teenager I could make $50 playing two nights. But my dad's generation believed that you had to work a legit-imate job. Being a musician wasn't a real job to him. Only jazz musicians did that, and as far as he was concerned they were all drug addicts.

I was backstage with the Barenaked Ladies for a Canada Day show in 2008. I'd known them for several years and had played on other shows with them. So as we're hanging out backstage I asked Ed Robertson where he got the idea for the song “If I Had a Million Dollars.” He told me that one summer he had a job as a camp counsellor and he had to keep the kids entertained and busy. One day he and the kids at this camp were sitting around and Ed told them he was a songwriter and asked if they wanted to help him write a song. “What should I write about?” he asked the kids. “Give me a song title and I'll see if I can write a song.”

One kid says, “Why don't you write about what you'd do if you had a million dollars?” So all these kids start saying what they'd do with a million dollars, but because they're kids they say things like “I'd buy some new socks and shoes” or “I'd eat only Kraft Dinner” or “I'd buy a monkey.” Ed took a lot of those ideas from the kids and with Steven Page wrote that song, which became a staple in their shows. It's a great song, a lot of fun.

The Barenaked Ladies and I are great friends and they've supported many of the same environmental causes that I have. We both played the Save the Stein Valley Festival when they were first getting started, and about ten years later they played at the Duncan, B.C., hockey arena with myself, my son Tal Bachman,
and Neil Young for the Clean Air Concert. They put on a terrific show, as always.

JANN ARDEN

I first met singer/songwriter Jann Arden in Calgary. I was at this classic rock radio station that's high up on a hill. I had a guitar with me and I'm playing songs and talking with the deejay. Other people are phoning in and talking with me on the air. Suddenly this girl calls in and says, “Stay there! Stay at the station. I'm coming down to see you.” So as I'm coming out the front door after the radio show, this girl is driving up.

She jumps out of her car and says, “Here's a copy of my CD. I just think you're great, and I'm going to be great someday. I'm going to be big. I sent in my demo to A&M Records and have signed with them. I want you to have one of the first copies of my CD.”