BTO's Bachman on Career and Guitar Auction

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All right, Over two hundred of his guitars are being auctioned off from his five decades and playing them with iconic bands on iconic songs. It's all happening at the Julian's Auctions Music Icon Sale happening at the Hard Rock Cafe in New York City next week. He is an icon. You just heard the music as a founding member of Bachman Turner Overdrive BTO and the guests who I've got to say, my brother George, I was texting earlier. He

How are you good? And I'm happy?

Oh? Happy is a good thing?

You happy to be here? We couldn't go any for three years.

I'm happy to get out of us, not mean to go to the grocery store.

Amen.

Amen, we all assume that being in, you know, kind of walking around your shoes, having lived your life, the bands you've been in, the iconic songs that still resonate with so many of us today, that you've lived a pretty amazing life and are still living it. Is that fair?

Well, there's two there's a flip side to the coin, okay, And I have to tell you this happens with a lot of us when the gig is done and the thousands of screaming, Yeah, you're in a car with a bunch of guys where you've been on the road for two months and you don't really like each other anymore, and everyone else is going home with their loved one to a snuggly home bed and the kids with a babysitter and the fireplace burning, and you're all alone on

Side of it, and be really successful. As what the travelers killer.

What was the point for you that it sort of shifted from living out that teenage dream to feeling like, Okay, I want to be home.

It happens every tour. It happens to David.

But did it happen earlier teenage dream?

Now I'm here on this great thing. I'm plugging my guitar sale.

But look to be fair, you know, Carol asked where your home base is and you said an airplane. You're traveling a ton still, yeah, yeah, all right, yeah, it wasn't.

You get home, you get anxious to go in the room, and you get on the road, you get anxious to go home. If you ask an actor do you like movies or stage? They say yes, You're like one or the other each time, and you've got to do kind of both to be fully rounded. You can't make a living in this business and can't be an athlete and play a home game every all the time.

You got to go away.

So all these glamorous gig you guys are getting hundred millions of dollars to play baseball. There's a downside, but yeah, the episode's big.

Now we feel that sometimes, right. We love travel, we love our jobs, but you know, it's nice to be home and we love that. We're gonna talk about the auction in the moment, but I want to ask you. In researching, we came across that Elvis Presley's motto taking care of Business was inspired by your band song Have you heard this?

Yes?

I was a big fan of Elvis. I played classical violin from the age of five to fourteen, and I got tired of playing classical music audition for the Winnipeg School Junior Symphony and flunked.

Quit playing, went home.

That's it playing. I'm never playing the violin again. The next day I saw Elvis on television and said, what is that. Oh, it's called rock and roll. That's called the guitar, and that's called Elvis. All you play on violin is melody. You're playing the guitar line. So my cousins had a guitar. I got their guitar. I could play everything because I was playing violin by ear, even the classical music. My teacher played first Tchaikovski or Chopin,

She said, oh yeah.

We were driving to the LA airport to fly back to Memphis, and Elvis heard a song on the radio by a Canadian band, taking Care of Business. He went, Boom, I want that TCB lightning bolt right away, but a big butter boom, and that became his model for his band. It's on his tombstone. Nobody else can use that. I wrote the song I can use taking care of Business. He can use it.

And that's pretty cool.

I have a buddy. He was waiting somewhere for me to show up. Incredible, Well dude singing taking care of business together?

Okay, not too soon.

That's pretty cool.

The auction is something we want.

To talk about.

Two hundred guitars, stove of a couple hundred, That's that's what I want.

How many pairs of shoes do you have in your closet? You don't know, I don't know how many guitars I have.

I don't even tell my husband. No, it's interesting. My husband also plays guitar, not you know, but a lot of fun. But it's like you can never have enough guitars, right, what is that?

How many shoes do you have? All?

Right?

You know what it's done.

You don't even have to justify. So why are you selling even some of them?

I had four?

When you travel, I wanted to be like Chuck Berry or a lot of these other guys. You have a home in London, a home in la so you don't have We're sick of motels. You'll drive three or hundred nights to sleep in your own bed for a couple of hours. So I home in London, Covent Garden, Santa Monica, Toronto, outside of Toronto, Oakfield and Victoria, can't go to them shut down for three or four you you can't go to your home. You sell everything, ship it to me.

So it was time to sell it.

These guitars, though each one of them has a story, A.

Lot of these do a lot of them.

My American Woman nineteen fifty nine less Paul is a rare guitar. To begin with, they only made a couple hundred each year, and the fifty eight to fifteen, nine and sixty are very rare because they were the last time they made it with a certain glue that when they put the neck in the body, that glue permeated the wood in the pores and then petrified. The guitar has this brain and it's very heavy. Guitar weighs fifteen pounds. You imagine that on your shoulder for four hours every day.

And no time.

All the guests who hits and a lot of bto guitar solos were that guitar. I just didn't play it on stage. Was too heavy to stand up. So then I start to play strat Fender stratocaster. So the two white strats I used with bt Or, they're their number one guitars. They played on You Ain't See Nothing Yet, Let It Ride. My Les Paul was American Woman, No Time. So these are iconic guitars that have played a number one singles and then all the albums on both sides

My kids are leaving home.

They don't necessarily hope.

Somebody adopts them.

And the American home guitar is bought by Slash or Lenny Kravitz, who deserve it, and it has another hit it plays.

Has anybody reached out to you?

There's a magic in these guitars. We just picked them up. They were traveling with us all day playing them. And when you plug it and play it, you've heard the sound before, even though its strange to you, you've heard it on the radio so many times. Even the rhythm to Let It Ride and things like that. There's there's a king when you hear.

It, but when you when you play it, again. Is there any part of you that's like, maybe I don't want to let it go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

They were handing for me one at a time last that it was a little showcase, and I go, see, I don't want to sell this, but I haven't played it for eleven years.

I'll probably never played for another eleven years.

It's time for it to get a new It's flying for somebody to play them, you.

Know, right, rather that than they're sitting in their cases, right yeah, in a storage room or in your home, the.

Legal lawyer's library. They don't go to the books anymore. It's all on the computer. But it's just like the guitars. You can't get to the guitars. They're all in storage.

Unbelievable. Randy sittit. We're going to come back, Like I said, Doe, a little.

Bit of news.

We're talking with Randy Bachman. He's founding member you know this a Bachman Turner Overdrive. Also the guests who here in our studio. We're going to talk a little bit more about Julian's auctions Music Icon sale. It's happening May twenty ninth, May thirtieth, next week, live at the hard Rock Cafe in New York City. So you can actually own kind of a piece of an icon. So we're

You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Meser and Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio and Television.

All right, everybody, we're talking with Randy Bachman, founding member of Bachman Turner Overdrive and the guests who because he's got an auction coming up, Julian's Auctions Music Icon Sale. He's got over two hundred or roughly two hundred guitars in that auction, and that's happening May twenty ninth and May thirtieth at the hard Rock Cafe in New York City. Having said that, you need to share with our audience about the lost guitar, tell us about that.

It's one guitar that will not be auctioned off.

No.

I just got it back after being gone forty seven, forty eight years. Oh, it was stolen from a hotel in Toronto or doing a bto album there.

It vanished.

There's no internet then, so I had to fax all the guitar stores. I ended up in a frenzy buying Gretch guitars. I went through my midlife crisis buying Gretz guitars. I masked over three hundred and finally sold them to Fred Gretch. It became the Fred the Gretch Museum in Savannah, Geork.

Joe I believe.

But this one that was stolen I kept searching for and we got a notice back a couple years ago. Tall and I my son were doing Back When, Back When train Wreck every Friday night on YouTube because there were no gigs, and the guy said, I found your Gretch guitar. It was in Tokyo with a guy named Takeshi, was like the Brian Setser of playing rockabilly on this

For this guitar. And we went there.

They wouldn't let me meet Takeshi or see my guitar until I walked on stage on Canada Day July, the first in the Canadian Consulate. So to the filming, this is being a film. They wanted to see my face when I saw this guitar. It's like if your childhood bike or your dog got run over by a truck and then somebody later came to, well, your dog had poppies, and here's a poppy and it's just like your dog. It's Skippy is back, right, So get my guitar up.

Skippy it was back.

They filmed it, and it's going to be a film coming out very soon being edited.

Right now, it's Netflix.

Maybe maybe if they Midhei.

Okay, all right, well will you come back when it's when it's I will.

That'll be a whole different story. That's the guitar I've gotten at home. It was number one guitar with the guests Who and Beto with all their hits and albums and maybe I'll have a number one again on Rotten Tomatoes or something when the film comes out. But my son and I cut an album that's coming out. That's the soundtrack to the movie of the Lost Guitar.

You never know, you never know. It might be my magic Feather, might be my Dumbo. You can fly. Here's your magic Guitar. Another hit song.

Do you have a favorite hit song of your own?

I think it might have to be taking Care of Business. I've had many teachers come to me that teach handicapped kids, altruistic kids, very advanced kids, and to get all their attention in the morning, they always play taking care of Business.

All these little kids were attention deficit or whatever. And also guys going in desert.

Storm in their tanks to battle, playing taking care of Business or playing American women in their tanks. They're going to fight. When the Canadian astronaut was in there, he played taking care of Business. But then we got to say that song thanks to Elvis and me.

He's like, wow, gotta feel pretty cool about this. Got thirty forty seconds left here. What do you want people to know about the auction?

Well, there's guitars, some of them are on split display at.

The hard Rock.

You can't afford a guitar, Go down to the camera, take a picture of the guitar. Some of they're going to sell for millions of dollars. The fifty nine that's Paul. They're all going Mark and Authers went for one point four million pounds or something like that.

This was a replica reissue. Mine's a real one from fifty nine.

Are you okay that you stopped playing violin and went this way?

Really? I actually get beat up with the violin my army Saturday morning, and all the guys would beat me up. Here's the sissy going through his five in. Listen, we're playing hockey. It's winter peg right.

It's not sissy. It's pretty amazing. Come back. You're welcome back in here.

Well, thanks, good luck.

On the tour. Thanks yeah, stay safe.

Come back hang out with us again.

I love hanging out with you guys. You're really happy.

Randy Open he's founding member of Bachman, Turner, Overdrive and the guests who check out Julian's auction. As we said, May twenty ninth and May thirtieth at the hard Rock in New York City.

This is Bloomberg Business Week Inside from the reporters and editors who bring you America's most trusted business magazine, plus global business, finance and tech news. As it happened This Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Meser and Tim Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio.

It is Bloomberg BusinessWeek.

That's Carol.

I'm Tim.

Hi, Hi, just getting my notes, Carol.

Little bit of news today in the world of executive transition. Yes, James Gorman is going to seed his role at Morgan Stanley as chairman at the end of the year. He's going to cap at nearly two decade run at the firm, in which he rescued it from the brink of failure turned it into a wealth management powerhouse. Remember Gorman was CEO until January. That's when Ted Pick took over.

Right, Well, this is Ty Wiggins world. His job is to guide CEOs through their first year two year and a half. He writes in his new book that he's part coach, part cheerleader, a venting partner, a challenger and an advisor. I feel like I want to hire him, but anyway.

Or it sounds like a pretty cool job. Actually, the new book is called The New CEO Lessons from CEOs on how to start well and perform quickly minus the common mistakes. Ty's also global lead and CEO and Global lead of CEO and Executive Transition Practice over at Russell Reynolds Associates. It's an executive search form. He joins us from the UK, Ty, good to have you with us. Congratulations to you and the team on the new book. Look, CEOs they're few and far between. There aren't that many

No, thanks, Tim, Carol.

I think non CEOs, you know, the opportunity in the book here is to understand the pressures and the challenges that CEOs go through in their transition.

And I think if you're a senior leader or an executive.

At an organization that's undergoing the CEO transition, the book will give you insight into how to best support and also slot in with the with the new CEO.

Well, you know, talk to us about who you talked to for this book to get some insight, and you know what is so important about maybe those first few days, first few weeks, first few months for a CEO on the job because I got to say, I feel like CEOs move around a lot as of late, and especially if it's a publicly held company and the stock isn't doing well, activists around out there or media is all over it, and there's a lot of pressure.

Yeah.

Now, in terms of the book, interviewed close to forty CEOs and then had the opportunity to speak to CEOs such as from On the Guider of PepsiCo and Huntspsburg of Verizon, Carol Tomato of UPS, and a string of others that are so cited in the book. You're right, CEO tenures are decreasing, which puts pressure on this early period in order to get a good start, and I think some of the early actions that CEOs take need

Go ahead, Carol share with us though in some of the conversations that you had with CEOs. All of the companies that we named, whether it was UPS, or some others. You know that these are very well known, certainly to the Bloomberg audience. You know, what did you what did you get from them about that first year?

Well, a lot of humility, which was which was really good to hear. I mean, these are great CEOs, as you've mentioned, and you know, some of them came internally within the organization, and I think there was a common thread around how difficult the CEO role is, how there's no real sandbox for it in terms of getting ready.

It's a shock.

We've talked about the loneliness a lot across different medias, and it's an actual it's an actual issue for a lot of CEOs.

And the responsibility.

You know, when I asked what the best and worst part about being a CEO is, often the answers are same. The responsibility. You know, these are individuals that want the responsibility, that want to lead, They want to have an impact on the organization in their community, but they also feel the weight of that responsibility in terms of being responsible for the financials. But also you know, there are employees,

What do you think about like those CEOs that are at a company leave and then they come back, and I think of someone like a Michael Eisner.

The Boomerang CEOs, the boomer Rang But you know Revere, I mean a Boger.

Like a Bob Iger, you know Disney Revered more like a Howard Schultz or a Howard Schultz right come back and you know their track record was incredible when they left, certainly boy byger right people you know, held them up really high, and then came back into a situation where the company was under some pressure because of its streaming pivot and so on and so forth. You know, is he like kind of starting from scratch again a little

Stepped through more than forty years, right, but stepped.

Back sometimes had a co CEO byby that was more out in front. Like I just wonder your thoughts on that.

I think it's you know, to have CEO return.

You know, depending on the individual and the organization, it can represent a number of things in terms of, you know, a succession that hasn't been successful, it obviously shows a passion and a love for the organization to come back. You know, in many cases, it's disruptive depending on the time period, you know, because we do expect the new CEO to see the world differently and to take a new, long term.

View of the organization.

So if there are changes that need to be reversed, that could be a little bit unsettling. But I think for the individuals involved, you know, I think if they're leaving at the right time in their career, then you know, I think it's less than ideal for them to need to return. But you know, each individual case will be different.

Ty, We've heard criticisms about boards being too close to their CEOs. Tesla, for example, one of the board members there is Kimball Musk, Elon Musk's brother.

Should you don't have a board member who has the same last name as you?

Yeah, it's good, it's a good question. I mean, should should the boards too close to their CEO? Shouldn't they be more independent from one another? They're supposed to keep them honest.

Right, absolutely, I mean the board, the board role is crucial to the governance of the organization, and they do play a specific role in One of those key roles that they play is to hire and fire the CEO, And so this is you know, any CEO transition lands heavily on the board as well as all groups of individuals and and you know, within organizations, it can be quite a challenge to continue to maintain that independence, especially when you have a very successful, very dominant CEO.

Should CEOs be allowed to serve as chairs of boards in your opinion.

Well, I think it's common practice in a lot of organizations, especially in the United States.

In other countries it's less common.

I think as long as there is an independent, you know, senior director to provide that counsel, that support and that challenge, it does allow CEOs to move with greater pace. So if the organization is in trouble, then that allows for quicker decision making. But I think that, you know, if we look at the independence that we require, there's a argument for the CEO to be separate to the chair role.

Just get about a minute. Then we're going to come back and continue the conversation. Having said that, is there a common mistake in talking to CEOs that you find that they all say, this is the one I made. Is there a common mistake among them, especially in that early, those early months or that early first year, year and a half.

It's the common mistake is generally around something that they say in a fairly public environment or an early action that they make without enough context and without enough information. And this is a question that comes up a lot, and the answer is, really it's any mistake that causes the board to doubt and to where you might lose the confidence of the board, because that obviously significally impacts your tenure and your ability to deliver along the term.

John Mackie talked to us about this yesterday is two thousand and nine op at about Obamacare on the Wall Street Journal. He was hiking and he got this panicked call it's in the book from the board. And after that he said, you know, the board said basically shut him down when it came to talking about that stuff.

Yeah, don't share your opinions on this stuff.

It's really interesting.

Yeah, I want to get back to Ty Wiggins, author of the new CEO Lessons from CEOs on how to start well and perform quickly minus the common mistakes. He's also global lead of CEO and Executive Transition Practice at Russell Reynolds Associates, an executive search firm. He's still with us from the UK. Hey, you know this kind of spoke to us. There is a section of the book about dealing with the street and here we are, you know, coming off an earning season, but we're always thinking about

Absolutely, unless you've been a CIO or a CFO and had you know, extensive experience, the investor relations will be fairly new and it's a challenging period of time. You know, the people will often underestimate the amount of preparation that goes into delivering results and doing the investor road shows and you know, trying to form that relationship really early to get buy into you know, what you're planning to

Okay, I want to play off grace a little bit because I was when preparing for this book and for this interview, I thought about the CEO stories that we've covered over the years, and it does seem like there was a spade a couple of years ago twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen where we had a lot of episodes of CEOs behaving badly, a lot of male CEOs having affairs with women who reported to them, and there were some

Look, it's I don't know whether i'd argue it's happening more or less. I think it's certainly disappointing when that is the outcome. Well, that is the behavior that we see from the leaders at the top of the organization.

You know.

One of the things that stands out for CEO is when I talk to them about what's the most important thing that they focus on, it's inevitably culture. You know, this is the one thing that whilst there's lots of people that support it. As CEO, you can't delegate that. So you are the masthead for the organization and how you behave and act and what you say, you know, is disproportionate in its effect to the culture of the organization.

And you have a culture.

Which is not conducive to where you want to take the organization. You know, your performance and the organization's performance will really struggle.

Hey, one of the things that we wanted to get into and Tim is and are prepping for this, Tim, you kind of highlighted this. But executive compensation CEO compensation. I mean I think about sometimes when there's a company in trouble, right peloton, you know, and you have Barry McCarthy comes in, he just stepped down his peloton CEO had total compensation one hundred and sixty eight million dollars

Yeah.

Fortunately, compensation is not an area that I get involved in. I know that it's a contested issue. I know that the CEOs that I work with certainly are really aware of that in terms of their role, you know. And you know, it's nice to it's nice to think that the people that I work with, especially, you know, this is not the driving force for what they're doing, why

Forgive me, because I must have a misconception about executive search, but I thought compensation was a big part of not just how you go out and find folks to do these jobs, but also how you actually get paid as a result of finding successful fits.

Hundred percent.

My role though within our firm, is focused on the CEO and executive transition practice. So I don't do the search work, and you know, I don't get into those conversations with the clients. I come in once they're appointed to help them to make sure that they're successful in that transition.

But fair right, it certainly is a lot of the conversations. Hey, one of the things I do want to go to is chapter eleven. If I could do it all over again, and you share a collection of pieces of advice from some of the CEOs you talk to. I'm not going to put you on the spot in terms of necessarily giving you a name like Mark.

Bitzer of wild Pool, So we speak to him a lot.

We've talked with him a lot but are there a couple of pieces of advice that really just have resonated with you.

Yeah, when people reflect on their time early in their CEO role, there's a couple of things that come up, you know, most often, the most popular is that they would move faster on their executive leadership team. You know, being CEO is a role you can't do on your own. You must have the right people around and for a bunch of reasons, you know, we don't move as quickly as necessarily. Our gut is telling us to move, and there are other restrictions in terms of momntum. So the

It's quite a ship and it.

Usually spend more time on board and board related activities in your first year than you expect, so you really need to factor that in.

And the third is that.

They would flex their leadership style more so they hang on to some of the things that served them well before without really accepting and stepping into the full gamut of the CEO role, accepting the good and the bad parts of it in terms of driving the outcomes that they that they know they need to deliver based on what they've promised the organization and the board and the market.

And if you're someone like Hans Vessberg, a CEO of Verizon, I've talked with him a few times. You walk the board through, or he did walk the board through his white paper. I love that before accepting the role. So it's basically like when my daughter wanted a puppy and she did a white board presentation and she spent a long time and she went through it and we're like, okay,

Yeah, And Hans did it really well.

And this is one of the things that you see second time CEO is doing much better than first time CEOs. Is this pre contracting with the board, is outlining, you know, this conversation of when not if I want to make a significant change or point the organization in a different direction,

That, And it was really key to him moving fast exactly.

Hey, just get about a minute left. Here is Elon one of the new CEOs in your view.

Elon Musk, Yeah, I think he's a different CEO.

Go On, Well, I think there's you know, there are very few individuals like him, and you know, in many ways the impact and influence has had in his space. Yeah, I would say he's definitely in that new category.

And what about Boeing, which has been plagued with problems just got about for searching flat Tail. They're searching for a new CEO, you know, internal, external, what it like? I don't know. Just give us some smart thoughts on that one.

Well, I think, you know, not necessarily Boeing specific, but an organization that really has lost the trust of the public.

You know, it's often a cultural change.

So whoever comes into an organization that's in a state in that type of state. They really need to focus on changing the culture, being transparent with the consumer about the issues to the level that they can be, and owning some of these challenges in terms of you know, how and how and what we're going to do to fix that. But ultimately these challenges stem from culture. It's a culture issue.

Really interesting, Yeah, no, absolutely interesting. Thank you so much for stopping by and sharing your book with us. Appreciate it. Ty Wiggins, Global lead of CEO and Executive Transistionion Practice over at Russell Reynolds Associates, as we said, an executive search firm over there in the UK. The new CEO Lessons from the CEOs on how to start well and perform quickly minus the common mistakes. It's a new book, so be sure to check it out.