Randy Bachman

originally from Winnipeg. So what's that like? I mean, first of all, a lot of the funny thing is that so much great music comes from Canada, especially now because government supports it, whereas we get no support in the United States. But people in the United States are really ignorant to Canada, even though it's just across the border. So what's growing up in Winnipeg Like, Well, I've been on tour in Europe and you're going to a record store in Germany or Hollander anywhere, and there's a map

on the wall of Canada. Really would be a gold circle around Winnipeg with little arrow going Neil Young, Randy Bachman, bt O, the Guests Who, and then around Saskatoon, Joni Mitchell around Montreal. So this is like downstairs and the records of the Whole Wall. So Canada is very I mean the world is very aware of Canadian music. And growing up in Winnipeg was amazing. It's dead center in the middle of Canada, which is pretty much the middle

of North America. And it's also in the middle of nowhere. Okay, just because people know nothing. If you drive south, where do you hit In the United States? Minneapolis is five miles south five hundred. How far north of the border is Winnipeg about, so you drive down there. But growing up there was like Liverpool in the sixties. The drinking age was twenty one, so everybody from twenty one under went to all the high school dances. So this is

you know, this is Neil Young, Sugar Mountain. You know, I can't go to the Team club an Yeah, this is like Neil Young and the Squire's Fred Turner and the Rock and Devils who became the Turner of back d Burton Cummings and the dev Brons, and I was in called Chad Allen and the Reflections who when we sent in the song shake on all Over, the record label said we don't like you can't use your name. We're gonna put guests who under it and we became guests.

Who Okay, but you're in Winnipeg. What does your father do for a living. He's an optician. I wear I class really and how many generations Canadian? Are you an immigrant or his parents immiget? My dad was born in Winnipeg, but his parents, his dad came from Germany. From Germany, why they end up in Winnipeg. Well, there's the same thing with my mother's side. They were Ukrainian Polish. They

landed in Canada. They went to the train station, said this is how much money we've got and they said, oh, you could go to thunder Bay, or you can go to Winnipeg, or you can go you went as far as your money. Like you see on TV a kid running away from home. Here's eighty bucks. I got to get out of here. Where can I go? Or you can go to Keepsie, New York? You know what I mean? That's what they did. So they ended up there. Okay,

so you're in Winnipeg. Actually, I've never I've been to Toronto, I've been to Vancouver, been to Montreal into other places, camp I've never been to Winnipeg. So what's Winnipeg like when you're growing up. Well, when you grow up and you're poor and all your friends are poor, and it's an immigrant city, you're happy. Your dad works, your mother does the house. You've got winter six or seven months

of the year. And when you get old enough to stop playing hockey outdoors forty below because then there was no indoor rinks. You just as a kid, you know, to go early and shovel the rink, and you played played hockey for a while. But I was a I started playing violin when I was six. What was your teacher would always say to you, don't play a sport where they bend your fingers back. Don't you can't play hockey,

you play, can't play baseball. So consequently I started playing violin, and I did solo things like running, swimming, riding a bike, not with team sports where they would break my fingers or hurt my hand. So I kind of grew up a nerdy cissy playing violin from the age five to fourteen until I saw Elvis on TV and I'm playing Royal Conservatory violin classical. Then what is that? And my mother's younger sister there and they're screaming at the TV set and Elvis is on the bottom half as blacked

out because he's shaken. Run What is that guy doing? And why is everyone screaming? That's Elvis Presley? Who? What? What's that? Name? Was a weird name the first time you heard it, Elvis Presley, that's called rock and roll? What's that? It's a guitar? Who's that guy behind him? Scotty Moore playing this great hybrid of Chad Atkins, Rold Travis, Rocketbilie stuff? And I said, that's what I want to do. Never touched my violin again. Okay, let's go back for

a second. Why did you start playing the violin to begin with? I'm about five or six, born just after the war. Um, my parents wanted better for me, and they said, okay, we want we will afford to give you music lessons. What do you want to play? Drums too loud, too noisy, to expense, and what's your next choice? Piano too lousy, too noisy, too expensive? Well, okay, harmonica too little too You know, I end up with a little, half sized violin. And you do take lessons in school

or outside. I took lessons outside Royal Conservatory of Music, the big deal. But what my mother wanted being Polish Ukrainian, and my dad being German, was for me to play polkas and jigs and reels at all their house parties and weddings and bar mitzvah's. I grew up in the Jewish part of towns. Everybody was you might be Russian, but you might be Russian Catholic or Russian Jewish. To us, there was nothing. We were just a bunch of kids

growing up there. So there was these mad house parties and weddings and bar mitzvahs and bad miss and everything was going on. And I would go there and play all this. I mean, I'd play all the Jewish klezmir stuff from the violin and and all the Ukrainian policas and stuff, and then the odd walls, and it got pretty boring after while because all the adults are there getting hammered and drunk and dancing like Cossacks and leaping in the air just like you see in the movies.

And then and then I'd go and do my kids Royal Conservatory Chopin and Tchai Kossi stuff like this is such a weird polarization of me. Then when I saw Elvis, it was the same thing, this weird polarization of all coming together because he would do old Sheep are he do a church song for his mother, and he was trying to be like Dean Martin, like mother loved her

being Crosby. And then suddenly would outcome this you ain't nothing but a hound dog rock And where this guy would go from being a calm, cool, collected to this wild, raving maniac hu Lin. Later when I said, oh, Elvis is my favorite guy. He's like wild, and they said, have you seen or heard the black Elvis? Well, who's that? It's a little Richard. He wrote two dy Fruity, he wrote Ready's Head, he wrote rip it Up, he wrote all these Elvis songs. Let me hear little Richard. When

I heard, I just went nuts. It's actually like the Beatles. They felt the same way exactly. Yeah, okay, just go back in your family. How many kids in the family for four boys? And where are you in that higher holdest boy? All this place, all the hopes and dreams were in you. Yes, and I was the designated babysitter. Those were the days when your parents said we're going out to visit your grandparents, play with your brothers in

the streets until the street lights come on. Then go in the house, put on your pajamas, go to bed. They were like, there's no nobody worried about kidnapping or nothing. Exactly. I walked to school, you know, until like eighth grade, and we'd watch to school. And then even first grade, you were walking to school, wasn't your mother would take you the first day. Okay, take the first day. You're on your own. So that was that. So I grew up with three brothers, but I was then used to

being a maker of decisions. When it's time to divide something, I cut it up. They all get to pick one to three, four, and I get the last piece. So when you're cutting a pie in for you cut it pretty damn equal. You don't kind of take the big piece first. You wait till your little brothers take the piece. So when I left the guests who, nobody would play

with me because I was kind of blackballed. After I left the guest who after American Woman, I went to my brothers who had kind of played in the family band around the house. Okay, so when you were playing violin at these various cases, were you're getting paid no, okay, just a social thing. I got Christmas presents though. Okay, So in any event, you hear Elvis, so you switched to the guitar. Yeah, how does that happen? Gives a

little more detail. My cousins played guitar. I had an aunt with my own, my mother, younger sister who had blonde hair, and a boyfriend with a white Chevy convertible, and they would take me to all the country music fescause they wanted to see the Ray Price violins, because violin was very big then the country music fiddle as they called it. And but I started to notice the guitar players who are thumbs Carlyle and you know, and

Chad Atkins and Merle Travis, and I'm noticing that. Then I hear on one of the shows, I see Jerry Lee Lewis, and he comes when he plays You Win Again in Crazy Arms, the Rape Price song, and suddenly he starts doing good, doing good, A whole lot of shaking going on, and his hair is beautiful, it's all wavy, and he stands up. The piano stool falls over backwards, crashes on the stage. Everybody looks around. He starts whole lot of shaking going on and the place goes crazy.

They go nuts. This is an outrage. What is this guy doing to country music? The next day on the radio at noon, we come home for lunch from school, they play a whole lot of shaking going on twice and go, this guy went crazy last night the Winnipeg out a toryment iPhone and go, I was there, I was there, was it wasn electric, It was incredible. Then I see Elvis at the same time on He a little bit slower because I want to make sure that was Jerry Lee Low Jerry Lee Lewis. But at that

time he did not have any fame in Calgary. I mean he was he was another guy. He was kind of a country guy who played this boogie woogie piano. Is kind of an outcast. So if you listen to his first records, it's you win again, crazy arms. Uh, that's when your heartaches beginning. He was doing Ray Price kind of songs with a honky tonk, but he had this one song shaken over them when he did it

change the world. Okay, so you call the next day and you were there and was everybody talking about it school? Everybody talking about at school did you see Elvis on TV? Yes? I did. I'm gonna play guitar. I'm gonna be like Elvis. I really wanted to be like Scotty Moore, but Elvis made me play guitar. Okay, So how did you get your first guitar? My cousins had a guitar. I went to and said, I need to play guitar. The great

thing about violin is it's a lead instrument. I could pick up a guitar and play the lead and everything, okay, but therefore strings out a violin and there's six strings. So they taught me a couple of chords. They said, we're cousins, and it's a folk guitar, and acoustic is a chuck Berry blonde single cutaway Gibson. I've seen chuck Berry chuck Berry guitar. Are you kidding? In the same thing Scotty Moore played with a blonde Gibson guitar. And so they teach me three chords, and they teach me

my first song. I walked the line Johnny Cash, so I learned. I walked the line. I go, this is kind of like that's alright, mom. I just could have played fastest saying, oh, it's the same three chords over Well, this is just like hound dogs, the same three chords. My cousins come back after a week of being away fishing and they come to get their guitar back, and I could play every song on the radio better than them, going what happened? And I could play the leads. How

can you play the lead? Well, I played lead on violin. I just found the notes on the guitar and they go while you're incredible. So that was the beginning for me. Okay, then how did you get a guitar? Sears catalog. I couldn't afford to go into music, so everything was three and four dollars. Look at hearst harmony guitar, you want electric, it's an extra ten bucks. It's forty nine dollars. You buy the guitar, You start to play which guitar? Did

you buy the acoustical? The election? I bought the acoustic, which I found it was a mistake. Nobody could hear it. I went to a drummer who was the drummer of the guests who to this stake, Gary Peterson. I was fourteen, he was twelve. I said, you want to be in a band. He says, you know from school, Yes, from school. And he also played with all the big bands when they came to Winnipeg, when the Dorsey Band came, or Lionel Hampton. He started playing drums when he was before

you go into a drum solo with Jean Krupa. There's all kind of pictures on me. He was he was four and five and eight when he's doing it. I met him when he was twelve, and he play a hockey bank who go to hockey banquet And here's a solo from Gary Peterson. Okay for those people who don't even know what is a hockey banquet, Well, you're on hockey teams, you're playing at the end of the year. There's a little dinner for the kids to encourage him. And the best goalie is Canute. The best bad player

is Randy Backman, who does do anything. He's afraid to hurt his fingers that can. The best goalie is Gary Peterson. He's a stock little guy who plays drums and he's got the arms and he can dive around and he can be the goalie. So it's the little thing. And older hockey players come there from the Winnipeg Jets or whatever they were called in and they kind of hype the kids up on being in the sport. But they

would also have music. They have music, and this kid would play a drum solo, like like Jane Cooper drum solo. You know, liked rich When you were still even playing the violin, you were aware of them, yes, And then I switched to guitar and said, you want to be in a band, and he said, to do what I said. We'll play the high school dance. Come to the dance while they plays records. I know, I walked the line. I know Bye Bye Love, I know all these songs.

We'll just get a mike and sing. It doesn't matter if you can sing or not. It rock and roll, who cares, you know, And you just play drums. And he said, and how much will we get paid? And said, well, we don't get paid. And he said, well, I play in a polka band. I go and play weddings and bar mitzvahs and all this stuff, and I get twenty five bucks a night. And I go, you're kidding. My dad was making thirty bucks a week as an optician.

You get twenty bucks night, So why don't you come with me learn a few things on violin, I said, I don't want to play violin, Okay, learn them on guitar. So I learned rebel rouser, which is basically a polka. You can polk at the rebel rouser to Dwaine anything. And I learned guitar boogie and a couple other things. And I learned sleepwalk. And I go and to play these weddings and I come home with like fifty bucks. I'm making more than my dad. I'm fifteen, I'm sixteen.

And then he says now. Then Gary Peterson says, now we could play the high school that asked for nothing, because we've got money in the bank from playing the wedding. So one weekend we'll go to the countryside and Winnipeg and play a wedding on a farm where they put you up for night and news you played Friday, Saturday and Sunday. There was a bride's party, a groom's freak out party, and then the wedding on Sunday whatever. So

we started to play rock and roll. I got asked to play rhythm guitar in a band in a little bit slower So the first two. It's just the two of you, two of us and one other guy who knew rhythm guitar okay. He would sing the songs okay, and you were playing on your acoustic guitar, my electric guitar. I didn't have an app, but this guy had an app. Okay. How did you switch? You said you ordered the Who's the Guitar? From Sears? How did you get an electric guitar?

Same thing Sears, my electric snow gut. I sold it the kid in my classroom. I brought it for thirty four I sold it for twenty nine bucks. I put that towards the electric. I got the electric, which I still have to this day, which is the same kind that Jimmy Page played, a little thin black down electro or silver tone guitars that was called from the catalog beautiful Sound. I still got it today. And then that's

like sixty years later, seventy years years later. So in any event, you have this friend who's got an app. He's gonna play rhythm guitar, and you can plug your guitar in there, right, and then what are your first gigs? Weddings? Then I got a call. We hear you can play guitar. Well, here, you're really good. We have it. We have a band called Ellen and the Silver Tones, who then became Chad Allen and the Reflections, and we want you audition for

rhythm guitar. Here's an album. Here's an EP to learn four songs, and that's the the way. Obviously, taking violin lessons, you could read music. No, no, no, that was That's one another reason I quit. I would go to this teacher. She would open this thing which I called chopping. It was chopin. I want to play chopping again. I really like that song. My mother loves that song. It's not chopping, its chopin. So my teacher was beautiful, a lady T shirt.

She was great. She'd put my music in front of me. She'd put in front of her and she would play it. And when she played it, I could play it. She said, now you try to play it. I would played exactly like her. You should go, well, that's amazing. Practice it for a week. And say, why would I practice it for a week. I already know how to play it. Okay, here's two more, and she'd play them. I'd go and practice them for a week, and I would look at the notes, and I'd see that they would go up

and down. It's kind of a clue, like you're going like louder or softer, like talking like visual clues. And she said, I think you're good enough. I want you to audition for the Winnipeg Junior School Symphony. It's eighty four kids. It's at the school called Calvin I, which is where Neil Young went to school. So go there Saturday morning. You're gonna audition for second violin. There's the soloist and then you're you're gonna be playing harmony to

the souls. There's four violins too, viola's a couple of cellows and at a bass. I go there to the audition. I'm thrilled. We start to play a song which she has played for me, so I know the song. When it gets to a certain part of the song, I play the wrong note. I'm playing blues on a violin.

We're playing Chakovski or something that that that that kind of thing right, And suddenly there's tap tap, tap tap tap, and the whole symphony stops and the conductor says, second violin, bar thirty two, it's an e natural, not in E flat. Let's take it from the top. I have no idea what this guy's talking about. He's talking Russian or Martian to me. I have no idea what he's saying. I don't even know what bar thirty two is. I'm playing by here, heart and Soul and by ear. We played

again off the top. I make the same mistake. He stops. He says, second violin, could you please play me an E on the violin. It's an open string. I play it. I'll play it up high. I played up high, and I could plain E flat. I didn't know what he was talking about, because so now there's seventy nine kids bullying, laughing at me. In tears. I pack up my violin. I go home. My mother goes, how did it go? I said, I quit. I've never playing again. The next night is when I saw Elvis on TV and said,

oh m G, what is that? That's what I wondered. That's insane, that's well. I don't want to worry about any or E flat. I just want to play with like I feel and have people go nuts. I want to go crazy when I play the music. I don't wanna have to stand in and do this Royal Conservatory kind of thing that was it never okay, So then you hear about chat Allen. They want you to play rhythm, Send the the send the EP learned those songs. VP is is the Shadows Cliff Richards backup band like the

Ventures instrumental band. So I'm learning the chords, but of course in my head, I'm hearing the lead guitar. I go to the rehearsal, the lead guitar player breaks a string. I finished playing the song. The whole band is looking at me, going, you play better lead than our league tar. Do you want to be lead guitar? I said, yeah, that's why I came. I play lead man. You know, I knew all the rhythms, um, So then I became the lead. We got the record shake un all over

a little bit slower. So chat Allen had reflections that he made any records before you got involved. No, okay, so how do you get that record deal? If you even know? We had a DJ in those days, everybody was a Dick Clark. So our local TV guy had a local TV show called Team Dance Party. He then say, we're playing at so and so Community Center tonight. I'm bringing chat Allen. The reflections we were named like Cliff Richard and the Shadows, chat Ellen and the Reflections, and

so we go and play this. I got asked was his real name chat Allen. His real name was Allen cow Bell KO w b L. So he changed it to chat Ellen to be like Chad and Jeremy. We want to be British. We're in Winnipeg. We want to we want to be the British invasion of Winnipeg. There comes chat Ellen and we become the Reflections to be like the Shadows. Then we got a cease and assist noticed from a lawyer who represents the Reflections, who had

a hit called just like Romeo and Juliet. Can't use the name me too, But we go, well we can't use the name. We send in Shake all Over, which we recorded by Johnny KIDNAPO little bit slower, so we got the DJ. How do you get a record deal? We just sent it blindly to Quality Records and try. Every record we got in Winnipeg was on Quality Records.

They were a big company Toronto who leased records from chess um Our c A everybody, so they were Canadian ly when they at least the national pure every record I got was on quality records or real records. So every chess thing I got a Muddy Waters and bow Didley, Chuck Berry. They were all in quality. So we look up the address as eleven eighty birch Mount Road, Scarborough, Ontario. You send in your tape. We get okay, well how and where did you make the tape? The same guy,

the team Dance Party Guy's name is Bob Burns. He becomes our manager. They have a recording studio just like this with one microphone in. We get a record from a cousin in England called shakun Over with Johnny Kidding and the Pirates. We played It's fantastic. We played the dances. Kids loved this. Guitar riff and bass riff. We recorded one night. We sent it to quality records. We get a telegram act this is before we could even afford long this, and get a telegram back saying this is

a smash we want to release it. We need to b side and what's the name of the band? We say, we don't have a name. We've got to cease and desist that we want to put this out. This is the beginning of the British invasion. Sixty four. This sounds very British and it sounded like Joe Meek the Tornadoes, you know, Tellstar with all the echo on it and everything. And so we're just gonna do fifty copies with a white label, put Shakole over and put guests who undered.

They sent it out to fifty stations. Nobody knew we were guys from Winnipeg. They thought it was British. They played it was number one in Canada. Then they find out it's the punks from Winnipeg. It's Chad Ellen. Reflections that got least by Florence Greenberg Acceptor Records in New York was taped twenty in Billboard and we're still in high school. We had no idea what was happening. It was amazing. I have to ask, did you make any money from it? We got asked to go to New York.

The answer is yes and no. We made some money, but it was called pacification money. What kind of money pacified you? Past? Complete? Well, OK, we gotta go. We get a silver record for half a million record sales and no royalties, and um, so I'm in there on state of Florence Greenberg, who you know, owned scepter and

she wrote Soldier Boys. She managed to sell. She managed John Warwick, her and Paul cant with like a whole thing there, and we got asked to do the Kingsman Louis Louis to The Kingsmen were on her label as well. So we're doing the Kingsman Louis Louis. But you're still in high school. I quit. How old were you when you quit? Nineteen twenty. I flung a couple of years because of guitar. When I discovered guitar, was like, this is it. I don't care about school. Okay, what do

your parents say about that? You'll never make it? Get a backup. My backup plan might plan B was stick to Plan A. Be a guitar player. Love that that way? Backup plan to stick the planet. Yes exactly, So I stuck to it no matter what people have said to me. What would you be if you weren't a successful musician? And I would say I would be a musician, not unsuccessful. But this is what I did since I was like five. I played music. I get joy out of it. It's

my whole life. I know when I hear something, I remember I have a phonographic memory. So I'm trying to learn guitar player Chuck Berry record Elvis or Chad Atkins. I played through once or twice. It's in my head. I figure out the notes. I can play it. I don't need the notes, I just figure out where it is on guitar. So I was very blessed that way,

to have a phonographic memory. Okay, So then you're on tour with the Kingsman, Phenomenal Deianna, the Belmont The Kingsman, Barbara Lewis, Sam the Sham and the Pharaoh's unbelievable whole summer Rock and Roll tour East Coast, New York, Philadelphia, all the beaches, all the beach So you went by bus, yeah, and the big bus. Well, I have to ask, because certainly by the end of the decade there were legendary escapades on the road. So on your first tour, were

those escapades there too? They were there, but we were very innocent kids from Winnipeg. I remember I loved being in the back of the bus with Diana the Belmonts because they were like do whopping in the back of the bus. It was just like amazing. The original Belmonts and we grew up on that and so it was pretty amazing. And then we play a club, I think Albany, New York, and they said, you want to come in

a club. And I don't drink or smoke or nothing, so like, I'll go in and have a look at a club, but like, I'm under twenty one or whatever. So we get into this club and there's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful women there and these guys all get a chick and I just go back on the bus and wait, and then they come in and they're really upset because the chicks they've got our men. It's a tranny bar.

And the first time I see a gorgeous woman, I'm going, wow, this is this looks like Marilyn Monroe or Jane Mansfield. And I found it it's a guy, you know what

I mean. Like, and so Doon the Belot's guys are there freaking out, like we got this chick, we got our hand up her her dress and guess what a surprise party, you know that kind of thing, like he didn't participate, no, And then I also saw these guys taking a cigarette with little tweets and pulling out some of the tobacco and putting in something else, some white powder or something, and then putting in the tobacco and doing a whole package of cigarette then just smoking it

all that. I didn't know what this was. We're like innocent kids from Winnipeg, you know what I mean. And uh, that went all the time. And then we get to New York after that tour. Because we were such a good high school band, we played what was on the radio. To play these high school dances, you wouldn't played what was on the radio. So you played Ray, Charles and and Elvis and the Beach Boys and the Beatles. You played everything, the Charel's and everything. So Florence Greenberg managed

and wrote for the Charell's. She also had a connection to the Crystals and the run Nets. So us white guys got to back the Street and four black chicks all over New York City, which was fine in New York. When you go to Chicago summer and race riots would started. Our dance co ops would come in with guns and tear gas and there would be blood baths and it was absolutely horrific. And six sixty six, the segregation. We'd pull into a gas station down south, they come up

with the shotgun and shoot in the air. You can't come in here, you guys with those the black girls go to the back door. You guys come in the front door. And we hadn't We didn't know this. And Winnipeg. When you're in Winnipeg growing up and it's pretty much all white and a black moose to town, you idolize them. They are Diana Ross, they are Ray Charles, They're Jackie Robinson.

There Joe Lewis the brown Bomber. We thought black people were like something really super duper special because we only saw the famous ones on TV and are in our hockey trading cards, are our basketball card, baseball cards, and so it's like it was a real shock to us. So that whole tour is a big eye opener for us. We'll take a quick break and come back with more of my conversation with Brandy Backman, recorded live at the

tune In Studios in Venice, California. I love having musicians in the studio like Paul Rodgers of Bad Company and Nancy Wilson of Hart. This week on the podcast, we have Randy Backman the stories galore about his humble beginnings playing the violin in Winnipeg to playing arenas around the world with the guests Who and Backman, Turner over Dry.

Whether you come for the music or conversations about the tech business, be the first to hear next week's episode by subscribing to the podcast I'm tune in, Apple Podcast or your podcast player of choice. While you're there, please be sure to rate and review. Okay, let's get back to my conversation with Randy Backman. Okay, let's go back to Winnipeg. So what happens You said, what happened when you saw Elvis? What happened when you saw beat the Beatles?

Similar kind of thing change, a world changing event. Um, Suddenly every guy in every band could sing. The drummer and the guests who, Gary Peterson sang Ringo songs. I got to sing George Harrison songs. The other guy, Burton Cummings or the other good chat Ellen before he left, and then we got Burton Coummings from Chat Allen left, Uh would sing the Paul and John songs. So all my life I've been singing George Harrison songs. Hence my new album by George. Okay, we'll save that for Walls

we're getting the history. Now. You talk about Winnipeg being a little Liverpool. Did you know Neil Young, Did you know Joni Mitchell? And how did you come to know that? Well, when you're playing at Community Center and you have a big gretch guitar like I had, and an echo machine and an AMP, everybody came to see you to look at your guitar, and your amp didn't care about you.

That was a big deal. At least. I grew fifty miles to New York City and used to go in your high school years go to Manny's just to look at the start. I mean, you go to the show. It's just amazing. We were fascinated, right, So every Saturday I'd get on the bus, I'd go down town to Winnipeg. There was a two blocks stretch there where there was an Eatons which is kind of like a Sears, and Hudson's Bay, which is like another Sears. Two blocks in between.

We're all music stores and clothing stores. We would go to one, get chips in gravy. That's all we can't afford. Meet Neil Young, meet Burton Cummings, walked down the street, stand at the window and stare at the Fender guitar that Buddy Holly played on Ed Sullivan last week. They wouldn't let us play if they knew we didn't have any money. Who we could even go and try. We just look at the guitar and dream, look at it sideways, look at it this way, look at it that way.

Look at the orange gretch that Eddie played on Bandstand and Chad Acts played in Eddie Cochran played, and just look and dream with the guitars. Finally you can afford a guitar. So so I got an orange gretch. Newly On would come to see me playing my orange gretch, and he bought an orange gretch. When he did a gig with the Squires, he had to call us and say, I don't have an amp. Are you guys playing next Friday? Can I brow the amp? Yeah, we'll bring it down.

We'll watch you play. We'd go watch Neil and the Squire's play all through Jim Kale's with a bass player in the guests who his concert amp, which was two channels and two inputs, so it had four infuts. So you plugged your microphone in the singers sang into one. You put the bass on the other the guitar and the other and you had a set of drums with no mics, and you would and played a high school dance one am on one amp. Well, how big a speaker was here? There's four tens and ender concert AMPKF.

You turned it just right to sound it pretty good. There was no stereo then, this was like the sixties. Everything was mono. When it was a record player, they had one speaker on the stage. So then did you? Was Neil Young singing? Then he sang a song called I Wonder which was horrific, And I sig song called Stop Teasing Me, which was horrific. But his forte was guitar playing, and he copied Hank Marvin's from the Shadows.

He had a song called Sultan and Aurora. I wrote a song called Maiden Lingoland, the same gratch, guitar, the same echo. We were like parallel twins. They're doing each the same kind of thing. But he was on one side of town. I was on the other side of town. And then what about Joni Mitchell. She came to Winnipeg quite a few times. When Chad Allen, after we finished the Kingsman tour, went back to Winnipeg. We weren't the

top band anymore. We have been gone two months. There's all kind of high school dances, all the lakes around Winnipeg and resorts. The next bands up. We're tied for number one spot. Burton Cummings and the Devrons, Neil Young and the Squires. Okay, what do we do? We're dethroned. Chad Allen says, nobody knows who I am. I'm not Chad Allen and wore everybody called me guess who. I'm sick of the name. I'm going back to college. He goes back to University of Manitoba. And where's he today?

In an old folks home? Wow? Yeah, uh? He goes back. Could we eliminate the competition? I know how? I call Burton c Commings his mother who went to school with my dad. Hello, Rhoda and Burton come to our meeting. Shirt I asked him to join the Bandy breaks up to den runs. He joins the guests. Who we go to We go to Regina to play a gig. Johnny Mitchell's playing the new Prairie Princess, the new Gordon Lightfoot, the new Leonard Cohen, the new Bob Dylan, female blonde hair,

big blue eyes, great guitar, great voice. To go to see her at that gig, and Regina meet Jonnie Mitchell there. Okay, anybody else I'm missing who made it from Winnipeg. Well since then there's been a lot of Laurie mckinnets come through there. Tom cochrane came from clear Lake through Winnipeg. Just like you say they come through London, they really don't. They come from Birmingham or or Brighton or something or

in Tranti say they come to Toronto. But Timmins, can you come to a little town to the big twe I think it was the end of the train, Like I said, when your parents are Grant came was immigrants and they had forty bucks. This will get you to Winnipeg. And by the way, if you're in Winnipeg, if you're Ukrainian or Jewish, go to that end of town. We don't like you guys. You're dirt. All the British people you go here. This is the uppity party town with all the nice trees. You guys are way out there.

So we all we we went out there. But I said, we grew up eating dirt. And parogies and things like that and borshed and all that stuff, and we were happy. Okay, So what music is? What kept it all together? The house parties? Like I said, the barn miss was the weddings, all this stuff. What the kids? Twelve? And this is

his birthday party and he gets thousands of dollars. I want to be Jewish, you know that kind of thing, like wow, okay, by getting a yo yo in a Superman comic and this kid's getting a thousand bucks to start a business when he's nineteen, you know what I mean. So you convinced Burton to be part of your band, and you've decided to continue under the Moniker guests, and so then what happens? Um we do a song called His Girl, We get a call from England. We like

this record a lot. It's getting played in Canada. We want to sweeten it. What does that mean? We recorded in three tracks in Minneapolis. It means we'll put it on three tracks on a four track. We want to add a fourth track of a foogle horn and strings. What we're rough? And well? The Beatles are doing us, so are the Fortunes. Remember you got your troubles. I got mine and had the bird background, Google hornet and stuff like that. Well, okay, we'll do anything for a hit.

Thinking about a little bit slower. You had that deal with the label in Toronto. So now when you're recording in Minnesota, who's paying and what label is it? We're still paying? We have no idea about royalties. O. We went to Florence, agreement said we've had a hit. Was shaken all over. They said, here's four dred bucks a hundred bucks each. That was it. Okay, but who when you made this second record was getting played in Canada? Who released it? Same label? Quality record? But they sent

it to guys just said we're gonna call you. Guess who. They sent it to England, Philip Solomon, who owns part of Pirate Radio. He owns King Wreck. It's we also know he's part of a what can I say, a family syndicate kind of thing. And so we go to England without a contract and we're so excited. We get on a plane. I don't even sign a contract. We're gonna be the new Beatles were from Winnipeg. Blah blah blah.

Well he sends a check, so you can go no, no, So you're going on your own money, going our own money. We buy new clothes, suits to look like the Beatles. Remember they had the beat of follow the suits and all this stuff. We buy new gear. We're forty granted the Holy Fly to England. Our first day there, we go to meet Philip Solomon at King Records. We find out he's part of the Pirate Radio station. I'm pirate radio. Was very blatant. We don't need to play your record,

but we'll sell you commercial time. Our commercial time is a pound a second. You one hundred seconds played of your record. That's why records they were all two minutes long, seconds played. Give us a hundred twenty pounds, will play your record between four and six. They played it like a commercial. They're playing it off shore and everybody England

listening to it because BBC is not playing nothing. They're fifty home grown talent and it's all Frankie Vaughan and all this weird stuff, and you know, Cliff Richard getting played and all that stuff. Britain has a whereas Canada has Ken Conner Britt calls you want to call it, Germany has Germ con So it helps the local talents. So we paid money through Philip Solomon and we owed him money. Then we go there said, okay, we want you guys to sign a contract. You get four hundred

pounds a week each? What eight? What do you mean each for the band? Four pounds? What? I'm gonna put you on tour in Australia. This I'm gonna send this record to Australia, abill. This is a long called his Girl and um so when do we get royalties? What don't you understand about four hundred pounds a week? What do you mean? How long is this contract? Three years? You get four hundred pounds a week for three years.

Where does all the other money go? It goes to pay the machine, the expenses to this that that really take or leave it? You don't have a contract. You're here in England, you're in the whole. We looked at each other. We've been through enough by then we just walked out. We didn't sign the contract. We had nothing. On the way out, we meet a guy named Jerry Dorsey who's also desperate. We're standing outside. We don't know what to do. We're in Soho and his outside of

his offices. Twenty minutes later, Jerry Dorsey comes out and we go what happened? He said, I took the deal? What certainly for three years they're changing my name to Angelbert Humperdink. Okay, we're in England. We're in the whole forty grand We've got rooms at the Regent Palace Hotel and Piccadilly. I say to the band, Okay, I've got a few bucks saved in my own money. How much money have you got? We just don't want to go home with our tails. But when we left Winnipeg, you

can see this in a video. Guess who are leaving for England. The whole cities are waving. It's like the Beatles landing in Winnipeg. They're waving good bye to us. You're gonna make it in England, the guests who are gonna be big the whole city. See the radio stations there, the TV and everything. We can't go back a week later, going we got shafted, we got screwed, blah blah blah. So we call up Tony Hiller, who runs meals music

that published shaken all over Hi. We're the guests who and he goes, oh, we know you guys are the a lot of ny Kid. Families very happy over you guys, because then after that that who did the song and everybody redid that song over and over again, and you were the first guys to do it after Johnny kidding the Pirates. What do you do in England? Well, we just met Philip Solomon and we've got shaft he said, Oh, I know Philip used to work for him. I know

you got shafted. Why don't you come in and be I've heard your stof Why don't you be a demo band? I've got to cut some songs by two of my songwriters. You cut these two songs. I won't pay you, but bring two of your own and you can record. They can go home and say you record in England, So go to Regent Sound. We don't have any to record. Neil Young has given me his demo from Buffalo Springfield. We record Flying on the Ground is wrong for Neil.

We're the first band ever recorded Neil Young song outside of him. Recorded a silly song I wrote called There's No Getting Way for You that never makes it anywhere. We record the song called this Time Long Ago. There's very much like the fortunes you got, your troubles I got mine, got the flugal horning in the strings and every thing, and we can go home with a master. We go home and send it to Quality Records and they go fabulous, great, they put it out. We have

a hit record in Canada. So we turned this defeat into a triumph. We've we've recorded Regent Sound where the Beatles just recorded. We got this song this time long ago. We've done a Neil Young song flying on the Ground as our follow up single. Quality Records doesn't know what to do with it. Our contract expires. We're a free band. We're forty grand in the whole. We come back. We're

gonna break up. Their Canada needs their money. Low's Music Store needs their money because we've gotten stuff on credit. We have no money. I get a call from a friend saying, Hey, I'm the producer of a television show called Let's Go, and all you gotta do is play the Top threty music is a half an hour Long's gonna play the Top fifty and Billboard the Top one. We'll pick the songs each week. Can you read music? And of course I say yes, even though we can't.

And I say, who's writing the charts? He goes, Bob mcmallan. And I knew Bob mcmall and he was like Winnipeg's George and Martin. He helped all the bands, but he wrote little charts for string string quartets and everything. So I get his phone number and I call him, say, Bob, have you written the charts? This is like on Thursday night. We got to go on Friday and play five or six songs for Larry Brown? Have you done the charts? And he doesn't know. He's not supposed to tell me.

We're supposed to show up cold and play the charts. He says, well, I've got this one done and that one done, and I got last train to Clarksville down. I got this downe I'm going okay, I'm writing them down. I run out and buy the six records Burton, and I learned them write out the courts. We practice Sturday and Sunday we go in. They put the music in front of us. We played the songs. Larry Brown comes and goes, wow, not only can you read play these songs,

you sound like the records. And he goes to me, you can't really read a damn thing. You're right, he said, But you got the job. So that paid us eighteen hundred bucks a week as a band. And then we come back and we're now the Kings of Winnipeg again. We get all the high school dances. So besides getting eighteen hundred bucks, can you getting two and fifty night for high school dance? We're still making two or three or four hundred on the weekend. We pay off our debt.

We get out a hole. We get a call from Jack Richardson, who's producing things Go Bad Or with Coca called these co commercials, the Ray Charles and other people singing. He's in Toronto working for McCann, Erickson and ad Agency, but he's the music producer. He calls it and and he says, will you guys do a thing for Coca Cola? And go yeah, we want to do a coke commercial. He says, no, No, I want you to do a whole album. I want you to do one side of

an album. And I want the other band called the Stacados who later became the five Man electrical band who wrote signs of those great hits. They're Canadian, yes, they're from Ottawa. So we want to do an album that you can only buy with ten coke caps from Coca Cola and a dollar, so it will be ten cod caps. We'll call it a wild pair. So you're half the pair. The other half of the pairs the Staccatos. You and Burton write five or six songs, and I'm gonna get

less Simerson in that band to write five or six songs. Well, they put it out. It sells eighty thou copies. He goes, this is like a gold album. We couldn't get a gold album because it wasn't sold through record stores or Canadian Record Association or anything, but we had to hit record. Then Jack interest and calls us up and goes, your stuff is pretty good. I watch you every Thursday on Let's Go on CBC. We're just kind of like the BBC.

There's We had the show for two full years where our producer comes to us and goes, it's getting a little redundant. The charts then were very slow. Now you're on the charts. It's gone in two weeks. They're your song with the last two or three or four months and we're playing the same songs over and he said, why don't you write your own? But they've got to be good enough. To fit in between Vanilla Fudge doing You Got Me Hanging On and Heye Jude and the

Supremes doing you know, Stopping the Name of Love. It's got to be good enough to fit on. I won't put it in the show. So comings and our start writing. Jack Richardson, here's a song, These Eyes, and he goes, wow, I'm going to mortgage my house and I don't want you guys to come to Toronto and record this album. So keep sending me all your demos, and we got the demos are recorded on TV. We're just pulling on TV,

sending him real toy reels. He compiles an album. We go to Toronto record and he says, I've got a guy with ears to mix your album. I said, we all have ears. What are you talking about? It said, this guy has ears. Man, you don't know what I mean by years. Well, who's this guy. Well he's twentiesy genius. His name is Phil Ramon. So we said, okay, we've never heard of this guy. He mixes the album. It's great. We go to his studio A and our studios in

New York. We record These Eyes. That thing you're here with Phil Ramon doing that that song still sounds great in the radio. Phormon is amazing. And I met him earlier when I was at with Florence Greenberg, because he did all John Warwick songs with Bert back Iraq. Once the demos are to inccepted, he took him over to him. He transferred them over and Bert's they're leading the orchestra and doing all that stuff with John Warwick. So I

knew Phil and he was really a great guy. That we had to hit these eyes and then a little bit how'd you write it? Um? At the Joni Mitchell concert in Regina, do you know these stories? Because you're asking me the right questions. At the Joni Mitchell's story the Joni Mitchell gig at their four Dan Regina, it's

sold out. Everybody's coming to see this Prairie princess because she's headed to l A. She's signed to Asylum Records or something, and she's under the wing of Elliott Robertson, David Geffen and Neil Young Brodby Stills the National Little Thing. The place is sold out and I'm there with the band. Burton Commings is there. There's an empty table with reserved on it and in walks. These two gorgeous chicks are blonde and brunette, and everybody goes, wow, they're clearly not

from Regina. They got t shirts on at the University of Arizona, University of Utah, and they look American and they're wearing shorts and they're beautiful ones, blonde, ones, brunette. I'm a very shy guy. My dad had five brothers. I have three brothers. I didn't even know how to talk to a girl. So I say to our road manager, Jim Martin, who we called Jumbo. He's a big Guy's also our balancer, but he drove our truck and lifted our gear. Jumbo, can you go over to that table

see those two chicks. See if you can sit at the table, talk to the blonde and not the brunette, and if you get lucky, call me over to the table and introduced me to the two of them, and then get away from the table. He calls me over. Joni's up there singing. She's just got married to Chuck Mitch. Or my name is Jonny Anderson. He's got married Jonie and Chuck Mitchell. Sheefter singing these great songs. I said at the table. Jim Martin leaves the table and I

say are you together? And said, yeah, we're sisters. What can I take you home? Yeah? Our dad dropped this off and you could take us home. So I got enough guts driving them home to night to say to the burnette, I have tomorrow night off? Can I do you want to go to the movies? I have a night off? Sure? Okay, what do you do? I play in the band. I go to pick her up. I'm early, it's my first date. She's late. I get ushered into a room. It's like this. There's a piano, a plant,

a little piano, and a couch. I've had no train and there's the piano. I've had no training on the piano. But when I got to be seven or eight, playing violin was a drag. My parents brought my next brother the ultimate polka instrument that Lawrence Welk accordion. So my brother's playing accordion and he hated it because we're a little in your five and they put an accordion on you. You look down, you can't see it. See there's keys there, and there's oompap buttons here, and you got to move

his left hand to Pump. He hated it. I used to get him to lay down, put the according side with Neil Pump and he'd pull it this way. I'd sit in front of him and I learned to play in the key of C. So, with nothing to do in this room, there's no TV, there's no radio, I go over to the piano and go boom boom boom boom that KFC boom boom boom boom, and I sing these arms are waiting to hold you. She comes down. We go on the date I showed it. The Britany goes, well,

we can't start it with these arms. I'll start with these ice car every night and make these arms long to hold you again as the second line, and we write the song in fifteen minutes. And I've got all these jazz cards I've learned from this jazz guitar player. When you get into these eyes, there's a lot, a lot, a lot of chords in there, with weird bass notes that are jazz based notes and stuff that I never ever thought of would be in a pop song. Because

pop song there was like three songs. It was Louie Louis and hang On Sloopy kind of thing. These eyes has a lot of incredible jazz cards and modulations where it changes. And we wrote that in fifteen or twenty minutes. And when Phil Ramon heard that they did the strings that came out. It was like a million selling record and we got our gold record from the g soon was on our c A. Yes, how'd you end up

on our CIA? What? Jack Richardson started his own little label in Toronto called Nimbus nine, named after the Clouds, and we had a hit in Canada and then he sent it around, just like quality that sending it to England, he sent it to the States and Don Berkheimer Rocco like an extra New York heard and said, while this is number two in Canada and in Detroit, Rosalie is

playing in Detroit. She was a legend. And who would play in Detroit and I mean Windsor and they'd hear it in Detroit, then Cleveland that he would get played in the whole Ohio area, and then Pittsburgh, I mean you know, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and then played in New York and so let's sign this band. So we went down there and we signed with our CIA And what about

a manager? Um? I pretty much managed the band at the time, being the oldest guy, the oldest brother and looking after the band um before I quit to go on the Kingsman Louis to Louis Louis Tour. I didn't want to get a job my dad. And I'm playing in a band and making a h fifty bucks a week. My dad's still making sixty fifty week optometrist. And he'd say, Son, I got you a real job. Oh really, Dad, what

is it. You're gonna sell shoes at bad at shoes Okay, show up at four thirty and you gotta work till nine. I said, I have a gig at nine, So I'd go there and work because my dad sat up with his friend, which is next door to his optometrist shop where he's selling eyeglasses. And uh, I'd go there and work till my break, which was seven fift And when I got my break, I would take it and it would not go back. I'd go to the gig. How long did that last? One night at best? Exactly two

weeks later, Son, I got you another gig. I know you didn't like the selling shoes one. And the reason I didn't like selling shoes one it was like it was boring. It was like three dollars an hour. When you're a new kid, they give you all the worst people. So I would get this bomba that would be two pound woman from the farm with Bunyan's on her feet, and all of a sudden, I'd have to measure her feet and put her on. I ASTOK, give you a

great looking chick. And when you're seventeen or eighteen and a good looking chick sits in front of with a short dress and you gotta measure her defeat and legs, you get a a thing happening in the crotch right and you gotta stand up right. And so I had enough for that job. And so the next next one is at Simpsons Sears men's wear suits. So they trying to teach me to upsell, and I hate doing that. I hate that to this day. When the guy comes in for a tie, tell him it looks good and

then show him a suit. Sell the guy a suit, then sell him a pair of shoes and her shirt. I hate doing that. Um So that lasted until the break and then we gotta shake over becomes a hit. I quit school, Okay, I go back at your later payoff my parents house, buy my dad a car. He says, you don't. You don't need a backup plan. I said, my backup planets. Stick to Plan A, Plan B, stick to Plan A. That's what I'm doing. You're listening to my conversation with Mandy Backman, recorded live at the tune

In Studios in Venice, California. I hope you're enjoying this episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want to see Randy and me in the studio, we post videos, photos, and sound bites from our guests as they joined me here. Visit apt tune in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now more of my chat with Randy Bachman on The Bob Left Sets Podcast. Okay, so now Phil Ramon mixes the record. You have a hit in Canada ends up being a huge hit in America. I remember these eyes. I was

taking geometry. They have imaginary numbers, we say, these eyes, but in any of them. Uh so, what happens? It's weird. We signed with our c A Records. They say to us, you can't use A in our studios anymore. Phil Ramon Studios, which is amazing. I mean, Simon Garfunkel did all this stuff that you're now with. Our CEO got to use r c A Studios And guess what studio we got for you, the one bing cross as we cut White Christmas just from Are you kidding? Yeah, but you're gonna

love it being cut their brother. We're going we can't get a drum sound. This is for the whole first album of the Guests, who was done at A in our studios with Phil Ramon. Every song sounds wonderful. It's it's not dated, everything's wet. The room had a great sound. He had a great reverb and all that kind of stuff. Great machines, great ears, you like, Jack said, this guy's

got ears. We start to cut the canned Weet, our second album, and the reason we was Wheat was from Wheat, sweet country and candical like prairies worthy girl the Wheat and so our song our album is called Candyheat. The album sounds terrible and we say to Jack, we can't even get a drum sound in here. It's dry, it's an an okaic chambers like. It's terrible, and he says, I have a plan because I know we're not going to get a hit record out of this studio. The

sound isn't right. Radio is gonna want to hear the same thing. So let's tell everybody at our c A. I've never told this story before. By the way, let's tell everybody. Say, you have a gig this weekend at something beach out in Long Island. I forget what it's called, Jones Beach. You gotta get get Jones which you're gonna pack up your gear Friday night at two o'clock, get in the car, drive to Jones Beach, will come back Sunday afternoon. Just start recording here Monday morning. He has

booked a in our studios. He has picked two songs from Canned Wheat that we're gonna do with throw Ramon. We go in there and set up fiel Ramon gets a song but a boom but a being, and Anari gets a song we called Laughing and she's come undone. They go on Canned Wheat. If you listen to cann Wheat today, the whole album sucks. It's very, very, very very dry, and these songs jump off the turn the off the vinyl. It's undone and laughing. They got this sound that was there. We also had a song on

there called No Time that was so terrible. We recorded again for the American Woman album with a with a better sound, and it was a hit for us. Okay, so then obviously Laughing is a hit and she's come undone. It's kind of a you know, underground classic in America. And then what happens with the third album, We well, we caused a strike at our. They found out the engineers played the album they're mastering at our c A

what are these two songs? This isn't our sound. They find out that we snuck into A and our studios. We have what's called the NABAT strike National Association or Broadcast Engineers Technicians. There's a strike. It's called the guests who strike. These guys won't work in the studio. So we have to settle the strike. We gotta go talk with union leaders and all this stuff. So we say to our say, we can't record here anymore. We need

to go at A and or. You can't go to A and R. It's got to be our c Okay, build us a studio. So they go to Chicago and they build us a studio. Because we're still living in Winnipeg. We're driving all the way to New York, is three thousand miles to record and then driving home on weekends. I mean, it's crazy. And so they build us a studio in Chicago to our spects and to Jack Richards

and Specs. We got a great engineer, they're called Brian Christiansen, and we record there and that's the sound of the American Woman album. Okay, so the album after ken Weed is an American American woman. Okay, how do you write American him in? We are still living in Winnipeg. We're crossing the border where gas is cheaper. We always go to the same gas station, which in the old days, the gas station was a glass tube with the leaders in it. You can see the gas going down. It

wasn't a digital kind of thing. And so would we sit there watching the gas go on, filling up our vehicle, and this farmer who would always fill up his tractor there and his thrashing machine, would say to us, where are you guys going now? And I say, we're going to Boston. We're playing a plotfest with Joan Bayaz and Richie Havens and next time where you going San Francisco to play with Frank Zapp and the Mothers? Where are you going? This time, we're going to Texas to play

a gig. And I said, but before we go down there, the guy at the border, I couldn't understand you talked like boss hog On because I had a big fat guy Boord, a guy with a real Southern drawl, Like I'm saying, hey, boy, before you go down to Texas, boy, you got to go in this building over there, boy, and make sure you're going too that building. Boy, I said, I didn't understand the guy. He said, We've got to go into some sort of service building. And I don't

know what he meant. And the guy filling the gas tanks did he did? He say selective service, and I said, maybe that's it. It's a white building with an American flag. He said that selective service. Do you know what that is? I said, I have no idea. Is it's the draft board. They drafted Vietnam War. They drafted my son a year ago. He's dead. My nephew turned eighteen last week. They got him. The next day. He's in fred Bragg to training him to go fight in his Vietnam and drawing. They're gonna

get you, guys. You're between twenty and thirty. You're healthy Canadians. You've got green cards. That means you can work in the state's pay tack in the states and be drafted and fight for the States. What do yourself a favor. Go into town here and pretend you're getting some chips and drinks for the road. You already got your gas. Keep driving. When you get to this highway, turn left, go up through Duluth, Go back to Minnesota and Louth, Minnesota.

Get into Canada, turning to green cards. Don't come back to the States of the wars over. Everybody's protesting the war. It might be over soon. Wow. I call Texas. We don't go to Texas. We want to go to Texas to see Buddy hally as if he's going to be there waiting for us, right, or Roy Orbison or somebody like that. We get to this place in Toronto, I call an agency. This is Valentine's Day. We're gonna play

Valentine's Day dance in Texas February. We get to Toronto early in the morning and I say, I call the agency and I say, do you have any gigs? This is Randy Backman from the Guests who and we're we need some gigs. In Torontesse. Guys. So, yeah, when do you need gigs? I said, tonight? What we're in town? We we we're draft dodging from the States. Really these West Valentine's Everything's book. But we just had a consulate cancelation. One guy's got laryng right, it's the middle of the

winter in Canada and he can't sing to you. Go can you go play a curling rink tonight in Kitchen or Waterloo? And I say, how much does it paints? Is four bucks? And that's what we're gonna get in Texas anyways, So I say, okay, we go and play this curling rink. You know what curling is the worst? Everybody knows. That was Resolve of the Olympics. Yes, they put plywood on the ice. It's freezing in there. It's

like it's minus ten um. Plywood's on the everybody's there in Tucson Park because we're playing a three hour dance. We're playing beach Boys and Beatles and all that stuff. And I break a string. I didn't have a tech, a tuner, a spare guitar, a roadie. I had nothing. You broke a string, Burton coming, says Randy broke a string. We're gonna take a break, talks among yourself. There's pot free pop run over there, DJ playing records. Randy's changing

a string. So I'm changing my string on the guitar less Paul, and I'm tuning it up, tuning it up. As I'm tuning it up, I'm going down. Don't then don't don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do that. The whole audience stops talking and I go, wow, I gotta remember this riff, and I keep playing. I'm on stage. I'm on my knees in front of Burton's piano, tuning to the piano. Didn't even have a tuner. You tune to a piano when you had a piano player in

those days. So I see Gary Peters in her drummer. I get on stage. He starts playing the riff. I see Jim Kale. Burton finally comes on the stage and goes, what is this? I said, I'm making it up, but just sing anything. And there's something about when you don't write music, I can't are The way to remembers thing is to put something silly to it, like when Paul McCartney wrote, yesterday, he called scrambled eggs. The next day he had to find syllables that fitted scrambled eggs. Baby,

how I love your legs. If you ever saw him and Jimmy fallon, do it, it's hilarious skit. They also writes the second verse, which was never done. So he got scrambled eggs and said yesterday. So Britain is singing the first thing that comes to his mind, which is American Woman, stay away from me. It's a statue of liberty. It's that Uncle Sam and the stars and stripes. Uncle Sam wants you. That's when we were terrified. So he sings American Woman stay away from Me four times. I solo,

he sings it again. We go to play it the next night. We can't remember it. I started out tuning my guitar again until I fall into dunt dhunt and we do it again. Then somebody records it. We played for Jack Richards and he goes crazy. This number one record. Do you realize when you say we don't want your war machines? It's an anti war song. Radio has been told not to play in the ant. They won't play Country Joe one two or three. What are we fighting for?

All the playing is Gary Sense, Sergeant Barry Sounded, Fighting Men, the Green Ray, all that kind of stuff. They're only playing war songs, not anti war song. And this is going to be number one. It gets to be a number one album and single, and then the DJs realize it's an anti war song. It's too late. They can't not play it. Okay, that's a monster ship. I remember listening to it to the first night. I got stoned. That leads upland too so. But then the band breaks up.

Well I leave why I had been with him at that point nine years the drug culture came in. I didn't smoke, drink or do drugs. I also had to think all the gallbladder problem that every night I'd have a gallbladder attack and I didn't know what it was. You're on a ninety day tour and you go to the hospital at night. They said, coming in the morning, we're gonna give you the stuff to drink and take an X ray. Well, I'm in Philadelphia to more, then

I'm in Pittsburgh, then I'm in Boston. Well, you you need to start stand still and go and see a doctor, because every night I have blood both ends in the bathroom. Incredible pain. We have gall black, just like somebody putting knife in you and just turning it and turning. And this last two or three hours. And my roady Jumbo, the same guy would take me to a hospital and they say, you've got to keep this guy in here,

or you gotta send them home. So I just called my doctor who birthed me into the world in Winnipeg and said, I'm coming home. I need some tests. The band had a week off. This is an amazing happenstance. The band had a week off. We're playing west Chester, Pennsylvania, playing in a church. In a church, the stage is like this high the low ceiling, so you can walk right up to the stage. We're playing on stage. This band. You can tell it's a band. The five guys come in.

They look as weird as us. They're not the normal guys in the suits and ties dancing with girls at the church, dance their whackle. Weird new musicians. So they're standing right in front of they're watching every note we're playing. When we're all done, this guy comes says, Hi, my name is Bob Sabellico. Um, this is my band, and we play all year stuff. All the guest is, we love your your music. It's great, but I can't figure

out she's come undone. All the jazz chords and some of the chords in these eyes, I can't figure them out. We show to me, I said sure, he said, come to our house later. My dad's a rich contractor. Our whole band practices in our base. We have a p A a hammered to be three. All the apps are there. Go to a party in his house. I teach them the songs that night to go home. Have a gallbladder attack.

They say, you got to go home. The band has a week off, five days off, and then they pick up again, and then we've got to go play the film or east closing of the film work which I want to play. I go into my doctors, so you have a gallbladder problem. Will schedule your your surgery for them. But all you can eat until then is skim milk, saltine, crackers, and jello without sugar, like gelatin. That'll fill you up. Don't need anything else because it's got fat or sugar.

Your goal better. So you've got a bunch of gall stones. So I go to the band and say, look, I gotta stay home. I gotta stay on this diet. But if I stay on this diet and I don't have any attacks, I want to come and play the film wre And the band says, well, we've got gigs. We've now gone from seven and fifty bucks a night to ten and twelve and fifteen thousand a night because of American woman hitting number one. We've now gone from opening

the show to catching. We're closing show like the Beatles when they were like opening for Roy Orbison or somebody else. Do you go to headlining the show? So I say to the band, out of my own pocket, I'll pay Bob sabella coo, because you know he knows all the songs he went to his party. I taught him undone in these Eyes. So rehearse with him for friendings, go to his base. When you stay here, I'm flying home to Winnipeg. Bob Sabellico plays with the guests who for

ten days he's famous. He plays for ten days, then he goes back to his band. They come back to Winnipeg. They got a couple of guys to take my place, Kurt Winters and Greg Glasgogo. I knew really well. I go black and play the film, or gig with them the film or researchers. My last gig with the guests who and I said goodbye. But on the airplane there, I'm so hungry. I take a drink that the stewardess gives me of apple juice. I get to the film, are going and play. We're doing two sets of the

film in between the sets of the film. Or I go in and I have a gallbladder attack in the bathroom, which is the most disgusting thing you'll ever see in your life, like the worst gas station of all time. This is at the film Wore. There's stuff all over the floor. I mean everything's all over the floor in there. So but when you have a gallbladder attack, it's like breaking your leg or something, or getting a burn or getting punched in the face. Your body suddenly kicks in

this adrenaline and everything feels wonderful for a while. So the second set of the film, Or I go out there, my gall blighter attacks over. I wiped, I'm cleaned up, and I'm on adrenaline, and I am rocking like Clapton in the Free World or Hendrix and everyone looking at me the band that we already had the meeting that this is my last gig. I'm out. I am playing my ass off. It's incredible, and it's the film More. It was just incredible. Okay. So do you have your

gallbladder removed? No? Okay, do you still have your gallbladder? Yes? What do they do? Well, I'll tell you the story. I finished the film More, I go home. The word is out that I'm leaving the guests who my house is getting egged and toilet papered. Okay, just to be clear, other than the gall bladder, what did your motivation for leaving the band? I had a son tell him, I had a baby daughter on the way. I've been on the road ninety days and we're facing another ninety day tour.

I married a very, very beautiful woman from Regina that I met at the Joni Mitchell concert and it was one of those two girls. Yeah, I'm married her. We had six kids or lists. Tell who had to hit she saw hid. He's now in my band playing with me every night. So are you still married to her? No? No, we got divorced and live happily ever after. Okay, but so you say and what do you plan to do now that you're out of the band. I just planned,

that's it. I all I got is get healthy. So a couple of months and we leave Winnipeg because my house is getting egged and toilet paper and everything, it's all everywhere. People are bringing their garbage on my lawn and lighting it on fire and it's stinking, and so we got to get out of town. My renette, her name was Lorraine. Her family has moved to Saskatoon, which is where Joni Mitchell's from. I get an offer from a band at Saskatoon to produce them. Why not, I'm

not doing anything. I've learned how to produce from Jack Richards in the phil Ramona kidding. These are the best guys in Canada and the States. So I'm go and start working with this band and were really strange thing happened to me. I had a gall bladder attack again. Unthinking LYE took a sip of orange crush that you get, you know, that's all that syrup, and it started up again. And UM, I don't know if you're into this or your readers are into it, but and I've never told

this story. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I got faith field. So these guys come in, their missionaries and my brother in law who's also a missionary. They anoint my head with oil. They put their hands on me and they say, you're you're healed, You're fine. This is the Friday night I've had the gold. I'm set to go in the next morning. I go on Saturday morning. The doctor says, blah blah blah. It's a long weekend. I said, look, I've had actually, i've got

sixteen gall stones. It's killing me. You gotta take the money. So I don't want to take him on less I can see your x race. So trying to call my doctor on a long weekend. It Saturday morning, there's nothing shaken until Tuesday morning, the Monday's holiday. Because I've called your doctor. They're gonna send your X rays. There was no fat accent, and they can send your extrays on air can on the airplane. I'll send somebody to get them with like a messenger service. Meanwhile, I'm gonna take

my own X rays. So I drink this barriam junk gets in, goes in me. I go and get my extras taken. He said, you don't have any goal stones. What do you mean you don't have any goals? Maybe you've passed them, maybe they're stuck somewhere else. So we're gonna give you more stuff to drink. It might be in your intestines or somewhere else. I stayed there for two days drinking the stuff. There's nothing in me. My

x rays come Tuesday morning. He looks at them, and he looks at the X rays taking He says, you're fine. You can leave the hospital. You don't have any goal stones. What happened, I said, I was given a blessing. I I guess I was faith field. I was in such a pain when these guys said it. I believed it in my brain. Are their brain or something or I did feel some incredible power when this was happening to me. I've seen it happen on TV. I did believe it.

I'm healthy. I go back home at eight o'clock every night, I'm downstairs playing guitar. I've done this for like fifteen years, playing guitar. My wife says to me, you gotta start another band. You're driving me cuckoo. I wake up three in the morning. You're not in bed you're downstairs with the headphones on playing guitar. So I started another band. Neil Young comes home plays says, I've broken up with Crosbie, Sales, Nash and Young. I'm on my own. Well, actually, I've

broken up the Sprinkle. They want me to join Crosbie, Szells and Nash. I'm trying to get my name at it, so I'll be Crosby, Seals Nash and Young plays me a couple of tracks. He helps me get a deal. I started country band like Poco, like Buffalo Sprinkle, called Brave Belt. Neil gets me a deal for PRIs. I go down there and do two albums with the PRIs. It doesn't sell. It's at the tail end of the country rocking, just before the Eagles burst out. I get Fred Turner in the band I know from the early

Winnipeg days. We changed Great Belt three becomes back when Turner Overdrive one. Okay, but Brave Belt is on Reprieve. Yes, why do you think it wasn't successful? Um? I didn't want to be a second rate guest who Burton comings is one of the greatest voices in rock and roll, like Elton John an operatic voice. Stree and a half four octaves. He can sing a ballad. You can sing Old Danny Boy and make you cry like true to his Irish roots. He could scream like Eric Burton, we

got to get out of this place. He could scream like Robert Plant. He's got a great voice. What could I do? I had a Neil Young voice. I sang Brian Wilson parts, I get around, I sang the high Thing. I wasn't a singer, and so rather than be a second rate guests who, I'd rather be a tenth rate guests who and not even compete in the pop market.

Do country music, get a pedal steel, be like Poco, Richie far Ray and Polka who left Buffalo Spring, Be like Neil and Steven Stills and Manassas and whatever they were doing. Do what you're wanted to sing harmony, play blazing rock and roll guitar. Nobody would work with me. I was blackballed after I left the guests who I had to produce myself, pay for my own sessions with my royalties that were coming very meager royalties from the eyes and laughing and undone and all this stuff, and

produced myself. Neil Young got me the deal came to Brave Belt three more. Auston and Don Schmissli called me and said, we can't keep you on the label anymore. It would be too much of a favorite. To Neil, We've already done you a favor. You're not meeting our bottom line. We're gonna go with America on Gordon Lightfoot, who we just signed a Canadian and you can't produce yourself like Gordon Lightfoot's taking Lenny warrenk Or if you

take Lenny, we'll keep on the label our templement. I said, no, I'm producing myself. Nobody knows what I'm doing. I don't even know what I'm doing. I'm just I'm floundering here. I'll find it. They said, we're sure you'll find it. I find it when I get Turner in the band, chat out and leaves again. He left the Guess Who and then he leaves the Brave Belt and he started with him is the only guy would play with me

in Winnipeg. He leaves the band. Fred Turner comes in. Suddenly, Fred Turner has got this Harley Davidson, John Forgerty voice. We started doing Creed this clear water. Everybody's up dancing our country music. Everybody's yawning, like when's the next rocket? When you're gonna play American Woman. I didn't want to play any guest who stuff. I wanted to start from scratch. So Fred turners in the band, and we get heavier and heavier and heavy and heavier. And there was a

revolution music at that time. We go to a club and the guy say, okay, coffee houses are over. People aren't sitting listening to lyrics anymore. They're up dancing to Proud Mary and and jumping Jack flashes off. You got to write stuff like that, so I started writing like The Who and the Stones and Creans clear Water. Fred has this big voice. I sing relief for Fred. Every once in a while, I sing like David Crosby Neil

Young song. You don't need a big, powerful voice, you just need kind of a cool voice that gives the other guy ar rescue or relief. Picture a relief hitter. And we've become back and turn over drive. Now you switch to mercury, right? Yes? How does that happen? When more Austen let me go? I had the album cut on my own dime. I had no money from her priest. I'm paying the band a salary out of my royalties, and I'm paying my own corn flakes and gas bill and my rent. And now I've got two kids and

a wife. We're getting near the end. I'm sending out real to real tapes. I have twenty six refusals, beautiful letterheads. Jack Holtzman Electric with the butterfly, Herb Belfort with the trumpet, the silver trumpet of A and M. We passed. We passed passes from everybody passes a pass from Mercury Records. In January. Before that, I had met Charlie Fatch, who was the guy who signed us, and he said, you've got to put your name on the record. Every mighty

trying to hide out be calling Brave Bell. Put your name in their radio. Guys are recognize your name and he might get a spin. They might play it because they recognize that you've written hit songs. So I'm trying to find put my name on there. We call ourselves back Main Turning. There's me and my brothers and Fred Turner. We're called back Fin Turner. For a while, people think we're like seals and crops, or Brewer and Shipley. A guitar and a mandolin singing one toke over the line.

We're blowing coffee mugs off the table. We're playing this powerful rock and roll, so um we cut the the I send bt O three again to Charlie Fatch and he calls me up and I hear side one cut one, give me your money please. It's a Saturday morning for you. You're working Saturday morning. Yeah, I'm listening to your record.

I just got back from met him and can and that whole thing, and um, my desk is cleared off at the end of January, and I look at all the new stuff and a guy named Bud Scopa, who you might not know, was his assistant clearing off my desk. And when you put everything in the trash can from last year because I'm coming back with a new budget, one tape Never Fail into the trash can and written on it was your name back when in red Sharpie. So I'm playing it now. Is the whole album like this?

He's playing side one cut one to go, Charlie. The whole album like that. It's in your face four and a half minute rock and roll. Listened to Fred Turner sing and he says, I'm flying Toto l A right now to play stuff for Erwin Steinberg and all the guys in l A on who we're gonna sign. We just got Rod Stewart who had like Maggie made and came out and because we've lost your Rye, heap for some other band. We need like a rock, heavy rock band. And he said how much you got into the album?

And I said, man, I've got like ninety eight thousand dollars and money in salary and studio costs, and I've been flying all over trying to get this mixed with Phil Ramone who then was out of the game. And I had Shelley Yatkison and Elliott Shiner who were Phil's assistant then. Who are no big dude producers working on that with me? Um Charlie says, I want to sign it, but I can't give you all your money back, but

I'll give you a five album deal. So you've got to recoup a little bit, and recoup a little bit and recoup a little bit. And so we're gonna ask you for another album in eighteen months. We're gonna put this one out. So he puts it out and it gets a modicum of air play. We get a call from a guy named Scott Shannon, who you might know, who's down south in St. Louis, and he says, we have a big thing planned at a drive in theater where at night, when it's dark, they play Girl Can't

Help It and rock around the clock. But at from six o'clock on, we're serving hot ducks and pizza. There's a stage in front of the drive in theater projected the screen, and we're having bands play live. And we had so and so booked, but so and so has been in a car accident and he's dead. I think

it's Dwayne Alman. Can you come and play? Well, we don't have anything to play, but I've got your new album, and if you agree to come and play for k K s C with a pig on it um, I'll play one of your tracks from bt O one every hour. So when you get here in three and a half weeks, you won't you won't have a hit song. You'll have a twelve hit songs. Everybody will know every song, really okay, And by the way, you're playing for nothing. We don't care.

We drive in there, we play, everybody knows every song we're and then the next station in the chain played next station, the Chain play next Charlie Fashion. Irwin Steimer called me saying, we're getting airplay, we're selling album. You're not hit a million albums. What's going on? You've had two million albums. Guess what? We want another album? And that first eighteen months. Instead of one album, we did

a third album. It was number one, not Fragile with the Ain't Seen Nothing You Know on as a number one single. B t O two with Letter Ride and taking Care of Business on it was number eighteen, and b t O one was number forty eight. We had three albums in the top fifty. Three songs in the top fifty is like what happened like two years suddenly, But we went on the road ninety days at a time, took a week off, cut the album ninety days took and obviously Lorraine fell out of love with me and

I didn't know my kids and I got divorced. We'll pause here for a brief moment and get right back to Randy Backman. For those who don't know, I'm primarily a writer, go to left sets dot com. We can catch up with my daily squeeds in addition to reading my commentary on music tech in the world at large. They'll be the first to find out when we've published a new podcast. Go to left sets dot com and

sign up for the newsletter. More with guitar legend Randy Backman, recorded live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California. Let's uh go a little bit slower. First album with Turner. You get some action, but there's no national hit. No. And then Charlie says to me, you know how to write hits. Write a hit, don't write these album cuts with two solos and five verses. Enough of this stuff. I'm having this problem with Rod Stewart. He didn't want

a single. Let Zeppelin. They don't want to single. They want to sell albums. Guess what you can sell albums and singles. I know what that means more tickets at the box office. Is playing auditoriums, you're playing twentyeder hockey arenas and stadiums. That's the difference between the hits. Okay, So the second al BT O two is the breakthrough record. Singles it has we ain't seen nothing one, it has let it ride and taking care of Business? Okay, So

how do you write taking gear of Business? That starts in seven in Scepter Studios in New York. We're recording Excepter for Laurence Greenberg is the boss there. Her son, Stanley Greenberg is the engineer. He's blind, so he's twiddling these knobs, getting a great son of darn works demos and we're cutting records there. John's doing your demos with Bert Backrock and Hell David, Ashford and Simpson were also pitching songs and everybody. This is the the alternative to

the brill building there. So Paperback Writer comes out. We love it, but it's pretty much a copy of Johnny be Good The day in the life of an average guy who learned to play guitar in a cabin made of earthen would Johnny be Good? And I'm a sorry maddim. When you read my book to a year to write, when you take a look, I want to write a thing about Stanley Greenberg, who's a blind engineer who comes to work every day with a white button down shirt, a tweet tie, a tweet jacket with patches on the el,

little leather patches, tweet pants, and brogue shoes. This is August in New York. It's ninety with ninety humidity. We're all wearing cutoff and flip flops. Stanley comes to work every drade draft. Stanley, why do you dress this way? Because I want to look like George Martin. He's the best producer in world. Get he's right, and you do look like him. I've met him. That's exactly what he wears. Okay, I'm writing a song that George Martin should produce, and

I'm gonna call it white Collar Work. And I'm gonna write it about you, Stanley Greenbrig because you always wear a white button on call. I'm gonna call it white collar Worker. It's going to be exact copy of paperback writer. So when you when you leave the studio every night at ten o'clock, why do you leave at ten o'clock? Because we're just getting rolling a musician coming at noon. We're used to playing from nine to midnight. That's when musicians are really juiced up. Is I take the train home.

I don't live in New York. I can't afford to live in New York. I'm taking the train. I go to Grand Central station. I go, you're kidding? Can I come with you? I want to write a song about you. I need to see what you do. He says, Okay, don't try to help me. I've been blind all my life. I have a white cane. So how do you get to Grand Central from here there on West fifty four? Um? Because I count steps, I go your kidding, this is my first experience with the vision impaired person. And he said,

don't try to help me. So I go out and sits turned right here, and I count five hund and eighty five steps. Really do listed for the tweets, and you're the cross wall. Then I walked creator and eighty five steps that way. Then I listen for the tweet tweet. Then I walk eight steps that way. It's Grand Central station. I am amazed. This is a quarter after ten. The streets are empty. It's like Vanilla Scott, you know they're

tom The streets are empty. Everyone's in the Madison Square Garden still a quarter to eleven, or they're in the theaters till ten thirty or eleven. So the streets are empty. So we get there and I say, very disappointed, standing nothing to write about. I have no fodder. I have no not even a hook line except white collar worker. That's gonna be white collar worker, just like paperback writer. I said, when do you come in? He said, I

take the eight fifteen into the city. I go, oh, you get up in the morning from your alarm clocks. Weren't you take the eight fifteen into the city. When you get here, he says, I get here about quarter to nine, and the train smells incredible because all these women are putting on makeup and proof. You can't see what they're doing. You get here a quarter to nine, he said, Yeah, I walked to work to start my slaving job to get my pay. Like there's the first line.

You get up in the morning from the alarm clocks. We're going to take the eight fifteen to the city. There's a whistle up above, people pushing, people's shoving, and the girls trying to look pretty. If your trains on time, you get to work by and I start to slave a job to get your pay. You ever get annoyed? Look at me. I'm self employed. I like to work at nothing. Like my father would keep saying, son, you work at nothing all day. What is that music business?

You don't do anything, I say, Dad, you would understand it's all in my head. I'm writing songs and we had and doing RIfS in my head, so I play that verse, but my it stops after that verse and we go wide call the worker, white calor worker, and I played for the band and they gag on the song. And so your verses are great, they're great, Johnny, be good versus. But you've got to get rid of this white collar worker thing. So it never makes it on

We'd Feel Soul, Canned Weed, or American Woman. It never makes it on Brave Belt one or a Brave Belt two. It never makes it on bt O one, which is Brave Belt three. We're playing a club in Vancouver now, Fred Turners, our lead singer. The first album is a success as far as an album goes. It's gold headed for platinum, and we're headed to play a club. And people think you're really rich when you have an album on the charts, but you're paying off all your studio

bills and all your loans. You're paying back your father and your grandmother and everyone who gave you twenty bucks or whatever. So we're playing six nights a week, five fifty minutes sets a night with ten minutes. So I've started seven ended one. I guests a Saturday night. Fred Turner says, I can't sing anymore. My voice is shot. You gotta sing the last set. I go what I gotta sing the last All I sing is like the high part. And I get around and I can sing.

Bob Dylan so um, I say, okay um. Bob Dylan has a song goed She belongs to Me, But I'm not gonna do it that way. But Rick Nelson had a much better version, and I'll do that. And the club owners going last set Saturday night, I turn up the heat. I gave everyone free pretzels and popcorn. They gotta buy booze. I'm selling this is the last round. Get them up dancing. I start, she belongs to me. It's really bad. Nobody's dancing. Santana had a song without

them called Oya como Va. I don't know any Spanish, I know Ukrainian. I start to play don don don the minute start that. Everybody's up dancing, and I saying, ohya como va, Farogue's way, Obama's a bowl abortioned or the commo ba hold off. I'm doing all these lyrics. Everyone's laughing, you understand me. The rest of people are drunk dancing. They don't care, and I'm warning, what am

I gonna do next? They're up dancing and the club gowners going okay, okay, and he's going like this, keep it rolling TV talk for keep doing it, don't cut it, keep it rolling, keep them once they sit down at the battle to get them up again. Keep them dancing. So a light goes on in my head. On the way to the gig that night, a DJs on there and he says, there's this Darryl B on C FUND Radio and we're taking care of business, and I go,

what a song title? And I write it down. I have a songwriting kit in my car, McDonald's napkin and a smash crayon left over from one of my kids, and I write down, taking care of this. You've got to write these things down or you forget them. The simple like I wrote down, Let it write. I wrote down, you ain't seen nothing yet, because like the great dream you had last time, when you say, Randy, I gotta tell you about this dream I had, and I said, what is it? G I kind of forget it's it's

gotten faded away. So I write it down. It goes on the shelf next to my heart. Of a few of my favorite things, which are the lyrics to White Collar Worker. And in the middle of a coma vault with everyone dancing and me wondering what am I going to do next? Is light bulb comes on and goes the band is your hostage. They're on stage. They've said no to this song for four albums. All you gotta do is turn around and say to them, play this song.

You're on stage, there's three people dancing. I stopped. Where goes do do do? Boy? I turned around, go follow me, play these three cards? They go what And I start to and I sing my verses. They get up in the morning. When I get to the hook, I don't stop and do white Collar Worker. I think taking care of business. It fits taking and got to the next time I say the band singing, They sing it and I answered them every way every day it's all mine and working over time and I go, oh my god,

thank you. The angel song has shot another arrow in me, just like when I did an American woman on the stage. And you get that feeling of energy. And here's a gift from the gods. You poor sawd You've been working eight years on the song. Guess what here's the final piece of this puzzle. And we did that song for thirty minutes. It ended the set. We'd stopped the song, the audience would sing, they felt the energy on stage. My brother keep the kick drum going, and the song

goes and goes and goes. We go to record it a couple of weeks later, all Vancouver studios who book We go down to Seattle. There's a brand new theater. They're started by Danny Kay, the actor, and Lester Still, who wants about six radio stations, Lester Smith, so it's

a less Case Smith Studios. And so we go in there and we're recording the album and Spread says he wants me to sing taking Care of Business as a good relief song for him and stop doing the Santana Parogie song and the bad Bob Dylan actually sing a song that's on our album. So I sing taking Care of Business. So the studio just like this. We've been in there since about eleven in the morning. It's not one o'clock. The next morning, we've been in there like

fourteen hours. There's a knock at the door. We're set to go home. I've sang the song once it speeds up and slows down. We don't care. It's a release song. I hide it on side two near the last cut on side too, so nobody will here until the end of the album. There's a knock at the door. Open the door. There's a guy standing there with three pizzas, big Frizzy black Beard, frizzy black hair, and army cap fatigue cap, army suit on. Since you guys order the pizza.

The guys about six ft four, six ft five. I say no. Tried on the hall. Steve Miller's cutting file like an Eagle album there and then Warris cutting why can't we be friends? On? Everyone's using this new studio because Lester Smith owns six radio stations. And if you're cutting his studio, guess what you got played on six stations? The paddle day with the big DJ there. You gotta played in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, all the way down to Portland, everything.

So he goes down the hall, gets rid of the pizza, comes back, knocks on the door and I say, yeah, pizza's gone. He said yeah. I said, what kind do for you? You look like you wants something, He said, I've been listening to this song you've been playing for the last twenty minutes, taking care of business, and it sounds like I could really use a piano. And I said, yeah, I know Elton and I know Little Richard, and they're in l A right now at a big party. I'd

love to get them. Money said, I'm a keyboard player. I don't deliver pizza to the end of the month when I can't pay my rent. Would you give me a shot? I go, what, We've been here fourteen hours when the pianos not even too And he said, I don't care. I said, okay, I'll give you a shot. Who am I not to give a guy a shot? I don't mind what somebody gives me a shot. Okay, here's your shot. Throwing the mike clothes the lid. He said, what do you want? It said, give me some Elton Johnson,

Dr Johnson, Little Richard, like making a pot pourri. Then maybe we'll pick a style needed the whole song and cell he plays it once. I said, good enough, go I'm gonna wipe it out. The next day he goes home. He goes delivering pizza. We go back to sleep. Charlie Fatch, the guy who signed us, flies in a day early, supposed to come a day later, comes in a day early. What do you Why are you here daily? Because I'm going to LA to play them your new album. Well,

we're not even done. Play me the album. I want to hear the single playing letter right, it goes great, wonderful single, the guitars, the harmonies, that's great, guts taking care of his Let's say to the engineer, don't play the piano track. We haven't even heard it back. So we listened to the whole side one. Here's let it ride. He's happy because you've got to do an edit that because it's very long. There's a breakdown, and said, yeah, I can edit that because if you didn't do it edit,

then radio did the wrong. You had different singles everywhere you went. Um. So halfway through the song, the engineer pushes up the fader and incomes to the piano and Charlie leaps out of his chair and goes, what on earth is that bt O with the piano? That is amazing because none of you guys will listen to me. You are guitar bassed and drums ZZ top guitar, bass and drums. Do be brothers guitar, bass and drums. Almond Brothers guitar. You know everybody's guitar based and drums. You

want to be different. Elton owns real estate on Top forty radio and AM Radio. Elton is everywhere. Let me hear the whole track. We're back up. We playing the whole track. Could go that's amazing. That will get you top for the airplane that and let it ride? Are you kidding? Let it ride? Starting with harmonies with you guys and the jangling beat and heavy guitar and like guitar, and then this comes out as a party track. TC be taking care of business? Amazing. Who's playing the piano?

And I say a pizza delivery guy and he said, no, seriously, who's playing the piano? I'd say, Charlie. A guy brought pizza here last night. He asked to play piano. And let him play piano. He's gone, I have no idea who he is. Where'd you get the pizza from? I said, I didn't know. We didn't order the pizza. So he says, so I go down and knock under our Steve Miller steball, where'd you get the pizza? I don't know. I didn't. We didn't get to go down to wars thing. It's

like walking to Cheech and Chunk's basement. There's a cloud of smoking there. I can't even see these guys. Where'd you get the pizza from last night? They say it is last night, Man, it's still last night. Nobody knows where the pizza came from. The I may just come and cleaned up the studio, right, because when you're a studio basically ordered Chinese and pizza all the time, or Greek or something, or spaghetti, and you eat and you don't have to wait to be served. The food comes in,

you eat it in like five minutes. The wolf pack eat and then you're back to recording again. So I go to the lady at the front of the studio and say, here's the yellow pages where you started Antonio's. I'll go halfway to at Mario's for on every pizza place within two blocks of the studio and see if they have a pizza to every guy that looks like Fidel Castro. He had a big, frizzy black beard and hair and wearing an army out fatigue off it. I get lucky in my third phone call. Yeah, we have

a guy like that looks like that. Can you tell me his name? No, we can't give employees names over the phone home. How do I get this guy? Would you want a pizza? Yeah? Yeah, we'll take When does he start works six o'clock? Okay, send him with a pizza. What do you want? Send yesterday's pizza. We don't care. We just want to meet the guy. He comes in. His name is Norman Dirkey. That's the piano here and

taking care one take by the piano. That's why one versus like Dr John, the next one like Elton John actor, the next one like Little Richard. It's all this potpourria piano style. Norman Dirky did do work at that studio. I didn't know, but he did commercial work there because he was a musician. He work wherever he got gigs. Um, so we find out his name. He was in the Union. We give him credit on the album that's the piano you hear. He then went on to be Bett Miller's

musical director on your first North American tour. And when I played with Ringle Star Lstar band, we toured the world and came back. We ended here in l A at the at the Greek Theater and the l A Philharmonic plays there, and the pianist was Dorman Turkey. Really yeah, okay, and then that's a long story, but that's a great story. I love the story and it's amazing. So how about you Ain't seen Nothing yet? That is a reject song I'm producing bt O. I always had what was called

the work song. We'd go in and I'd want to get a really good kick drum, then a good snare, and you'd move the mics around, crawl around, get a good bass on. Then I'd go and add a nice clean guitar track and nice jangly rhythm track and then this powerful sledgehammer in the face, powerful guitar thing. That's what heavy rock was, basically pop music with heavier courses, like bigger, heavier things like I could make Sugar Sugar

into a heavy rock song just with guitar sounds. So I have this work track one of my brothers, the one who played a kordion that I got to burn these eyes on stutters. So I don't know if you've got any brothers, even if you've got sisters, actually only have two sisters. You tease each other, you put each other on your short seet. Each other's bad. You tire your laces and not so the kids can't put on

their shots, you know that kind of thing. So me and my brother has always played pranks on each other. So my brother who started. I think I'm gonna take this work track where the guitars out of tune, and it's totally a wreckage of a track. But it's got the heavy, powerful guitar and at you see that, it's got the nice jangly thing copying Dave Mason, only you know and I know in the verse of course, and um, I stutter over it. We mix one cassette and put

it aside. Charlie comes to hear the album. It's not fragile, here's not that fragic, goes well, this is the beginning of something new. This isn't heavy rock. You can call this heavy metal. This is incredible. And here's Rolling down the Highway and a couple of other songs deal though they are pretty good. Are looking for a song now to be in the top three on Top forty. Taking care of Business was great, it's like top ten. You eight,

um let it ride number four. I want to get you up to in the top one or two or three. That would be really amazing. I said, that's the album. We've been on road for ninety days. We have we're in here for five days. We cut our albums in five days and beat you and mixed it on the sixth just balancing the tracks on the sixth day. It wasn't rocket science with this band. Once you got the sounds, we played everything over and over and over, and so

we play the album. He goes, I need more stuff, and the engineers and wanted to play him the work track, the throwaway track, and Charlie jumps out of his chair again and he says, what, there's another track, And I say, Charlie, it's a train wreck. I haven't even tuned my guitars out of tune. Okay, all our instruments are put away. I can't even redo the guitar and it we're done, and I played for me, go that is really charming. When you hear the jangly rhythm, it lifts, it's right,

it's a foot above the vinyl. When you hear that back, it's magical. Radio radio is gonna love this. You put it on it. It's a it's a morning track for morning drive. It's a sunshiny day and you ain't seen nothing yet. I go, okay, let me re sing it because there's a Michael. I try to resing it. It doesn't work. It's like it's like Tony Bennett, baby bad Michael Boom. You ain't see nothing yet. It doesn't fit. He said, leave it the way the charming, it's never

the same. I said, well, I'm copying the way my brother talks that you're never gonna four get four get that kind of thing because you just leave it. I say, okay, it's terrible. I'm gonna remix out of remixing and Sound City in l A. So I go to Sound City and I'm there and if the sun City is in its heyday, right, that's in the mid seventies and bucking am Nicks have been in there there auditioning for Fleetwood mac Lindsey Buckingham's put his guitar through a Leslie speaker.

He's blown the speaker on the Leslie, which is a little triangular horn. There's a big one in the bottom. There's a little triangular horn that spins around. The speakers are being fixed. So I said to my engineer, Mark Smith, I need to disguise my guitar. There's no such thing as a harmonizer or to retune your guitar, and there's no guitars there mixing like for three days. So I

want to disguise my lead guitar. So can we run it through the leslie and give it the swishing sound and we'll put an echo repeat on it, so you hear the repeat and you won't listen to that the guitars out of tune. We go out there and the top speaker's gone, and I said, what can we use as a speaker? He said, all the speakers as a cone. Let's use this. It takes a cola Coca Cola cup, jams it on the top of these wires with this little thing, and it's spinning your own the mic on it.

That's my lead guitar. And you ain't seen nothing yet. Out of tune with a cocaco And we have a picture of this and like a true story with a slap echo and someone who goes to dad, who da da da dada. It repeats itself, so you're listening to more than just the guitar. Sol and I started my way through it. There's bad van Morrison impression that I'm going shall a lot, just like Brown Eyed Girl and

I'm having fun. It's a stupid party track. Charlie says, this is a career song, just like taking care of Business. This is gonna go on the album. That's the first B two album that had the extra song, the ninth song. We only worked with four side to get about twenty to twenty two minutes because it was violent. Both sides have to be the same amount of volume. The more time you had, the volume went down here dividing the space between more grooves and uh so we put the

five shorter songs on one side. He releases it, it comes out as a single. It goes to number one and twenty two countries. It's a gold single. It's a platinum single for us, and it wants an award five or six years ago from the Stuttering Association of North America, that was the best stuttering song of all because but a real guy and was done in loving fun. Do

you know what I mean? That kind of thing? So that's some of my greatest hits are our train wreck accidents right okay, which brings us the four wheel drive. You're so big and people are anticipating that, and although it's successful, it is not seen. What is the league of the two previous recreence? Do you see it that way? It came out too soon. We we are me the band, are caught in this bubble of one album in eighteen months, and suddenly we've got three and eighteen months and they're

on the top fifty and you want another one? Oh, who can we copy? That's good? Oh, let's copy ourselves. Let's make hey you like you ain't seen nothing yet a guitar intro. If that would have come out nine months later, it would have been solid four wheel drive, big powerful song. Every trucker lies in, every four wheel driver and loves that song. Four wheel drive, four wheel rides, side by side, four wheel drive. It's like amazing song. It just came out too soon. We flooded our own market,

We burst our own bubble. It's sold millions of copies, but we were into like Bato two and three, like eight million, nine million, a million in England, a million in Australia. We're selling tens and twelves and fifteen million albums around the world. Suddenly we just we ran out of steam. And again I don't know my wife and kids. I go home, my kids cry when I picked them up. I'm a strange guy. But had you got remarried at this point? No, I was still with my first wife,

had six kids with her. Okay, so how does bt O end? It ends with a dreaded five letter word called disco or is that four letter d I S C O five other words? It was pretty much the end of every rock band. No longer between gigs, between tours, could you go home and play a club and get maybe two grand five guy for for the week when you're home, because you gotta work in your home or you're spending your rothies. You're burning your your fuel, right,

you gotta keep adding to the pile of fuel. And so they would hire like a Donna Summer or somebody with a dat or you know, player or a cassette and they would go and look good or a chick usually doing disco singing uh and sing three or four song and hire three of those a night, pay them fifty bucks each and everyone's happy. But they weren't playing

rock bands. So you try to do something different. So you the Doobie Brothers, they've got Michael McDonald they had taken to the street, the horn section, all that kind of stuff. Um, a lot of guys rolling stones that I miss you, disco kind of beat which you know did it, which kind of cool. And I thought, well, I'm gonna go back to my Ben McPeak days, my

bill Ramon days. Get to get a horn section. I'm gonna do my wheels, won't turn instead of going done, don't, I'll be like Fats Domin I have a horn section, going to do do do do, reinforcing our stuff. The band hated it. It just didn't work. And pretty much radio had played at that point so much bt O literally so much. Even now they play a lot, uh, which is great. I'm thrilled all these mistakes get played

over and over again. I still play the mistakes on stage. Okay, So the band ends, and do you feel at this point, Well, I've been on the road for fifteen years. I just want to stay home and you then start my own I have my own studio, And did you have any desire to make it back to the top of it? Of course that's my big desire to this day start a band called Iron Horse. We have a hit on Scotti Brothers Records. Goes to the number one in Italy.

I go into Italy with the number one record I Am Elvis and Italy it's incredible, number one record with stuttering with sweet Louis Louise with a big hit. I come back Um. Fred Turner wants to join the band. We just want to be called Iron Ours, so we call herself Union. We meet Lenny Pizza, who's just done. Girls just want to have fun with So Lenny Pizza. Here's what I've done. I've got my own studio. Here's why. He says, great, I'll sign you guys. We put out

a double A side. My song is called main Street USA. That's kind of a rap record, rock and roll rap record. Fred puts out a song called on Strike by Union. The Yankees are on strike or baseballs on strike and New York. Lenny Pizzas flaves New York this song is gonna rock your face off playing it on New York radio. This is on strike and the Yankees are on Psyche are somebody's on strike. I don't know who's on Some

baseball guys are on strike. It comes out on a long weekend, so the guys who normally meet every Monday morning who pick what records are gonna get played. They aren't there. The substitutes are there, and they liked the record, and they start to play it. At the end of the week, we're on a d forty stations. I get a call from CBS Portrait. You've got to come here to New York. We're celebrating and being on the thing, but we need to have a business meeting. What kind

of business meeting? So I go into this meeting and they say to me, Um, we use indie promotion guys, and somehow you bypass these guys and you're on the radio. So we usually pay these guys some money and the band pays them half the money. So unless you come up with the money, you're going to be taken off the playlist. And I go, what are you kidding? Is this like extortion pay all that kind of stuff. No,

it's not. It's high level radio promotion. These guys help us with programming or whatever they want to call it. And I said, look, I don't have any money. I'm going to call their bluff. I called their bluff. The record vanished, gone, went from hundred forty station in the first four days, does nothing zero. So I was off. I've had some great adventures. So then where does that leave you? Well, it leads people still with a dream of writing a hit song. Um. It leads me to

right now. UM. A few years ago got offered a record deal which is really weird, out of the blue by a friend of mine who brought Two North Records up in Canada, which is really a great label. They've had Bruce Colburn forever and a couple of other really good acts that when you call heritage acts, they just keep recording and touring for for decades. And Buffy, Satan, Marie and other friends of mine are on there. And so he offers me a record deal. I get inducted

into Nashville Musicians Hall of Fame. I go down their new Young's there because Ben Keith has pedaled steel players being duck. I'm there with Kenny Wayne Shepherds, who's fitting in for Stevie a Van because Step Round, Double Trouble are inducted. I'm inducted. Frampton's inducted, Billy Gibbons is there. It's phenomenal. We'll leaves their playing bass. It's I'm in like my element of rock and roll guitar, and I said, I guess what. I just got offered a record deal,

and he says, do yourself a favor. Don't do the same old Randy Backman ship. So what do you mean. Don't do the same stuff. Do something totally different. Be like me, reinvent yourself. Shock everybody. You lose some fans, but you get some new fans and your real diehard fans will love this little ride. You're going, this little deeptour. So I go back to Canada again, invite to see Tommy out and Stratford we have the Stratford Shakespeare Festival,

but every year like a jazzer. So they have Stevie Wonder at a jazz festival, or Michael McDonald or Steve Winwood or something. They're having Tommy. So they invite me to Tommy. I'm sitting behind keep Pete Townsend and desk mechanics. Who's the guy who produced Tommy? And I'm knowing Pete for a long time. We argued over the name of the guests who and the who wait back in the sixties and he leans back and he goes the drummer is incredible. I've got to meet this drummer. Drummer is incredible.

It plays every note like Keith Moon and Keith in Pinball Wizard. I've got to meet this drummer Dale, I said. Dale is a girl. Dale is a woman. What I said? The program says Dale Brendon, it's Dale and Brandon. I know this girl. She drums in a country Banner, written songs with them. I've done gigs with her, he said. It can't be that she has her own drums. Call she drumm Me says she's eight, She's got a hundred students. We go back, stay, she meets her. It's her, I

said her. A man, I want I want to do an album with you. The drums who played were so Keith Moon. She's got exact kit. She's in her own room with Mike's. She got a monitor. She's watching the guy she's playing. It's amazing. And so I say to my manager, I want to do an album like Black Keys or The White Stripes. Me on guitar told the Rock and Blues I want to honor the British invasion of Clapton and Hendricks Cream and the who power guitar and drums is that you can't do what you're jumping

on the Bandwagon, get somebody else. I see a bass player, a tall, beautiful chick playing with Ladies of the Canyon, which is like Canadians crazy Horse for knewing, But it's four chicks, beautiful, long hair and there blazing playing rock and country rock. So I asked the bass player she wanted to just do with this one project with me? And she's wearing a John in Twistle t shirt and

she studied at McGill. She's, you know, standard based and reads notes, but she loves rocking out like John Entwistle. So I say, do you want to do an album with me? We'll just set up, we'll do it live in like four or five days, Power Tree. I'll show you the song we learned it once. It's blues. It ain't rocket science, it's all feel out of the blue.

I call a friend of mine, Kevin Shirley, who I helped out twenty years ago, and he was stuck in Canada, came to Deuce Rush, couldn't get back into the States. I get him through to a radio show for me. I said, Kevin, you wow me a favor. He said, yeah, I do, and um, I see what are you doing? So I'm doing the led Zeppelin, Box said, ac DC Box said, I'm doing I don't know who he's doing all the Scorpions or something last year. He said, but I do your favor. I have a week off. I'll

come to Toronto. Can you record an album in a week? I said, no problem. He flies in, I have these songs. I do an album called Heavy Blues. He takes it back to and mixes. Its incredible, he said, I got my next door neighbor to play on a track. Who's that Joe Bonamasa, Oh cool. I listen to it. I go wow, Maybe I should have some guests. So I get Neil Young, Peter Frampton, Robert Randolph Scott Holiday from the rival Sons and get all these guns. And Jeff

Healey from the grave his wife. Let's me get an old track of him, this his guitar off and put it on a tribute to him. I have these seven guest guitar players. I mean, that's one of the best albums I did. Then the next better one is getting this idea to do my new album by George, the George Harrison Album. It's the most spiritual thing that I've ever done that I feel. That's the ratists working. Put the American Woman alb up there They're not fragile album,

and put up the by George album. Though that's my triad of greatness in my life, honestly. So this is George Harrison covers using the words, but the riffs and the melodies are different, absolutely different. When it starts out, you have no idea what song it is. People play games, they have party games. Now they put on this record and they sit there betting I can name that in eight seconds. I can name that song in ten seconds or twelve words or whatever. And then when I start singing,

everybody sings along. They all know the words every George Harrison song, and even the guitar solos in the songs are taken from other Beatle solos and put in a different song. So in and then then I wrote the first song between Two Mountains, which I said what I felt, how George felt. Going to a session with mont Lennon and Martin McCartney with thirty gems each, and then they call write maybe twenty each, and after they're all done and tired out, George, do you have a song? Oh? Yeah,

I got a song called ACX Man. I got a song called something. I got a song you know, called Piggies or something, so I wrote between two Mountains. I wrote it in a daze, in a haze one night, in a weird psychedelic dream. I don't take psychedelics, but

it was a really weird dream. If you've got kids, our little brothers or sisters, and you're asleep, you know when they walk in the room, even though you're asleep, you sent the presence in the room where you're doing your father and you wake up your little kids there with a Teddy Bearer blanket. Oh, if you had a bad dream coming to bed with daddy, they fall aslee. If you take them back to the crib, you sent somebody's in the room. So this happened like two years ago.

The whole album is done. I want to get one of my songs on there because I've been George all my life and every band I've sung George Yarrison side. I bought his book, I've got his paintings. I phoned his house at Friar Park when I left the guests who to see if I could join his band, which

was Clapton was in his band. There's no way I was going to get in his band, but I talked to him and I love the guy left his peacefulness in quietness, and I left how he dedicated the last part of his life too, really gin and spirituality and saying with John Lennon, war is over. You can have peace and put their career on the line and don't do commercial stuff anymore. Do songs that really means something.

And when the Beatles came to New York and met Bob Dylan, he said, now that you have the attention of the world, say something. And they started to say something. So I have this feeling in mind, and I have this presence in the room. And I get up out of my bed this two o'clock in the morning, and I go next door and I said at my computer, I start to type, there's peace within. Just close your eyes, breathe in the power, and just realize. I learned to wait.

My time would come. I'd celebrate because I was the one between two mountains. And I go, WHOA, this isn't me. And I feel these school I feel the goose bumps. Now saying that to you, I feel this weird thing that George wasn't piste off between these guys. He was grateful because they made a greatness of two mountains. And it's just like us being on the TV show. We had to write songs. Original song Burton Night have fit in between the Beatles and the Stones and the Beach Boys.

George had to write a song that when it came time to play the song, it had to fit in there between Lennon McCartney's best and maybe one of the worst that got bombed Thumb and George has got in there. So I had this feet and then I wrote the second verse more about us in life, the mountain of good in the mountain and evil were between two mountains.

And then I had a three. I've never written an ABC song that's ABC and then repeats ABC always on the of course on a hook, and of course on hook and a B A B A B and so something. I write this different kind of song, and I'm gonna put three pieces of music behind us that are very distinct. I'm going to borrow from George's Beatles stuff, and I start to bore some Indians cuitar stuff from some tablet, and I write the song and the solo in the middle is his greatest solo I think from and I

love her. Doo Do dooe. So when you play between two mons in the middle of here too do Doo Do Do Do, and you go, where is that from? Wow? That's from man I love Her? And then you listen to Don't Bother Me, the solo from tax Man's and Don't Bother Me the solo from My Sweet Lords is in a different and song, and so if you're a guitar freak, and then listen to this album, going wow, I'm playing Georges solo in a different song, and so it's really cool. I had a lot of fun. We

had a lot of fun. You listened to the album in entirety, it should be listened to. It's entirely like a Beatles album because it's book ended with between two mountains and the other one's done with backwards loops and all kinds of noises and tape flipping around like film at the end of a film, and all these two d dude like Strawberry Fields Forever. We just had great fun and figure, I'm not going to get any airplay. Miles Ago nuts I was invited to England for John

lennon seventy fifth birthday about four years ago. Went to Liverpool. His sister Julia Broadis brownies, which was John's favorite birthday cake, gave us John Lennon glasses. I go to see Beatle the Beatles show there. Let it be a friend of mine was putting it on there. I'm really immersed in Beatles. I ride the bus, I get my haircut at Penny Lane barber shop and all that. I come back and go, wow,

that was great. John Lennon. Me at John Lennons birthday. Yeah, I'm there with a bunch of Canadian lawyers and stuff and guys, what kind of George with the youngest Beatle? Whence heat? Whence Heat seventy five? Great? Whence the birthday? For well, I got an excuse to do an album, so I do something weird and different, like Neil Young said, don't do the same old stuff. Get a reason for doing it. And the first one was the sixties blues

with these two girls and we totally rocked out. And then doing this George Yarrison thing with my band who've been together thirty years, who know every Beatles song backers, and my son Tell who grew up on the Beatles. I'd go on the road and come home all my Beatle records would be all over the house, laid out, not in their not in their sleeves or jackets. I'm about to tear a strip off of you. Of my best friend says to me, Are you nuts? Your son

is steadying the Beatles? Do you understand what that is? These guys took the word from a yeah yeah yeah, to z to zed in Canada, to z with marmalade skies and relax your mind and float down screen. These guys took the world through bubblegum pop abba heavy metal like She's so heavy. These guys did everything your son setting leave them alone by you, by yourself, a set of Beatle stuff. Let your son have these and listen to them. So we're all really to the Beatles stuff.

So to get these guys together saying we're gonna do ten George ten or twelve George songs and by the way, we're gonna make them unrecognizable. I've got these groups from the tax Man I do like in a fast Chicago likes easy top dude, do do do and we stopped. Let me tell you how it will be to do do Do Do? And it's like when we do that live the crowd goes nuts and they don't know what is because we solo for the first two minutes. Okay, so at this late date, how much how many live

dates are you doing? Well? We started George's birthday febr Kings in New York. We went to Canada luckily. Now things are staggered. Things came out first as a download. Then see these now the vinyls of the vinyls this big. I went through a transition on the date of the eclipse. So I have a picture of the eclipse. That's the cover of my album. That's me going in though my new phase of life with moving to a new city.

I'm gonna get a new woman in my life. I've got a new album, I've got did you did you do all those things? Did you move to? In the middle. I'm going home to say goodbye to my house. I'm flying to my new house in Victoria next Friday. I have a couple of women waiting to both partner. You are so alive, it's unbelievable. How about the old days to the royalty still come in? Yes, and a wonderful things happening in the world to me and everybody else.

It's called reversion of copyrights. They expire after a while and the original creators can apply to get them back. So we're working on that. But things got really really good in the nineties when classic rock radio came out as a format. Could before that they only play a Golden Old or a Graveyard groovy or some old thing, and they play Monster Mash or something like that on Halloween.

Now it's like a whole format. And then everything came out and c D and every goon that brought our album and vinyl and bought it in c D and now those are gone, the other by him and Vinyl again there. I just remastered eight BTO albums that's coming out as a box set in November with outtakes, and they all sound similar, no, because they're all mastered by

the same guy. And for and preparing the Monster Bto Truckload it's called that will be remixes of everything without take and intakes and other solos because you could try one or two solos. Now you just linked in the song because you got protos. You make the solo twice as long you're bringing your other solo that nobody's heard before that might even have a mistake and what's wrong

with the stakes? Neil Young plays them all the time, you know what I mean, and so do I like They're part of being the mistakes and what makes something great human exact exactly. So I've got Japanese recordings of the Beatles when when they got them to master in Japan, they couldn't read the mastering notes. So the end of tax Man or the end of my Guitar, generally, we've Paul Party makes twelve based mistakes. I played that for all my friends and they go nuts Paul making mistakes.

They love it, so it's great to have those mistakes in there. Okay, So what's the dream? Presently? The dream is to have the George album be a success, to play one song called You Liked Me Too Much, which I did in Gypsy Kings sound, to play it on the Grammys with the Gypsy Kings, who I saw last week in London and they were just great. So I gotta tell you, can you listen to You Like Me

Too Much? It's to change la la la la. And we're singing in Gypsy and my son sings in Spanish, so if I can do that song anywhere with the Gypsy Kings, it would be I've seen them ten times. I love these guys well. The amazing thing talking to someone of your generation, which is my generation, who is a musician, I must say I have not encountered someone as optimistic and enthusiastic about music at this late date. You're really excited and it's infectious. Thank you. While I'm

still a fan. I am on my own radio show and canic called Randy's Vinyl Tap, and I play all my old vinyl and I tell my stories like I've told you about Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney touring the ringo stary that nobody knows these stories. So I will do a two hour show. It's o Saturday Night on CBC, and I tell the story. I'm in my thirteenth year, so to do the show, it's like a two hour theme one. One thing will be girls names, and next

thing will be boys names. The next one would be summer songs, driving songs, songs about hope, songs about love, songs about the Earth for the Earth Day. And that allows me to play fifty or sixty years of rock and roll, from Little Richard right to Lady Gaga. Do you know what are you Are you a hip hop fan? Are you play everything? Yeah? If it fits my theme, and that's why people love my show. It's like old radio. You were. Old radio is with cousin Brucey or Latman Jack.

They played the Ames Brothers and then they played Johnny Horton North to Alaska. Then they played Elvis, and they played the Stones Can't get a Satisfaction. Then it played Steven IVI gour may blame it on the Boston Nova, you know what I mean. And then they played the Ventures and they played everything. Radio was exciting. You never changed the channel. When you listen to radio every Saturday, you listen to the Top fifty, you listen fifty nine,

you listen what's number one? You listen all day long. Now everybody's changing. You can hear the same song every day at ten on all these radio stations. I know it's it's certainly not what it once was, but you are still what you once were. You're very but as I said earlier, exciting and enthusiastic and Rhan, you're listening to Randy Backman on the Bob Left Sets podcast. Ready,

thanks so much for doing this. Thanks you are a legend and it's a thrilled to talk to you than what I thought, Well, what did you think it was? Because you're gonna slam me, You're why would you think I'm gonna slam you? Because you're very opinionated, which is good, right, And my son saying, don't talk about to politics. My manager just saying, talking about vitamins bumps into health and I'm met to health and all. But what you did was really great, was really a nice ride for me

through mytory of my life. I can all the records you're mentioning. I have my own specific stories where I was when I heard those and off the first b t O album, I had my one of my too closest friends from college, he's from Kansas City, and they played it there. We just played Kansas City, Okay, they they played it there, and I was unaware of the record with the New York City radio market. And then of course bt O two comes up and it's the biggest band in the land. As I say, I literally have.

I can tell you you know this is about you, but I can tell you where I heard four Wheel Drive in Mammoth, California the first time. I can tell you being slipping some golfers around hearing you know you ain't seen nothing yet. It's like these songs are part of the American in the world fabric. That's my stage show. Is this just what I told you? From shaking over on? I tell every story of every song. I tell George

Harrison's stories. So I started with three George, and this is We did the true of our a couple of nights ago, and then last night in Palomino Club and the night before in Kansas City. People are sitting down, they don't want to stand up and dance. They danced. Near the end. We come up with a tax man and taking care of business. And by the way, Elvis, she was taking care of business as his logo, his motto. Elvis made me start to play guitar. I wrote, tc B,

it's on his tombstone TCB. I've seen Priscilla saying Elvis heard a Canadian band singing that song and said, that's my logo. So tc B, my connection with Elvis is complete. You have now come full circle above left. I was gonna ask another question, but this full circle we should end there. Thanks again so much. City. That wraps up this week's episode of The Bob left Sets podcast recorded live at the tune In studios in Venice, California. It's

a mepic stories and a bunch of fun. Email me at Bob left sets dot com if you want to tell me what you thought. Until next time, it's Bob left Sets. Think me reas don't know exactly