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Bachman & Turner  

After many years of fan demand, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, two giants of rock n' roll, are finally reuniting for the first time in more than 20 years.

You ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

Sometimes the best things are worth waiting for. After almost twenty years apart, two giants of Canadian rock, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, are back together and ready to take care of business once again.

In the mid ‘70s there was no one bigger than Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Over a mere four year span they earned a staggering 120 platinum, gold and silver disks notching up hits in over 20 countries. The hard rock Canadian quartet reached 1 on both the Billboard singles and album charts as well as placing a half dozen more songs in the Top 50. “Takin’ Care of Business”, “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet”, “Let It Ride”, “Roll On Down the Highway”, “Hey You”, “Blue Collar”, “Not Fragile”, “Four Wheel Drive”, “Looking Out For 1”, “My Wheels Won’t Turn” – all classic rock anthems written by Bachman and Turner.

“Bachman-Turner Overdrive was the closest thing to a metal band in Canada back then,” states former Billboard Canadian correspondent Larry Leblanc. “Bachman-Turner Overdrive had those guitars revved up. They were the future of Canadian rock at that time. They swept away all that prissy Canadian pop fluff that had come before them. There was nothing like them.”

What brought the two rock icons back together again after so many years? The music. After they split in the latter ‘80s, Randy and Fred went their separate ways, Randy to a solo career, a much-celebrated reunion with the Guess Who and later with lead singer Burton Cummings as Bachman-Cummings, as well as establishing himself as a jazz artist and radio personality (Randy’s Vinyl Tap on CBC and Sirius satellite radio is heard by millions worldwide each week). Fred carried on with Bachman-Turner Overdrive before retiring from music in the latter 1990s. But there was still a lingering feeling that Randy and Fred still had something to say through their music. Then last year Randy began recording a solo rock album that would feature different vocalists. He and Fred had been communicating over the past few years and had rekindled their friendship. All they required was the right reason to work together. Randy had written a song, “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is the Only Way Out”, that he thought would be perfect for Fred’s gritty “refrigerator-sized” voice. He sent the track to Fred. Impressed, the two began working together on the song.

Out of a purely natural and organic situation emerged the desire to record an album together and now to tour as Bachman & Turner. For Randy and Fred it’s all about the creative process, collaboration and teamwork of two old friends and partners that has resulted in Bachman & Turner.

Formed in Winnipeg, Canada in 1972, Bachman and Turner’s distinctive brand of ‘no holds barred’ blue collar hard rock took the world by storm the following year with the release of BTO I. But theirs was no overnight Cinderella story. Randy Bachman and C.F. ‘Fred’ Turner had paid their dues as veteran journeymen musicians for more than a decade. Both grew up in the heady environment of ‘60s Winnipeg, a fertile musical melting pot that stirred up the likes of Neil Young, the Guess Who, Lenny Breau, and Burton Cummings. Randy and Fred often crossed paths on the local community club and high school sock hop circuit, Randy with top Winnipeg band Chad Allan & the Reflections and Fred in a series of popular groups including the Downbeats, The Unnamed, Pink Plumm, and D-Drifters. By 1965 the Reflections had transformed into the Guess Who and Randy found himself with a North American hit record with a raucous cover of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates’ “Shakin’ All Over”. Tours across North America and recording sessions in New York followed but the group was unable to capitalize on their instant success with a follow up hit and although they continued to be Canada’s biggest group their fortunes south of the border waned.

By 1967, with singer Chad Allan gone, teenage wiz kid Burton Cummings front and center, and Randy at the helm, the Guess Who continued recording, touring and hosting CBC TV’s weekly Let’s Go music show. An ill-fated trip to England left the group deep in debt and demoralized until Toronto record producer Jack Richardson took a chance and mortgaged his house to finance a Guess Who recording session in New York. That session yielded Wheatfield Soul and the 1969 million-selling single “These Eyes” from the songwriting team of Bachman-Cummings. That partnership would yield further gold with the hit singles “Laughing”, “Undun”, “No Time”, “No Sugar Tonight”, and “American Woman” which topped the Billboard singles charts for an amazing 3 weeks in May 1970 selling over 2 million copies. The Guess Who became Canada’s first rock superstars. In 1970 alone they sold more records than the entire Canadian recording industry combined up to that point. But behind the hit records and sell out concert tours there was dissention within the band. Randy’s no-drinking, no-drugs lifestyle was at odds with the other members of the Guess Who and after suffering serious health problems at the peak of their success with “American Woman” at  1 he chose to walk away from the band following a triumphant concert at New York’s Fillmore East. Responsible for the string of Guess Who hits and steering the band to the top, Randy nonetheless returned to Winnipeg to recuperate and sort out his future.

A chance meeting with former band mate Chad Allan led to the formation of Brave Belt in early 1971 along with youngest brother Robin Bachman on drums. However the trio’s soft country rock approach on their debut album failed to garner any attention. Randy’s fans, expecting another “American Woman” or “No Time”, were disappointed that he had forsaken hard rockin’ for country pickin’. Never one to tarry long when something isn’t working, Randy retooled the formula recruiting Fred Turner on bass and vocals to give Brave Belt a bit more beef to their sound. “Being a survivor for all those years in the Guess Who,” states Randy, “I knew that no matter how much you like something, if it isn’t working you have to change it.” In fact, Randy hadn’t even asked Fred about joining. Sitting in the LA office of Reprise Records head Mo Ostin about to sign with the label on no less than Neil Young’s recommendation, Mo suggested that a quartet was better than a trio. “I immediately thought of Fred Turner as the fourth guy,” Randy recalls. “Fred seemed like a natural fit to me. He was into music as a career with both feet. Fred and I shared that common bond, too, having played the same local circuit for years with the same aspirations and experiences. I wanted a guy who could play both guitar and bass and who had a strong, distinctive voice, a guy who could really belt it out. I needed that John Fogerty voice and Fred Turner had it. So I put Fred’s name on the contract. The problem was Fred didn’t know it yet.”

“One of the reasons I went with Randy was because I was writing songs and no one in my band was interested,” notes Fred. “I had started writing so when Randy contacted me and asked if I was writing any songs, I thought ‘Hey, somebody’s interested in my songs!’ And from that point on I always had a place to put my songs.” Soon after, Chad Allan split and Fred moved to centre stage as lead vocalist. His presence brought out a harder rock edge in the group’s sound only hinted at on Brave Belt II. The band had been financed by Randy’s Guess Who nest egg to the tune of $97,000. Having recorded Brave Belt III, they found no takers for their rockier approach. “Sure it was humbling,” Randy admits. “I had come from the biggest band in the country and I was starting out not at rung one on the ladder but below it. Getting up that ladder was going to be difficult. Everything was on my shoulders.”

Logging over 27 rejections it wasn’t until Mercury Records’ Charlie Fach heard the tracks that the group was offered a contract. “The universal appeal of their music was that it was understandable rock ‘n’ roll,” stresses Charlie. “You could hear it one time and it stuck with you. It was workingman’s rock ‘n’ roll.” There was one caveat, however. The name Brave Belt no longer suited the style of rock the album represented so Brave Belt became Bachman-Turner Overdrive, taking the latter name from a trucker’s magazine. Brave Belt III was retitled BTO I when released in 1973. The other piece to the puzzle was the addition of manager Bruce Allen who took the band on when no one else would and kept them working steadily. In 1973 alone they logged 300 days out on the road.

Randy and Fred’s hefty size helped create a mystique and an identifiable image. “During the time of glam rock and platform boots we weren’t wimps or pretty boys,” laughs Randy. “We looked like mountain men in furs and skins, lumberjacks in fur, fringe, flannel, and long beards. We were the Radisson and Groseilliers of rock, two hearty voyageurs who lived in the woods and never shaved. We were perceived by some as the lumberjack rockers from Canada who’ll blow the windshield out of your car. The media picked up on that rustic image and really ran with it. Fred had what we called the Harley-Davidson voice, like Creedence’s John Fogerty only bigger. He was a big guy like myself and had this flaming orange hair and beard, a stunning appearance. Fred even had a coonskin hat and these big, fringed jackets with beads. We were rugged men from the northern wilds of Canada. We would come out on stage and the music was full tilt stomping with Fred screaming at the top of his lungs over sledgehammer guitars and drums that sounded like falling trees. So our image matched the sound coming out on the records. We were a guy’s band. We appealed to the ‘ordinary Joe’ kind of guy.”

Nineteen seventy-four was the year of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. The band was an unstoppable colossus. Randy and Fred were fronting the biggest selling act in the world scoring not only album and concert successes but conquering the pop singles charts as well with “Let It Ride”, “Takin’ Care Of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” (1 in over 20 countries). Bachman-Turner Overdrive enjoyed that rare and enviable distinction of scoring pop hit singles and AOR (album-oriented rock) sales success. They had credibility in both markets – AM pop radio and FM rock – at a time when hit singles took away your credibility as an AOR act. BTO II went gold setting the stage for Not Fragile selling 3.6 million copies. “In 1974, nobody was selling like that,” offers Fred. “Nobody came near our sales.” Randy and Fred’s meat ‘n’ potatoes, industrial strength rock ‘n’ roll was just what the music world needed at that moment. And they capitalized on their time at the top. As Fred recalls, “There were so many places we played it just became a blur. I can remember the odd ones simply because they were big names like Madison Square Gardens, the Spectrum, Cobo Hall in Detroit, or Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh. I remember all those big ones.”

“Bachman-Turner Overdrive came at a period when there was a lot of disruptive change in the music culture that a lot of people didn’t take to,” muses Fred. “We were like the guys around the corner who played straight, ordinary rock ‘n’ roll. We sold a lot of albums. Maybe it could have been that people wanted to get out and party and it was good dance party music. We broke so fast. It was said that we broke faster than the Beatles did in the US. But there is never a real overnight sensation. It took a year and a half to become an overnight sensation. We worked hard to get to that point.”

“Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s success was worldwide,” Charlie Fach acknowledges. “They sold in Europe, Japan, Asia, South Africa, South America. The band was so big at one point, when they had a new album coming out, the German and British companies sent people over to New York to pick up the masters and take them back and press the albums.” Adds Randy, “The success of Bachman-Turner Overdrive became mind boggling by 1975. The momentum we had built in North America spread around the world from Asia to Europe with gold and platinum records coming in from all corners of the world along with offers to tour.”

Randy Bachman had proven to all those naysayers quick to write him off after the Guess Who that he was indeed a survivor. Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s success eclipsed that of his former band by a wide margin selling in excess of 30 million records worldwide. “Randy ranks right up there at the top of Canadian rock ‘n’ roll,” states Larry Leblanc. “He’s the only guy that has successfully launched three international acts from a Canadian base: first with the Chad Allan version of the Guess Who and “Shakin’ All Over”, then with the “These Eyes” Guess Who with Burton, and a third time with Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Nobody’s done that up here, ever. He has an unparalleled string of successes.”

Four Wheel Drive and Head On solidified Randy and Fred’s grip on the charts but by 1977 the steam was running out of the engine and the inevitable split came over musical differences. Randy felt the band needed to stretch and not be confined by the public’s expectations. When some of the others disagreed Randy left and Bachman-Turner Overdrive carried on with Fred at the helm for two more albums before calling it quits. In the early ‘80s Randy and Fred reunited as Union releasing the album On Strike boosted by Randy and Beach Boy Carl Wilson’s “Keep The Summer Alive”, later a hit for the Beach Boys. But personal problems derailed Union. “The Union album had something there that if it had have gone on I think it would have been very good,” states Fred. The two got together again in 1984 as BACHMAN-TURNER OVERDRIVE, releasing further albums and touring for two years including opening for Van Halen’s world tour. By the end of the decade Fred was gone, with Randy again pursuing a solo career. The two shared a stage together in May1997 for the Red River Relief concert produced by Gilles Paquin and singer/activist Tom Jackson to raise funds for beleaguered Manitobans affected by “The Flood of the Century”.

“I personally invited Fred to join me and we really rocked,” enthuses Randy. “We could see the emotion on people’s faces when we played those Bachman-Turner Overdrive songs. There were tears being shed in the crowd. Fred and I had dinner together the night before and enjoyed each other’s company. I still felt a little disjointed at how that whole Bachman-Turner Overdrive thing went down at the end.” Fred toured sporadically under the Bachman-Turner Overdrive banner until 2004.

Fast forward to 2009 and the two former partners, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner, are making music once again. Managed by another old friend and colleague, Gilles Paquin, this is no mere grab at nostalgia or reliving old glories; Bachman & Turner today are motivated by a desire to make new music. “If it was just going out and redoing the old Bachman-Turner Overdrive thing rehashing the old songs just to put some bucks in my pocket I’m not interested,” emphasizes Fred. “I’m not offering anybody anything. If I had a chance to go out and play new things and grow, then I’ll be offering people something.”

More than three decades after they first collaborated together, Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are back and this time they’re taking care of ‘unfinished’ business.

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