Speaker 1: Pushkin, Laurel Kenyon, Hayde Ashbury and Swinging London are a
Speaker 1: few of the locations that come to mind when we
Speaker 1: think about the powerhouse music scenes of the sixties, but Canada,
Speaker 1: anywhere in Canada, rarely comes up. But after listening to
Speaker 1: Randy Bachman talk about his musical baptism across the Great
Speaker 1: Plains of the Great White North, all that might change
Speaker 1: for you. Bachman is a master guitarist and songwriter with
Speaker 1: twelve hits to his name. Between the guests Who and
Speaker 1: Bachman Turner Overdrive. On today's episode, Bruce Helm talks to
Speaker 1: Bachman as he dissects some of the incredible songs he's written,
Speaker 1: including an American Woman and These Eyes. He also discussed
Speaker 1: how he became one of the greatest guitars of his generation.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richman. Here's Bruce conversation with Randy Bachman.
Speaker 2: Listening to talk about your songs in the past and
Speaker 2: reading your book. What fascinated me, as someone who's never
Speaker 2: written a song, is how you took other songs and
Speaker 2: just transformed them and the roots for some of those
Speaker 2: songs you mentioned. I think laughing came out of a platter.
Speaker 2: Song came out of that ascending figure in twilight Time,
Speaker 2: and nobody is nobody on earth who would have picked
Speaker 2: that out. But somehow you took that from one song
Speaker 2: and just made it work that whatever that old line
Speaker 2: is about geniuses is covering up your influences.
Speaker 3: Are we running? Because you should have this on tape?
Speaker 2: Are we running? Yeah? We're running?
Speaker 3: Okay. I grew up playing violin. I started when I
Speaker 3: was five, real conservatory. So I'm playing Chopin, Shaikovsky, all
Speaker 3: this stuff. I don't know what I'm doing. My teacher
Speaker 3: would put the music down in front of me. I
Speaker 3: should play it first, and I've heard that. She put
Speaker 3: it from me, and I'd play it. Go wow, take
Speaker 3: that home and practice it for a week. Well, I
Speaker 3: already know it. Give me two or three. I was
Speaker 3: learning by ear because I would listen to her and
Speaker 3: I would watch her fingers, and I was learning to play.
Speaker 3: The music didn't mean anything to me, and I got
Speaker 3: that way till I was about fourteen. I'm a very
Speaker 3: good classical violinist. And she said you should go in an
Speaker 3: audition for the Winnipeg Junior School Symphony eighty five. Kids
Speaker 3: like a big symphony and you'll be second violin. There's
Speaker 3: four violins, a couple of yolas, cellos and stuff. So
Speaker 3: I go to this audition, which is a Neil Young's
Speaker 3: school in Winnipeg. It's in the Cristin High School the
Speaker 3: other side of Winnipeg. So it's a Saturday morning. I
Speaker 3: go in there with my violin. They put a piece
Speaker 3: in front of us. I know it. It's the Chaikovsky
Speaker 3: kind of thing. And halfway through into the song, the
Speaker 3: conductor taps the thing and he goes, second violin, bar
Speaker 3: thirty two. It's an E flat, not an E natural.
Speaker 3: Let's take it from the top. I don't know what
Speaker 3: he's talking about. I don't know what bar thirty two is.
Speaker 3: I don't know what flat is. I'm playing notes that
Speaker 3: when I want to hear a note, I know where
Speaker 3: my finger goes on the second string or third string
Speaker 3: and my bugle. That way, we start the song again.
Speaker 3: I get the same plot. I play the same note,
Speaker 3: tap tap tap, second violin. Can you what don't you
Speaker 3: understand about an E flat? And I go I don't know.
Speaker 3: He said, can you please play? Can you play an e?
Speaker 3: I'm sure, it's open string the violin. Can you play
Speaker 3: an E flat? I don't know what we're on? E
Speaker 3: flat is you can't go below that. Here's your E string.
Speaker 3: You can't go down there. I don't realize that the
Speaker 3: string before that is in needing to play flat. You
Speaker 3: go the string before and you go down there's an
Speaker 3: E flat that doesn't click on. I mean in front
Speaker 3: of eighty five kids. Okay, right, And he says, what
Speaker 3: don't you understand? And I figured, fuck this. I put
Speaker 3: my violin in the case. I get on the bus,
Speaker 3: I go home. It's a Saturday morning. This is how
Speaker 3: to go. I said, I'm never playing violin again. I
Speaker 3: don't know what I'm doing. Everyone's laughing at me. I'm done.
Speaker 3: The next day, my aunt comes over, my mother's younger sister.
Speaker 3: My mother's like thirty something. My aunt, just like ten
Speaker 3: years younger, puts on television and sees Elvis, and I go,
Speaker 3: what is that? Because I had been classically trained, Well,
Speaker 3: that's called rock and roll. That's called the guitar. And
Speaker 3: that guy's name is Elvis Presley. So when you're from
Speaker 3: Winnipeg and your best friend is Joey Goldberg or something,
Speaker 3: you don't hear a name like Elvis Presley, like what's
Speaker 3: his name? Again? Over and over, and I said, I
Speaker 3: want to do that. It's so wild compared to classical music,
Speaker 3: where you have to stand a certain way. You can't
Speaker 3: rest your elbow when you're tired. You have to stand
Speaker 3: this way and do all of this grandiose up and
Speaker 3: down bowstroke. And so I started to copy Elvis. And
Speaker 3: my cousins had a guitar. They taught me three chords.
Speaker 3: But with the minute I got the guitar, I could
Speaker 3: play all the leads on it, because on violin, all
Speaker 3: he plays the top line. You play lead on violin.
Speaker 3: So I've been playing lead since I was five. Like
Speaker 3: ten years later, I get a guitar and I'm playing lead,
Speaker 3: and playing lead is very easy. But it was like
Speaker 3: wandering in the forest. I didn't know where I was going.
Speaker 3: And then a guy moved to Winnipeg. His name was
Speaker 3: Lenny Brow, one year older than me. He had been
Speaker 3: playing since he was six in his family band. His
Speaker 3: dad was like Roy Rogers, his mother like Dale Evans.
Speaker 3: If you ever grew up seeing Roy Rogers, Happy trails
Speaker 3: to you. At gene Autry at the end of the
Speaker 3: Cowboy movie. They'd sing with the Son of the Pioneers,
Speaker 3: cool clear water and stuff like that. That's what a
Speaker 3: sprid Ringo star was the Cowboy movies of Geene Autry
Speaker 3: and Roy Rogers. And he played this country band his
Speaker 3: fathers called hall Loan Pine. The mother is Betty Cody.
Speaker 3: They made up these western names, and he was hel
Speaker 3: Lone Pine Junior. But he played a big orange gretch
Speaker 3: and I didn't know if the gretches were orange. You
Speaker 3: see an American band, then it's black and white. I
Speaker 3: saw Chuck Barry, Dwayne Eddie, Eddie Copperant all playing this
Speaker 3: cool looking guitar. And when one came into Winnipeg and
Speaker 3: we see it in the store window and it's orange. Wow,
Speaker 3: that guitar is orange. Is like a giant pumpkin. It's incredible.
Speaker 3: So I bought that one. Neil Young bought the next
Speaker 3: one that came in a month later. He still got
Speaker 3: his mind stolen. But then you learned to play guitar
Speaker 3: like that. And this guy had been was playing with
Speaker 3: his parents. Man, they had him quit school when he
Speaker 3: was ten, so he's playing since he was six. He's mastered.
Speaker 3: So he taught me five Chad Atkins albums, three Merle Travis.
Speaker 3: I'm then I starting to get Howard Roberts and Barney
Speaker 3: Kessel and stuff like that. And after you learn that stuff,
Speaker 3: ched Atkins is like a vocabulary because every album of
Speaker 3: his is classical and bluegrass, on country and rock and everything.
Speaker 3: He just played absolutely everything. So that was like a
Speaker 3: great thing for me. But Lenny Brow said to me
Speaker 3: one thing. His real name was Lenny Brow. He was
Speaker 3: held in Pine Junior, but his family name was Bro.
Speaker 3: You're a really really good guitar player for your age.
Speaker 3: Because everybody in Winnipeg wanted lessons from me because they
Speaker 3: couldn't speak to Lenny Bro. He started and stammered, and
Speaker 3: I had a brother who started, Who I did? You
Speaker 3: ain't see nothing yet after, So you know how to
Speaker 3: communicate with a guy who's status the stummer. You never
Speaker 3: try to correct him or say sentences. You just let him.
Speaker 3: He relax and then he starts to slowly speak to you.
Speaker 3: So I could speak to Lennibro all the time, and
Speaker 3: I I was a year younger than him. He had
Speaker 3: no girlfriends. I had girlfriends. I introduced him to kids.
Speaker 3: He came from Maine up to Winnipeg and live there.
Speaker 3: So he said to me, there will always be like
Speaker 3: the wild West. That'll always be a younger, faster gunslinger
Speaker 3: who's going to come to town and shoot you down. Learn
Speaker 3: to write good songs. Wow, I really, he said, I've
Speaker 3: been playing this is my favorite song, and he played
Speaker 3: Funny Valentine and he said that nod was my favorite song.
Speaker 3: It was Chet Baker's favorite song. It was so and
Speaker 3: so favorite song. It'll be Michael Bubla's favorite the next
Speaker 3: flatter it'll be his favorite song. So write a good song.
Speaker 3: And by the way you play guitar. Look, everybody forgets it.
Speaker 3: If you write a good song, it's it's it's it's forever,
Speaker 3: and you get paid forever. He said, what do you mean.
Speaker 3: So when it's played on the radio, they pay you
Speaker 3: a couple of pennies. But if you make a door
Speaker 3: and sell your door for two hundred bucks, you gets
Speaker 3: sold later for two thousand dollars as an antique door.
Speaker 3: Nobody sends you any money. But when you write a song,
Speaker 3: you get your couple of pennies. You keep getting your
Speaker 3: couple of pennies. So write a whole bunch of songs,
Speaker 3: get a whole bunch of couple of pennies, you'll have
Speaker 3: a really good life. So I meet Burton Cummings. We
Speaker 3: idolized the Beatles and the Stones and every record that
Speaker 3: came out, Burt Backrack, Hal David, Brian Wilson, the great song.
Speaker 3: Let's copy these guys and Burton, you copy a song.
Speaker 3: I'll copy a song and I'll play you what I
Speaker 3: think and if you could recognize it, then I haven't
Speaker 3: copied a good song. Okay, you do one.
Speaker 2: You have said so much. We have to unpack a
Speaker 2: little bit because you know, there are guitarists. Everybody knows
Speaker 2: there's Eric Clapton and there's Eddie van Halen. Then they're
Speaker 2: the guitarists other guitarists talk about. I think you're in
Speaker 2: that category.
Speaker 3: Really.
Speaker 2: Oh, I had when I first moved to New York.
Speaker 2: I took a couple lessons from a guy who was
Speaker 2: a jazz player. He actually had no money, turned down
Speaker 2: a record deal because they wanted to him to play
Speaker 2: like Stevie on Yeah. And he was, Oh, that's that
Speaker 2: garbage comes up. I'm Canadian. He goes, Oh, Randy Bachman,
Speaker 2: you were oh for for him? You were like at
Speaker 2: the toll.
Speaker 3: I've had a lot of New York guitar players tell
Speaker 3: me that. Oh yes, I said, I was the first
Speaker 3: guy in rock and roll to play a minor seven
Speaker 3: with the ninth on is What do you mean? I
Speaker 3: didn't even realize, because I didn't know what anything was called.
Speaker 3: I'm playing by ear, following Lenny Bro's fingers, so it's
Speaker 3: shaken them over. So goes the minor seven with the
Speaker 3: ninth on top. I didn't know what that was. To
Speaker 3: put that in a rock and roll song, like, to
Speaker 3: put that in it was like it was genius?
Speaker 2: Now was there not a Was there not a ninth
Speaker 2: in the original? In the in the English? Was oh interesting?
Speaker 3: They played the notes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I played it as chords, Oh I see.
Speaker 3: And they played mine went one guitar I made. I
Speaker 3: made a chord out of it. Yeah, I'm playing chords.
Speaker 3: He's going, Oh I see, I made chords out of it.
Speaker 3: And also I did the shake. Yeah there's no shake
Speaker 3: on the original. I went, I had a big screen.
Speaker 3: I wanged it like Matt Rall. I had the bass
Speaker 3: for your goal and he also did that on that
Speaker 3: that note, and it made the whole record.
Speaker 2: Now Lenny bro is at the top of the list
Speaker 2: of guitarists other guitarists talk about. I just saw an
Speaker 2: interview recently with Andy Summers, and it was in the eighties,
Speaker 2: so he's in the Police, the biggest band in the
Speaker 2: world at that point, and he sort of says to
Speaker 2: the interviewer, says, you probably don't know who this is.
Speaker 2: The interviewer diad Actually he said, but I got a
Speaker 2: lesson with Lenny Bro when he's when Andy Summers is
Speaker 2: like on top. Lenny Bro charged him forty dollars. He's
Speaker 2: this unbelievable player who he did a couple of live albums.
Speaker 2: He died young and tragically. There's some he was murdered.
Speaker 2: Oh he was Oh, I had no idea by.
Speaker 3: His wife's brother, who was a dope dealer in la
Speaker 3: Oh he didn't pay.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's very sad.
Speaker 3: They found him floating in a pool, face down with
Speaker 3: no water in his lungs. They'd been strangled thrown in
Speaker 3: the pool. But when I met him, like I said,
Speaker 3: he was sixteen, I was fifteen. He didn't have any friends,
Speaker 3: has been family. Band played almost three or four or
Speaker 3: five nights a week. Weddings. Bar Mits was barn dancers.
Speaker 3: Then they had a barn dance where you're playing rockabilly
Speaker 3: and polkas and all that, and he's playing all well,
Speaker 3: chet ackens kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So he's playing, he's playing bass, he's playing chords, and
Speaker 2: he's playing a top line as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, playing chet akinstall. So you're playing.
Speaker 2: So what was it about that? That captivating?
Speaker 3: He's playing that way? And he teaches me to play
Speaker 3: the way from every ched Atkins album. And he also
Speaker 3: sing to me write good songs.
Speaker 2: Okay, but he didn't write idiot. No, no, he didn't
Speaker 2: write but you.
Speaker 3: But he taught me all this stuff. So some time
Speaker 3: he taught me to play on the inside for strings.
Speaker 3: Which are these? They some of the best on a guitar.
Speaker 3: So what I did undone? I went she she didn't
Speaker 3: know what she was. These are old Man minor seventh.
Speaker 3: She found him instead of going there to go higher,
Speaker 3: same chord but higher and it lifts the last part
Speaker 3: of the verse. It was too late, dude, And I
Speaker 3: didn't know what that was called. But I took it
Speaker 3: from Malaguana was. I took that and put it there.
Speaker 3: I'm doing Malaguania, and I got this song like I
Speaker 3: heard it was done Bob Dylan song called Ballad and
Speaker 3: d Bell and Plaine d Somewhere in twenty verses, he goes,
Speaker 3: she came undone, I go Holy Cow, And I had
Speaker 3: a girlfriend that had died from overdose of something. Somebody
Speaker 3: put something in her drink. I think it was Ellis Dain.
Speaker 3: She went to a coma. So I wrote about her,
Speaker 3: and I had these these quotes, and Mickey Lenny bros Said,
Speaker 3: get the Mickey Baker Jazz Guitar Book. It was from
Speaker 3: Mickey and Sylvia. If you don't love a strong Yeah,
Speaker 3: Mickey Baker in changed my life, him and Lenny bro
Speaker 3: to get instead of playing blues like this seventh ninth, Yeah,
Speaker 3: Mickey Baker's every downstroke is a different court. And I
Speaker 3: want to do that. I want and you don't do
Speaker 3: downstairs because you're playing like this, you're playing the middle
Speaker 3: for inside, for strings, and you're playing your thumb. So
Speaker 3: when I did, Lenny Borough showed me two endings that
Speaker 3: are jazz endings. They're called codas right, So the song
Speaker 3: is called mean to Me. He goes me to me,
Speaker 3: to me, can't you see the ending goes, I lower
Speaker 3: it once and I go, oh, every day is in
Speaker 3: and the string you got to write it to the
Speaker 3: end of the line. Just take that ending and make
Speaker 3: it my beginning. And it becomes looking out for number one.
Speaker 3: And the other part is from Ray Charles a song
Speaker 3: of this Little Girl of Mine that went, h this
Speaker 3: little girl of mine. But he's doing it on piano.
Speaker 3: So I think that and put on trying to go.
Speaker 3: And I found.
Speaker 4: Out every trick in the book, and that there's only
Speaker 4: one way to get things done.
Speaker 3: I found out the only way to the top looking
Speaker 3: at the phone number. What I mean, you keep looking
Speaker 3: the phone number?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: So I put all that together, and it's strange to
Speaker 3: put the two endings together. And when I played it
Speaker 3: for Burton Comings and said, I've written the follow up
Speaker 3: to undone, which I wrote alone, everybody's sing writing another
Speaker 3: Chaz song. You just can't pull them out of the
Speaker 3: I said, I put these two any sing and I
Speaker 3: played and he said, oh, that that's brilliant. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 2: And then didn't didn't Lenny bro say to you, won't
Speaker 2: people think the song's over because you're playing the because
Speaker 2: you're playing the turnaround. Yeah, yeah, oh my god.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I said, guess what, Lenny, I wrote a song.
Speaker 3: I start with that coder. You taught me the song's over.
Speaker 3: I said, no, no, I repeat, I repeat, I repeat it,
Speaker 3: and I put this in. I put that in it
Speaker 3: and stuff and he he taught me, and he said,
Speaker 3: you can put anything you want together. You just need
Speaker 3: a passing note. So, I mean, I don't even know
Speaker 3: what key this is in.
Speaker 2: You don't know now what key that's in. You don't
Speaker 2: even know now what key that's in.
Speaker 3: You tell me what key it's in. I don't know. Basically,
Speaker 3: it's an f right. That's what means to me is
Speaker 3: I've lowered mine te right, So I've got it's gone
Speaker 3: on after tone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after quick break.
Speaker 1: Will be back with more from Randy Bachman.
Speaker 3: We're back.
Speaker 1: Bruce had them and Randy Bachman.
Speaker 2: How did you learn from those Mickey Baker books, because
Speaker 2: that's pretty heavy music theory, the Mickey Baker stuff.
Speaker 3: Little x's instead of five lines EGBDF, the ad GB,
Speaker 3: little x's the word to put your fingers. It was
Speaker 3: the first book. I didn't know what tablature was. Yes, Like,
Speaker 3: to me, music is stupid okay, especially when you get
Speaker 3: to the bass cleft and it's different on a piano.
Speaker 3: That's what I thought about playing violin. Why is the
Speaker 3: cello music just like mine? We're playing the same line
Speaker 3: hisre's one whole line below. And they explained to me, well,
Speaker 3: when you do the staff and another staff, and when
Speaker 3: you're symphony director down there as all the guys, by
Speaker 3: the time they get to the top, your EGBDF bass
Speaker 3: is one one below this.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: See, whatever you know you're getting me, I'll mixed up
Speaker 3: in anyways, I just learned the wonderful thing about I
Speaker 3: have a phonographic memory as a kid. I hear it once,
Speaker 3: I know it in my head just to figure out
Speaker 3: it's Chuck Berry. That kind of stuff. And every time
Speaker 3: I was going to produce an album I produced bto
Speaker 3: I produced a man called Trooper. I would listen to
Speaker 3: a dozen Berries, the Chuck Berry Greatest Hits, phenomenal album
Speaker 3: who took twelve bar blues and made every song a
Speaker 3: story of Johnny be Good or maybe Lean or incredible
Speaker 3: lyrics that this guy had over twelve bar blue songs,
Speaker 3: rock and roll music, roll over Beethoven. And the guy
Speaker 3: was a poet of unprecedented rock and roll lyrics. I
Speaker 3: mean really compared to Shoe by Dewbey, you know, and
Speaker 3: the boom and get a job. He Chuck Berry wrote
Speaker 3: like Shakespeare and obviously affected the Beatles. And besides a
Speaker 3: dozen berries, which I would get the simplicity of an
Speaker 3: intro of guitar, I would play a revolver or rubber
Speaker 3: soul to get what the Beatles did with four guys
Speaker 3: to sound like six guys. And I'm I'm dealing with Bto,
Speaker 3: which are three or four guys try to sound like six.
Speaker 3: So every time I produced a BTO album, I made
Speaker 3: sure that in the verses we had a cow bell
Speaker 3: muted or in the course or we had a shaker going.
Speaker 3: So if we listened to the Beatles behind every section,
Speaker 3: the middle eight, the versus the intro, there's a different
Speaker 3: percussion thing, and a lot of times they're clapping, and
Speaker 3: I would take the Beatles thing like there's a song
Speaker 3: called Homie Tight that goes, oh meat tight, dude, it's
Speaker 3: been a hardy, same thing, taking care of bins, same
Speaker 3: clapping and under a ringo playing bongos. Just let it ride, goodbye.
Speaker 3: It's got the bongos. We didn't have bongos. We used
Speaker 3: the milk jug emptied one gallon milk job filled with paper.
Speaker 3: My brother put it between his legs and did the
Speaker 3: gallop on it. So we're doing all these things for
Speaker 3: bto to sound like more than four guys on a record,
Speaker 3: and it's so easy, too alive. You just crank up
Speaker 3: loud and you played louder.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you wrote about that because I was listening
Speaker 2: to some beatles the other day and I thought I
Speaker 2: heard some little like a little gallop under it all,
Speaker 2: and I thought, well, was that in the music I
Speaker 2: don't but.
Speaker 3: Listen to Hard when I'm home. The gallup stops when
Speaker 3: I'm home, clank clank, clubo, everything, and that drives that
Speaker 3: seem homely feeling only tied. It's been a they get
Speaker 3: back to hard and you get into the groove again.
Speaker 3: So their percussion and the shakers and ringo played a
Speaker 3: lot of claps claves. But he didn't do it one
Speaker 3: and three, just every once in a while, every fourth
Speaker 3: beat or third beat, like and I Love Her. He
Speaker 3: didn't go down like the Latin thing Dad, click click
Speaker 3: click every other time.
Speaker 2: Now when you when you played with him. Did you
Speaker 2: ask him about things like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was the guy who said it's been hard
Speaker 3: to his ninety I love this check eight days a week.
Speaker 3: John gives him no credit. I mean, if somebody gives
Speaker 3: me a title, I give them ten percent of the song.
Speaker 3: I mean it inspires your hook, it's your course.
Speaker 2: Basically good news for Bob Dylan, who's still looking for
Speaker 2: that check for undone.
Speaker 3: By the way, you have my check for undone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, what pissed me off?
Speaker 3: As Wally Lyme wrote a book called She's Coming Done,
Speaker 3: which Oprah had in her book Club with the Week
Speaker 3: and sold millions of copies, and he thank Burton Cummings
Speaker 3: in the intro, not me. I wrote it all by myself.
Speaker 2: Oh you're kidding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so, I said, Wally Lime letter going, but I
Speaker 3: never got a reply back.
Speaker 2: I want to ask you more about writing, but you're
Speaker 2: talking so much about guitar. And there is something about
Speaker 2: your guitar playing which has always been noticeable for me,
Speaker 2: which is how melodic your solos are. They're not solos
Speaker 2: the way we think of do you think it's violin?
Speaker 2: They're very they're almost I'm not saying they're sing songy,
Speaker 2: but I could, even now it's been years and years,
Speaker 2: I could sing the solo from No Time or American Woman,
Speaker 2: What do you Well?
Speaker 3: That's what Lenny bro taught me. Sing it. Sing your
Speaker 3: solo in your head first. Don't think of a blues
Speaker 3: run or a Les Paul lick or Chad akinlick and
Speaker 3: piecing it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Play your song
Speaker 3: in your head. Sing a solo. I'm gonna go. I'm
Speaker 3: doing right now, Just go up. That becomes your solo.
Speaker 3: So we're doing any any solo that I've got, like
Speaker 3: let it Ride, Mickey Baker. Guys have heard that solo.
Speaker 3: How could you play those notes in a rock and
Speaker 3: roll song? Where you're going? That's so jazzy, but it's
Speaker 3: so passing that when I get to that, it's a relief.
Speaker 3: That's all jazz stuff like Howard Roberts, but it's in
Speaker 3: there's a there's that Cordigan and I got that from
Speaker 3: Anton Divorcedhack Piano Concerto and t because I read about
Speaker 3: John Lennon listening to classical music, Stockhausen and things like that,
Speaker 3: and I can't afford anything right. Most of your life
Speaker 3: you're broke and Philip Glass. So I have a friend
Speaker 3: that has Philip Glass and listen to it and he's
Speaker 3: smashing a piano with the sledgehammers. I can't do this,
Speaker 3: and I can stockhausing thing and I can't even understand it.
Speaker 3: And I go into Crass, which is a cheap five
Speaker 3: and dime store. Oh I remembers they turned into Kmart
Speaker 3: right yeah, and by a classical album for dollar forty
Speaker 3: nine and to Divora Piano concertoy the whole side and
Speaker 3: the find one is the piano concerto very boring, but
Speaker 3: in the ending it goes. So I go on to
Speaker 3: make chords out of that. Would you medd it ride?
Speaker 2: Okay? He's waiting for his check too, I think, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's great.
Speaker 3: And the Doobie. I was writing that with Fred Turner
Speaker 3: at the ed Mardi Gras in New Orleans and I'm
Speaker 3: showing it to Fred. I got these cords, Fred, And
Speaker 3: we just heard a trucker say, no big deal, Bud,
Speaker 3: he let it ride. He'd cut us off and with
Speaker 3: an accent the highway and we're crossing this guy and
Speaker 3: he says, no big deal, just let it ride. So
Speaker 3: what does that mean? Fred, it's like mean chill out
Speaker 3: in the nineteen seventy two. We don't need trucker lingo.
Speaker 3: And he said, oh, it's just a chill out thing.
Speaker 3: So I'm sure and the Doobie Brothers get this lolong
Speaker 3: train running. But I've already done showing it to Fred,
Speaker 3: and Patrick's watching me playing. So Tom Johnson and we
Speaker 3: both got the same ant Undervorjak thing.
Speaker 2: You created two hits from one.
Speaker 3: We all realized that there's a pool of things you
Speaker 3: share they don't necessarily need to pay for, but if
Speaker 3: there's things you directly steal, you pay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: I remember talking to Gordon Lightfoot and I said, how
Speaker 3: do you like song? He said, what do you mean
Speaker 3: it said, Whitney Houston, what do you mean? I said,
Speaker 3: I just can't take it. That's from if you could
Speaker 3: read my mind? Girl. Really he called the lawyer. He
Speaker 3: go to check for a couple of hundred grand from
Speaker 3: Michael whoever's name was, who wrote.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, good for him. Yeah did you remain friends
Speaker 2: with him? You saw him very early in life Lightfoot? Yeah,
Speaker 2: you guys wrote you wrote a song about Gordon before
Speaker 2: he was a big.
Speaker 3: Just joined our band and because we had a television
Speaker 3: show national like American Band then right across Canada that
Speaker 3: Monday was from Halifax, who that had add Murray on it.
Speaker 3: Tuesday was Ottawa or Montreal. Wednesday was Toronto. Bands like
Speaker 3: Who became David Clayton Thomas. The host was Alex Trebek.
Speaker 3: Right from from Jeopardy Winnipeg was Us Calgary, Mpton in
Speaker 3: BC with band that became The Collectors are Chillawa. We're
Speaker 3: still around the guys that were on this show, but
Speaker 3: it was on every single week for two years, so
Speaker 3: everybody in Canada would see the guests who every Thursday
Speaker 3: and we get to do the hit Preided and after
Speaker 3: a while, the hit Preid then lasted six months. Now
Speaker 3: it last six weeks. So we'd be repeating songs. So
Speaker 3: the producer came to write your own songs and if
Speaker 3: they're good enough, I'll put you in between the Stones
Speaker 3: and the Beach Boys. But it's got to be good enough.
Speaker 3: So Britain and I start writing songs. We do a
Speaker 3: tour and we go to Montreal and Lightfoot's playing in
Speaker 3: a little nightclub there and we go and see when
Speaker 3: we know each other because we all would hang out
Speaker 3: at the riverboat where, which is manager owned in the
Speaker 3: village in downtown Toronto, and we go and see him
Speaker 3: and he does three hours painting pictures of tiger lilies
Speaker 3: and leaving on a jetplane kind of thing, and incredible
Speaker 3: early morning rain and all these songs of his and
Speaker 3: we sat there stunned and went to meet him and
Speaker 3: how do you write songs? And he said do you?
Speaker 3: You have to have a gift. And I had the
Speaker 3: gift as a child, and so did Burton Cummings. And
Speaker 3: I know a lot of people that don't. And I
Speaker 3: only found out they don't because I went through several
Speaker 3: counseling sessions with my family that was getting divorced, Me
Speaker 3: and Tell and my other kids. And after sitting there
Speaker 3: for weeks and weeks, you every week for years and
Speaker 3: years with your ex wife, trying to get back together
Speaker 3: and work out your differences and stuff. And the doctor
Speaker 3: kept saying to me, what are your feelings? I forget
Speaker 3: my feelings. I'm pissed on you know whatever. Finally said,
Speaker 3: what's in your head right now? Because I'm not sharing anyone.
Speaker 3: I said, well, besides the music, I'm a little angry.
Speaker 3: What music We'll have music in my head? What kind
Speaker 3: of music? Well, ever since I was born, I have
Speaker 3: music in my head. What do you mean? Said, there's
Speaker 3: music in my head and I play it. And if
Speaker 3: somebody said do you make it up? I say, I
Speaker 3: think so. But if they say they heard it somewhere,
Speaker 3: then it's from somewhere else. That's how I write songs,
Speaker 3: or in my head. I craft them and moved them
Speaker 3: and switched them around. And he said, I hear nothing,
Speaker 3: and I said, well, I really feel sorry for you.
Speaker 3: And this guy doctor goes, WHOA, He's like the shrink,
Speaker 3: the shrink of all times. Right, nothing in his hit
Speaker 3: His head is blank. Yeah, And I find people that
Speaker 3: are musical. Even right now, the song is going in
Speaker 3: my head. I have a soundtrack. I'm never alone. I'm
Speaker 3: you can lock people with solitary. I enjoy it. Nobody's
Speaker 3: interrupting by my broadcast. That's in my head and it's
Speaker 3: old songs and it's new songs, and I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is. It's just there.
Speaker 2: It's just a stream. And you, yeah, you're handed every
Speaker 2: once in a while and pull something out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, after one last quick break, we'll be back with
Speaker 1: the rest of Bruce Headlin's conversation with Randy Bachman. We're
Speaker 1: back with Bruce Headlam and Randy Bachman.
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about I think most people think that
Speaker 2: Burton Cummings came up with these eyes because he was
Speaker 2: the piano player. But as you, yeah, tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Well, my mother and my father was German, my mother
Speaker 3: was Ukrainian. These people partied. They had house parties, drinking
Speaker 3: like mad and then in the middle they would clear
Speaker 3: the chairs and do the cola maker to the Russian kick,
Speaker 3: the guys jumping in the air and they went crazy.
Speaker 3: They were like real classacks. And so my mother beside
Speaker 3: the Glasgow violin, she made me watch every Sunday night
Speaker 3: Don Messrs Jubilee, which was from Halifax, Newfoundland, where they
Speaker 3: played Celtic and fiddle music, jigs and reels and stuff
Speaker 3: like that. And she wanted so I would pick it
Speaker 3: up and I'd play. They would all do bulcus to it.
Speaker 3: And my brother was younger than me, the brother who
Speaker 3: started who I wrote, ain't see nothing yet, for I
Speaker 3: was bought the alphabate polka instrument and accordion. He's five
Speaker 3: years old. I'm seven. You get an accordion. You can't
Speaker 3: play it. They strap it to you can't see it.
Speaker 3: This finger has to play notes, this hand has to
Speaker 3: pump it, and these fingers have to go upah on
Speaker 3: these little buttons. And we would be sent to our
Speaker 3: bed driam to practice. And he cries, I can't do this.
Speaker 3: I say, okay, turn it sideways and I'll put He
Speaker 3: turned it sideways and I pulled this, and he pulled this.
Speaker 3: I sat there and I played in the KYFC. I
Speaker 3: figured out, well, see much different than guitar or violin,
Speaker 3: told me so do don't you can just sit I
Speaker 3: can play anything on a piano in the KYFC, all
Speaker 3: evenly spaced. I get him to pump the coordinate and
Speaker 3: sit there and my mother would think he was practicing.
Speaker 3: So this is my formal training on a keyboard. So Britain,
Speaker 3: Kempany just joined the guests who we're in Regina for
Speaker 3: this summer doing CAGs to get out of winn Bay
Speaker 3: because we he had broken up the devrons to join
Speaker 3: me to join the guests who and all the fans
Speaker 3: were upset. So we have a night off in Regina, Saskatchewan,
Speaker 3: and the Queen, the new Queen, the new female Gordon
Speaker 3: Lightfoot is playing in Regina at the four D the
Speaker 3: Fourth Dimension Coffeehouse. Joni Mitchell, Jony and Chuck Mitchell. She
Speaker 3: just Joni Anderson just married Chuck Mitchell. And so the
Speaker 3: sellout we go to see her. We know the promoter.
Speaker 3: It's a little coffee one hundred and twenty people. There's
Speaker 3: a table that says reserved. The place is full. So
Speaker 3: I'm there with the band and in walks's two really
Speaker 3: good looking chicks, a blonde and a brunette. And I go, oh,
Speaker 3: my gosh, that happens to the most guys you see
Speaker 3: a woman. It's like wow, I said my road manager.
Speaker 3: I don't know how to pick up a check like
Speaker 3: I had three brothers. And no, there's no females in
Speaker 3: the back of front. All boys. My cousins are all boys. Everybody.
Speaker 2: Some of those Russian dances dance moves help, yes.
Speaker 3: And so I said, can you go and talk to
Speaker 3: those two chicks, and if you get lucky called me over.
Speaker 3: Don't talk to the brunette, just talk to the blonde.
Speaker 3: We find out later they're sisters. He calls me over.
Speaker 3: I take them home, I asked the brunette for a date.
Speaker 3: The next night, I go to her house. Rushed into
Speaker 3: the house. There's a potted pit plant, a piano and
Speaker 3: a couch, no radio, no TV. And I'm waiting and waiting.
Speaker 3: She's late. I'm there early for the date. She's late.
Speaker 3: She's late. She's late. I go over to the piano
Speaker 3: and I go boom boom, my training in the KEYFC
Speaker 3: on the accordion, boom boom, and I started to sing
Speaker 3: these Arms Long to hold You? When are you coming down?
Speaker 3: We've missed the beginning of the movie. It is supposed
Speaker 3: to start at seven, and I'm singing this stupid song,
Speaker 3: these Arms Long to hold You. I forget about that Burton.
Speaker 3: I sit down to write some songs and say, here's
Speaker 3: the beginning of a song. It's called these Arms. He goes, well,
Speaker 3: that doesn't go anywhere. Why don't we call it these eyes?
Speaker 3: These eyes cr every night, These arms long to hold you.
Speaker 3: And the minute he said that, boom and outcomes by
Speaker 3: birth backrack training. Because we before Bertain was in the band,
Speaker 3: we had shaken over a big hit sixty four to
Speaker 3: sixty five. Got invited to New York to the Kingsman
Speaker 3: Louis Lewis tour. We were on Scepter Records owned by
Speaker 3: Florence Greenberg, who had Dion Warwick, Chuck Jackson, the Cherrell's.
Speaker 3: She wrote Soldier Boy for the Cherells. Her songwriters were
Speaker 3: Backcarck and David. They came and played songs just like
Speaker 3: this in the studio for Don Warwick every single day.
Speaker 3: I mean I heard San Jose and do you know
Speaker 3: raw with Burton with Burt background and Hal David singing
Speaker 3: the stuff Bert Bert Backer all these chords. I also
Speaker 3: found out that was the Zombies because the Dombies did
Speaker 3: it tour with Dean Worick and Rod Arg was sitting
Speaker 3: and listened to Bert Bacherak songs. So if you listen
Speaker 3: to the Zombies, tell her no, it's just like Undone.
Speaker 3: She's coming on the same chords, but different era. So
Speaker 3: when you listen to These Eyes, it sounds like a
Speaker 3: normal pop song, like three or four songs. I think
Speaker 3: there's twenty two chords in it. Yep. Besides the the
Speaker 3: the other part is very jazzy, like F major seventh
Speaker 3: over G.
Speaker 5: These eyes.
Speaker 3: Nobody would go that's standard Papa jazzys. These eyes. I'm
Speaker 3: crying these I've seen a lot of.
Speaker 4: Change key like you what these.
Speaker 3: A changed key again? You change again? These keeps changing
Speaker 3: key in going up And for Burton to sing that
Speaker 3: he was eighteen at the time, you can't sing that song.
Speaker 3: Nobody can sing that except him and maybe Elton John
Speaker 3: or Stephen Tyler. You got to have like a three
Speaker 3: or four octave voice and hit every note. Oh our
Speaker 3: crime like really like that. I got really lucky to
Speaker 3: get this guy as a singer, really incredible singer. Even today,
Speaker 3: I'm listening to old tracks that we did years ago.
Speaker 3: Just incredible voice. He's still touring and if we get
Speaker 3: the guest who name back, will be We'll be touring
Speaker 3: at the Guest Who next year. The real guys who wrote.
Speaker 2: The songs, not the guys who.
Speaker 3: So you mentioned laughing. Okay, that's from the platter song
Speaker 3: and cliches.
Speaker 4: Of night are calling. It's twilight time time together last
Speaker 4: a twelight time. I should laugh, but I cried because
Speaker 4: you'll learn. Let's be boar. Also, Dave Clark.
Speaker 3: Give me one chance, I'll be.
Speaker 6: Happy just to be with you. Give me give me
Speaker 6: a chance to be near you mecausecause I love you.
Speaker 3: Dave Clark took the same thing and wrote just because.
Speaker 3: So they're all there. And I learned this trick from
Speaker 3: Brian Willison when I turned the Beach Boys. Brian, how
Speaker 3: do you get these chord progressions? He said, get a
Speaker 3: fake book. Every musician in New York goin. They're jazz
Speaker 3: fake where they're all the Broadway hit songs. So I said, look,
Speaker 3: give me an example. Okay, here's an example five but two.
Speaker 3: Has anybody see my Instead of those changes, keep them
Speaker 3: half as long or keep them double? I said, what
Speaker 3: do you mean? He goes, I get around my side
Speaker 3: of town. I'm a real good head, make it real
Speaker 3: good bread. I get around and it's five for two,
Speaker 3: five for two. Excif going five for two, he just
Speaker 3: made it longer. Get a fake book. They tell you
Speaker 3: how to put chords after chords and end up where
Speaker 3: you started where you should when you're singing a song
Speaker 3: with these transitional things and middle eights that are unbelievable
Speaker 3: Broadway middle eights or what prompted the Beatles, the middle
Speaker 3: eight of every song is another little song that gives
Speaker 3: your relief from the verses and the choruses. So a
Speaker 3: lot of the guests whose songs had middle eights or
Speaker 3: pre courses, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 2: So give me a good example of a pre chorus
Speaker 2: from Beatles or from the Beatles are from the guests who.
Speaker 3: Song, well, well it's another instead of going uh over
Speaker 3: and over, not the pre course and then the odd
Speaker 3: then the big course comes in the thing. And we
Speaker 3: were very lucky to record that here in New York
Speaker 3: at Phil Vermon Studio, with Phil Vermon being our engineer
Speaker 3: and mixer. Because you hear these eyes on the radio,
Speaker 3: it sounds phenomenal. Even today everything is and thick and
Speaker 3: roomy and juicy and phenomenal, where other stuff sounds very dry.
Speaker 3: From that era.
Speaker 2: You did two songs I think off that record in
Speaker 2: New York, didn't you, because.
Speaker 3: Well the whole album, well, here's what happened. The whole album,
Speaker 3: the Wheatfield sol was done at Philermont Studio. Are in
Speaker 3: our studios sounded great. Then we signed with RCA. We
Speaker 3: were independent before that. These I became a hit. RCA
Speaker 3: signed it. We get to New York and they say,
Speaker 3: guess what, you now get to use our studios. Really
Speaker 3: where are they? Or they're in Greenwich Village. It's where
Speaker 3: being Crosby cut White Christmas. Oh really, so we're going
Speaker 3: to the room is dead. It's an okay chamber for
Speaker 3: having strings. You don't want big boomy strings. We go
Speaker 3: in there. We can't even get a drum sound we're
Speaker 3: trying to do. Is it because the room's too big
Speaker 3: or carpet everywhere? Like there was no there was no
Speaker 3: room sound. You clapped, it was your clap vanished and
Speaker 3: had weird little pockets in the corner of bass oofs
Speaker 3: and things like that. It wasn't really a great studio.
Speaker 3: So we're in there trying to record the follow up
Speaker 3: to These Eyes, which is now a million seller, and
Speaker 3: RCA is screaming, do another song, do another song, and
Speaker 3: we're saying we're a rock band. We only did one ballad.
Speaker 3: It was These Eyes. We don't want to be Gary Peckett,
Speaker 3: the Union Gap with Young Girl Get Out of My Mind,
Speaker 3: over and over and over, and the Rocco like anestros
Speaker 3: they had guy at the time said radio ain't going
Speaker 3: to play a rock song by you guys, not for
Speaker 3: a couple of years. We want to not a ballad
Speaker 3: of just like these Eyes. Okay Rocco And I heard
Speaker 3: the beg song in the event of something happening to me,
Speaker 3: there's something I would like it. So I said to Briton,
Speaker 3: I started these eyes with a piano, which gives you
Speaker 3: a break. And he's on stage. He goes, boom boom,
Speaker 3: that a little intro. Everybody knows that, and it's so simple.
Speaker 3: I'm going to take the begs and put the platters
Speaker 3: over it.
Speaker 5: And go.
Speaker 3: But I love nothing, And he said, well do you
Speaker 3: have I don't have any lyrics. He said what should
Speaker 3: we call I said, well, represent that had a song
Speaker 3: called crying. What don't we call this laughing? You're laughing
Speaker 3: at me? You're breaking up, You're crying, You're laughing, I'm crying,
Speaker 3: You're laughing, and then then you're crying. I'm laughing, laugh
Speaker 3: and you're crying. And he goes, first song, it's first
Speaker 3: one that anybody ever laughed, and that became a hit,
Speaker 3: and so that song becomes rocos thing and then they
Speaker 3: flip it over and play undone. And I've heard other
Speaker 3: guys say when they heard Undone on the radio, it
Speaker 3: was life changing for them to hear jazzy chords like
Speaker 3: that with a pop voice and a food solo played
Speaker 3: on Top forty. The first time I heard Panima on
Speaker 3: the radio was the same thing. In the middle of
Speaker 3: all this stuff of beatles and beach boys and over
Speaker 3: the radio and rolling stones, outcomes Girl from Me Panina
Speaker 3: with the sexy voice of Astros Jolberto and the sacks
Speaker 3: of stan Gets. It's like nothing on the radio song,
Speaker 3: like do you want to hear it over and over again?
Speaker 3: Because it was so unusual and the same thing. I
Speaker 3: was told the same thing with undone, to have major
Speaker 3: and minor sevens in the over and over and over,
Speaker 3: with a pop melody over it and a great voice
Speaker 3: like Burdens, which are now a recognizable voice because of
Speaker 3: these eyes and laughing, and they're playing undone, and finally
Speaker 3: we rocked out with no time in an American Woman.
Speaker 2: But even in undone, which is, as you said, a
Speaker 2: jazzy song, it's got that heavier middle section, the too
Speaker 2: many people section, which has like a heavier guitar sound.
Speaker 3: I was trying to write a middle eight. It didn't fit.
Speaker 3: There had so many chords. So one thing you learn,
Speaker 3: you're writing a song. And I saw a great show
Speaker 3: a little a little while many years ago. Paul Simon
Speaker 3: and singing together two, three songs alone, a couple together,
Speaker 3: two or three loone, searching back and forth, and I
Speaker 3: noticed the similarity. Every Paul Simon and sing song and
Speaker 3: solo songs have got incredible verses with very very lot
Speaker 3: of lyrics, and when it gets to the chorus, it's boom,
Speaker 3: simple three chords, simple verses. Keeping that in mind, I
Speaker 3: did the same thing with Undone, A lot of chords,
Speaker 3: a lot of verses. I get to the middle, and
Speaker 3: I got to make the middle boring mm hmm. And
Speaker 3: I don't know what to do, so I just take
Speaker 3: too many mountains and I don't know what I'm doing,
Speaker 3: but it's kind of like a cello line the nature.
Speaker 3: Then I go too.
Speaker 5: Many people, not enough us to see, too many lies
Speaker 5: to leave, not enough time too.
Speaker 3: And I saw that from the Zombies too, at the
Speaker 3: end of tell her No Little, that's Britain hitting his face.
Speaker 3: Oh h your cheek. Yeah, before you stole from everybody
Speaker 3: told them. So you meet rod Ers and say, man,
Speaker 3: we stole your thing. He said, I know it. I
Speaker 3: knew the first time I heard it. Congratulations, did a
Speaker 3: great job, you know.
Speaker 2: So you also recorded in Minneapolis, right that's where we
Speaker 2: first went Okay.
Speaker 3: When we were in Winnipeg, we shaken over with one microphone.
Speaker 3: We had a Fender concert amp, which is two channels,
Speaker 3: but four and two inputs in each channel. So I
Speaker 3: had my guitar through a little echo tape recorder into
Speaker 3: one channel with the bass. The other one had a
Speaker 3: real guitar mic on a piano. Little would call the
Speaker 3: mouse pickup the he's just stuck on a piano, A
Speaker 3: little contact like that. So our mixing board with the
Speaker 3: Fender amp, one mic in the middle of a room
Speaker 3: just like this, a set of drums and Chad Allen,
Speaker 3: the singer, stood in front of the mic and sang
Speaker 3: shaken all over. Wow. We heard a playback. The drums
Speaker 3: were too loud. We moved the drums back of foot.
Speaker 3: Chad moved in closer. I turned my guitar up. We
Speaker 3: did five takes. We picked the take that had the
Speaker 3: least amount of stakes. Mono, you had to do five
Speaker 3: or six takes and everybody kept making mistakes. You picked
Speaker 3: the one with least amount of mistakes. We sent it
Speaker 3: into the record label. We were called Chad Allen and
Speaker 3: the reflections. We couldn't use the name because the Reflections
Speaker 3: had a hit called just like Romeo and Juliet then
Speaker 3: from Baltimore, and we had to change our name. We
Speaker 3: couldn't find a name, so they said, we'd like this
Speaker 3: record a lot. Take advantage of the British Invasion. It
Speaker 3: sounds very British. It is a British hit. It was
Speaker 3: number one in nineteen sixty one by Johnny Kidnap Pirates,
Speaker 3: And here we are in sixty four and this could
Speaker 3: be a hit here and the kids in Winnipeg love
Speaker 3: it at the dances. It's British Invasion, but it's heavy
Speaker 3: rock and roll. It's not pop like the Beatles. Stuff
Speaker 3: was really poppy. And they put out fifty white labels,
Speaker 3: forty fives shaken all over big black letters and put
Speaker 3: guests who with a question mark hundred and it came
Speaker 3: out in Canada and everybody in the radio thought it
Speaker 3: was a British band. That it was Brian Jones and
Speaker 3: George Harrison and a guy from the Pretty Things and
Speaker 3: a guy from all these band together at a party
Speaker 3: who couldn't put their name on it because they're all
Speaker 3: signed with different bands and a different label. So they put
Speaker 3: guests who on it. So this mystique starts above the
Speaker 3: song and we're calling rediously saying it's us, it's us,
Speaker 3: and they're saying, no, it's not. As a British band anyway.
Speaker 3: That goes to number one in Canada. Florence leases it
Speaker 3: for Scepter Records here and it goes top twenty in Billboard.
Speaker 3: We're in high school, right, I quit school before my
Speaker 3: final example to come here to do The Kingsman, Louis
Speaker 3: Louis Tour, which was incredible. Deannor the Belmonts, Barbara Mason,
Speaker 3: Eddie Hodges, the Turtle, Sanda Sham and the Pharaoh down
Speaker 3: in Memphis, and the Kingsman, the Louis Louis Tour like incredible.
Speaker 2: You mentioned American Woman and that song came out of
Speaker 2: a almost an accident, right, It came out of a jam.
Speaker 3: Us an accident. We had been playing the States, backing
Speaker 3: up other groups like Crystals, run S, stuff like that.
Speaker 3: And when you did that, you played one song, You
Speaker 3: played Shaken all over and maybe another song in the middle.
Speaker 3: We might have played the Louis Louis sing We just
Speaker 3: on tour the Kingsman, and then you up another band
Speaker 3: or the swarfied bands. We reach play ten minutes. We
Speaker 3: suddenly got a gig in Canada, a three hour dance
Speaker 3: at a bond Spiel, which is curling, a curling tournament.
Speaker 3: So there's ice. It's a half moon in the prairie
Speaker 3: of aluminum with no heat. They freeze the I think
Speaker 3: pour water in the ice. There's targets and they're sliding
Speaker 3: rocks around and it's a bond Spiel. It's a curling tournament.
Speaker 3: We get a dance in there to celebrate the bond Spiel.
Speaker 3: They put plywood on the floor the stage and body
Speaker 3: heat warms it up, and we're playing on stage. It's
Speaker 3: a three hour set, so by then you'd have a
Speaker 3: set written out. We would take a break, and then
Speaker 3: when the next set starts, instead of calling each other
Speaker 3: because the no iPhones are nothing, then the band would
Speaker 3: start to play dune dud doo doo doo doo to
Speaker 3: an animal song. We'd all know that's the beginning. We'd
Speaker 3: all come to the stage and finish the song. In
Speaker 3: the middle of a song, I break a string. I'm
Speaker 3: playing my fifty nine less pole which have the bigs
Speaker 3: beyond it, so your string has to come from here.
Speaker 3: It's got to go over the ridge, under a bar,
Speaker 3: over a bar and the little hole in the string,
Speaker 3: and that's got to fit a little nipple on your Bigsby.
Speaker 3: And then so you do your big B. So you've
Speaker 3: got to bend a string and put it under and
Speaker 3: put it on this little nipple. It's in the dark.
Speaker 3: I have no road. You have no tuner. So Burton coming,
Speaker 3: says Randy Brooke, a string talks about yourself. He's got
Speaker 3: to change the string. So I go. I'm on my
Speaker 3: floor in front of Burton's piano. I don't have a tuner,
Speaker 3: so I'm going going going go on the piano playing
Speaker 3: an E and a B. And I'm tuning up my guitar,
Speaker 3: putting on my string. And as you're tuning a Bigsby,
Speaker 3: there's a spring in it, so it's up this high.
Speaker 3: So as you're tuning it, the handle and the spring
Speaker 3: goes down. You have to keep tuning it over and
Speaker 3: over until all the strings are in tune, because every
Speaker 3: time you tighten the string, the spring goes down and
Speaker 3: they all go out of tune. So I'm tuning it.
Speaker 3: I'm going so I like to tune the guitar to
Speaker 3: walk to five five five one, and I'm on my
Speaker 3: niece playing that, and the audience their head snaps around
Speaker 3: and go, oh my god, I can't forget this riff.
Speaker 3: And I'm in the dark. I stand up in front
Speaker 3: of Burton's piano and I go like this. The drummer
Speaker 3: comes on, he starts to play. Jim Becks starts playing bass.
Speaker 3: Burton is out at the back of the hall hanging
Speaker 3: out with some guys and it's not a recognizable song.
Speaker 3: So he's in the audience talking, we're not playing the
Speaker 3: next song in the sets, we're not playing also the
Speaker 3: Rising Son or whatever the animal song is that dode
Speaker 3: in that dirty old part. We got to get out
Speaker 3: of this place. We're not playing. We got to get
Speaker 3: out of this place. And somebody says, then, why aren't
Speaker 3: you on stage with the band. He looks at we're
Speaker 3: on stage because running on I'm doing play something. He
Speaker 3: does harmonica solo, he does a piano solo. Very he
Speaker 3: brought argent and zombie solo. He plays a flute solo.
Speaker 3: I said, sing something, Sing anything, because I know you
Speaker 3: have words. You'll help you to remember the riff. The
Speaker 3: riff is so simple, you forget it. So he's sang
Speaker 3: American woman, stay away from me four times. That was it.
Speaker 3: We soloed, he did it again. That was it. We
Speaker 3: will go to record. We tell Jack Richardson, we got
Speaker 3: this song, but I forget how it goes. What do
Speaker 3: you mean, I said, well it was? He said, okay, everybody,
Speaker 3: this is RCA studio is in New York, in Chicago.
Speaker 3: Everybody out of the studio. Randy, get on your knees
Speaker 3: in front of Burne's piano, put a string on your guitar.
Speaker 3: Get go back to that place. Oh wow, see if
Speaker 3: you can tune the guitar so you can play the riff.
Speaker 3: And if we get we'll run the tape recorder, play
Speaker 3: the riff, play what you think the riff is, and
Speaker 3: then we'll come in. And meanwhile, I got a version
Speaker 3: of that. It's terrible, but it's the riff and I'm
Speaker 3: doing it. It's almost like it's almost like that, just
Speaker 3: playing the rip like that, And out of that we
Speaker 3: taped it. We listened to it. I played the rhythm
Speaker 3: on my gretch and my uh Fender stratocastro that and
Speaker 3: then to sit on top because there's no foot pedals.
Speaker 3: Then you had one app and three guitars. The fender
Speaker 3: was thinner, the gibson was thicker in sound, and the
Speaker 3: gretch was more ringier, or you had a rickenback or
Speaker 3: something like that. So on top since this less Paul,
Speaker 3: this just right on top of the track and it's
Speaker 3: just floating there and it's magic happened in the studio
Speaker 3: with that? How did you.
Speaker 2: Get that on that solo? The is it the sustain?
Speaker 2: There's something on that solo the.
Speaker 3: Way way way back. Because I grew up playing violin
Speaker 3: and I love viola. I have a viola now because
Speaker 3: I got too big for violin. Two hunch avilla is
Speaker 3: just a bigger violin. Same. I put the violin strings
Speaker 3: on tune like a viola, tune like a violin. I
Speaker 3: always wanted to play melodic solos, and melodic solos aren't
Speaker 3: like national anthem kind of things or hymns. There's no
Speaker 3: fast hymns. It's onward Christian, so just like everybody can
Speaker 3: sing it. So I want to play line and I
Speaker 3: can't get to sustain. So I figure out if you
Speaker 3: put a little amp into a big amp, the little
Speaker 3: amp can be loud and you take the speaker out
Speaker 3: molt Fender has had a little output to your speaker
Speaker 3: into a big amp and you get this sustained sound
Speaker 3: like a ciello or viola, like you're boeing and you're
Speaker 3: using the vibrato in your hand. And that would last
Speaker 3: maybe ten or fifteen minutes, and then the amp would
Speaker 3: blow up. It literally go into flames because you're putting
Speaker 3: electricity into electricity and if it goes on too long. Literally,
Speaker 3: I would take the amp into a guy to get
Speaker 3: it fixed every Saturday or Sunday or Monday morning after
Speaker 3: don the gig because it would had burn marks all
Speaker 3: over the amplifiers. And he said, what are you doing through?
Speaker 3: These amps are on fire? And I'd say, well. His
Speaker 3: name was gar Gar Gillis. Garnet Gillis said, Guar, I
Speaker 3: plugged this into there and I get this really great sound.
Speaker 3: So you can't put an amp into a namp. You
Speaker 3: can put a preamp into an amp. Preamps about one
Speaker 3: and a hat wats output. You're putting fifteen wats into
Speaker 3: thirty amps. It's like gasoline and a match is going
Speaker 3: to burst into flames. I say it does. He said,
Speaker 3: I'll build your preamp. What's that, Well, stereos have a preamp.
Speaker 3: I have a big amplifier. The one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: watts little preamp you put your tape recorder in or
Speaker 3: your turntable. It's a one and a half watch. You
Speaker 3: have a volume control. The other one is the big
Speaker 3: power to make it loud. This that's your tone control.
Speaker 3: And every so he makes me a thing, and we
Speaker 3: just called it the noise machine. And I was reading
Speaker 3: a book at the time by Werner Herzog, and I
Speaker 3: would call him up and say, gar, I'm coming down.
Speaker 3: Let's work on the noise machine again. And then we
Speaker 3: had three noise machines. We need to get a name
Speaker 3: for this thing. And my wife kept saying, to me,
Speaker 3: how do you know what you're talking about. Why don't
Speaker 3: you call I said, well, I would call him, say
Speaker 3: I'm down to work on the thing. No, the other
Speaker 3: thing all you guys talk is about is things. And
Speaker 3: the other thing, I said, okay, I'll call it a Herzel.
Speaker 3: You had this book called Verner Herzel, like a pocketbook.
Speaker 3: I'll call this thing a Herzog. It's rather than a
Speaker 3: buzz face or whatever you want to call it. So
Speaker 3: he made me a think was one twelve AX seven
Speaker 3: tube and another twelve AX seven tube you can put
Speaker 3: in your drive. One tube by turning up your tube
Speaker 3: gets really hot. The other one you can squeak in
Speaker 3: a little bit and you make your sustain and it
Speaker 3: goes out to your amplifiers about one and a half
Speaker 3: wats out or even half a wat out to your
Speaker 3: power amp. And he built me a power amp because
Speaker 3: I blew up all the fenders. He would buy a
Speaker 3: normal Dinaco Dina kit, which was a home sterea at
Speaker 3: the time. Nice and clean, turn it up loud. It's clean.
Speaker 3: You want your home sera to be clean. But the
Speaker 3: little preamp, this Herzog made me distortion and a little
Speaker 3: off on switch on the front, which we made. The
Speaker 3: extra switch would be a little bit longer. If I'd
Speaker 3: be playing a solo on stage, I'd flipping on to
Speaker 3: my solo. At the end of the solo, I'd roll
Speaker 3: my note and reached back from my elbow and turn
Speaker 3: it off. The turn it on again with my thumb,
Speaker 3: play the sole as I'm notes sting into the song again,
Speaker 3: flip it off. I said, okay, can you put a
Speaker 3: switch in there? A foot switch off and on switch.
Speaker 3: So we made this thing called the Her Song that
Speaker 3: plug into a Gardett app got me to sustain on
Speaker 3: that thing as well as my less Paul had a
Speaker 3: Bigsby on it. So when you're bending a note on
Speaker 3: a guitar, you go from there up, but you can't
Speaker 3: go you can't go below unless you go That's not
Speaker 3: the same when you have a Bigsby. So you're bending
Speaker 3: a note here and you're getting a shake below and
Speaker 3: above pitch on An American Woman and I double tracked it.
Speaker 3: One thing we went to do that television show is
Speaker 3: Burton double tracked his vocals inmaculately sound to the syllabo,
Speaker 3: and I double tracked my guitar. You listen to No Time,
Speaker 3: they're all double track guitars and it sounds fat and thick.
Speaker 3: It sits right on top with the track no matter
Speaker 3: what you're listening to. So those all came from accident
Speaker 3: and trying to be a little bit different. I loved
Speaker 3: Eric Clapton solo and I Feel Free, That's what I'm
Speaker 3: copying An American Woman. You listen to the middle of
Speaker 3: my solo, it's pretty much I feel free that they're
Speaker 3: going I feel free, dude, Yeah, the same thing.
Speaker 2: Now, there must be you must have had a million
Speaker 2: pedal makers come up to you and say, how do
Speaker 2: I get that?
Speaker 3: I did a little while later somebody invented, I think,
Speaker 3: call a sons amp, because you're now recording at home
Speaker 3: the songs empt you're plug into it and it emulates
Speaker 3: a speaker in different sounds. And I had a sons
Speaker 3: amp was really good. And then they made a songzamp
Speaker 3: rack mount and when I got to number forty eight,
Speaker 3: I said, Amo, American Woman. I turned it on. It
Speaker 3: was my sound. Now it was my sound from the record,
Speaker 3: which was my fifty nine less Paul through a Garnet
Speaker 3: herzog through a garnet amp, through an RCA ribbon mic
Speaker 3: something like this through a Uri compressor to sixteen track tape,
Speaker 3: but with the final sound that was on the record.
Speaker 3: And so I called up the guy. He's in New
Speaker 3: York here so at sounzamp, famous guy, and I said, hey,
Speaker 3: I'm number forty eight. Can you make me an American
Speaker 3: woman pedal? He said sure, all I want is number
Speaker 3: forty eight in the pedal, So maybe a couple of pedals.
Speaker 3: They're very rare because at the time, he didn't have
Speaker 3: a big enough case for it, so he jammed it
Speaker 3: into a normal sized case. So because it's jammed in
Speaker 3: that pedal, if part of the circuit board touches the
Speaker 3: outer case, which is metal, it shorts out, So you
Speaker 3: got to take it apart and maybe put duct tape
Speaker 3: in there so it's like isolated. And then it's an American
Speaker 3: woman pedal. So there's a very few of those out today,
Speaker 3: but if you get a rack amount sounds, amp number
Speaker 3: forty eight is an American woman amazing. And then Garnett
Speaker 3: Gark called me, oh, maybe twelve fifteen years ago, and
Speaker 3: he said, look, I'm eighty five. I can hardly do this,
Speaker 3: and that I'm gearing down. I'm going to be passing
Speaker 3: away soon. I've got this wrong with me and that
Speaker 3: wrong with me. But I found a box of parts
Speaker 3: from nineteen sixty six when we made the original Herzog,
Speaker 3: and he said, I can make some. I said, how
Speaker 3: much do you want for me to I don't know.
Speaker 3: I said, oh, make as many as you can. How
Speaker 3: many these are all military high high duty, heavy duty parts.
Speaker 3: He said, I can make maybe eleven or twelve or thirty.
Speaker 3: I said, make them all, send them all to me.
Speaker 3: Tell me what you need. I'll pay you. I'll pay
Speaker 3: you double. So he sent them all to me. So
Speaker 3: I gave one to Neil Young, went to Lenny Kravitz,
Speaker 3: went to Bob Rock, the Great Producer, went to Steal
Speaker 3: Crop or Steve Cropper several to the national musicians who
Speaker 3: want to get that sound when you hear let it ride,
Speaker 3: we're going slow thinking, which is my lust. Paul with
Speaker 3: the Bigsby through the herzog, it's like a cello. It's
Speaker 3: phenomen better than a shallow actual because a cello you
Speaker 3: gotta you run out of bow and you gotta go
Speaker 3: up upstroke down. When it's the herzog and you gotta sustain,
Speaker 3: and you got the Bigsby, then note can last for
Speaker 3: it Oh amazing. So those came out of a dream
Speaker 3: of wanting to play and have my guitar sound like
Speaker 3: ccello or a viola. I like the term slowhand because
Speaker 3: the Eric Clapton used to play very slow, and I
Speaker 3: played very slow, so I always got compared to him
Speaker 3: playing with the slowhand. Because you play one note and
Speaker 3: put something like bbck. You play one or two notes,
Speaker 3: you put more into it than guys going crazy all
Speaker 3: this kind of weird hammer on stuff. You can see
Speaker 3: kids on the internet now, and I saw somebody joking
Speaker 3: was Alex Van Aalen and Sammy Heygar. We're joking about
Speaker 3: these whiz kids now that you google at thirteen. They're
Speaker 3: eight years old. They're doing all these incredible hammer on
Speaker 3: stuff on YouTube. The world's fast and guitar player. But
Speaker 3: they can't play in a band, and they can't play
Speaker 3: a song. They just learned a whole bunch of licks
Speaker 3: that maybe their dad taught them, and they're really cool,
Speaker 3: and maybe someday they will realize there's something to holding back.
Speaker 3: And I'm playing with some guys and letting him do
Speaker 3: the groove and then you get a chance to groove.
Speaker 3: But things are so much different now with YouTube. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean when I learned, it was one record at
Speaker 3: a time, saved after your money. You bought a forty five,
Speaker 3: You learned the A and B side, who wrote it,
Speaker 3: who recorded, who published it, who wrote you learned everything.
Speaker 3: You traded it like Superman combooks to your friend who
Speaker 3: had a forty five. I would trade Neil Young singles.
Speaker 3: I at his single and traded my shadow singles back
Speaker 3: and forth. Those were the days, and the singles were
Speaker 3: so precious. I mean we couldn't afford anything, you know,
Speaker 3: it was like amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well listen, we might be fragile. You're not fragile.
Speaker 3: I'm a survivor.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: Of my doctor's worst he called me his worst patience
Speaker 3: because I don't have to come back to it. Only
Speaker 3: last Wednesday, I would certified cancer free to two years
Speaker 3: and he said, I'll see you in another year. We've
Speaker 3: got to check you every year. But I had non
Speaker 3: hospital and Fulma had five cancers. Wow, stomach appendix, prostate, thyroid,
Speaker 3: and non hoskins all gone.
Speaker 2: Wow, looky, you look amazing and you're back playing.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Thanks Mandy Bachman for chatting with Bruce and bringing his
Speaker 1: guitar along to play through some of his great hits.
Speaker 1: If you want to hear playlist some of the songs
Speaker 1: mentioned in this episode, you can hear that at broken
Speaker 1: Record podcast dot com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at
Speaker 1: YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcast, where you can
Speaker 1: find all of our new episodes. You can follow us
Speaker 1: on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is produced and
Speaker 1: edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Erek Sandler
Speaker 1: and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tollinay. Broken Record
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Speaker 1: Anny Beats. I'm justin Richmond.