Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome to the Bob Left Sets podcast. My
Speaker 1: guest this week is Randy Backman, legendary musician from Canada,
Speaker 1: founding member of the Guests Who, founding member of Bachman
Speaker 1: Turner Overdrive, still playing music doing radio. Great to have
Speaker 1: you here, Randy, wonderful to be here. Okay, well, thank you,
Speaker 1: I'll take that to the bank. Get nothing, okay. So
Speaker 1: originally from Winnipeg. So what's that like? I mean, first
Speaker 1: of all, a lot of the funny thing is that
Speaker 1: so much great music comes from Canada, especially now because
Speaker 1: government supports it, whereas we get no support in the
Speaker 1: United States. But people in the United States are really
Speaker 1: ignorant to Canada, even though it's just across the border.
Speaker 1: So what's growing up in Winnipeg Like, Well, I've been
Speaker 1: on tour in Europe and you're going to a record
Speaker 1: store in Germany or Hollander anywhere, and there's a map
Speaker 1: on the wall of Canada. Really would be a gold
Speaker 1: circle around Winnipeg with little arrow going Neil Young, Randy Bachman,
Speaker 1: bt O, the Guests Who, and then around Saskatoon, Joni
Speaker 1: Mitchell around Montreal. So this is like downstairs and the
Speaker 1: records of the Whole Wall. So Canada is very I
Speaker 1: mean the world is very aware of Canadian music. And
Speaker 1: growing up in Winnipeg was amazing. It's dead center in
Speaker 1: the middle of Canada, which is pretty much the middle
Speaker 1: of North America. And it's also in the middle of nowhere. Okay,
Speaker 1: just because people know nothing. If you drive south, where
Speaker 1: do you hit In the United States? Minneapolis is five
Speaker 1: miles south five hundred. How far north of the border
Speaker 1: is Winnipeg about, so you drive down there. But growing
Speaker 1: up there was like Liverpool in the sixties. The drinking
Speaker 1: age was twenty one, so everybody from twenty one under
Speaker 1: went to all the high school dances. So this is
Speaker 1: you know, this is Neil Young, Sugar Mountain. You know,
Speaker 1: I can't go to the Team club an Yeah, this
Speaker 1: is like Neil Young and the Squire's Fred Turner and
Speaker 1: the Rock and Devils who became the Turner of back
Speaker 1: d Burton Cummings and the dev Brons, and I was
Speaker 1: in called Chad Allen and the Reflections who when we
Speaker 1: sent in the song shake on all Over, the record
Speaker 1: label said we don't like you can't use your name.
Speaker 1: We're gonna put guests who under it and we became guests.
Speaker 1: Who Okay, but you're in Winnipeg. What does your father
Speaker 1: do for a living. He's an optician. I wear I
Speaker 1: class really and how many generations Canadian? Are you an
Speaker 1: immigrant or his parents immiget? My dad was born in Winnipeg,
Speaker 1: but his parents, his dad came from Germany. From Germany,
Speaker 1: why they end up in Winnipeg. Well, there's the same
Speaker 1: thing with my mother's side. They were Ukrainian Polish. They
Speaker 1: landed in Canada. They went to the train station, said
Speaker 1: this is how much money we've got and they said, oh,
Speaker 1: you could go to thunder Bay, or you can go
Speaker 1: to Winnipeg, or you can go you went as far
Speaker 1: as your money. Like you see on TV a kid
Speaker 1: running away from home. Here's eighty bucks. I got to
Speaker 1: get out of here. Where can I go? Or you
Speaker 1: can go to Keepsie, New York? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That's what they did. So they ended up there. Okay,
Speaker 1: so you're in Winnipeg. Actually, I've never I've been to Toronto,
Speaker 1: I've been to Vancouver, been to Montreal into other places,
Speaker 1: camp I've never been to Winnipeg. So what's Winnipeg like
Speaker 1: when you're growing up. Well, when you grow up and
Speaker 1: you're poor and all your friends are poor, and it's
Speaker 1: an immigrant city, you're happy. Your dad works, your mother
Speaker 1: does the house. You've got winter six or seven months
Speaker 1: of the year. And when you get old enough to
Speaker 1: stop playing hockey outdoors forty below because then there was
Speaker 1: no indoor rinks. You just as a kid, you know,
Speaker 1: to go early and shovel the rink, and you played
Speaker 1: played hockey for a while. But I was a I
Speaker 1: started playing violin when I was six. What was your
Speaker 1: teacher would always say to you, don't play a sport
Speaker 1: where they bend your fingers back. Don't you can't play hockey,
Speaker 1: you play, can't play baseball. So consequently I started playing violin,
Speaker 1: and I did solo things like running, swimming, riding a bike,
Speaker 1: not with team sports where they would break my fingers
Speaker 1: or hurt my hand. So I kind of grew up
Speaker 1: a nerdy cissy playing violin from the age five to
Speaker 1: fourteen until I saw Elvis on TV and I'm playing
Speaker 1: Royal Conservatory violin classical. Then what is that? And my
Speaker 1: mother's younger sister there and they're screaming at the TV
Speaker 1: set and Elvis is on the bottom half as blacked
Speaker 1: out because he's shaken. Run What is that guy doing?
Speaker 1: And why is everyone screaming? That's Elvis Presley? Who? What?
Speaker 1: What's that? Name? Was a weird name the first time
Speaker 1: you heard it, Elvis Presley, that's called rock and roll?
Speaker 1: What's that? It's a guitar? Who's that guy behind him?
Speaker 1: Scotty Moore playing this great hybrid of Chad Atkins, Rold Travis,
Speaker 1: Rocketbilie stuff? And I said, that's what I want to do.
Speaker 1: Never touched my violin again. Okay, let's go back for
Speaker 1: a second. Why did you start playing the violin to
Speaker 1: begin with? I'm about five or six, born just after
Speaker 1: the war. Um, my parents wanted better for me, and
Speaker 1: they said, okay, we want we will afford to give
Speaker 1: you music lessons. What do you want to play? Drums
Speaker 1: too loud, too noisy, to expense, and what's your next choice?
Speaker 1: Piano too lousy, too noisy, too expensive? Well, okay, harmonica
Speaker 1: too little too You know, I end up with a little,
Speaker 1: half sized violin. And you do take lessons in school
Speaker 1: or outside. I took lessons outside Royal Conservatory of Music,
Speaker 1: the big deal. But what my mother wanted being Polish Ukrainian,
Speaker 1: and my dad being German, was for me to play
Speaker 1: polkas and jigs and reels at all their house parties
Speaker 1: and weddings and bar mitzvah's. I grew up in the
Speaker 1: Jewish part of towns. Everybody was you might be Russian,
Speaker 1: but you might be Russian Catholic or Russian Jewish. To us,
Speaker 1: there was nothing. We were just a bunch of kids
Speaker 1: growing up there. So there was these mad house parties
Speaker 1: and weddings and bar mitzvahs and bad miss and everything
Speaker 1: was going on. And I would go there and play
Speaker 1: all this. I mean, I'd play all the Jewish klezmir
Speaker 1: stuff from the violin and and all the Ukrainian policas
Speaker 1: and stuff, and then the odd walls, and it got
Speaker 1: pretty boring after while because all the adults are there
Speaker 1: getting hammered and drunk and dancing like Cossacks and leaping
Speaker 1: in the air just like you see in the movies.
Speaker 1: And then and then I'd go and do my kids
Speaker 1: Royal Conservatory Chopin and Tchai Kossi stuff like this is
Speaker 1: such a weird polarization of me. Then when I saw Elvis,
Speaker 1: it was the same thing, this weird polarization of all
Speaker 1: coming together because he would do old Sheep are he
Speaker 1: do a church song for his mother, and he was
Speaker 1: trying to be like Dean Martin, like mother loved her
Speaker 1: being Crosby. And then suddenly would outcome this you ain't
Speaker 1: nothing but a hound dog rock And where this guy
Speaker 1: would go from being a calm, cool, collected to this wild,
Speaker 1: raving maniac hu Lin. Later when I said, oh, Elvis
Speaker 1: is my favorite guy. He's like wild, and they said,
Speaker 1: have you seen or heard the black Elvis? Well, who's that?
Speaker 1: It's a little Richard. He wrote two dy Fruity, he
Speaker 1: wrote Ready's Head, he wrote rip it Up, he wrote
Speaker 1: all these Elvis songs. Let me hear little Richard. When
Speaker 1: I heard, I just went nuts. It's actually like the Beatles.
Speaker 1: They felt the same way exactly. Yeah, okay, just go
Speaker 1: back in your family. How many kids in the family
Speaker 1: for four boys? And where are you in that higher
Speaker 1: holdest boy? All this place, all the hopes and dreams
Speaker 1: were in you. Yes, and I was the designated babysitter.
Speaker 1: Those were the days when your parents said we're going
Speaker 1: out to visit your grandparents, play with your brothers in
Speaker 1: the streets until the street lights come on. Then go
Speaker 1: in the house, put on your pajamas, go to bed.
Speaker 1: They were like, there's no nobody worried about kidnapping or nothing. Exactly.
Speaker 1: I walked to school, you know, until like eighth grade,
Speaker 1: and we'd watch to school. And then even first grade,
Speaker 1: you were walking to school, wasn't your mother would take
Speaker 1: you the first day. Okay, take the first day. You're
Speaker 1: on your own. So that was that. So I grew
Speaker 1: up with three brothers, but I was then used to
Speaker 1: being a maker of decisions. When it's time to divide something,
Speaker 1: I cut it up. They all get to pick one
Speaker 1: to three, four, and I get the last piece. So
Speaker 1: when you're cutting a pie in for you cut it
Speaker 1: pretty damn equal. You don't kind of take the big
Speaker 1: piece first. You wait till your little brothers take the piece.
Speaker 1: So when I left the guests who, nobody would play
Speaker 1: with me because I was kind of blackballed. After I
Speaker 1: left the guest who after American Woman, I went to
Speaker 1: my brothers who had kind of played in the family
Speaker 1: band around the house. Okay, so when you were playing
Speaker 1: violin at these various cases, were you're getting paid no, okay,
Speaker 1: just a social thing. I got Christmas presents though. Okay,
Speaker 1: So in any event, you hear Elvis, so you switched
Speaker 1: to the guitar. Yeah, how does that happen? Gives a
Speaker 1: little more detail. My cousins played guitar. I had an
Speaker 1: aunt with my own, my mother, younger sister who had
Speaker 1: blonde hair, and a boyfriend with a white Chevy convertible,
Speaker 1: and they would take me to all the country music
Speaker 1: fescause they wanted to see the Ray Price violins, because
Speaker 1: violin was very big then the country music fiddle as
Speaker 1: they called it. And but I started to notice the
Speaker 1: guitar players who are thumbs Carlyle and you know, and
Speaker 1: Chad Atkins and Merle Travis, and I'm noticing that. Then
Speaker 1: I hear on one of the shows, I see Jerry
Speaker 1: Lee Lewis, and he comes when he plays You Win
Speaker 1: Again in Crazy Arms, the Rape Price song, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he starts doing good, doing good, A whole lot of
Speaker 1: shaking going on, and his hair is beautiful, it's all wavy,
Speaker 1: and he stands up. The piano stool falls over backwards,
Speaker 1: crashes on the stage. Everybody looks around. He starts whole
Speaker 1: lot of shaking going on and the place goes crazy.
Speaker 1: They go nuts. This is an outrage. What is this
Speaker 1: guy doing to country music? The next day on the
Speaker 1: radio at noon, we come home for lunch from school,
Speaker 1: they play a whole lot of shaking going on twice
Speaker 1: and go, this guy went crazy last night the Winnipeg
Speaker 1: out a toryment iPhone and go, I was there, I
Speaker 1: was there, was it wasn electric, It was incredible. Then
Speaker 1: I see Elvis at the same time on He a
Speaker 1: little bit slower because I want to make sure that
Speaker 1: was Jerry Lee Low Jerry Lee Lewis. But at that
Speaker 1: time he did not have any fame in Calgary. I
Speaker 1: mean he was he was another guy. He was kind
Speaker 1: of a country guy who played this boogie woogie piano.
Speaker 1: Is kind of an outcast. So if you listen to
Speaker 1: his first records, it's you win again, crazy arms. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's when your heartaches beginning. He was doing Ray Price
Speaker 1: kind of songs with a honky tonk, but he had
Speaker 1: this one song shaken over them when he did it
Speaker 1: change the world. Okay, so you call the next day
Speaker 1: and you were there and was everybody talking about it school?
Speaker 1: Everybody talking about at school did you see Elvis on TV? Yes?
Speaker 1: I did. I'm gonna play guitar. I'm gonna be like Elvis.
Speaker 1: I really wanted to be like Scotty Moore, but Elvis
Speaker 1: made me play guitar. Okay, So how did you get
Speaker 1: your first guitar? My cousins had a guitar. I went
Speaker 1: to and said, I need to play guitar. The great
Speaker 1: thing about violin is it's a lead instrument. I could
Speaker 1: pick up a guitar and play the lead and everything, okay,
Speaker 1: but therefore strings out a violin and there's six strings.
Speaker 1: So they taught me a couple of chords. They said,
Speaker 1: we're cousins, and it's a folk guitar, and acoustic is
Speaker 1: a chuck Berry blonde single cutaway Gibson. I've seen chuck
Speaker 1: Berry chuck Berry guitar. Are you kidding? In the same
Speaker 1: thing Scotty Moore played with a blonde Gibson guitar. And
Speaker 1: so they teach me three chords, and they teach me
Speaker 1: my first song. I walked the line Johnny Cash, so
Speaker 1: I learned. I walked the line. I go, this is
Speaker 1: kind of like that's alright, mom. I just could have
Speaker 1: played fastest saying, oh, it's the same three chords over Well,
Speaker 1: this is just like hound dogs, the same three chords.
Speaker 1: My cousins come back after a week of being away
Speaker 1: fishing and they come to get their guitar back, and
Speaker 1: I could play every song on the radio better than them,
Speaker 1: going what happened? And I could play the leads. How
Speaker 1: can you play the lead? Well, I played lead on violin.
Speaker 1: I just found the notes on the guitar and they
Speaker 1: go while you're incredible. So that was the beginning for me. Okay,
Speaker 1: then how did you get a guitar? Sears catalog. I
Speaker 1: couldn't afford to go into music, so everything was three
Speaker 1: and four dollars. Look at hearst harmony guitar, you want electric,
Speaker 1: it's an extra ten bucks. It's forty nine dollars. You
Speaker 1: buy the guitar, You start to play which guitar? Did
Speaker 1: you buy the acoustical? The election? I bought the acoustic,
Speaker 1: which I found it was a mistake. Nobody could hear it.
Speaker 1: I went to a drummer who was the drummer of
Speaker 1: the guests who to this stake, Gary Peterson. I was fourteen,
Speaker 1: he was twelve. I said, you want to be in
Speaker 1: a band. He says, you know from school, Yes, from school.
Speaker 1: And he also played with all the big bands when
Speaker 1: they came to Winnipeg, when the Dorsey Band came, or
Speaker 1: Lionel Hampton. He started playing drums when he was before
Speaker 1: you go into a drum solo with Jean Krupa. There's
Speaker 1: all kind of pictures on me. He was he was
Speaker 1: four and five and eight when he's doing it. I
Speaker 1: met him when he was twelve, and he play a
Speaker 1: hockey bank who go to hockey banquet And here's a
Speaker 1: solo from Gary Peterson. Okay for those people who don't
Speaker 1: even know what is a hockey banquet, Well, you're on
Speaker 1: hockey teams, you're playing at the end of the year.
Speaker 1: There's a little dinner for the kids to encourage him.
Speaker 1: And the best goalie is Canute. The best bad player
Speaker 1: is Randy Backman, who does do anything. He's afraid to
Speaker 1: hurt his fingers that can. The best goalie is Gary Peterson.
Speaker 1: He's a stock little guy who plays drums and he's
Speaker 1: got the arms and he can dive around and he
Speaker 1: can be the goalie. So it's the little thing. And
Speaker 1: older hockey players come there from the Winnipeg Jets or
Speaker 1: whatever they were called in and they kind of hype
Speaker 1: the kids up on being in the sport. But they
Speaker 1: would also have music. They have music, and this kid
Speaker 1: would play a drum solo, like like Jane Cooper drum solo.
Speaker 1: You know, liked rich When you were still even playing
Speaker 1: the violin, you were aware of them, yes, And then
Speaker 1: I switched to guitar and said, you want to be
Speaker 1: in a band, and he said, to do what I said.
Speaker 1: We'll play the high school dance. Come to the dance
Speaker 1: while they plays records. I know, I walked the line.
Speaker 1: I know Bye Bye Love, I know all these songs.
Speaker 1: We'll just get a mike and sing. It doesn't matter
Speaker 1: if you can sing or not. It rock and roll,
Speaker 1: who cares, you know, And you just play drums. And
Speaker 1: he said, and how much will we get paid? And said, well,
Speaker 1: we don't get paid. And he said, well, I play
Speaker 1: in a polka band. I go and play weddings and
Speaker 1: bar mitzvahs and all this stuff, and I get twenty
Speaker 1: five bucks a night. And I go, you're kidding. My
Speaker 1: dad was making thirty bucks a week as an optician.
Speaker 1: You get twenty bucks night, So why don't you come
Speaker 1: with me learn a few things on violin, I said,
Speaker 1: I don't want to play violin, Okay, learn them on guitar.
Speaker 1: So I learned rebel rouser, which is basically a polka.
Speaker 1: You can polk at the rebel rouser to Dwaine anything.
Speaker 1: And I learned guitar boogie and a couple other things.
Speaker 1: And I learned sleepwalk. And I go and to play
Speaker 1: these weddings and I come home with like fifty bucks.
Speaker 1: I'm making more than my dad. I'm fifteen, I'm sixteen.
Speaker 1: And then he says now. Then Gary Peterson says, now
Speaker 1: we could play the high school that asked for nothing,
Speaker 1: because we've got money in the bank from playing the wedding.
Speaker 1: So one weekend we'll go to the countryside and Winnipeg
Speaker 1: and play a wedding on a farm where they put
Speaker 1: you up for night and news you played Friday, Saturday
Speaker 1: and Sunday. There was a bride's party, a groom's freak
Speaker 1: out party, and then the wedding on Sunday whatever. So
Speaker 1: we started to play rock and roll. I got asked
Speaker 1: to play rhythm guitar in a band in a little
Speaker 1: bit slower So the first two. It's just the two
Speaker 1: of you, two of us and one other guy who
Speaker 1: knew rhythm guitar okay. He would sing the songs okay,
Speaker 1: and you were playing on your acoustic guitar, my electric guitar.
Speaker 1: I didn't have an app, but this guy had an app. Okay.
Speaker 1: How did you switch? You said you ordered the Who's
Speaker 1: the Guitar? From Sears? How did you get an electric guitar?
Speaker 1: Same thing Sears, my electric snow gut. I sold it
Speaker 1: the kid in my classroom. I brought it for thirty
Speaker 1: four I sold it for twenty nine bucks. I put
Speaker 1: that towards the electric. I got the electric, which I
Speaker 1: still have to this day, which is the same kind
Speaker 1: that Jimmy Page played, a little thin black down electro
Speaker 1: or silver tone guitars that was called from the catalog
Speaker 1: beautiful Sound. I still got it today. And then that's
Speaker 1: like sixty years later, seventy years years later. So in
Speaker 1: any event, you have this friend who's got an app.
Speaker 1: He's gonna play rhythm guitar, and you can plug your
Speaker 1: guitar in there, right, and then what are your first gigs? Weddings?
Speaker 1: Then I got a call. We hear you can play guitar. Well, here,
Speaker 1: you're really good. We have it. We have a band
Speaker 1: called Ellen and the Silver Tones, who then became Chad
Speaker 1: Allen and the Reflections, and we want you audition for
Speaker 1: rhythm guitar. Here's an album. Here's an EP to learn
Speaker 1: four songs, and that's the the way. Obviously, taking violin lessons,
Speaker 1: you could read music. No, no, no, that was That's
Speaker 1: one another reason I quit. I would go to this teacher.
Speaker 1: She would open this thing which I called chopping. It
Speaker 1: was chopin. I want to play chopping again. I really
Speaker 1: like that song. My mother loves that song. It's not chopping,
Speaker 1: its chopin. So my teacher was beautiful, a lady T shirt.
Speaker 1: She was great. She'd put my music in front of me.
Speaker 1: She'd put in front of her and she would play it.
Speaker 1: And when she played it, I could play it. She said,
Speaker 1: now you try to play it. I would played exactly
Speaker 1: like her. You should go, well, that's amazing. Practice it
Speaker 1: for a week. And say, why would I practice it
Speaker 1: for a week. I already know how to play it. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's two more, and she'd play them. I'd go and
Speaker 1: practice them for a week, and I would look at
Speaker 1: the notes, and I'd see that they would go up
Speaker 1: and down. It's kind of a clue, like you're going
Speaker 1: like louder or softer, like talking like visual clues. And
Speaker 1: she said, I think you're good enough. I want you
Speaker 1: to audition for the Winnipeg Junior School Symphony. It's eighty
Speaker 1: four kids. It's at the school called Calvin I, which
Speaker 1: is where Neil Young went to school. So go there
Speaker 1: Saturday morning. You're gonna audition for second violin. There's the
Speaker 1: soloist and then you're you're gonna be playing harmony to
Speaker 1: the souls. There's four violins too, viola's a couple of
Speaker 1: cellows and at a bass. I go there to the audition.
Speaker 1: I'm thrilled. We start to play a song which she
Speaker 1: has played for me, so I know the song. When
Speaker 1: it gets to a certain part of the song, I
Speaker 1: play the wrong note. I'm playing blues on a violin.
Speaker 1: We're playing Chakovski or something that that that that kind
Speaker 1: of thing right, And suddenly there's tap tap, tap tap tap,
Speaker 1: and the whole symphony stops and the conductor says, second violin,
Speaker 1: bar thirty two, it's an e natural, not in E flat.
Speaker 1: Let's take it from the top. I have no idea
Speaker 1: what this guy's talking about. He's talking Russian or Martian
Speaker 1: to me. I have no idea what he's saying. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what bar thirty two is. I'm playing
Speaker 1: by here, heart and Soul and by ear. We played
Speaker 1: again off the top. I make the same mistake. He stops.
Speaker 1: He says, second violin, could you please play me an
Speaker 1: E on the violin. It's an open string. I play it.
Speaker 1: I'll play it up high. I played up high, and
Speaker 1: I could plain E flat. I didn't know what he
Speaker 1: was talking about, because so now there's seventy nine kids bullying,
Speaker 1: laughing at me. In tears. I pack up my violin.
Speaker 1: I go home. My mother goes, how did it go?
Speaker 1: I said, I quit. I've never playing again. The next
Speaker 1: night is when I saw Elvis on TV and said,
Speaker 1: oh m G, what is that? That's what I wondered.
Speaker 1: That's insane, that's well. I don't want to worry about
Speaker 1: any or E flat. I just want to play with
Speaker 1: like I feel and have people go nuts. I want
Speaker 1: to go crazy when I play the music. I don't
Speaker 1: wanna have to stand in and do this Royal Conservatory
Speaker 1: kind of thing that was it never okay, So then
Speaker 1: you hear about chat Allen. They want you to play rhythm,
Speaker 1: Send the the send the EP learned those songs. VP
Speaker 1: is is the Shadows Cliff Richards backup band like the
Speaker 1: Ventures instrumental band. So I'm learning the chords, but of
Speaker 1: course in my head, I'm hearing the lead guitar. I
Speaker 1: go to the rehearsal, the lead guitar player breaks a string.
Speaker 1: I finished playing the song. The whole band is looking
Speaker 1: at me, going, you play better lead than our league tar.
Speaker 1: Do you want to be lead guitar? I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I came. I play lead man. You know,
Speaker 1: I knew all the rhythms, um, So then I became
Speaker 1: the lead. We got the record shake un all over
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. So chat Allen had reflections that
Speaker 1: he made any records before you got involved. No, okay,
Speaker 1: so how do you get that record deal? If you
Speaker 1: even know? We had a DJ in those days, everybody
Speaker 1: was a Dick Clark. So our local TV guy had
Speaker 1: a local TV show called Team Dance Party. He then say,
Speaker 1: we're playing at so and so Community Center tonight. I'm
Speaker 1: bringing chat Allen. The reflections we were named like Cliff
Speaker 1: Richard and the Shadows, chat Ellen and the Reflections, and
Speaker 1: so we go and play this. I got asked was
Speaker 1: his real name chat Allen. His real name was Allen
Speaker 1: cow Bell KO w b L. So he changed it
Speaker 1: to chat Ellen to be like Chad and Jeremy. We
Speaker 1: want to be British. We're in Winnipeg. We want to
Speaker 1: we want to be the British invasion of Winnipeg. There
Speaker 1: comes chat Ellen and we become the Reflections to be
Speaker 1: like the Shadows. Then we got a cease and assist
Speaker 1: noticed from a lawyer who represents the Reflections, who had
Speaker 1: a hit called just like Romeo and Juliet. Can't use
Speaker 1: the name me too, But we go, well we can't
Speaker 1: use the name. We send in Shake all Over, which
Speaker 1: we recorded by Johnny KIDNAPO little bit slower, so we
Speaker 1: got the DJ. How do you get a record deal?
Speaker 1: We just sent it blindly to Quality Records and try.
Speaker 1: Every record we got in Winnipeg was on Quality Records.
Speaker 1: They were a big company Toronto who leased records from
Speaker 1: chess um Our c A everybody, so they were Canadian
Speaker 1: ly when they at least the national pure every record
Speaker 1: I got was on quality records or real records. So
Speaker 1: every chess thing I got a Muddy Waters and bow Didley,
Speaker 1: Chuck Berry. They were all in quality. So we look
Speaker 1: up the address as eleven eighty birch Mount Road, Scarborough, Ontario.
Speaker 1: You send in your tape. We get okay, well how
Speaker 1: and where did you make the tape? The same guy,
Speaker 1: the team Dance Party Guy's name is Bob Burns. He
Speaker 1: becomes our manager. They have a recording studio just like
Speaker 1: this with one microphone in. We get a record from
Speaker 1: a cousin in England called shakun Over with Johnny Kidding
Speaker 1: and the Pirates. We played It's fantastic. We played the dances.
Speaker 1: Kids loved this. Guitar riff and bass riff. We recorded
Speaker 1: one night. We sent it to quality records. We get
Speaker 1: a telegram act this is before we could even afford
Speaker 1: long this, and get a telegram back saying this is
Speaker 1: a smash we want to release it. We need to
Speaker 1: b side and what's the name of the band? We say,
Speaker 1: we don't have a name. We've got to cease and
Speaker 1: desist that we want to put this out. This is
Speaker 1: the beginning of the British invasion. Sixty four. This sounds
Speaker 1: very British and it sounded like Joe Meek the Tornadoes,
Speaker 1: you know, Tellstar with all the echo on it and everything.
Speaker 1: And so we're just gonna do fifty copies with a
Speaker 1: white label, put Shakole over and put guests who undered.
Speaker 1: They sent it out to fifty stations. Nobody knew we
Speaker 1: were guys from Winnipeg. They thought it was British. They
Speaker 1: played it was number one in Canada. Then they find
Speaker 1: out it's the punks from Winnipeg. It's Chad Ellen. Reflections
Speaker 1: that got least by Florence Greenberg Acceptor Records in New
Speaker 1: York was taped twenty in Billboard and we're still in
Speaker 1: high school. We had no idea what was happening. It
Speaker 1: was amazing. I have to ask, did you make any
Speaker 1: money from it? We got asked to go to New York.
Speaker 1: The answer is yes and no. We made some money,
Speaker 1: but it was called pacification money. What kind of money
Speaker 1: pacified you? Past? Complete? Well, OK, we gotta go. We
Speaker 1: get a silver record for half a million record sales
Speaker 1: and no royalties, and um, so I'm in there on
Speaker 1: state of Florence Greenberg, who you know, owned scepter and
Speaker 1: she wrote Soldier Boys. She managed to sell. She managed
Speaker 1: John Warwick, her and Paul cant with like a whole
Speaker 1: thing there, and we got asked to do the Kingsman
Speaker 1: Louis Louis to The Kingsmen were on her label as well.
Speaker 1: So we're doing the Kingsman Louis Louis. But you're still
Speaker 1: in high school. I quit. How old were you when
Speaker 1: you quit? Nineteen twenty. I flung a couple of years
Speaker 1: because of guitar. When I discovered guitar, was like, this
Speaker 1: is it. I don't care about school. Okay, what do
Speaker 1: your parents say about that? You'll never make it? Get
Speaker 1: a backup. My backup plan might plan B was stick
Speaker 1: to Plan A. Be a guitar player. Love that that way?
Speaker 1: Backup plan to stick the planet. Yes exactly, So I
Speaker 1: stuck to it no matter what people have said to me.
Speaker 1: What would you be if you weren't a successful musician?
Speaker 1: And I would say I would be a musician, not unsuccessful.
Speaker 1: But this is what I did since I was like five.
Speaker 1: I played music. I get joy out of it. It's
Speaker 1: my whole life. I know when I hear something, I
Speaker 1: remember I have a phonographic memory. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: learn guitar player Chuck Berry record Elvis or Chad Atkins.
Speaker 1: I played through once or twice. It's in my head.
Speaker 1: I figure out the notes. I can play it. I
Speaker 1: don't need the notes, I just figure out where it
Speaker 1: is on guitar. So I was very blessed that way,
Speaker 1: to have a phonographic memory. Okay, So then you're on
Speaker 1: tour with the Kingsman, Phenomenal Deianna, the Belmont The Kingsman,
Speaker 1: Barbara Lewis, Sam the Sham and the Pharaoh's unbelievable whole
Speaker 1: summer Rock and Roll tour East Coast, New York, Philadelphia,
Speaker 1: all the beaches, all the beach So you went by bus, yeah,
Speaker 1: and the big bus. Well, I have to ask, because
Speaker 1: certainly by the end of the decade there were legendary
Speaker 1: escapades on the road. So on your first tour, were
Speaker 1: those escapades there too? They were there, but we were
Speaker 1: very innocent kids from Winnipeg. I remember I loved being
Speaker 1: in the back of the bus with Diana the Belmonts
Speaker 1: because they were like do whopping in the back of
Speaker 1: the bus. It was just like amazing. The original Belmonts
Speaker 1: and we grew up on that and so it was
Speaker 1: pretty amazing. And then we play a club, I think Albany,
Speaker 1: New York, and they said, you want to come in
Speaker 1: a club. And I don't drink or smoke or nothing,
Speaker 1: so like, I'll go in and have a look at
Speaker 1: a club, but like, I'm under twenty one or whatever.
Speaker 1: So we get into this club and there's beautiful, beautiful,
Speaker 1: beautiful women there and these guys all get a chick
Speaker 1: and I just go back on the bus and wait,
Speaker 1: and then they come in and they're really upset because
Speaker 1: the chicks they've got our men. It's a tranny bar.
Speaker 1: And the first time I see a gorgeous woman, I'm going, wow,
Speaker 1: this is this looks like Marilyn Monroe or Jane Mansfield.
Speaker 1: And I found it it's a guy, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. Like, and so Doon the Belot's guys are
Speaker 1: there freaking out, like we got this chick, we got
Speaker 1: our hand up her her dress and guess what a
Speaker 1: surprise party, you know that kind of thing, like he
Speaker 1: didn't participate, no, And then I also saw these guys
Speaker 1: taking a cigarette with little tweets and pulling out some
Speaker 1: of the tobacco and putting in something else, some white
Speaker 1: powder or something, and then putting in the tobacco and
Speaker 1: doing a whole package of cigarette then just smoking it
Speaker 1: all that. I didn't know what this was. We're like
Speaker 1: innocent kids from Winnipeg, you know what I mean. And uh,
Speaker 1: that went all the time. And then we get to
Speaker 1: New York after that tour. Because we were such a
Speaker 1: good high school band, we played what was on the radio.
Speaker 1: To play these high school dances, you wouldn't played what
Speaker 1: was on the radio. So you played Ray, Charles and
Speaker 1: and Elvis and the Beach Boys and the Beatles. You
Speaker 1: played everything, the Charel's and everything. So Florence Greenberg managed
Speaker 1: and wrote for the Charell's. She also had a connection
Speaker 1: to the Crystals and the run Nets. So us white
Speaker 1: guys got to back the Street and four black chicks
Speaker 1: all over New York City, which was fine in New York.
Speaker 1: When you go to Chicago summer and race riots would started.
Speaker 1: Our dance co ops would come in with guns and
Speaker 1: tear gas and there would be blood baths and it
Speaker 1: was absolutely horrific. And six sixty six, the segregation. We'd
Speaker 1: pull into a gas station down south, they come up
Speaker 1: with the shotgun and shoot in the air. You can't
Speaker 1: come in here, you guys with those the black girls
Speaker 1: go to the back door. You guys come in the
Speaker 1: front door. And we hadn't We didn't know this. And Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: When you're in Winnipeg growing up and it's pretty much
Speaker 1: all white and a black moose to town, you idolize them.
Speaker 1: They are Diana Ross, they are Ray Charles, They're Jackie Robinson.
Speaker 1: There Joe Lewis the brown Bomber. We thought black people
Speaker 1: were like something really super duper special because we only
Speaker 1: saw the famous ones on TV and are in our
Speaker 1: hockey trading cards, are our basketball card, baseball cards, and
Speaker 1: so it's like it was a real shock to us.
Speaker 1: So that whole tour is a big eye opener for us.
Speaker 1: We'll take a quick break and come back with more
Speaker 1: of my conversation with Brandy Backman, recorded live at the
Speaker 1: tune In Studios in Venice, California. I love having musicians
Speaker 1: in the studio like Paul Rodgers of Bad Company and
Speaker 1: Nancy Wilson of Hart. This week on the podcast, we
Speaker 1: have Randy Backman the stories galore about his humble beginnings
Speaker 1: playing the violin in Winnipeg to playing arenas around the
Speaker 1: world with the guests Who and Backman, Turner over Dry.
Speaker 1: Whether you come for the music or conversations about the
Speaker 1: tech business, be the first to hear next week's episode
Speaker 1: by subscribing to the podcast I'm tune in, Apple Podcast
Speaker 1: or your podcast player of choice. While you're there, please
Speaker 1: be sure to rate and review. Okay, let's get back
Speaker 1: to my conversation with Randy Backman. Okay, let's go back
Speaker 1: to Winnipeg. So what happens You said, what happened when
Speaker 1: you saw Elvis? What happened when you saw beat the Beatles?
Speaker 1: Similar kind of thing change, a world changing event. Um,
Speaker 1: Suddenly every guy in every band could sing. The drummer
Speaker 1: and the guests who, Gary Peterson sang Ringo songs. I
Speaker 1: got to sing George Harrison songs. The other guy, Burton
Speaker 1: Cummings or the other good chat Ellen before he left,
Speaker 1: and then we got Burton Coummings from Chat Allen left,
Speaker 1: Uh would sing the Paul and John songs. So all
Speaker 1: my life I've been singing George Harrison songs. Hence my
Speaker 1: new album by George. Okay, we'll save that for Walls
Speaker 1: we're getting the history. Now. You talk about Winnipeg being
Speaker 1: a little Liverpool. Did you know Neil Young, Did you
Speaker 1: know Joni Mitchell? And how did you come to know that? Well,
Speaker 1: when you're playing at Community Center and you have a
Speaker 1: big gretch guitar like I had, and an echo machine
Speaker 1: and an AMP, everybody came to see you to look
Speaker 1: at your guitar, and your amp didn't care about you.
Speaker 1: That was a big deal. At least. I grew fifty
Speaker 1: miles to New York City and used to go in
Speaker 1: your high school years go to Manny's just to look
Speaker 1: at the start. I mean, you go to the show.
Speaker 1: It's just amazing. We were fascinated, right, So every Saturday
Speaker 1: I'd get on the bus, I'd go down town to Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: There was a two blocks stretch there where there was
Speaker 1: an Eatons which is kind of like a Sears, and
Speaker 1: Hudson's Bay, which is like another Sears. Two blocks in between.
Speaker 1: We're all music stores and clothing stores. We would go
Speaker 1: to one, get chips in gravy. That's all we can't afford.
Speaker 1: Meet Neil Young, meet Burton Cummings, walked down the street,
Speaker 1: stand at the window and stare at the Fender guitar
Speaker 1: that Buddy Holly played on Ed Sullivan last week. They
Speaker 1: wouldn't let us play if they knew we didn't have
Speaker 1: any money. Who we could even go and try. We
Speaker 1: just look at the guitar and dream, look at it sideways,
Speaker 1: look at it this way, look at it that way.
Speaker 1: Look at the orange gretch that Eddie played on Bandstand
Speaker 1: and Chad Acts played in Eddie Cochran played, and just
Speaker 1: look and dream with the guitars. Finally you can afford
Speaker 1: a guitar. So so I got an orange gretch. Newly
Speaker 1: On would come to see me playing my orange gretch,
Speaker 1: and he bought an orange gretch. When he did a
Speaker 1: gig with the Squires, he had to call us and say,
Speaker 1: I don't have an amp. Are you guys playing next Friday?
Speaker 1: Can I brow the amp? Yeah, we'll bring it down.
Speaker 1: We'll watch you play. We'd go watch Neil and the
Speaker 1: Squire's play all through Jim Kale's with a bass player
Speaker 1: in the guests who his concert amp, which was two
Speaker 1: channels and two inputs, so it had four infuts. So
Speaker 1: you plugged your microphone in the singers sang into one.
Speaker 1: You put the bass on the other the guitar and
Speaker 1: the other and you had a set of drums with
Speaker 1: no mics, and you would and played a high school
Speaker 1: dance one am on one amp. Well, how big a
Speaker 1: speaker was here? There's four tens and ender concert AMPKF.
Speaker 1: You turned it just right to sound it pretty good.
Speaker 1: There was no stereo then, this was like the sixties.
Speaker 1: Everything was mono. When it was a record player, they
Speaker 1: had one speaker on the stage. So then did you?
Speaker 1: Was Neil Young singing? Then he sang a song called
Speaker 1: I Wonder which was horrific, And I sig song called
Speaker 1: Stop Teasing Me, which was horrific. But his forte was
Speaker 1: guitar playing, and he copied Hank Marvin's from the Shadows.
Speaker 1: He had a song called Sultan and Aurora. I wrote
Speaker 1: a song called Maiden Lingoland, the same gratch, guitar, the
Speaker 1: same echo. We were like parallel twins. They're doing each
Speaker 1: the same kind of thing. But he was on one
Speaker 1: side of town. I was on the other side of town.
Speaker 1: And then what about Joni Mitchell. She came to Winnipeg
Speaker 1: quite a few times. When Chad Allen, after we finished
Speaker 1: the Kingsman tour, went back to Winnipeg. We weren't the
Speaker 1: top band anymore. We have been gone two months. There's
Speaker 1: all kind of high school dances, all the lakes around
Speaker 1: Winnipeg and resorts. The next bands up. We're tied for
Speaker 1: number one spot. Burton Cummings and the Devrons, Neil Young
Speaker 1: and the Squires. Okay, what do we do? We're dethroned.
Speaker 1: Chad Allen says, nobody knows who I am. I'm not
Speaker 1: Chad Allen and wore everybody called me guess who. I'm
Speaker 1: sick of the name. I'm going back to college. He
Speaker 1: goes back to University of Manitoba. And where's he today?
Speaker 1: In an old folks home? Wow? Yeah, uh? He goes back.
Speaker 1: Could we eliminate the competition? I know how? I call
Speaker 1: Burton c Commings his mother who went to school with
Speaker 1: my dad. Hello, Rhoda and Burton come to our meeting.
Speaker 1: Shirt I asked him to join the Bandy breaks up
Speaker 1: to den runs. He joins the guests. Who we go
Speaker 1: to We go to Regina to play a gig. Johnny
Speaker 1: Mitchell's playing the new Prairie Princess, the new Gordon Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: the new Leonard Cohen, the new Bob Dylan, female blonde hair,
Speaker 1: big blue eyes, great guitar, great voice. To go to
Speaker 1: see her at that gig, and Regina meet Jonnie Mitchell there. Okay,
Speaker 1: anybody else I'm missing who made it from Winnipeg. Well
Speaker 1: since then there's been a lot of Laurie mckinnets come
Speaker 1: through there. Tom cochrane came from clear Lake through Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: Just like you say they come through London, they really don't.
Speaker 1: They come from Birmingham or or Brighton or something or
Speaker 1: in Tranti say they come to Toronto. But Timmins, can
Speaker 1: you come to a little town to the big twe
Speaker 1: I think it was the end of the train, Like
Speaker 1: I said, when your parents are Grant came was immigrants
Speaker 1: and they had forty bucks. This will get you to Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're in Winnipeg, if you're
Speaker 1: Ukrainian or Jewish, go to that end of town. We
Speaker 1: don't like you guys. You're dirt. All the British people
Speaker 1: you go here. This is the uppity party town with
Speaker 1: all the nice trees. You guys are way out there.
Speaker 1: So we all we we went out there. But I said,
Speaker 1: we grew up eating dirt. And parogies and things like
Speaker 1: that and borshed and all that stuff, and we were happy. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what music is? What kept it all together? The
Speaker 1: house parties? Like I said, the barn miss was the weddings,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. What the kids? Twelve? And this is
Speaker 1: his birthday party and he gets thousands of dollars. I
Speaker 1: want to be Jewish, you know that kind of thing,
Speaker 1: like wow, okay, by getting a yo yo in a
Speaker 1: Superman comic and this kid's getting a thousand bucks to
Speaker 1: start a business when he's nineteen, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So you convinced Burton to be part of your band,
Speaker 1: and you've decided to continue under the Moniker guests, and
Speaker 1: so then what happens? Um we do a song called
Speaker 1: His Girl, We get a call from England. We like
Speaker 1: this record a lot. It's getting played in Canada. We
Speaker 1: want to sweeten it. What does that mean? We recorded
Speaker 1: in three tracks in Minneapolis. It means we'll put it
Speaker 1: on three tracks on a four track. We want to
Speaker 1: add a fourth track of a foogle horn and strings.
Speaker 1: What we're rough? And well? The Beatles are doing us,
Speaker 1: so are the Fortunes. Remember you got your troubles. I
Speaker 1: got mine and had the bird background, Google hornet and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Well, okay, we'll do anything for a hit.
Speaker 1: Thinking about a little bit slower. You had that deal
Speaker 1: with the label in Toronto. So now when you're recording
Speaker 1: in Minnesota, who's paying and what label is it? We're
Speaker 1: still paying? We have no idea about royalties. O. We
Speaker 1: went to Florence, agreement said we've had a hit. Was
Speaker 1: shaken all over. They said, here's four dred bucks a
Speaker 1: hundred bucks each. That was it. Okay, but who when
Speaker 1: you made this second record was getting played in Canada?
Speaker 1: Who released it? Same label? Quality record? But they sent
Speaker 1: it to guys just said we're gonna call you. Guess who.
Speaker 1: They sent it to England, Philip Solomon, who owns part
Speaker 1: of Pirate Radio. He owns King Wreck. It's we also
Speaker 1: know he's part of a what can I say, a
Speaker 1: family syndicate kind of thing. And so we go to
Speaker 1: England without a contract and we're so excited. We get
Speaker 1: on a plane. I don't even sign a contract. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be the new Beatles were from Winnipeg. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Well he sends a check, so you can go no, no,
Speaker 1: So you're going on your own money, going our own money.
Speaker 1: We buy new clothes, suits to look like the Beatles.
Speaker 1: Remember they had the beat of follow the suits and
Speaker 1: all this stuff. We buy new gear. We're forty granted
Speaker 1: the Holy Fly to England. Our first day there, we
Speaker 1: go to meet Philip Solomon at King Records. We find
Speaker 1: out he's part of the Pirate Radio station. I'm pirate radio.
Speaker 1: Was very blatant. We don't need to play your record,
Speaker 1: but we'll sell you commercial time. Our commercial time is
Speaker 1: a pound a second. You one hundred seconds played of
Speaker 1: your record. That's why records they were all two minutes long,
Speaker 1: seconds played. Give us a hundred twenty pounds, will play
Speaker 1: your record between four and six. They played it like
Speaker 1: a commercial. They're playing it off shore and everybody England
Speaker 1: listening to it because BBC is not playing nothing. They're
Speaker 1: fifty home grown talent and it's all Frankie Vaughan and
Speaker 1: all this weird stuff, and you know, Cliff Richard getting
Speaker 1: played and all that stuff. Britain has a whereas Canada
Speaker 1: has Ken Conner Britt calls you want to call it,
Speaker 1: Germany has Germ con So it helps the local talents.
Speaker 1: So we paid money through Philip Solomon and we owed
Speaker 1: him money. Then we go there said, okay, we want
Speaker 1: you guys to sign a contract. You get four hundred
Speaker 1: pounds a week each? What eight? What do you mean
Speaker 1: each for the band? Four pounds? What? I'm gonna put
Speaker 1: you on tour in Australia. This I'm gonna send this
Speaker 1: record to Australia, abill. This is a long called his
Speaker 1: Girl and um so when do we get royalties? What
Speaker 1: don't you understand about four hundred pounds a week? What
Speaker 1: do you mean? How long is this contract? Three years?
Speaker 1: You get four hundred pounds a week for three years.
Speaker 1: Where does all the other money go? It goes to
Speaker 1: pay the machine, the expenses to this that that really
Speaker 1: take or leave it? You don't have a contract. You're
Speaker 1: here in England, you're in the whole. We looked at
Speaker 1: each other. We've been through enough by then we just
Speaker 1: walked out. We didn't sign the contract. We had nothing.
Speaker 1: On the way out, we meet a guy named Jerry
Speaker 1: Dorsey who's also desperate. We're standing outside. We don't know
Speaker 1: what to do. We're in Soho and his outside of
Speaker 1: his offices. Twenty minutes later, Jerry Dorsey comes out and
Speaker 1: we go what happened? He said, I took the deal?
Speaker 1: What certainly for three years they're changing my name to
Speaker 1: Angelbert Humperdink. Okay, we're in England. We're in the whole
Speaker 1: forty grand We've got rooms at the Regent Palace Hotel
Speaker 1: and Piccadilly. I say to the band, Okay, I've got
Speaker 1: a few bucks saved in my own money. How much
Speaker 1: money have you got? We just don't want to go
Speaker 1: home with our tails. But when we left Winnipeg, you
Speaker 1: can see this in a video. Guess who are leaving
Speaker 1: for England. The whole cities are waving. It's like the
Speaker 1: Beatles landing in Winnipeg. They're waving good bye to us.
Speaker 1: You're gonna make it in England, the guests who are
Speaker 1: gonna be big the whole city. See the radio stations there,
Speaker 1: the TV and everything. We can't go back a week later,
Speaker 1: going we got shafted, we got screwed, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: So we call up Tony Hiller, who runs meals music
Speaker 1: that published shaken all over Hi. We're the guests who
Speaker 1: and he goes, oh, we know you guys are the
Speaker 1: a lot of ny Kid. Families very happy over you guys,
Speaker 1: because then after that that who did the song and
Speaker 1: everybody redid that song over and over again, and you
Speaker 1: were the first guys to do it after Johnny kidding
Speaker 1: the Pirates. What do you do in England? Well, we
Speaker 1: just met Philip Solomon and we've got shaft he said, Oh,
Speaker 1: I know Philip used to work for him. I know
Speaker 1: you got shafted. Why don't you come in and be
Speaker 1: I've heard your stof Why don't you be a demo band?
Speaker 1: I've got to cut some songs by two of my songwriters.
Speaker 1: You cut these two songs. I won't pay you, but
Speaker 1: bring two of your own and you can record. They
Speaker 1: can go home and say you record in England, So
Speaker 1: go to Regent Sound. We don't have any to record.
Speaker 1: Neil Young has given me his demo from Buffalo Springfield.
Speaker 1: We record Flying on the Ground is wrong for Neil.
Speaker 1: We're the first band ever recorded Neil Young song outside
Speaker 1: of him. Recorded a silly song I wrote called There's
Speaker 1: No Getting Way for You that never makes it anywhere.
Speaker 1: We record the song called this Time Long Ago. There's
Speaker 1: very much like the fortunes you got, your troubles I
Speaker 1: got mine, got the flugal horning in the strings and
Speaker 1: every thing, and we can go home with a master.
Speaker 1: We go home and send it to Quality Records and
Speaker 1: they go fabulous, great, they put it out. We have
Speaker 1: a hit record in Canada. So we turned this defeat
Speaker 1: into a triumph. We've we've recorded Regent Sound where the
Speaker 1: Beatles just recorded. We got this song this time long ago.
Speaker 1: We've done a Neil Young song flying on the Ground
Speaker 1: as our follow up single. Quality Records doesn't know what
Speaker 1: to do with it. Our contract expires. We're a free band.
Speaker 1: We're forty grand in the whole. We come back. We're
Speaker 1: gonna break up. Their Canada needs their money. Low's Music
Speaker 1: Store needs their money because we've gotten stuff on credit.
Speaker 1: We have no money. I get a call from a
Speaker 1: friend saying, Hey, I'm the producer of a television show
Speaker 1: called Let's Go, and all you gotta do is play
Speaker 1: the Top threty music is a half an hour Long's
Speaker 1: gonna play the Top fifty and Billboard the Top one.
Speaker 1: We'll pick the songs each week. Can you read music?
Speaker 1: And of course I say yes, even though we can't.
Speaker 1: And I say, who's writing the charts? He goes, Bob mcmallan.
Speaker 1: And I knew Bob mcmall and he was like Winnipeg's
Speaker 1: George and Martin. He helped all the bands, but he
Speaker 1: wrote little charts for string string quartets and everything. So
Speaker 1: I get his phone number and I call him, say, Bob,
Speaker 1: have you written the charts? This is like on Thursday night.
Speaker 1: We got to go on Friday and play five or
Speaker 1: six songs for Larry Brown? Have you done the charts?
Speaker 1: And he doesn't know. He's not supposed to tell me.
Speaker 1: We're supposed to show up cold and play the charts.
Speaker 1: He says, well, I've got this one done and that
Speaker 1: one done, and I got last train to Clarksville down.
Speaker 1: I got this downe I'm going okay, I'm writing them down.
Speaker 1: I run out and buy the six records Burton, and
Speaker 1: I learned them write out the courts. We practice Sturday
Speaker 1: and Sunday we go in. They put the music in
Speaker 1: front of us. We played the songs. Larry Brown comes
Speaker 1: and goes, wow, not only can you read play these songs,
Speaker 1: you sound like the records. And he goes to me,
Speaker 1: you can't really read a damn thing. You're right, he said,
Speaker 1: But you got the job. So that paid us eighteen
Speaker 1: hundred bucks a week as a band. And then we
Speaker 1: come back and we're now the Kings of Winnipeg again.
Speaker 1: We get all the high school dances. So besides getting
Speaker 1: eighteen hundred bucks, can you getting two and fifty night
Speaker 1: for high school dance? We're still making two or three
Speaker 1: or four hundred on the weekend. We pay off our debt.
Speaker 1: We get out a hole. We get a call from
Speaker 1: Jack Richardson, who's producing things Go Bad Or with Coca
Speaker 1: called these co commercials, the Ray Charles and other people singing.
Speaker 1: He's in Toronto working for McCann, Erickson and ad Agency,
Speaker 1: but he's the music producer. He calls it and and
Speaker 1: he says, will you guys do a thing for Coca Cola?
Speaker 1: And go yeah, we want to do a coke commercial.
Speaker 1: He says, no, No, I want you to do a
Speaker 1: whole album. I want you to do one side of
Speaker 1: an album. And I want the other band called the
Speaker 1: Stacados who later became the five Man electrical band who
Speaker 1: wrote signs of those great hits. They're Canadian, yes, they're
Speaker 1: from Ottawa. So we want to do an album that
Speaker 1: you can only buy with ten coke caps from Coca
Speaker 1: Cola and a dollar, so it will be ten cod caps.
Speaker 1: We'll call it a wild pair. So you're half the pair.
Speaker 1: The other half of the pairs the Staccatos. You and
Speaker 1: Burton write five or six songs, and I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: less Simerson in that band to write five or six songs. Well,
Speaker 1: they put it out. It sells eighty thou copies. He goes,
Speaker 1: this is like a gold album. We couldn't get a
Speaker 1: gold album because it wasn't sold through record stores or
Speaker 1: Canadian Record Association or anything, but we had to hit record.
Speaker 1: Then Jack interest and calls us up and goes, your
Speaker 1: stuff is pretty good. I watch you every Thursday on
Speaker 1: Let's Go on CBC. We're just kind of like the BBC.
Speaker 1: There's We had the show for two full years where
Speaker 1: our producer comes to us and goes, it's getting a
Speaker 1: little redundant. The charts then were very slow. Now you're
Speaker 1: on the charts. It's gone in two weeks. They're your
Speaker 1: song with the last two or three or four months
Speaker 1: and we're playing the same songs over and he said,
Speaker 1: why don't you write your own? But they've got to
Speaker 1: be good enough. To fit in between Vanilla Fudge doing
Speaker 1: You Got Me Hanging On and Heye Jude and the
Speaker 1: Supremes doing you know, Stopping the Name of Love. It's
Speaker 1: got to be good enough to fit on. I won't
Speaker 1: put it in the show. So comings and our start writing.
Speaker 1: Jack Richardson, here's a song, These Eyes, and he goes, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm going to mortgage my house and I don't want
Speaker 1: you guys to come to Toronto and record this album.
Speaker 1: So keep sending me all your demos, and we got
Speaker 1: the demos are recorded on TV. We're just pulling on TV,
Speaker 1: sending him real toy reels. He compiles an album. We
Speaker 1: go to Toronto record and he says, I've got a
Speaker 1: guy with ears to mix your album. I said, we
Speaker 1: all have ears. What are you talking about? It said,
Speaker 1: this guy has ears. Man, you don't know what I
Speaker 1: mean by years. Well, who's this guy. Well he's twentiesy genius.
Speaker 1: His name is Phil Ramon. So we said, okay, we've
Speaker 1: never heard of this guy. He mixes the album. It's great.
Speaker 1: We go to his studio A and our studios in
Speaker 1: New York. We record These Eyes. That thing you're here
Speaker 1: with Phil Ramon doing that that song still sounds great
Speaker 1: in the radio. Phormon is amazing. And I met him
Speaker 1: earlier when I was at with Florence Greenberg, because he
Speaker 1: did all John Warwick songs with Bert back Iraq. Once
Speaker 1: the demos are to inccepted, he took him over to him.
Speaker 1: He transferred them over and Bert's they're leading the orchestra
Speaker 1: and doing all that stuff with John Warwick. So I
Speaker 1: knew Phil and he was really a great guy. That
Speaker 1: we had to hit these eyes and then a little
Speaker 1: bit how'd you write it? Um? At the Joni Mitchell
Speaker 1: concert in Regina, do you know these stories? Because you're
Speaker 1: asking me the right questions. At the Joni Mitchell's story
Speaker 1: the Joni Mitchell gig at their four Dan Regina, it's
Speaker 1: sold out. Everybody's coming to see this Prairie princess because
Speaker 1: she's headed to l A. She's signed to Asylum Records
Speaker 1: or something, and she's under the wing of Elliott Robertson,
Speaker 1: David Geffen and Neil Young Brodby Stills the National Little Thing.
Speaker 1: The place is sold out and I'm there with the band.
Speaker 1: Burton Commings is there. There's an empty table with reserved
Speaker 1: on it and in walks. These two gorgeous chicks are
Speaker 1: blonde and brunette, and everybody goes, wow, they're clearly not
Speaker 1: from Regina. They got t shirts on at the University
Speaker 1: of Arizona, University of Utah, and they look American and
Speaker 1: they're wearing shorts and they're beautiful ones, blonde, ones, brunette.
Speaker 1: I'm a very shy guy. My dad had five brothers.
Speaker 1: I have three brothers. I didn't even know how to
Speaker 1: talk to a girl. So I say to our road manager,
Speaker 1: Jim Martin, who we called Jumbo. He's a big Guy's
Speaker 1: also our balancer, but he drove our truck and lifted
Speaker 1: our gear. Jumbo, can you go over to that table
Speaker 1: see those two chicks. See if you can sit at
Speaker 1: the table, talk to the blonde and not the brunette,
Speaker 1: and if you get lucky, call me over to the
Speaker 1: table and introduced me to the two of them, and
Speaker 1: then get away from the table. He calls me over.
Speaker 1: Joni's up there singing. She's just got married to Chuck Mitch.
Speaker 1: Or my name is Jonny Anderson. He's got married Jonie
Speaker 1: and Chuck Mitchell. Sheefter singing these great songs. I said
Speaker 1: at the table. Jim Martin leaves the table and I
Speaker 1: say are you together? And said, yeah, we're sisters. What
Speaker 1: can I take you home? Yeah? Our dad dropped this
Speaker 1: off and you could take us home. So I got
Speaker 1: enough guts driving them home to night to say to
Speaker 1: the burnette, I have tomorrow night off? Can I do
Speaker 1: you want to go to the movies? I have a
Speaker 1: night off? Sure? Okay, what do you do? I play
Speaker 1: in the band. I go to pick her up. I'm early,
Speaker 1: it's my first date. She's late. I get ushered into
Speaker 1: a room. It's like this. There's a piano, a plant,
Speaker 1: a little piano, and a couch. I've had no train
Speaker 1: and there's the piano. I've had no training on the piano.
Speaker 1: But when I got to be seven or eight, playing
Speaker 1: violin was a drag. My parents brought my next brother
Speaker 1: the ultimate polka instrument that Lawrence Welk accordion. So my
Speaker 1: brother's playing accordion and he hated it because we're a
Speaker 1: little in your five and they put an accordion on you.
Speaker 1: You look down, you can't see it. See there's keys there,
Speaker 1: and there's oompap buttons here, and you got to move
Speaker 1: his left hand to Pump. He hated it. I used
Speaker 1: to get him to lay down, put the according side
Speaker 1: with Neil Pump and he'd pull it this way. I'd
Speaker 1: sit in front of him and I learned to play
Speaker 1: in the key of C. So, with nothing to do
Speaker 1: in this room, there's no TV, there's no radio, I
Speaker 1: go over to the piano and go boom boom boom
Speaker 1: boom that KFC boom boom boom boom, and I sing
Speaker 1: these arms are waiting to hold you. She comes down.
Speaker 1: We go on the date I showed it. The Britany goes, well,
Speaker 1: we can't start it with these arms. I'll start with
Speaker 1: these ice car every night and make these arms long
Speaker 1: to hold you again as the second line, and we
Speaker 1: write the song in fifteen minutes. And I've got all
Speaker 1: these jazz cards I've learned from this jazz guitar player.
Speaker 1: When you get into these eyes, there's a lot, a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot of chords in there, with weird bass notes
Speaker 1: that are jazz based notes and stuff that I never
Speaker 1: ever thought of would be in a pop song. Because
Speaker 1: pop song there was like three songs. It was Louie
Speaker 1: Louis and hang On Sloopy kind of thing. These eyes
Speaker 1: has a lot of incredible jazz cards and modulations where
Speaker 1: it changes. And we wrote that in fifteen or twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: And when Phil Ramon heard that they did the strings
Speaker 1: that came out. It was like a million selling record
Speaker 1: and we got our gold record from the g soon
Speaker 1: was on our c A. Yes, how'd you end up
Speaker 1: on our CIA? What? Jack Richardson started his own little
Speaker 1: label in Toronto called Nimbus nine, named after the Clouds,
Speaker 1: and we had a hit in Canada and then he
Speaker 1: sent it around, just like quality that sending it to England,
Speaker 1: he sent it to the States and Don Berkheimer Rocco
Speaker 1: like an extra New York heard and said, while this
Speaker 1: is number two in Canada and in Detroit, Rosalie is
Speaker 1: playing in Detroit. She was a legend. And who would
Speaker 1: play in Detroit and I mean Windsor and they'd hear
Speaker 1: it in Detroit, then Cleveland that he would get played
Speaker 1: in the whole Ohio area, and then Pittsburgh, I mean
Speaker 1: you know, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, and then played in New York
Speaker 1: and so let's sign this band. So we went down
Speaker 1: there and we signed with our CIA And what about
Speaker 1: a manager? Um? I pretty much managed the band at
Speaker 1: the time, being the oldest guy, the oldest brother and
Speaker 1: looking after the band um before I quit to go
Speaker 1: on the Kingsman Louis to Louis Louis Tour. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to get a job my dad. And I'm playing
Speaker 1: in a band and making a h fifty bucks a week.
Speaker 1: My dad's still making sixty fifty week optometrist. And he'd say, Son,
Speaker 1: I got you a real job. Oh really, Dad, what
Speaker 1: is it. You're gonna sell shoes at bad at shoes Okay,
Speaker 1: show up at four thirty and you gotta work till nine.
Speaker 1: I said, I have a gig at nine, So I'd
Speaker 1: go there and work because my dad sat up with
Speaker 1: his friend, which is next door to his optometrist shop
Speaker 1: where he's selling eyeglasses. And uh, I'd go there and
Speaker 1: work till my break, which was seven fift And when
Speaker 1: I got my break, I would take it and it
Speaker 1: would not go back. I'd go to the gig. How
Speaker 1: long did that last? One night at best? Exactly two
Speaker 1: weeks later, Son, I got you another gig. I know
Speaker 1: you didn't like the selling shoes one. And the reason
Speaker 1: I didn't like selling shoes one it was like it
Speaker 1: was boring. It was like three dollars an hour. When
Speaker 1: you're a new kid, they give you all the worst people.
Speaker 1: So I would get this bomba that would be two
Speaker 1: pound woman from the farm with Bunyan's on her feet,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I'd have to measure her
Speaker 1: feet and put her on. I ASTOK, give you a
Speaker 1: great looking chick. And when you're seventeen or eighteen and
Speaker 1: a good looking chick sits in front of with a
Speaker 1: short dress and you gotta measure her defeat and legs,
Speaker 1: you get a a thing happening in the crotch right
Speaker 1: and you gotta stand up right. And so I had
Speaker 1: enough for that job. And so the next next one
Speaker 1: is at Simpsons Sears men's wear suits. So they trying
Speaker 1: to teach me to upsell, and I hate doing that.
Speaker 1: I hate that to this day. When the guy comes
Speaker 1: in for a tie, tell him it looks good and
Speaker 1: then show him a suit. Sell the guy a suit,
Speaker 1: then sell him a pair of shoes and her shirt.
Speaker 1: I hate doing that. Um So that lasted until the
Speaker 1: break and then we gotta shake over becomes a hit.
Speaker 1: I quit school, Okay, I go back at your later
Speaker 1: payoff my parents house, buy my dad a car. He says,
Speaker 1: you don't. You don't need a backup plan. I said,
Speaker 1: my backup planets. Stick to Plan A, Plan B, stick
Speaker 1: to Plan A. That's what I'm doing. You're listening to
Speaker 1: my conversation with Mandy Backman, recorded live at the tune
Speaker 1: In Studios in Venice, California. I hope you're enjoying this
Speaker 1: episode of the Bob Left Sets podcast. If you want
Speaker 1: to see Randy and me in the studio, we post videos, photos,
Speaker 1: and sound bites from our guests as they joined me here.
Speaker 1: Visit apt tune in on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Now
Speaker 1: more of my chat with Randy Bachman on The Bob
Speaker 1: Left Sets Podcast. Okay, so now Phil Ramon mixes the record.
Speaker 1: You have a hit in Canada ends up being a
Speaker 1: huge hit in America. I remember these eyes. I was
Speaker 1: taking geometry. They have imaginary numbers, we say, these eyes,
Speaker 1: but in any of them. Uh so, what happens? It's weird.
Speaker 1: We signed with our c A Records. They say to us,
Speaker 1: you can't use A in our studios anymore. Phil Ramon Studios,
Speaker 1: which is amazing. I mean, Simon Garfunkel did all this
Speaker 1: stuff that you're now with. Our CEO got to use
Speaker 1: r c A Studios And guess what studio we got
Speaker 1: for you, the one bing cross as we cut White
Speaker 1: Christmas just from Are you kidding? Yeah, but you're gonna
Speaker 1: love it being cut their brother. We're going we can't
Speaker 1: get a drum sound. This is for the whole first
Speaker 1: album of the Guests, who was done at A in
Speaker 1: our studios with Phil Ramon. Every song sounds wonderful. It's
Speaker 1: it's not dated, everything's wet. The room had a great sound.
Speaker 1: He had a great reverb and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Great machines, great ears, you like, Jack said, this guy's
Speaker 1: got ears. We start to cut the canned Weet, our
Speaker 1: second album, and the reason we was Wheat was from Wheat,
Speaker 1: sweet country and candical like prairies worthy girl the Wheat
Speaker 1: and so our song our album is called Candyheat. The
Speaker 1: album sounds terrible and we say to Jack, we can't
Speaker 1: even get a drum sound in here. It's dry, it's
Speaker 1: an an okaic chambers like. It's terrible, and he says,
Speaker 1: I have a plan because I know we're not going
Speaker 1: to get a hit record out of this studio. The
Speaker 1: sound isn't right. Radio is gonna want to hear the
Speaker 1: same thing. So let's tell everybody at our c A.
Speaker 1: I've never told this story before. By the way, let's
Speaker 1: tell everybody. Say, you have a gig this weekend at
Speaker 1: something beach out in Long Island. I forget what it's called,
Speaker 1: Jones Beach. You gotta get get Jones which you're gonna
Speaker 1: pack up your gear Friday night at two o'clock, get
Speaker 1: in the car, drive to Jones Beach, will come back
Speaker 1: Sunday afternoon. Just start recording here Monday morning. He has
Speaker 1: booked a in our studios. He has picked two songs
Speaker 1: from Canned Wheat that we're gonna do with throw Ramon.
Speaker 1: We go in there and set up fiel Ramon gets
Speaker 1: a song but a boom but a being, and Anari
Speaker 1: gets a song we called Laughing and she's come undone.
Speaker 1: They go on Canned Wheat. If you listen to cann
Speaker 1: Wheat today, the whole album sucks. It's very, very, very
Speaker 1: very dry, and these songs jump off the turn the
Speaker 1: off the vinyl. It's undone and laughing. They got this
Speaker 1: sound that was there. We also had a song on
Speaker 1: there called No Time that was so terrible. We recorded
Speaker 1: again for the American Woman album with a with a
Speaker 1: better sound, and it was a hit for us. Okay,
Speaker 1: so then obviously Laughing is a hit and she's come undone.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a you know, underground classic in America.
Speaker 1: And then what happens with the third album, We well,
Speaker 1: we caused a strike at our. They found out the
Speaker 1: engineers played the album they're mastering at our c A
Speaker 1: what are these two songs? This isn't our sound. They
Speaker 1: find out that we snuck into A and our studios.
Speaker 1: We have what's called the NABAT strike National Association or
Speaker 1: Broadcast Engineers Technicians. There's a strike. It's called the guests
Speaker 1: who strike. These guys won't work in the studio. So
Speaker 1: we have to settle the strike. We gotta go talk
Speaker 1: with union leaders and all this stuff. So we say
Speaker 1: to our say, we can't record here anymore. We need
Speaker 1: to go at A and or. You can't go to
Speaker 1: A and R. It's got to be our c Okay,
Speaker 1: build us a studio. So they go to Chicago and
Speaker 1: they build us a studio. Because we're still living in Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: We're driving all the way to New York, is three
Speaker 1: thousand miles to record and then driving home on weekends.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's crazy. And so they build us a
Speaker 1: studio in Chicago to our spects and to Jack Richards
Speaker 1: and Specs. We got a great engineer, they're called Brian Christiansen,
Speaker 1: and we record there and that's the sound of the
Speaker 1: American Woman album. Okay, so the album after ken Weed
Speaker 1: is an American American woman. Okay, how do you write
Speaker 1: American him in? We are still living in Winnipeg. We're
Speaker 1: crossing the border where gas is cheaper. We always go
Speaker 1: to the same gas station, which in the old days,
Speaker 1: the gas station was a glass tube with the leaders
Speaker 1: in it. You can see the gas going down. It
Speaker 1: wasn't a digital kind of thing. And so would we
Speaker 1: sit there watching the gas go on, filling up our vehicle,
Speaker 1: and this farmer who would always fill up his tractor
Speaker 1: there and his thrashing machine, would say to us, where
Speaker 1: are you guys going now? And I say, we're going
Speaker 1: to Boston. We're playing a plotfest with Joan Bayaz and
Speaker 1: Richie Havens and next time where you going San Francisco
Speaker 1: to play with Frank Zapp and the Mothers? Where are
Speaker 1: you going? This time, we're going to Texas to play
Speaker 1: a gig. And I said, but before we go down there,
Speaker 1: the guy at the border, I couldn't understand you talked
Speaker 1: like boss hog On because I had a big fat
Speaker 1: guy Boord, a guy with a real Southern drawl, Like
Speaker 1: I'm saying, hey, boy, before you go down to Texas, boy,
Speaker 1: you got to go in this building over there, boy,
Speaker 1: and make sure you're going too that building. Boy, I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't understand the guy. He said, We've got to
Speaker 1: go into some sort of service building. And I don't
Speaker 1: know what he meant. And the guy filling the gas
Speaker 1: tanks did he did? He say selective service, and I said,
Speaker 1: maybe that's it. It's a white building with an American flag.
Speaker 1: He said that selective service. Do you know what that is?
Speaker 1: I said, I have no idea. Is it's the draft board.
Speaker 1: They drafted Vietnam War. They drafted my son a year ago.
Speaker 1: He's dead. My nephew turned eighteen last week. They got him.
Speaker 1: The next day. He's in fred Bragg to training him
Speaker 1: to go fight in his Vietnam and drawing. They're gonna
Speaker 1: get you, guys. You're between twenty and thirty. You're healthy Canadians.
Speaker 1: You've got green cards. That means you can work in
Speaker 1: the state's pay tack in the states and be drafted
Speaker 1: and fight for the States. What do yourself a favor.
Speaker 1: Go into town here and pretend you're getting some chips
Speaker 1: and drinks for the road. You already got your gas.
Speaker 1: Keep driving. When you get to this highway, turn left,
Speaker 1: go up through Duluth, Go back to Minnesota and Louth, Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Get into Canada, turning to green cards. Don't come back
Speaker 1: to the States of the wars over. Everybody's protesting the war.
Speaker 1: It might be over soon. Wow. I call Texas. We
Speaker 1: don't go to Texas. We want to go to Texas
Speaker 1: to see Buddy hally as if he's going to be
Speaker 1: there waiting for us, right, or Roy Orbison or somebody
Speaker 1: like that. We get to this place in Toronto, I
Speaker 1: call an agency. This is Valentine's Day. We're gonna play
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day dance in Texas February. We get to Toronto
Speaker 1: early in the morning and I say, I call the
Speaker 1: agency and I say, do you have any gigs? This
Speaker 1: is Randy Backman from the Guests who and we're we
Speaker 1: need some gigs. In Torontesse. Guys. So, yeah, when do
Speaker 1: you need gigs? I said, tonight? What we're in town?
Speaker 1: We we we're draft dodging from the States. Really these
Speaker 1: West Valentine's Everything's book. But we just had a consulate cancelation.
Speaker 1: One guy's got laryng right, it's the middle of the
Speaker 1: winter in Canada and he can't sing to you. Go
Speaker 1: can you go play a curling rink tonight in Kitchen
Speaker 1: or Waterloo? And I say, how much does it paints?
Speaker 1: Is four bucks? And that's what we're gonna get in
Speaker 1: Texas anyways, So I say, okay, we go and play
Speaker 1: this curling rink. You know what curling is the worst?
Speaker 1: Everybody knows. That was Resolve of the Olympics. Yes, they
Speaker 1: put plywood on the ice. It's freezing in there. It's
Speaker 1: like it's minus ten um. Plywood's on the everybody's there
Speaker 1: in Tucson Park because we're playing a three hour dance.
Speaker 1: We're playing beach Boys and Beatles and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: And I break a string. I didn't have a tech,
Speaker 1: a tuner, a spare guitar, a roadie. I had nothing.
Speaker 1: You broke a string, Burton coming, says Randy broke a string.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a break, talks among yourself. There's pot
Speaker 1: free pop run over there, DJ playing records. Randy's changing
Speaker 1: a string. So I'm changing my string on the guitar
Speaker 1: less Paul, and I'm tuning it up, tuning it up.
Speaker 1: As I'm tuning it up, I'm going down. Don't then
Speaker 1: don't don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't do that.
Speaker 1: The whole audience stops talking and I go, wow, I
Speaker 1: gotta remember this riff, and I keep playing. I'm on stage.
Speaker 1: I'm on my knees in front of Burton's piano, tuning
Speaker 1: to the piano. Didn't even have a tuner. You tune
Speaker 1: to a piano when you had a piano player in
Speaker 1: those days. So I see Gary Peters in her drummer.
Speaker 1: I get on stage. He starts playing the riff. I
Speaker 1: see Jim Kale. Burton finally comes on the stage and goes,
Speaker 1: what is this? I said, I'm making it up, but
Speaker 1: just sing anything. And there's something about when you don't
Speaker 1: write music, I can't are The way to remembers thing
Speaker 1: is to put something silly to it, like when Paul
Speaker 1: McCartney wrote, yesterday, he called scrambled eggs. The next day
Speaker 1: he had to find syllables that fitted scrambled eggs. Baby,
Speaker 1: how I love your legs. If you ever saw him
Speaker 1: and Jimmy fallon, do it, it's hilarious skit. They also
Speaker 1: writes the second verse, which was never done. So he
Speaker 1: got scrambled eggs and said yesterday. So Britain is singing
Speaker 1: the first thing that comes to his mind, which is
Speaker 1: American Woman, stay away from me. It's a statue of liberty.
Speaker 1: It's that Uncle Sam and the stars and stripes. Uncle
Speaker 1: Sam wants you. That's when we were terrified. So he
Speaker 1: sings American Woman stay away from Me four times. I solo,
Speaker 1: he sings it again. We go to play it the
Speaker 1: next night. We can't remember it. I started out tuning
Speaker 1: my guitar again until I fall into dunt dhunt and
Speaker 1: we do it again. Then somebody records it. We played
Speaker 1: for Jack Richards and he goes crazy. This number one record.
Speaker 1: Do you realize when you say we don't want your
Speaker 1: war machines? It's an anti war song. Radio has been
Speaker 1: told not to play in the ant. They won't play
Speaker 1: Country Joe one two or three. What are we fighting for?
Speaker 1: All the playing is Gary Sense, Sergeant Barry Sounded, Fighting Men,
Speaker 1: the Green Ray, all that kind of stuff. They're only
Speaker 1: playing war songs, not anti war song. And this is
Speaker 1: going to be number one. It gets to be a
Speaker 1: number one album and single, and then the DJs realize
Speaker 1: it's an anti war song. It's too late. They can't
Speaker 1: not play it. Okay, that's a monster ship. I remember
Speaker 1: listening to it to the first night. I got stoned.
Speaker 1: That leads upland too so. But then the band breaks up.
Speaker 1: Well I leave why I had been with him at
Speaker 1: that point nine years the drug culture came in. I
Speaker 1: didn't smoke, drink or do drugs. I also had to
Speaker 1: think all the gallbladder problem that every night I'd have
Speaker 1: a gallbladder attack and I didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1: You're on a ninety day tour and you go to
Speaker 1: the hospital at night. They said, coming in the morning,
Speaker 1: we're gonna give you the stuff to drink and take
Speaker 1: an X ray. Well, I'm in Philadelphia to more, then
Speaker 1: I'm in Pittsburgh, then I'm in Boston. Well, you you
Speaker 1: need to start stand still and go and see a doctor,
Speaker 1: because every night I have blood both ends in the bathroom.
Speaker 1: Incredible pain. We have gall black, just like somebody putting
Speaker 1: knife in you and just turning it and turning. And
Speaker 1: this last two or three hours. And my roady Jumbo,
Speaker 1: the same guy would take me to a hospital and
Speaker 1: they say, you've got to keep this guy in here,
Speaker 1: or you gotta send them home. So I just called
Speaker 1: my doctor who birthed me into the world in Winnipeg
Speaker 1: and said, I'm coming home. I need some tests. The
Speaker 1: band had a week off. This is an amazing happenstance.
Speaker 1: The band had a week off. We're playing west Chester, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: playing in a church. In a church, the stage is
Speaker 1: like this high the low ceiling, so you can walk
Speaker 1: right up to the stage. We're playing on stage. This band.
Speaker 1: You can tell it's a band. The five guys come in.
Speaker 1: They look as weird as us. They're not the normal
Speaker 1: guys in the suits and ties dancing with girls at
Speaker 1: the church, dance their whackle. Weird new musicians. So they're
Speaker 1: standing right in front of they're watching every note we're playing.
Speaker 1: When we're all done, this guy comes says, Hi, my
Speaker 1: name is Bob Sabellico. Um, this is my band, and
Speaker 1: we play all year stuff. All the guest is, we
Speaker 1: love your your music. It's great, but I can't figure
Speaker 1: out she's come undone. All the jazz chords and some
Speaker 1: of the chords in these eyes, I can't figure them out.
Speaker 1: We show to me, I said sure, he said, come
Speaker 1: to our house later. My dad's a rich contractor. Our
Speaker 1: whole band practices in our base. We have a p
Speaker 1: A a hammered to be three. All the apps are there.
Speaker 1: Go to a party in his house. I teach them
Speaker 1: the songs that night to go home. Have a gallbladder attack.
Speaker 1: They say, you got to go home. The band has
Speaker 1: a week off, five days off, and then they pick
Speaker 1: up again, and then we've got to go play the
Speaker 1: film or east closing of the film work which I
Speaker 1: want to play. I go into my doctors, so you
Speaker 1: have a gallbladder problem. Will schedule your your surgery for them.
Speaker 1: But all you can eat until then is skim milk, saltine, crackers,
Speaker 1: and jello without sugar, like gelatin. That'll fill you up.
Speaker 1: Don't need anything else because it's got fat or sugar.
Speaker 1: Your goal better. So you've got a bunch of gall stones.
Speaker 1: So I go to the band and say, look, I
Speaker 1: gotta stay home. I gotta stay on this diet. But
Speaker 1: if I stay on this diet and I don't have
Speaker 1: any attacks, I want to come and play the film
Speaker 1: wre And the band says, well, we've got gigs. We've
Speaker 1: now gone from seven and fifty bucks a night to
Speaker 1: ten and twelve and fifteen thousand a night because of
Speaker 1: American woman hitting number one. We've now gone from opening
Speaker 1: the show to catching. We're closing show like the Beatles
Speaker 1: when they were like opening for Roy Orbison or somebody else.
Speaker 1: Do you go to headlining the show? So I say
Speaker 1: to the band, out of my own pocket, I'll pay
Speaker 1: Bob sabella coo, because you know he knows all the
Speaker 1: songs he went to his party. I taught him undone
Speaker 1: in these Eyes. So rehearse with him for friendings, go
Speaker 1: to his base. When you stay here, I'm flying home
Speaker 1: to Winnipeg. Bob Sabellico plays with the guests who for
Speaker 1: ten days he's famous. He plays for ten days, then
Speaker 1: he goes back to his band. They come back to Winnipeg.
Speaker 1: They got a couple of guys to take my place,
Speaker 1: Kurt Winters and Greg Glasgogo. I knew really well. I
Speaker 1: go black and play the film, or gig with them
Speaker 1: the film or researchers. My last gig with the guests
Speaker 1: who and I said goodbye. But on the airplane there,
Speaker 1: I'm so hungry. I take a drink that the stewardess
Speaker 1: gives me of apple juice. I get to the film,
Speaker 1: are going and play. We're doing two sets of the
Speaker 1: film in between the sets of the film. Or I
Speaker 1: go in and I have a gallbladder attack in the bathroom,
Speaker 1: which is the most disgusting thing you'll ever see in
Speaker 1: your life, like the worst gas station of all time.
Speaker 1: This is at the film Wore. There's stuff all over
Speaker 1: the floor. I mean everything's all over the floor in there.
Speaker 1: So but when you have a gallbladder attack, it's like
Speaker 1: breaking your leg or something, or getting a burn or
Speaker 1: getting punched in the face. Your body suddenly kicks in
Speaker 1: this adrenaline and everything feels wonderful for a while. So
Speaker 1: the second set of the film, Or I go out there,
Speaker 1: my gall blighter attacks over. I wiped, I'm cleaned up,
Speaker 1: and I'm on adrenaline, and I am rocking like Clapton
Speaker 1: in the Free World or Hendrix and everyone looking at
Speaker 1: me the band that we already had the meeting that
Speaker 1: this is my last gig. I'm out. I am playing
Speaker 1: my ass off. It's incredible, and it's the film More.
Speaker 1: It was just incredible. Okay. So do you have your
Speaker 1: gallbladder removed? No? Okay, do you still have your gallbladder? Yes?
Speaker 1: What do they do? Well, I'll tell you the story.
Speaker 1: I finished the film More, I go home. The word
Speaker 1: is out that I'm leaving the guests who my house
Speaker 1: is getting egged and toilet papered. Okay, just to be clear,
Speaker 1: other than the gall bladder, what did your motivation for
Speaker 1: leaving the band? I had a son tell him, I
Speaker 1: had a baby daughter on the way. I've been on
Speaker 1: the road ninety days and we're facing another ninety day tour.
Speaker 1: I married a very, very beautiful woman from Regina that
Speaker 1: I met at the Joni Mitchell concert and it was
Speaker 1: one of those two girls. Yeah, I'm married her. We
Speaker 1: had six kids or lists. Tell who had to hit
Speaker 1: she saw hid. He's now in my band playing with
Speaker 1: me every night. So are you still married to her? No? No,
Speaker 1: we got divorced and live happily ever after. Okay, but
Speaker 1: so you say and what do you plan to do
Speaker 1: now that you're out of the band. I just planned,
Speaker 1: that's it. I all I got is get healthy. So
Speaker 1: a couple of months and we leave Winnipeg because my
Speaker 1: house is getting egged and toilet paper and everything, it's
Speaker 1: all everywhere. People are bringing their garbage on my lawn
Speaker 1: and lighting it on fire and it's stinking, and so
Speaker 1: we got to get out of town. My renette, her
Speaker 1: name was Lorraine. Her family has moved to Saskatoon, which
Speaker 1: is where Joni Mitchell's from. I get an offer from
Speaker 1: a band at Saskatoon to produce them. Why not, I'm
Speaker 1: not doing anything. I've learned how to produce from Jack
Speaker 1: Richards in the phil Ramona kidding. These are the best
Speaker 1: guys in Canada and the States. So I'm go and
Speaker 1: start working with this band and were really strange thing
Speaker 1: happened to me. I had a gall bladder attack again.
Speaker 1: Unthinking LYE took a sip of orange crush that you get,
Speaker 1: you know, that's all that syrup, and it started up again.
Speaker 1: And UM, I don't know if you're into this or
Speaker 1: your readers are into it, but and I've never told
Speaker 1: this story. I don't know why I'm telling you this.
Speaker 1: I got faith field. So these guys come in, their
Speaker 1: missionaries and my brother in law who's also a missionary.
Speaker 1: They anoint my head with oil. They put their hands
Speaker 1: on me and they say, you're you're healed, You're fine.
Speaker 1: This is the Friday night I've had the gold. I'm
Speaker 1: set to go in the next morning. I go on
Speaker 1: Saturday morning. The doctor says, blah blah blah. It's a
Speaker 1: long weekend. I said, look, I've had actually, i've got
Speaker 1: sixteen gall stones. It's killing me. You gotta take the money.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to take him on less I
Speaker 1: can see your x race. So trying to call my
Speaker 1: doctor on a long weekend. It Saturday morning, there's nothing
Speaker 1: shaken until Tuesday morning, the Monday's holiday. Because I've called
Speaker 1: your doctor. They're gonna send your X rays. There was
Speaker 1: no fat accent, and they can send your extrays on
Speaker 1: air can on the airplane. I'll send somebody to get
Speaker 1: them with like a messenger service. Meanwhile, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: my own X rays. So I drink this barriam junk
Speaker 1: gets in, goes in me. I go and get my
Speaker 1: extras taken. He said, you don't have any goal stones.
Speaker 1: What do you mean you don't have any goals? Maybe
Speaker 1: you've passed them, maybe they're stuck somewhere else. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna give you more stuff to drink. It might be
Speaker 1: in your intestines or somewhere else. I stayed there for
Speaker 1: two days drinking the stuff. There's nothing in me. My
Speaker 1: x rays come Tuesday morning. He looks at them, and
Speaker 1: he looks at the X rays taking He says, you're fine.
Speaker 1: You can leave the hospital. You don't have any goal stones.
Speaker 1: What happened, I said, I was given a blessing. I
Speaker 1: I guess I was faith field. I was in such
Speaker 1: a pain when these guys said it. I believed it
Speaker 1: in my brain. Are their brain or something or I
Speaker 1: did feel some incredible power when this was happening to me.
Speaker 1: I've seen it happen on TV. I did believe it.
Speaker 1: I'm healthy. I go back home at eight o'clock every night,
Speaker 1: I'm downstairs playing guitar. I've done this for like fifteen years,
Speaker 1: playing guitar. My wife says to me, you gotta start
Speaker 1: another band. You're driving me cuckoo. I wake up three
Speaker 1: in the morning. You're not in bed you're downstairs with
Speaker 1: the headphones on playing guitar. So I started another band.
Speaker 1: Neil Young comes home plays says, I've broken up with Crosbie, Sales,
Speaker 1: Nash and Young. I'm on my own. Well, actually, I've
Speaker 1: broken up the Sprinkle. They want me to join Crosbie,
Speaker 1: Szells and Nash. I'm trying to get my name at it,
Speaker 1: so I'll be Crosby, Seals Nash and Young plays me
Speaker 1: a couple of tracks. He helps me get a deal.
Speaker 1: I started country band like Poco, like Buffalo Sprinkle, called
Speaker 1: Brave Belt. Neil gets me a deal for PRIs. I
Speaker 1: go down there and do two albums with the PRIs.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sell. It's at the tail end of the
Speaker 1: country rocking, just before the Eagles burst out. I get
Speaker 1: Fred Turner in the band I know from the early
Speaker 1: Winnipeg days. We changed Great Belt three becomes back when
Speaker 1: Turner Overdrive one. Okay, but Brave Belt is on Reprieve. Yes,
Speaker 1: why do you think it wasn't successful? Um? I didn't
Speaker 1: want to be a second rate guest who Burton comings
Speaker 1: is one of the greatest voices in rock and roll,
Speaker 1: like Elton John an operatic voice. Stree and a half
Speaker 1: four octaves. He can sing a ballad. You can sing
Speaker 1: Old Danny Boy and make you cry like true to
Speaker 1: his Irish roots. He could scream like Eric Burton, we
Speaker 1: got to get out of this place. He could scream
Speaker 1: like Robert Plant. He's got a great voice. What could
Speaker 1: I do? I had a Neil Young voice. I sang
Speaker 1: Brian Wilson parts, I get around, I sang the high Thing.
Speaker 1: I wasn't a singer, and so rather than be a
Speaker 1: second rate guests who, I'd rather be a tenth rate
Speaker 1: guests who and not even compete in the pop market.
Speaker 1: Do country music, get a pedal steel, be like Poco,
Speaker 1: Richie far Ray and Polka who left Buffalo Spring, Be
Speaker 1: like Neil and Steven Stills and Manassas and whatever they
Speaker 1: were doing. Do what you're wanted to sing harmony, play
Speaker 1: blazing rock and roll guitar. Nobody would work with me.
Speaker 1: I was blackballed after I left the guests who I
Speaker 1: had to produce myself, pay for my own sessions with
Speaker 1: my royalties that were coming very meager royalties from the
Speaker 1: eyes and laughing and undone and all this stuff, and
Speaker 1: produced myself. Neil Young got me the deal came to
Speaker 1: Brave Belt three more. Auston and Don Schmissli called me
Speaker 1: and said, we can't keep you on the label anymore.
Speaker 1: It would be too much of a favorite. To Neil,
Speaker 1: We've already done you a favor. You're not meeting our
Speaker 1: bottom line. We're gonna go with America on Gordon Lightfoot,
Speaker 1: who we just signed a Canadian and you can't produce
Speaker 1: yourself like Gordon Lightfoot's taking Lenny warrenk Or if you
Speaker 1: take Lenny, we'll keep on the label our templement. I said, no,
Speaker 1: I'm producing myself. Nobody knows what I'm doing. I don't
Speaker 1: even know what I'm doing. I'm just I'm floundering here.
Speaker 1: I'll find it. They said, we're sure you'll find it.
Speaker 1: I find it when I get Turner in the band,
Speaker 1: chat out and leaves again. He left the Guess Who
Speaker 1: and then he leaves the Brave Belt and he started
Speaker 1: with him is the only guy would play with me
Speaker 1: in Winnipeg. He leaves the band. Fred Turner comes in. Suddenly,
Speaker 1: Fred Turner has got this Harley Davidson, John Forgerty voice.
Speaker 1: We started doing Creed this clear water. Everybody's up dancing
Speaker 1: our country music. Everybody's yawning, like when's the next rocket?
Speaker 1: When you're gonna play American Woman. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: play any guest who stuff. I wanted to start from scratch.
Speaker 1: So Fred turners in the band, and we get heavier
Speaker 1: and heavier and heavy and heavier. And there was a
Speaker 1: revolution music at that time. We go to a club
Speaker 1: and the guy say, okay, coffee houses are over. People
Speaker 1: aren't sitting listening to lyrics anymore. They're up dancing to
Speaker 1: Proud Mary and and jumping Jack flashes off. You got
Speaker 1: to write stuff like that, so I started writing like
Speaker 1: The Who and the Stones and Creans clear Water. Fred
Speaker 1: has this big voice. I sing relief for Fred. Every
Speaker 1: once in a while, I sing like David Crosby Neil
Speaker 1: Young song. You don't need a big, powerful voice, you
Speaker 1: just need kind of a cool voice that gives the
Speaker 1: other guy ar rescue or relief. Picture a relief hitter.
Speaker 1: And we've become back and turn over drive. Now you
Speaker 1: switch to mercury, right? Yes? How does that happen? When
Speaker 1: more Austen let me go? I had the album cut
Speaker 1: on my own dime. I had no money from her priest.
Speaker 1: I'm paying the band a salary out of my royalties,
Speaker 1: and I'm paying my own corn flakes and gas bill
Speaker 1: and my rent. And now I've got two kids and
Speaker 1: a wife. We're getting near the end. I'm sending out
Speaker 1: real to real tapes. I have twenty six refusals, beautiful letterheads.
Speaker 1: Jack Holtzman Electric with the butterfly, Herb Belfort with the trumpet,
Speaker 1: the silver trumpet of A and M. We passed. We
Speaker 1: passed passes from everybody passes a pass from Mercury Records.
Speaker 1: In January. Before that, I had met Charlie Fatch, who
Speaker 1: was the guy who signed us, and he said, you've
Speaker 1: got to put your name on the record. Every mighty
Speaker 1: trying to hide out be calling Brave Bell. Put your
Speaker 1: name in their radio. Guys are recognize your name and
Speaker 1: he might get a spin. They might play it because
Speaker 1: they recognize that you've written hit songs. So I'm trying
Speaker 1: to find put my name on there. We call ourselves
Speaker 1: back Main Turning. There's me and my brothers and Fred Turner.
Speaker 1: We're called back Fin Turner. For a while, people think
Speaker 1: we're like seals and crops, or Brewer and Shipley. A
Speaker 1: guitar and a mandolin singing one toke over the line.
Speaker 1: We're blowing coffee mugs off the table. We're playing this
Speaker 1: powerful rock and roll, so um we cut the the
Speaker 1: I send bt O three again to Charlie Fatch and
Speaker 1: he calls me up and I hear side one cut one,
Speaker 1: give me your money please. It's a Saturday morning for you.
Speaker 1: You're working Saturday morning. Yeah, I'm listening to your record.
Speaker 1: I just got back from met him and can and
Speaker 1: that whole thing, and um, my desk is cleared off
Speaker 1: at the end of January, and I look at all
Speaker 1: the new stuff and a guy named Bud Scopa, who
Speaker 1: you might not know, was his assistant clearing off my desk.
Speaker 1: And when you put everything in the trash can from
Speaker 1: last year because I'm coming back with a new budget,
Speaker 1: one tape Never Fail into the trash can and written
Speaker 1: on it was your name back when in red Sharpie.
Speaker 1: So I'm playing it now. Is the whole album like this?
Speaker 1: He's playing side one cut one to go, Charlie. The
Speaker 1: whole album like that. It's in your face four and
Speaker 1: a half minute rock and roll. Listened to Fred Turner
Speaker 1: sing and he says, I'm flying Toto l A right
Speaker 1: now to play stuff for Erwin Steinberg and all the
Speaker 1: guys in l A on who we're gonna sign. We
Speaker 1: just got Rod Stewart who had like Maggie made and
Speaker 1: came out and because we've lost your Rye, heap for
Speaker 1: some other band. We need like a rock, heavy rock band.
Speaker 1: And he said how much you got into the album?
Speaker 1: And I said, man, I've got like ninety eight thousand
Speaker 1: dollars and money in salary and studio costs, and I've
Speaker 1: been flying all over trying to get this mixed with
Speaker 1: Phil Ramone who then was out of the game. And
Speaker 1: I had Shelley Yatkison and Elliott Shiner who were Phil's
Speaker 1: assistant then. Who are no big dude producers working on
Speaker 1: that with me? Um Charlie says, I want to sign it,
Speaker 1: but I can't give you all your money back, but
Speaker 1: I'll give you a five album deal. So you've got
Speaker 1: to recoup a little bit, and recoup a little bit
Speaker 1: and recoup a little bit. And so we're gonna ask
Speaker 1: you for another album in eighteen months. We're gonna put
Speaker 1: this one out. So he puts it out and it
Speaker 1: gets a modicum of air play. We get a call
Speaker 1: from a guy named Scott Shannon, who you might know,
Speaker 1: who's down south in St. Louis, and he says, we
Speaker 1: have a big thing planned at a drive in theater
Speaker 1: where at night, when it's dark, they play Girl Can't
Speaker 1: Help It and rock around the clock. But at from
Speaker 1: six o'clock on, we're serving hot ducks and pizza. There's
Speaker 1: a stage in front of the drive in theater projected
Speaker 1: the screen, and we're having bands play live. And we
Speaker 1: had so and so booked, but so and so has
Speaker 1: been in a car accident and he's dead. I think
Speaker 1: it's Dwayne Alman. Can you come and play? Well, we
Speaker 1: don't have anything to play, but I've got your new album,
Speaker 1: and if you agree to come and play for k
Speaker 1: K s C with a pig on it um, I'll
Speaker 1: play one of your tracks from bt O one every hour.
Speaker 1: So when you get here in three and a half weeks,
Speaker 1: you won't you won't have a hit song. You'll have
Speaker 1: a twelve hit songs. Everybody will know every song, really okay,
Speaker 1: And by the way, you're playing for nothing. We don't care.
Speaker 1: We drive in there, we play, everybody knows every song
Speaker 1: we're and then the next station in the chain played
Speaker 1: next station, the Chain play next Charlie Fashion. Irwin Steimer
Speaker 1: called me saying, we're getting airplay, we're selling album. You're
Speaker 1: not hit a million albums. What's going on? You've had
Speaker 1: two million albums. Guess what? We want another album? And
Speaker 1: that first eighteen months. Instead of one album, we did
Speaker 1: a third album. It was number one, not Fragile with
Speaker 1: the Ain't Seen Nothing You Know on as a number
Speaker 1: one single. B t O two with Letter Ride and
Speaker 1: taking Care of Business on it was number eighteen, and
Speaker 1: b t O one was number forty eight. We had
Speaker 1: three albums in the top fifty. Three songs in the
Speaker 1: top fifty is like what happened like two years suddenly,
Speaker 1: But we went on the road ninety days at a time,
Speaker 1: took a week off, cut the album ninety days took
Speaker 1: and obviously Lorraine fell out of love with me and
Speaker 1: I didn't know my kids and I got divorced. We'll
Speaker 1: pause here for a brief moment and get right back
Speaker 1: to Randy Backman. For those who don't know, I'm primarily
Speaker 1: a writer, go to left sets dot com. We can
Speaker 1: catch up with my daily squeeds in addition to reading
Speaker 1: my commentary on music tech in the world at large.
Speaker 1: They'll be the first to find out when we've published
Speaker 1: a new podcast. Go to left sets dot com and
Speaker 1: sign up for the newsletter. More with guitar legend Randy Backman,
Speaker 1: recorded live at the tune In Studios in Venice, California.
Speaker 1: Let's uh go a little bit slower. First album with Turner.
Speaker 1: You get some action, but there's no national hit. No.
Speaker 1: And then Charlie says to me, you know how to
Speaker 1: write hits. Write a hit, don't write these album cuts
Speaker 1: with two solos and five verses. Enough of this stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm having this problem with Rod Stewart. He didn't want
Speaker 1: a single. Let Zeppelin. They don't want to single. They
Speaker 1: want to sell albums. Guess what you can sell albums
Speaker 1: and singles. I know what that means more tickets at
Speaker 1: the box office. Is playing auditoriums, you're playing twentyeder hockey
Speaker 1: arenas and stadiums. That's the difference between the hits. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the second al BT O two is the breakthrough record.
Speaker 1: Singles it has we ain't seen nothing one, it has
Speaker 1: let it ride and taking care of Business? Okay, So
Speaker 1: how do you write taking gear of Business? That starts
Speaker 1: in seven in Scepter Studios in New York. We're recording
Speaker 1: Excepter for Laurence Greenberg is the boss there. Her son,
Speaker 1: Stanley Greenberg is the engineer. He's blind, so he's twiddling
Speaker 1: these knobs, getting a great son of darn works demos
Speaker 1: and we're cutting records there. John's doing your demos with
Speaker 1: Bert Backrock and Hell David, Ashford and Simpson were also
Speaker 1: pitching songs and everybody. This is the the alternative to
Speaker 1: the brill building there. So Paperback Writer comes out. We
Speaker 1: love it, but it's pretty much a copy of Johnny
Speaker 1: be Good The day in the life of an average
Speaker 1: guy who learned to play guitar in a cabin made
Speaker 1: of earthen would Johnny be Good? And I'm a sorry maddim.
Speaker 1: When you read my book to a year to write,
Speaker 1: when you take a look, I want to write a
Speaker 1: thing about Stanley Greenberg, who's a blind engineer who comes
Speaker 1: to work every day with a white button down shirt,
Speaker 1: a tweet tie, a tweet jacket with patches on the el,
Speaker 1: little leather patches, tweet pants, and brogue shoes. This is
Speaker 1: August in New York. It's ninety with ninety humidity. We're
Speaker 1: all wearing cutoff and flip flops. Stanley comes to work
Speaker 1: every drade draft. Stanley, why do you dress this way?
Speaker 1: Because I want to look like George Martin. He's the
Speaker 1: best producer in world. Get he's right, and you do
Speaker 1: look like him. I've met him. That's exactly what he wears. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm writing a song that George Martin should produce, and
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call it white Collar Work. And I'm gonna
Speaker 1: write it about you, Stanley Greenbrig because you always wear
Speaker 1: a white button on call. I'm gonna call it white
Speaker 1: collar Worker. It's going to be exact copy of paperback writer.
Speaker 1: So when you when you leave the studio every night
Speaker 1: at ten o'clock, why do you leave at ten o'clock?
Speaker 1: Because we're just getting rolling a musician coming at noon.
Speaker 1: We're used to playing from nine to midnight. That's when
Speaker 1: musicians are really juiced up. Is I take the train home.
Speaker 1: I don't live in New York. I can't afford to
Speaker 1: live in New York. I'm taking the train. I go
Speaker 1: to Grand Central station. I go, you're kidding? Can I
Speaker 1: come with you? I want to write a song about you.
Speaker 1: I need to see what you do. He says, Okay,
Speaker 1: don't try to help me. I've been blind all my life.
Speaker 1: I have a white cane. So how do you get
Speaker 1: to Grand Central from here there on West fifty four? Um?
Speaker 1: Because I count steps, I go your kidding, this is
Speaker 1: my first experience with the vision impaired person. And he said,
Speaker 1: don't try to help me. So I go out and
Speaker 1: sits turned right here, and I count five hund and
Speaker 1: eighty five steps. Really do listed for the tweets, and
Speaker 1: you're the cross wall. Then I walked creator and eighty
Speaker 1: five steps that way. Then I listen for the tweet tweet.
Speaker 1: Then I walk eight steps that way. It's Grand Central station.
Speaker 1: I am amazed. This is a quarter after ten. The
Speaker 1: streets are empty. It's like Vanilla Scott, you know they're
Speaker 1: tom The streets are empty. Everyone's in the Madison Square
Speaker 1: Garden still a quarter to eleven, or they're in the
Speaker 1: theaters till ten thirty or eleven. So the streets are empty.
Speaker 1: So we get there and I say, very disappointed, standing
Speaker 1: nothing to write about. I have no fodder. I have
Speaker 1: no not even a hook line except white collar worker.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be white collar worker, just like paperback writer.
Speaker 1: I said, when do you come in? He said, I
Speaker 1: take the eight fifteen into the city. I go, oh,
Speaker 1: you get up in the morning from your alarm clocks.
Speaker 1: Weren't you take the eight fifteen into the city. When
Speaker 1: you get here, he says, I get here about quarter
Speaker 1: to nine, and the train smells incredible because all these
Speaker 1: women are putting on makeup and proof. You can't see
Speaker 1: what they're doing. You get here a quarter to nine,
Speaker 1: he said, Yeah, I walked to work to start my
Speaker 1: slaving job to get my pay. Like there's the first line.
Speaker 1: You get up in the morning from the alarm clocks.
Speaker 1: We're going to take the eight fifteen to the city.
Speaker 1: There's a whistle up above, people pushing, people's shoving, and
Speaker 1: the girls trying to look pretty. If your trains on time,
Speaker 1: you get to work by and I start to slave
Speaker 1: a job to get your pay. You ever get annoyed?
Speaker 1: Look at me. I'm self employed. I like to work
Speaker 1: at nothing. Like my father would keep saying, son, you
Speaker 1: work at nothing all day. What is that music business?
Speaker 1: You don't do anything, I say, Dad, you would understand
Speaker 1: it's all in my head. I'm writing songs and we
Speaker 1: had and doing RIfS in my head, so I play
Speaker 1: that verse, but my it stops after that verse and
Speaker 1: we go wide call the worker, white calor worker, and
Speaker 1: I played for the band and they gag on the song.
Speaker 1: And so your verses are great, they're great, Johnny, be
Speaker 1: good versus. But you've got to get rid of this
Speaker 1: white collar worker thing. So it never makes it on
Speaker 1: We'd Feel Soul, Canned Weed, or American Woman. It never
Speaker 1: makes it on Brave Belt one or a Brave Belt two.
Speaker 1: It never makes it on bt O one, which is
Speaker 1: Brave Belt three. We're playing a club in Vancouver now,
Speaker 1: Fred Turners, our lead singer. The first album is a
Speaker 1: success as far as an album goes. It's gold headed
Speaker 1: for platinum, and we're headed to play a club. And
Speaker 1: people think you're really rich when you have an album
Speaker 1: on the charts, but you're paying off all your studio
Speaker 1: bills and all your loans. You're paying back your father
Speaker 1: and your grandmother and everyone who gave you twenty bucks
Speaker 1: or whatever. So we're playing six nights a week, five
Speaker 1: fifty minutes sets a night with ten minutes. So I've
Speaker 1: started seven ended one. I guests a Saturday night. Fred
Speaker 1: Turner says, I can't sing anymore. My voice is shot.
Speaker 1: You gotta sing the last set. I go what I
Speaker 1: gotta sing the last All I sing is like the
Speaker 1: high part. And I get around and I can sing.
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan so um, I say, okay um. Bob Dylan
Speaker 1: has a song goed She belongs to Me, But I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna do it that way. But Rick Nelson had
Speaker 1: a much better version, and I'll do that. And the
Speaker 1: club owners going last set Saturday night, I turn up
Speaker 1: the heat. I gave everyone free pretzels and popcorn. They
Speaker 1: gotta buy booze. I'm selling this is the last round.
Speaker 1: Get them up dancing. I start, she belongs to me.
Speaker 1: It's really bad. Nobody's dancing. Santana had a song without
Speaker 1: them called Oya como Va. I don't know any Spanish,
Speaker 1: I know Ukrainian. I start to play don don don
Speaker 1: the minute start that. Everybody's up dancing, and I saying,
Speaker 1: ohya como va, Farogue's way, Obama's a bowl abortioned or
Speaker 1: the commo ba hold off. I'm doing all these lyrics.
Speaker 1: Everyone's laughing, you understand me. The rest of people are
Speaker 1: drunk dancing. They don't care, and I'm warning, what am
Speaker 1: I gonna do next? They're up dancing and the club
Speaker 1: gowners going okay, okay, and he's going like this, keep
Speaker 1: it rolling TV talk for keep doing it, don't cut it,
Speaker 1: keep it rolling, keep them once they sit down at
Speaker 1: the battle to get them up again. Keep them dancing.
Speaker 1: So a light goes on in my head. On the
Speaker 1: way to the gig that night, a DJs on there
Speaker 1: and he says, there's this Darryl B on C FUND
Speaker 1: Radio and we're taking care of business, and I go,
Speaker 1: what a song title? And I write it down. I
Speaker 1: have a songwriting kit in my car, McDonald's napkin and
Speaker 1: a smash crayon left over from one of my kids,
Speaker 1: and I write down, taking care of this. You've got
Speaker 1: to write these things down or you forget them. The
Speaker 1: simple like I wrote down, Let it write. I wrote down,
Speaker 1: you ain't seen nothing yet, because like the great dream
Speaker 1: you had last time, when you say, Randy, I gotta
Speaker 1: tell you about this dream I had, and I said,
Speaker 1: what is it? G I kind of forget it's it's
Speaker 1: gotten faded away. So I write it down. It goes
Speaker 1: on the shelf next to my heart. Of a few
Speaker 1: of my favorite things, which are the lyrics to White
Speaker 1: Collar Worker. And in the middle of a coma vault
Speaker 1: with everyone dancing and me wondering what am I going
Speaker 1: to do next? Is light bulb comes on and goes
Speaker 1: the band is your hostage. They're on stage. They've said
Speaker 1: no to this song for four albums. All you gotta
Speaker 1: do is turn around and say to them, play this song.
Speaker 1: You're on stage, there's three people dancing. I stopped. Where
Speaker 1: goes do do do? Boy? I turned around, go follow me,
Speaker 1: play these three cards? They go what And I start
Speaker 1: to and I sing my verses. They get up in
Speaker 1: the morning. When I get to the hook, I don't
Speaker 1: stop and do white Collar Worker. I think taking care
Speaker 1: of business. It fits taking and got to the next
Speaker 1: time I say the band singing, They sing it and
Speaker 1: I answered them every way every day it's all mine
Speaker 1: and working over time and I go, oh my god,
Speaker 1: thank you. The angel song has shot another arrow in me,
Speaker 1: just like when I did an American woman on the stage.
Speaker 1: And you get that feeling of energy. And here's a
Speaker 1: gift from the gods. You poor sawd You've been working
Speaker 1: eight years on the song. Guess what here's the final
Speaker 1: piece of this puzzle. And we did that song for
Speaker 1: thirty minutes. It ended the set. We'd stopped the song,
Speaker 1: the audience would sing, they felt the energy on stage.
Speaker 1: My brother keep the kick drum going, and the song
Speaker 1: goes and goes and goes. We go to record it
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks later, all Vancouver studios who book
Speaker 1: We go down to Seattle. There's a brand new theater.
Speaker 1: They're started by Danny Kay, the actor, and Lester Still,
Speaker 1: who wants about six radio stations, Lester Smith, so it's
Speaker 1: a less Case Smith Studios. And so we go in
Speaker 1: there and we're recording the album and Spread says he
Speaker 1: wants me to sing taking Care of Business as a
Speaker 1: good relief song for him and stop doing the Santana
Speaker 1: Parogie song and the bad Bob Dylan actually sing a
Speaker 1: song that's on our album. So I sing taking Care
Speaker 1: of Business. So the studio just like this. We've been
Speaker 1: in there since about eleven in the morning. It's not
Speaker 1: one o'clock. The next morning, we've been in there like
Speaker 1: fourteen hours. There's a knock at the door. We're set
Speaker 1: to go home. I've sang the song once it speeds
Speaker 1: up and slows down. We don't care. It's a release song.
Speaker 1: I hide it on side two near the last cut
Speaker 1: on side too, so nobody will here until the end
Speaker 1: of the album. There's a knock at the door. Open
Speaker 1: the door. There's a guy standing there with three pizzas,
Speaker 1: big Frizzy black Beard, frizzy black hair, and army cap
Speaker 1: fatigue cap, army suit on. Since you guys order the pizza.
Speaker 1: The guys about six ft four, six ft five. I
Speaker 1: say no. Tried on the hall. Steve Miller's cutting file
Speaker 1: like an Eagle album there and then Warris cutting why
Speaker 1: can't we be friends? On? Everyone's using this new studio
Speaker 1: because Lester Smith owns six radio stations. And if you're
Speaker 1: cutting his studio, guess what you got played on six stations?
Speaker 1: The paddle day with the big DJ there. You gotta
Speaker 1: played in Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, all the way down to Portland, everything.
Speaker 1: So he goes down the hall, gets rid of the pizza,
Speaker 1: comes back, knocks on the door and I say, yeah,
Speaker 1: pizza's gone. He said yeah. I said, what kind do
Speaker 1: for you? You look like you wants something, He said,
Speaker 1: I've been listening to this song you've been playing for
Speaker 1: the last twenty minutes, taking care of business, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like I could really use a piano. And I said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know Elton and I know Little Richard, and they're
Speaker 1: in l A right now at a big party. I'd
Speaker 1: love to get them. Money said, I'm a keyboard player.
Speaker 1: I don't deliver pizza to the end of the month
Speaker 1: when I can't pay my rent. Would you give me
Speaker 1: a shot? I go, what, We've been here fourteen hours
Speaker 1: when the pianos not even too And he said, I
Speaker 1: don't care. I said, okay, I'll give you a shot.
Speaker 1: Who am I not to give a guy a shot?
Speaker 1: I don't mind what somebody gives me a shot. Okay,
Speaker 1: here's your shot. Throwing the mike clothes the lid. He said,
Speaker 1: what do you want? It said, give me some Elton Johnson,
Speaker 1: Dr Johnson, Little Richard, like making a pot pourri. Then
Speaker 1: maybe we'll pick a style needed the whole song and
Speaker 1: cell he plays it once. I said, good enough, go
Speaker 1: I'm gonna wipe it out. The next day he goes home.
Speaker 1: He goes delivering pizza. We go back to sleep. Charlie Fatch,
Speaker 1: the guy who signed us, flies in a day early,
Speaker 1: supposed to come a day later, comes in a day early.
Speaker 1: What do you Why are you here daily? Because I'm
Speaker 1: going to LA to play them your new album. Well,
Speaker 1: we're not even done. Play me the album. I want
Speaker 1: to hear the single playing letter right, it goes great,
Speaker 1: wonderful single, the guitars, the harmonies, that's great, guts taking
Speaker 1: care of his Let's say to the engineer, don't play
Speaker 1: the piano track. We haven't even heard it back. So
Speaker 1: we listened to the whole side one. Here's let it ride.
Speaker 1: He's happy because you've got to do an edit that
Speaker 1: because it's very long. There's a breakdown, and said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I can edit that because if you didn't do it edit,
Speaker 1: then radio did the wrong. You had different singles everywhere
Speaker 1: you went. Um. So halfway through the song, the engineer
Speaker 1: pushes up the fader and incomes to the piano and
Speaker 1: Charlie leaps out of his chair and goes, what on
Speaker 1: earth is that bt O with the piano? That is
Speaker 1: amazing because none of you guys will listen to me.
Speaker 1: You are guitar bassed and drums ZZ top guitar, bass
Speaker 1: and drums. Do be brothers guitar, bass and drums. Almond
Speaker 1: Brothers guitar. You know everybody's guitar based and drums. You
Speaker 1: want to be different. Elton owns real estate on Top
Speaker 1: forty radio and AM Radio. Elton is everywhere. Let me
Speaker 1: hear the whole track. We're back up. We playing the
Speaker 1: whole track. Could go that's amazing. That will get you
Speaker 1: top for the airplane that and let it ride? Are
Speaker 1: you kidding? Let it ride? Starting with harmonies with you
Speaker 1: guys and the jangling beat and heavy guitar and like guitar,
Speaker 1: and then this comes out as a party track. TC
Speaker 1: be taking care of business? Amazing. Who's playing the piano?
Speaker 1: And I say a pizza delivery guy and he said, no, seriously,
Speaker 1: who's playing the piano? I'd say, Charlie. A guy brought
Speaker 1: pizza here last night. He asked to play piano. And
Speaker 1: let him play piano. He's gone, I have no idea
Speaker 1: who he is. Where'd you get the pizza from? I said,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. We didn't order the pizza. So he says,
Speaker 1: so I go down and knock under our Steve Miller steball,
Speaker 1: where'd you get the pizza? I don't know. I didn't.
Speaker 1: We didn't get to go down to wars thing. It's
Speaker 1: like walking to Cheech and Chunk's basement. There's a cloud
Speaker 1: of smoking there. I can't even see these guys. Where'd
Speaker 1: you get the pizza from last night? They say it
Speaker 1: is last night, Man, it's still last night. Nobody knows
Speaker 1: where the pizza came from. The I may just come
Speaker 1: and cleaned up the studio, right, because when you're a
Speaker 1: studio basically ordered Chinese and pizza all the time, or
Speaker 1: Greek or something, or spaghetti, and you eat and you
Speaker 1: don't have to wait to be served. The food comes in,
Speaker 1: you eat it in like five minutes. The wolf pack
Speaker 1: eat and then you're back to recording again. So I
Speaker 1: go to the lady at the front of the studio
Speaker 1: and say, here's the yellow pages where you started Antonio's.
Speaker 1: I'll go halfway to at Mario's for on every pizza
Speaker 1: place within two blocks of the studio and see if
Speaker 1: they have a pizza to every guy that looks like
Speaker 1: Fidel Castro. He had a big, frizzy black beard and
Speaker 1: hair and wearing an army out fatigue off it. I
Speaker 1: get lucky in my third phone call. Yeah, we have
Speaker 1: a guy like that looks like that. Can you tell
Speaker 1: me his name? No, we can't give employees names over
Speaker 1: the phone home. How do I get this guy? Would
Speaker 1: you want a pizza? Yeah? Yeah, we'll take When does
Speaker 1: he start works six o'clock? Okay, send him with a pizza.
Speaker 1: What do you want? Send yesterday's pizza. We don't care.
Speaker 1: We just want to meet the guy. He comes in.
Speaker 1: His name is Norman Dirkey. That's the piano here and
Speaker 1: taking care one take by the piano. That's why one
Speaker 1: versus like Dr John, the next one like Elton John actor,
Speaker 1: the next one like Little Richard. It's all this potpourria
Speaker 1: piano style. Norman Dirky did do work at that studio.
Speaker 1: I didn't know, but he did commercial work there because
Speaker 1: he was a musician. He work wherever he got gigs. Um,
Speaker 1: so we find out his name. He was in the Union.
Speaker 1: We give him credit on the album that's the piano
Speaker 1: you hear. He then went on to be Bett Miller's
Speaker 1: musical director on your first North American tour. And when
Speaker 1: I played with Ringle Star Lstar band, we toured the
Speaker 1: world and came back. We ended here in l A
Speaker 1: at the at the Greek Theater and the l A
Speaker 1: Philharmonic plays there, and the pianist was Dorman Turkey. Really yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and then that's a long story, but that's a great story.
Speaker 1: I love the story and it's amazing. So how about
Speaker 1: you Ain't seen Nothing yet? That is a reject song
Speaker 1: I'm producing bt O. I always had what was called
Speaker 1: the work song. We'd go in and I'd want to
Speaker 1: get a really good kick drum, then a good snare,
Speaker 1: and you'd move the mics around, crawl around, get a
Speaker 1: good bass on. Then I'd go and add a nice
Speaker 1: clean guitar track and nice jangly rhythm track and then
Speaker 1: this powerful sledgehammer in the face, powerful guitar thing. That's
Speaker 1: what heavy rock was, basically pop music with heavier courses,
Speaker 1: like bigger, heavier things like I could make Sugar Sugar
Speaker 1: into a heavy rock song just with guitar sounds. So
Speaker 1: I have this work track one of my brothers, the
Speaker 1: one who played a kordion that I got to burn
Speaker 1: these eyes on stutters. So I don't know if you've
Speaker 1: got any brothers, even if you've got sisters, actually only
Speaker 1: have two sisters. You tease each other, you put each
Speaker 1: other on your short seet. Each other's bad. You tire
Speaker 1: your laces and not so the kids can't put on
Speaker 1: their shots, you know that kind of thing. So me
Speaker 1: and my brother has always played pranks on each other.
Speaker 1: So my brother who started. I think I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: this work track where the guitars out of tune, and
Speaker 1: it's totally a wreckage of a track. But it's got
Speaker 1: the heavy, powerful guitar and at you see that, it's
Speaker 1: got the nice jangly thing copying Dave Mason, only you
Speaker 1: know and I know in the verse of course, and um,
Speaker 1: I stutter over it. We mix one cassette and put
Speaker 1: it aside. Charlie comes to hear the album. It's not fragile,
Speaker 1: here's not that fragic, goes well, this is the beginning
Speaker 1: of something new. This isn't heavy rock. You can call
Speaker 1: this heavy metal. This is incredible. And here's Rolling down
Speaker 1: the Highway and a couple of other songs deal though
Speaker 1: they are pretty good. Are looking for a song now
Speaker 1: to be in the top three on Top forty. Taking
Speaker 1: care of Business was great, it's like top ten. You eight,
Speaker 1: um let it ride number four. I want to get
Speaker 1: you up to in the top one or two or three.
Speaker 1: That would be really amazing. I said, that's the album.
Speaker 1: We've been on road for ninety days. We have we're
Speaker 1: in here for five days. We cut our albums in
Speaker 1: five days and beat you and mixed it on the
Speaker 1: sixth just balancing the tracks on the sixth day. It
Speaker 1: wasn't rocket science with this band. Once you got the sounds,
Speaker 1: we played everything over and over and over, and so
Speaker 1: we play the album. He goes, I need more stuff,
Speaker 1: and the engineers and wanted to play him the work track,
Speaker 1: the throwaway track, and Charlie jumps out of his chair
Speaker 1: again and he says, what, there's another track, And I say, Charlie,
Speaker 1: it's a train wreck. I haven't even tuned my guitars
Speaker 1: out of tune. Okay, all our instruments are put away.
Speaker 1: I can't even redo the guitar and it we're done,
Speaker 1: and I played for me, go that is really charming.
Speaker 1: When you hear the jangly rhythm, it lifts, it's right,
Speaker 1: it's a foot above the vinyl. When you hear that back,
Speaker 1: it's magical. Radio radio is gonna love this. You put
Speaker 1: it on it. It's a it's a morning track for
Speaker 1: morning drive. It's a sunshiny day and you ain't seen
Speaker 1: nothing yet. I go, okay, let me re sing it
Speaker 1: because there's a Michael. I try to resing it. It
Speaker 1: doesn't work. It's like it's like Tony Bennett, baby bad
Speaker 1: Michael Boom. You ain't see nothing yet. It doesn't fit.
Speaker 1: He said, leave it the way the charming, it's never
Speaker 1: the same. I said, well, I'm copying the way my
Speaker 1: brother talks that you're never gonna four get four get
Speaker 1: that kind of thing because you just leave it. I say, okay,
Speaker 1: it's terrible. I'm gonna remix out of remixing and Sound
Speaker 1: City in l A. So I go to Sound City
Speaker 1: and I'm there and if the sun City is in
Speaker 1: its heyday, right, that's in the mid seventies and bucking
Speaker 1: am Nicks have been in there there auditioning for Fleetwood
Speaker 1: mac Lindsey Buckingham's put his guitar through a Leslie speaker.
Speaker 1: He's blown the speaker on the Leslie, which is a
Speaker 1: little triangular horn. There's a big one in the bottom.
Speaker 1: There's a little triangular horn that spins around. The speakers
Speaker 1: are being fixed. So I said to my engineer, Mark Smith,
Speaker 1: I need to disguise my guitar. There's no such thing
Speaker 1: as a harmonizer or to retune your guitar, and there's
Speaker 1: no guitars there mixing like for three days. So I
Speaker 1: want to disguise my lead guitar. So can we run
Speaker 1: it through the leslie and give it the swishing sound
Speaker 1: and we'll put an echo repeat on it, so you
Speaker 1: hear the repeat and you won't listen to that the
Speaker 1: guitars out of tune. We go out there and the
Speaker 1: top speaker's gone, and I said, what can we use
Speaker 1: as a speaker? He said, all the speakers as a cone.
Speaker 1: Let's use this. It takes a cola Coca Cola cup,
Speaker 1: jams it on the top of these wires with this
Speaker 1: little thing, and it's spinning your own the mic on it.
Speaker 1: That's my lead guitar. And you ain't seen nothing yet.
Speaker 1: Out of tune with a cocaco And we have a
Speaker 1: picture of this and like a true story with a
Speaker 1: slap echo and someone who goes to dad, who da
Speaker 1: da da dada. It repeats itself, so you're listening to
Speaker 1: more than just the guitar. Sol and I started my
Speaker 1: way through it. There's bad van Morrison impression that I'm
Speaker 1: going shall a lot, just like Brown Eyed Girl and
Speaker 1: I'm having fun. It's a stupid party track. Charlie says,
Speaker 1: this is a career song, just like taking care of Business.
Speaker 1: This is gonna go on the album. That's the first
Speaker 1: B two album that had the extra song, the ninth song.
Speaker 1: We only worked with four side to get about twenty
Speaker 1: to twenty two minutes because it was violent. Both sides
Speaker 1: have to be the same amount of volume. The more
Speaker 1: time you had, the volume went down here dividing the
Speaker 1: space between more grooves and uh so we put the
Speaker 1: five shorter songs on one side. He releases it, it
Speaker 1: comes out as a single. It goes to number one
Speaker 1: and twenty two countries. It's a gold single. It's a
Speaker 1: platinum single for us, and it wants an award five
Speaker 1: or six years ago from the Stuttering Association of North America,
Speaker 1: that was the best stuttering song of all because but
Speaker 1: a real guy and was done in loving fun. Do
Speaker 1: you know what I mean? That kind of thing? So
Speaker 1: that's some of my greatest hits are our train wreck
Speaker 1: accidents right okay, which brings us the four wheel drive.
Speaker 1: You're so big and people are anticipating that, and although
Speaker 1: it's successful, it is not seen. What is the league
Speaker 1: of the two previous recreence? Do you see it that way?
Speaker 1: It came out too soon. We we are me the band,
Speaker 1: are caught in this bubble of one album in eighteen months,
Speaker 1: and suddenly we've got three and eighteen months and they're
Speaker 1: on the top fifty and you want another one? Oh,
Speaker 1: who can we copy? That's good? Oh, let's copy ourselves.
Speaker 1: Let's make hey you like you ain't seen nothing yet
Speaker 1: a guitar intro. If that would have come out nine
Speaker 1: months later, it would have been solid four wheel drive,
Speaker 1: big powerful song. Every trucker lies in, every four wheel
Speaker 1: driver and loves that song. Four wheel drive, four wheel rides,
Speaker 1: side by side, four wheel drive. It's like amazing song.
Speaker 1: It just came out too soon. We flooded our own market,
Speaker 1: We burst our own bubble. It's sold millions of copies,
Speaker 1: but we were into like Bato two and three, like
Speaker 1: eight million, nine million, a million in England, a million
Speaker 1: in Australia. We're selling tens and twelves and fifteen million
Speaker 1: albums around the world. Suddenly we just we ran out
Speaker 1: of steam. And again I don't know my wife and kids.
Speaker 1: I go home, my kids cry when I picked them up.
Speaker 1: I'm a strange guy. But had you got remarried at
Speaker 1: this point? No, I was still with my first wife,
Speaker 1: had six kids with her. Okay, so how does bt
Speaker 1: O end? It ends with a dreaded five letter word
Speaker 1: called disco or is that four letter d I S
Speaker 1: C O five other words? It was pretty much the
Speaker 1: end of every rock band. No longer between gigs, between tours,
Speaker 1: could you go home and play a club and get
Speaker 1: maybe two grand five guy for for the week when
Speaker 1: you're home, because you gotta work in your home or
Speaker 1: you're spending your rothies. You're burning your your fuel, right,
Speaker 1: you gotta keep adding to the pile of fuel. And
Speaker 1: so they would hire like a Donna Summer or somebody
Speaker 1: with a dat or you know, player or a cassette
Speaker 1: and they would go and look good or a chick
Speaker 1: usually doing disco singing uh and sing three or four
Speaker 1: song and hire three of those a night, pay them
Speaker 1: fifty bucks each and everyone's happy. But they weren't playing
Speaker 1: rock bands. So you try to do something different. So
Speaker 1: you the Doobie Brothers, they've got Michael McDonald they had
Speaker 1: taken to the street, the horn section, all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. Um, a lot of guys rolling stones that
Speaker 1: I miss you, disco kind of beat which you know
Speaker 1: did it, which kind of cool. And I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go back to my Ben McPeak days, my
Speaker 1: bill Ramon days. Get to get a horn section. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do my wheels, won't turn instead of going done, don't,
Speaker 1: I'll be like Fats Domin I have a horn section,
Speaker 1: going to do do do do, reinforcing our stuff. The
Speaker 1: band hated it. It just didn't work. And pretty much
Speaker 1: radio had played at that point so much bt O
Speaker 1: literally so much. Even now they play a lot, uh,
Speaker 1: which is great. I'm thrilled all these mistakes get played
Speaker 1: over and over again. I still play the mistakes on stage. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the band ends, and do you feel at this point, Well,
Speaker 1: I've been on the road for fifteen years. I just
Speaker 1: want to stay home and you then start my own
Speaker 1: I have my own studio, And did you have any
Speaker 1: desire to make it back to the top of it?
Speaker 1: Of course that's my big desire to this day start
Speaker 1: a band called Iron Horse. We have a hit on
Speaker 1: Scotti Brothers Records. Goes to the number one in Italy.
Speaker 1: I go into Italy with the number one record I
Speaker 1: Am Elvis and Italy it's incredible, number one record with
Speaker 1: stuttering with sweet Louis Louise with a big hit. I
Speaker 1: come back Um. Fred Turner wants to join the band.
Speaker 1: We just want to be called Iron Ours, so we
Speaker 1: call herself Union. We meet Lenny Pizza, who's just done.
Speaker 1: Girls just want to have fun with So Lenny Pizza.
Speaker 1: Here's what I've done. I've got my own studio. Here's why.
Speaker 1: He says, great, I'll sign you guys. We put out
Speaker 1: a double A side. My song is called main Street USA.
Speaker 1: That's kind of a rap record, rock and roll rap record.
Speaker 1: Fred puts out a song called on Strike by Union.
Speaker 1: The Yankees are on strike or baseballs on strike and
Speaker 1: New York. Lenny Pizzas flaves New York this song is
Speaker 1: gonna rock your face off playing it on New York radio.
Speaker 1: This is on strike and the Yankees are on Psyche
Speaker 1: are somebody's on strike. I don't know who's on Some
Speaker 1: baseball guys are on strike. It comes out on a
Speaker 1: long weekend, so the guys who normally meet every Monday
Speaker 1: morning who pick what records are gonna get played. They
Speaker 1: aren't there. The substitutes are there, and they liked the record,
Speaker 1: and they start to play it. At the end of
Speaker 1: the week, we're on a d forty stations. I get
Speaker 1: a call from CBS Portrait. You've got to come here
Speaker 1: to New York. We're celebrating and being on the thing,
Speaker 1: but we need to have a business meeting. What kind
Speaker 1: of business meeting? So I go into this meeting and
Speaker 1: they say to me, Um, we use indie promotion guys,
Speaker 1: and somehow you bypass these guys and you're on the radio.
Speaker 1: So we usually pay these guys some money and the
Speaker 1: band pays them half the money. So unless you come
Speaker 1: up with the money, you're going to be taken off
Speaker 1: the playlist. And I go, what are you kidding? Is
Speaker 1: this like extortion pay all that kind of stuff. No,
Speaker 1: it's not. It's high level radio promotion. These guys help
Speaker 1: us with programming or whatever they want to call it.
Speaker 1: And I said, look, I don't have any money. I'm
Speaker 1: going to call their bluff. I called their bluff. The
Speaker 1: record vanished, gone, went from hundred forty station in the
Speaker 1: first four days, does nothing zero. So I was off.
Speaker 1: I've had some great adventures. So then where does that
Speaker 1: leave you? Well, it leads people still with a dream
Speaker 1: of writing a hit song. Um. It leads me to
Speaker 1: right now. UM. A few years ago got offered a
Speaker 1: record deal which is really weird, out of the blue
Speaker 1: by a friend of mine who brought Two North Records
Speaker 1: up in Canada, which is really a great label. They've
Speaker 1: had Bruce Colburn forever and a couple of other really
Speaker 1: good acts that when you call heritage acts, they just
Speaker 1: keep recording and touring for for decades. And Buffy, Satan,
Speaker 1: Marie and other friends of mine are on there. And
Speaker 1: so he offers me a record deal. I get inducted
Speaker 1: into Nashville Musicians Hall of Fame. I go down their
Speaker 1: new Young's there because Ben Keith has pedaled steel players
Speaker 1: being duck. I'm there with Kenny Wayne Shepherds, who's fitting
Speaker 1: in for Stevie a Van because Step Round, Double Trouble
Speaker 1: are inducted. I'm inducted. Frampton's inducted, Billy Gibbons is there.
Speaker 1: It's phenomenal. We'll leaves their playing bass. It's I'm in
Speaker 1: like my element of rock and roll guitar, and I said,
Speaker 1: I guess what. I just got offered a record deal,
Speaker 1: and he says, do yourself a favor. Don't do the
Speaker 1: same old Randy Backman ship. So what do you mean.
Speaker 1: Don't do the same stuff. Do something totally different. Be
Speaker 1: like me, reinvent yourself. Shock everybody. You lose some fans,
Speaker 1: but you get some new fans and your real diehard
Speaker 1: fans will love this little ride. You're going, this little deeptour.
Speaker 1: So I go back to Canada again, invite to see
Speaker 1: Tommy out and Stratford we have the Stratford Shakespeare Festival,
Speaker 1: but every year like a jazzer. So they have Stevie
Speaker 1: Wonder at a jazz festival, or Michael McDonald or Steve
Speaker 1: Winwood or something. They're having Tommy. So they invite me
Speaker 1: to Tommy. I'm sitting behind keep Pete Townsend and desk mechanics.
Speaker 1: Who's the guy who produced Tommy? And I'm knowing Pete
Speaker 1: for a long time. We argued over the name of
Speaker 1: the guests who and the who wait back in the
Speaker 1: sixties and he leans back and he goes the drummer
Speaker 1: is incredible. I've got to meet this drummer. Drummer is incredible.
Speaker 1: It plays every note like Keith Moon and Keith in
Speaker 1: Pinball Wizard. I've got to meet this drummer Dale, I said.
Speaker 1: Dale is a girl. Dale is a woman. What I said?
Speaker 1: The program says Dale Brendon, it's Dale and Brandon. I
Speaker 1: know this girl. She drums in a country Banner, written
Speaker 1: songs with them. I've done gigs with her, he said.
Speaker 1: It can't be that she has her own drums. Call
Speaker 1: she drumm Me says she's eight, She's got a hundred students.
Speaker 1: We go back, stay, she meets her. It's her, I
Speaker 1: said her. A man, I want I want to do
Speaker 1: an album with you. The drums who played were so
Speaker 1: Keith Moon. She's got exact kit. She's in her own
Speaker 1: room with Mike's. She got a monitor. She's watching the
Speaker 1: guy she's playing. It's amazing. And so I say to
Speaker 1: my manager, I want to do an album like Black
Speaker 1: Keys or The White Stripes. Me on guitar told the
Speaker 1: Rock and Blues I want to honor the British invasion
Speaker 1: of Clapton and Hendricks Cream and the who power guitar
Speaker 1: and drums is that you can't do what you're jumping
Speaker 1: on the Bandwagon, get somebody else. I see a bass player,
Speaker 1: a tall, beautiful chick playing with Ladies of the Canyon,
Speaker 1: which is like Canadians crazy Horse for knewing, But it's
Speaker 1: four chicks, beautiful, long hair and there blazing playing rock
Speaker 1: and country rock. So I asked the bass player she
Speaker 1: wanted to just do with this one project with me?
Speaker 1: And she's wearing a John in Twistle t shirt and
Speaker 1: she studied at McGill. She's, you know, standard based and
Speaker 1: reads notes, but she loves rocking out like John Entwistle.
Speaker 1: So I say, do you want to do an album
Speaker 1: with me? We'll just set up, we'll do it live
Speaker 1: in like four or five days, Power Tree. I'll show
Speaker 1: you the song we learned it once. It's blues. It
Speaker 1: ain't rocket science, it's all feel out of the blue.
Speaker 1: I call a friend of mine, Kevin Shirley, who I
Speaker 1: helped out twenty years ago, and he was stuck in Canada,
Speaker 1: came to Deuce Rush, couldn't get back into the States.
Speaker 1: I get him through to a radio show for me.
Speaker 1: I said, Kevin, you wow me a favor. He said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I do, and um, I see what are you doing?
Speaker 1: So I'm doing the led Zeppelin, Box said, ac DC
Speaker 1: Box said, I'm doing I don't know who he's doing
Speaker 1: all the Scorpions or something last year. He said, but
Speaker 1: I do your favor. I have a week off. I'll
Speaker 1: come to Toronto. Can you record an album in a week?
Speaker 1: I said, no problem. He flies in, I have these songs.
Speaker 1: I do an album called Heavy Blues. He takes it
Speaker 1: back to and mixes. Its incredible, he said, I got
Speaker 1: my next door neighbor to play on a track. Who's
Speaker 1: that Joe Bonamasa, Oh cool. I listen to it. I
Speaker 1: go wow, Maybe I should have some guests. So I
Speaker 1: get Neil Young, Peter Frampton, Robert Randolph Scott Holiday from
Speaker 1: the rival Sons and get all these guns. And Jeff
Speaker 1: Healey from the grave his wife. Let's me get an
Speaker 1: old track of him, this his guitar off and put
Speaker 1: it on a tribute to him. I have these seven
Speaker 1: guest guitar players. I mean, that's one of the best
Speaker 1: albums I did. Then the next better one is getting
Speaker 1: this idea to do my new album by George, the
Speaker 1: George Harrison Album. It's the most spiritual thing that I've
Speaker 1: ever done that I feel. That's the ratists working. Put
Speaker 1: the American Woman alb up there They're not fragile album,
Speaker 1: and put up the by George album. Though that's my
Speaker 1: triad of greatness in my life, honestly. So this is
Speaker 1: George Harrison covers using the words, but the riffs and
Speaker 1: the melodies are different, absolutely different. When it starts out,
Speaker 1: you have no idea what song it is. People play games,
Speaker 1: they have party games. Now they put on this record
Speaker 1: and they sit there betting I can name that in
Speaker 1: eight seconds. I can name that song in ten seconds
Speaker 1: or twelve words or whatever. And then when I start singing,
Speaker 1: everybody sings along. They all know the words every George
Speaker 1: Harrison song, and even the guitar solos in the songs
Speaker 1: are taken from other Beatle solos and put in a
Speaker 1: different song. So in and then then I wrote the
Speaker 1: first song between Two Mountains, which I said what I felt,
Speaker 1: how George felt. Going to a session with mont Lennon
Speaker 1: and Martin McCartney with thirty gems each, and then they
Speaker 1: call write maybe twenty each, and after they're all done
Speaker 1: and tired out, George, do you have a song? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I got a song called ACX Man. I got a
Speaker 1: song called something. I got a song you know, called
Speaker 1: Piggies or something, so I wrote between two Mountains. I
Speaker 1: wrote it in a daze, in a haze one night,
Speaker 1: in a weird psychedelic dream. I don't take psychedelics, but
Speaker 1: it was a really weird dream. If you've got kids,
Speaker 1: our little brothers or sisters, and you're asleep, you know
Speaker 1: when they walk in the room, even though you're asleep,
Speaker 1: you sent the presence in the room where you're doing
Speaker 1: your father and you wake up your little kids there
Speaker 1: with a Teddy Bearer blanket. Oh, if you had a
Speaker 1: bad dream coming to bed with daddy, they fall aslee.
Speaker 1: If you take them back to the crib, you sent
Speaker 1: somebody's in the room. So this happened like two years ago.
Speaker 1: The whole album is done. I want to get one
Speaker 1: of my songs on there because I've been George all
Speaker 1: my life and every band I've sung George Yarrison side.
Speaker 1: I bought his book, I've got his paintings. I phoned
Speaker 1: his house at Friar Park when I left the guests
Speaker 1: who to see if I could join his band, which
Speaker 1: was Clapton was in his band. There's no way I
Speaker 1: was going to get in his band, but I talked
Speaker 1: to him and I love the guy left his peacefulness
Speaker 1: in quietness, and I left how he dedicated the last
Speaker 1: part of his life too, really gin and spirituality and
Speaker 1: saying with John Lennon, war is over. You can have
Speaker 1: peace and put their career on the line and don't
Speaker 1: do commercial stuff anymore. Do songs that really means something.
Speaker 1: And when the Beatles came to New York and met
Speaker 1: Bob Dylan, he said, now that you have the attention
Speaker 1: of the world, say something. And they started to say something.
Speaker 1: So I have this feeling in mind, and I have
Speaker 1: this presence in the room. And I get up out
Speaker 1: of my bed this two o'clock in the morning, and
Speaker 1: I go next door and I said at my computer,
Speaker 1: I start to type, there's peace within. Just close your eyes,
Speaker 1: breathe in the power, and just realize. I learned to wait.
Speaker 1: My time would come. I'd celebrate because I was the
Speaker 1: one between two mountains. And I go, WHOA, this isn't me.
Speaker 1: And I feel these school I feel the goose bumps.
Speaker 1: Now saying that to you, I feel this weird thing
Speaker 1: that George wasn't piste off between these guys. He was
Speaker 1: grateful because they made a greatness of two mountains. And
Speaker 1: it's just like us being on the TV show. We
Speaker 1: had to write songs. Original song Burton Night have fit
Speaker 1: in between the Beatles and the Stones and the Beach Boys.
Speaker 1: George had to write a song that when it came
Speaker 1: time to play the song, it had to fit in
Speaker 1: there between Lennon McCartney's best and maybe one of the
Speaker 1: worst that got bombed Thumb and George has got in there.
Speaker 1: So I had this feet and then I wrote the
Speaker 1: second verse more about us in life, the mountain of
Speaker 1: good in the mountain and evil were between two mountains.
Speaker 1: And then I had a three. I've never written an
Speaker 1: ABC song that's ABC and then repeats ABC always on
Speaker 1: the of course on a hook, and of course on
Speaker 1: hook and a B A B A B and so something.
Speaker 1: I write this different kind of song, and I'm gonna
Speaker 1: put three pieces of music behind us that are very distinct.
Speaker 1: I'm going to borrow from George's Beatles stuff, and I
Speaker 1: start to bore some Indians cuitar stuff from some tablet,
Speaker 1: and I write the song and the solo in the
Speaker 1: middle is his greatest solo I think from and I
Speaker 1: love her. Doo Do dooe. So when you play between
Speaker 1: two mons in the middle of here too do Doo
Speaker 1: Do Do Do, and you go, where is that from? Wow?
Speaker 1: That's from man I love Her? And then you listen
Speaker 1: to Don't Bother Me, the solo from tax Man's and
Speaker 1: Don't Bother Me the solo from My Sweet Lords is
Speaker 1: in a different and song, and so if you're a
Speaker 1: guitar freak, and then listen to this album, going wow,
Speaker 1: I'm playing Georges solo in a different song, and so
Speaker 1: it's really cool. I had a lot of fun. We
Speaker 1: had a lot of fun. You listened to the album
Speaker 1: in entirety, it should be listened to. It's entirely like
Speaker 1: a Beatles album because it's book ended with between two
Speaker 1: mountains and the other one's done with backwards loops and
Speaker 1: all kinds of noises and tape flipping around like film
Speaker 1: at the end of a film, and all these two
Speaker 1: d dude like Strawberry Fields Forever. We just had great
Speaker 1: fun and figure, I'm not going to get any airplay.
Speaker 1: Miles Ago nuts I was invited to England for John
Speaker 1: lennon seventy fifth birthday about four years ago. Went to Liverpool.
Speaker 1: His sister Julia Broadis brownies, which was John's favorite birthday cake,
Speaker 1: gave us John Lennon glasses. I go to see Beatle
Speaker 1: the Beatles show there. Let it be a friend of
Speaker 1: mine was putting it on there. I'm really immersed in Beatles.
Speaker 1: I ride the bus, I get my haircut at Penny
Speaker 1: Lane barber shop and all that. I come back and go, wow,
Speaker 1: that was great. John Lennon. Me at John Lennons birthday. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm there with a bunch of Canadian lawyers and stuff
Speaker 1: and guys, what kind of George with the youngest Beatle?
Speaker 1: Whence heat? Whence Heat seventy five? Great? Whence the birthday?
Speaker 1: For well, I got an excuse to do an album,
Speaker 1: so I do something weird and different, like Neil Young said,
Speaker 1: don't do the same old stuff. Get a reason for
Speaker 1: doing it. And the first one was the sixties blues
Speaker 1: with these two girls and we totally rocked out. And
Speaker 1: then doing this George Yarrison thing with my band who've
Speaker 1: been together thirty years, who know every Beatles song backers,
Speaker 1: and my son Tell who grew up on the Beatles.
Speaker 1: I'd go on the road and come home all my
Speaker 1: Beatle records would be all over the house, laid out,
Speaker 1: not in their not in their sleeves or jackets. I'm
Speaker 1: about to tear a strip off of you. Of my
Speaker 1: best friend says to me, Are you nuts? Your son
Speaker 1: is steadying the Beatles? Do you understand what that is?
Speaker 1: These guys took the word from a yeah yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: to z to zed in Canada, to z with marmalade
Speaker 1: skies and relax your mind and float down screen. These
Speaker 1: guys took the world through bubblegum pop abba heavy metal
Speaker 1: like She's so heavy. These guys did everything your son
Speaker 1: setting leave them alone by you, by yourself, a set
Speaker 1: of Beatle stuff. Let your son have these and listen
Speaker 1: to them. So we're all really to the Beatles stuff.
Speaker 1: So to get these guys together saying we're gonna do
Speaker 1: ten George ten or twelve George songs and by the way,
Speaker 1: we're gonna make them unrecognizable. I've got these groups from
Speaker 1: the tax Man I do like in a fast Chicago
Speaker 1: likes easy top dude, do do do and we stopped.
Speaker 1: Let me tell you how it will be to do
Speaker 1: do Do Do? And it's like when we do that
Speaker 1: live the crowd goes nuts and they don't know what
Speaker 1: is because we solo for the first two minutes. Okay,
Speaker 1: so at this late date, how much how many live
Speaker 1: dates are you doing? Well? We started George's birthday febr
Speaker 1: Kings in New York. We went to Canada luckily. Now
Speaker 1: things are staggered. Things came out first as a download.
Speaker 1: Then see these now the vinyls of the vinyls this big.
Speaker 1: I went through a transition on the date of the eclipse.
Speaker 1: So I have a picture of the eclipse. That's the
Speaker 1: cover of my album. That's me going in though my
Speaker 1: new phase of life with moving to a new city.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna get a new woman in my life. I've
Speaker 1: got a new album, I've got did you did you
Speaker 1: do all those things? Did you move to? In the middle.
Speaker 1: I'm going home to say goodbye to my house. I'm
Speaker 1: flying to my new house in Victoria next Friday. I
Speaker 1: have a couple of women waiting to both partner. You
Speaker 1: are so alive, it's unbelievable. How about the old days
Speaker 1: to the royalty still come in? Yes, and a wonderful
Speaker 1: things happening in the world to me and everybody else.
Speaker 1: It's called reversion of copyrights. They expire after a while
Speaker 1: and the original creators can apply to get them back.
Speaker 1: So we're working on that. But things got really really
Speaker 1: good in the nineties when classic rock radio came out
Speaker 1: as a format. Could before that they only play a
Speaker 1: Golden Old or a Graveyard groovy or some old thing,
Speaker 1: and they play Monster Mash or something like that on Halloween.
Speaker 1: Now it's like a whole format. And then everything came
Speaker 1: out and c D and every goon that brought our
Speaker 1: album and vinyl and bought it in c D and
Speaker 1: now those are gone, the other by him and Vinyl
Speaker 1: again there. I just remastered eight BTO albums that's coming
Speaker 1: out as a box set in November with outtakes, and
Speaker 1: they all sound similar, no, because they're all mastered by
Speaker 1: the same guy. And for and preparing the Monster Bto
Speaker 1: Truckload it's called that will be remixes of everything without
Speaker 1: take and intakes and other solos because you could try
Speaker 1: one or two solos. Now you just linked in the
Speaker 1: song because you got protos. You make the solo twice
Speaker 1: as long you're bringing your other solo that nobody's heard
Speaker 1: before that might even have a mistake and what's wrong
Speaker 1: with the stakes? Neil Young plays them all the time,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, and so do I like
Speaker 1: They're part of being the mistakes and what makes something
Speaker 1: great human exact exactly. So I've got Japanese recordings of
Speaker 1: the Beatles when when they got them to master in Japan,
Speaker 1: they couldn't read the mastering notes. So the end of
Speaker 1: tax Man or the end of my Guitar, generally, we've
Speaker 1: Paul Party makes twelve based mistakes. I played that for
Speaker 1: all my friends and they go nuts Paul making mistakes.
Speaker 1: They love it, so it's great to have those mistakes
Speaker 1: in there. Okay, So what's the dream? Presently? The dream
Speaker 1: is to have the George album be a success, to
Speaker 1: play one song called You Liked Me Too Much, which
Speaker 1: I did in Gypsy Kings sound, to play it on
Speaker 1: the Grammys with the Gypsy Kings, who I saw last
Speaker 1: week in London and they were just great. So I
Speaker 1: gotta tell you, can you listen to You Like Me
Speaker 1: Too Much? It's to change la la la la. And
Speaker 1: we're singing in Gypsy and my son sings in Spanish,
Speaker 1: so if I can do that song anywhere with the
Speaker 1: Gypsy Kings, it would be I've seen them ten times.
Speaker 1: I love these guys well. The amazing thing talking to
Speaker 1: someone of your generation, which is my generation, who is
Speaker 1: a musician, I must say I have not encountered someone
Speaker 1: as optimistic and enthusiastic about music at this late date.
Speaker 1: You're really excited and it's infectious. Thank you. While I'm
Speaker 1: still a fan. I am on my own radio show
Speaker 1: and canic called Randy's Vinyl Tap, and I play all
Speaker 1: my old vinyl and I tell my stories like I've
Speaker 1: told you about Brian Wilson or Paul McCartney touring the
Speaker 1: ringo stary that nobody knows these stories. So I will
Speaker 1: do a two hour show. It's o Saturday Night on CBC,
Speaker 1: and I tell the story. I'm in my thirteenth year,
Speaker 1: so to do the show, it's like a two hour
Speaker 1: theme one. One thing will be girls names, and next
Speaker 1: thing will be boys names. The next one would be
Speaker 1: summer songs, driving songs, songs about hope, songs about love,
Speaker 1: songs about the Earth for the Earth Day. And that
Speaker 1: allows me to play fifty or sixty years of rock
Speaker 1: and roll, from Little Richard right to Lady Gaga. Do
Speaker 1: you know what are you Are you a hip hop fan?
Speaker 1: Are you play everything? Yeah? If it fits my theme,
Speaker 1: and that's why people love my show. It's like old radio.
Speaker 1: You were. Old radio is with cousin Brucey or Latman Jack.
Speaker 1: They played the Ames Brothers and then they played Johnny
Speaker 1: Horton North to Alaska. Then they played Elvis, and they
Speaker 1: played the Stones Can't get a Satisfaction. Then it played
Speaker 1: Steven IVI gour may blame it on the Boston Nova,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. And then they played the
Speaker 1: Ventures and they played everything. Radio was exciting. You never
Speaker 1: changed the channel. When you listen to radio every Saturday,
Speaker 1: you listen to the Top fifty, you listen fifty nine,
Speaker 1: you listen what's number one? You listen all day long.
Speaker 1: Now everybody's changing. You can hear the same song every
Speaker 1: day at ten on all these radio stations. I know
Speaker 1: it's it's certainly not what it once was, but you
Speaker 1: are still what you once were. You're very but as
Speaker 1: I said earlier, exciting and enthusiastic and Rhan, you're listening
Speaker 1: to Randy Backman on the Bob Left Sets podcast. Ready,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing this. Thanks you are a
Speaker 1: legend and it's a thrilled to talk to you than
Speaker 1: what I thought, Well, what did you think it was?
Speaker 1: Because you're gonna slam me, You're why would you think
Speaker 1: I'm gonna slam you? Because you're very opinionated, which is good, right,
Speaker 1: And my son saying, don't talk about to politics. My
Speaker 1: manager just saying, talking about vitamins bumps into health and
Speaker 1: I'm met to health and all. But what you did
Speaker 1: was really great, was really a nice ride for me
Speaker 1: through mytory of my life. I can all the records
Speaker 1: you're mentioning. I have my own specific stories where I
Speaker 1: was when I heard those and off the first b
Speaker 1: t O album, I had my one of my too
Speaker 1: closest friends from college, he's from Kansas City, and they
Speaker 1: played it there. We just played Kansas City, Okay, they
Speaker 1: they played it there, and I was unaware of the
Speaker 1: record with the New York City radio market. And then
Speaker 1: of course bt O two comes up and it's the
Speaker 1: biggest band in the land. As I say, I literally have.
Speaker 1: I can tell you you know this is about you,
Speaker 1: but I can tell you where I heard four Wheel
Speaker 1: Drive in Mammoth, California the first time. I can tell
Speaker 1: you being slipping some golfers around hearing you know you
Speaker 1: ain't seen nothing yet. It's like these songs are part
Speaker 1: of the American in the world fabric. That's my stage show.
Speaker 1: Is this just what I told you? From shaking over on?
Speaker 1: I tell every story of every song. I tell George
Speaker 1: Harrison's stories. So I started with three George, and this
Speaker 1: is We did the true of our a couple of
Speaker 1: nights ago, and then last night in Palomino Club and
Speaker 1: the night before in Kansas City. People are sitting down,
Speaker 1: they don't want to stand up and dance. They danced.
Speaker 1: Near the end. We come up with a tax man
Speaker 1: and taking care of business. And by the way, Elvis,
Speaker 1: she was taking care of business as his logo, his motto.
Speaker 1: Elvis made me start to play guitar. I wrote, tc B,
Speaker 1: it's on his tombstone TCB. I've seen Priscilla saying Elvis
Speaker 1: heard a Canadian band singing that song and said, that's
Speaker 1: my logo. So tc B, my connection with Elvis is complete.
Speaker 1: You have now come full circle above left. I was
Speaker 1: gonna ask another question, but this full circle we should
Speaker 1: end there. Thanks again so much. City. That wraps up
Speaker 1: this week's episode of The Bob left Sets podcast recorded
Speaker 1: live at the tune In studios in Venice, California. It's
Speaker 1: a mepic stories and a bunch of fun. Email me
Speaker 1: at Bob left sets dot com if you want to
Speaker 1: tell me what you thought. Until next time, it's Bob
Speaker 1: left Sets. Think me reas don't know exactly