Celebrity Jobber with Jeff Zito - Randy Bachman

Hey, it's Jeff Zito. Thanks again for checking out another episode of the Celebrity Jobber podcast streaming on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeart, or wherever you get your podcast. Please subscribe. We'd love a five star rating and please leave a review. Pass guests and episodes online at celebrityjobber.com. And you can also follow on Instagram, celebrity underscore jobber underscore podcast or the YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash the at sign celebrity jobber also at celebrity jobber on sub stack. So subscribe to sub stack for some bonus content and a lot of other stuff. What would happen to these people if they didn't get their big break if they weren't famous? What would they be doing? You know, and what was life? And you know, like what was life like before fame for some of these people? You know, most just held regular jobs and were regular people. We're about to hear a really incredible story. This guy is 80 years old and man, he can tell a story and he's got a lot to tell. As you know, the guess who is back on tour. And I'm talking about the real band Randy Backman and Burton Cummings back together on tour right now. The guess who.com for tour dates near you. Going to talk about the beginning from when Randy was a little kid. I mean, all the way back to like three years old. That's where this story starts, believe it or not. You know, it's pretty huge to get a record deal and get a hit song with one band, let alone two. So it happened two times with Randy Backman, first with the guess who and then with Bachman Turner overdrive, BTO. And what about jobs outside of music? What was Randy's first job or if he had several different jobs? We're about ready to hear the whole story from the guess who and Bachman Turner overdrive, the one and only Randy Backman is my guest this week on celebrity jobber. The celebrity jobber podcast with Jeff Zeta. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, give a five star rating and leave a review. Check out all our past episodes on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you pod. What if these celebrities weren't famous? What would they have become? What was their first job? We're about to find out. Hey, Randy, how's it going? Great. It's funny. You know, I usually I have a term I usually call rock and roll time and that's, you know, usually 15 minutes late. But here you are, proven me proven that theory wrong two minutes early. Pretty incredible. I'll sign off and come back in 15. I won't disappoint you. Definitely not disappointed. I've been waiting to speak with you for a long time. And I do want to thank you for taking the time to speak with me. Is it true? Us Americans have been mispronouncing your name for over 50 years. Yes, but you've been mispronouncing everything for 50 years. You heard the song you say tomato, tomato, potato, potato, right. Backman, Bachman. Okay, so you just you just responded to Bachman. No big deal. You didn't correct anybody. You didn't want to make us feel bad. Is that what it was? Here's what I say. This is Randy Bachman from Bachman, Turner, Overture. That's great, man. Tell me, what was it back in in the good old days when you were a young boy growing up in Canada? What made you want to get into rock and roll? What was it? Well, I grew up as a classical kid. I started classical violin. I was five. It was Royal Conservatories. You got to play Chopin and Tchaikovsky and all this stuff. And it was pretty good. And I turned like 14. And it's a very boring life because it's all classical. And the world is changing. And in addition for a symphony orchestra, the junior, Winnipeg Junior Symphony School Orchestra, and realized I couldn't, I wasn't as good as the classical people there. And I wanted to break out. And so I quit. And the next day after I quit, I went home and said to my mother, I'm not playing violin anymore. I'm quitting. What are you going to do? I thought I have no idea. The next day I saw Elvis Presley on TV. And I said, what is that? Because TV was brand new back then. This is like the mid 50s in Winnipeg. Well, that's called rock and roll. That's called a guitar. And that's called Elvis Presley. That's insane. The guys, everybody's screaming at the guy. What's going on? Well, that's what rock and roll. You do whatever you want. You can dance and shake and scream and yell. I said, well, I want to do that. My cousins had a guitar. So I said, how do you play this? They showed me three things on the guitar. I picked up and played it. And they said, how can you play this? So easy. I said, well, a lot of violin, all you play is melody. I've been playing melody since I was five. I'm now 15. So very ten years. I can play. I can play lead on this guitar. It's just like a violin. They said, oh, you're a lead guitar player. I started a band. It was Chad Allen. The reflections. We became the gas. Who here I am. Wow. Unbelievable story. And I heard there was a chance meeting with the legendary Les Paul, where you tried to actually buy a ticket to go into a show, but you were too young. Well, I just on the other side of Winnipeg was out. It was at a supper club, a nightclub. I didn't realize it. And I didn't tell my parents I was going. You can't or else they won't let you go. Right? You're 15. Right. Les Paul, Mary Ford had three songs in the top 10, Bayek and Dio's and a couple others. How high the moon is stuff like that. So I go, I get on the bus, I go to the other side of Winnipeg, which is a three bus transfers across town. And I go to the club and it's like 5 30 at night. And I said, I've come to see the Les Paul. He says, you can't get in. It's a supper club. We serve alcohol here unless you have an adult with you and book a table. You can't get in. I said, you're kidding. So I'm sitting out front kind of disheveled, sitting at the bus stop and a black Cadillac pulls up the window rolls down and sitting there holding a Les Paul, Mary Ford album. The window rolls down and says, hi kid. Wow. And I look at Les Paul. He says, what are you doing? It's not a came to see your show, but I can't get in. He's, I'll get you in. Carry my guitar. We go in the back of a supper club. He said, you can't go out there. They won't let you go. But you can stay here in the kitchen. And so they had big swinging doors on the kitchen where waiters are going through with trays with food on and the swinging doors had big round windows. So they wouldn't smash into each other and knock the trays out of each other's hand. And beside me backstage was five Apex tape recorders all stacked up that he, all his music was on. And he controlled them all with a controller on his guitar. He called it the Les pulverizer. And he had this pulverizer switch that would start the tape recorders. And he would go explain to the audience, here's how I play rhythm to and he would play that. Here's how I play the lead. Here's how Mary Ford sang. Mary Ford, what they walked around to each table and serenaded each table like you would do with a mariachi band. Right. And it was amazing. Wow. And when the whole thing was done and I'm sorry, beside, I'm beside the tape record, but all I see is rear end and Mary and he's wearing a tuxedo and Mary Ford's wearing like a white prom dress, you know, big frilly dress and their son Jean is playing drums. You're keeping rhythm going. That's why I see the whole show that way. When it's all done, he comes back to his whole disc, he had me his guitar and he wipes his brow. He goes, let me do this is on core. And that was that unbelievable. And then I hear years later, you run into him again. I'm with BTO. I'm opening with for Van Halen and we're in New Jersey outside of New York at the National Coliseum at Les Paul comes in to say hi to Eddie and he comes up to me and Sammy Hager is in the band at that time. Les Paul comes up to me and he says, do I know you? I said, Rancho Don Cardo, swimming bag, oh kid, do you remember that lick? I said, yeah, he showed me the lick on how high the moon. He thought I'm playing at the Iridium Club tour and I'd come on down. So I go down to the Iridium Club. He calls me up on stage. We play how high the moon. He says to me, let's do one of yours, kid. I go, what? Yeah, don't you ever? I said, yeah, I play taking care of business and Les Paul played guitar with me. And then I went a few years later, I go to Neil Young's birthday in LA at the Trumador and Neil comes up to me says, you know that story you told about Les Paul? I go, yeah, and he says, you don't realize I was at that show and I said, really? Yeah, but my mother booked a table. I sat at the front table. I saw Neil, I saw Les Paul's fingers play. You saw his rear end as he was walking around. Unbelievable. What were your parents, musical Randy? No, but they did everything to get the kids out of the ghetto. So I had violin lessons and my son, my brother had accordion lessons. My other brother had drum lessons. And we became the heart of Bachman Turnover. They added up my buddy Fred Turner. After the guess who, I started a band with my brothers. We became the three Bachmans and the Turner and my brothers have now passed away. I'm the last surviving guy and I continue on as BTO. Celebrity Jobber. The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. So you won a singing contest at three years old by five years old. You started playing classical violin and I asked you if your parents were musical people. You said no, but they did all they could to get the kids out of the ghetto. What did you mean by that number one and number two? What did your parents do for work? My mother was a mother. She had four sons. Believe me. Four boys is a big job. And it's an ad hill. And my dad was an optician, eyeglass guy. Because my parents were not well off, we did live in a ghetto. It was a Ukrainian, Polish, Jewish kind of ghetto where all the poor people lived on the other side of the train tracks, whereas Winnipeg and the downtown with the, I don't know, the more British or the more upper class. You needed a way out. I was either playing hockey, you know, stopping pucks or shooting pucks, shooting hoops, hitting home runs, playing an instrument, being an actor, being an athlete, excelling at something to get you out of there. Or else you're going to stay there and marry your high school sweetheart and have four kids and go to the same game at the same, same old, same old, same old, same old. For some people, that's really good. Sometimes I long for that. There's a nice thing about the comfort zone of that. And then part of me wants to join the Rock and Roll circus and go around the world, which is what I did. So what kind of music were your parents into? The music they would play and they would go and see that would come to Winnipeg would be the Benny Goodman Orchestra, Tony Bennett, Barbara Streisand, you know, when they were teenagers, when they were 20 or something, whatever. But they'd always play this music in the house on 78s. And they always had a great guitar solo like Charlie Christian or something is playing the guitar solo in Grand Slam. And I learned that right off the bat. I didn't know who it was. It doesn't say who it is on a 78. And I would just kind of get that in my head. Yeah. So that's kind of what happens. So if I was to say school really wasn't your thing, would that be accurate? Well, it was my thing until about grades through eight or nine. I was an A student, A plus student. I did everything perfect. I mean, literally everything. I'm playing violin. Because my parents had to scrape up the money for my lesson, which was like $2 a week. This was like big money for them. My dad was making 50 bucks a week then. So for me to take that money and get a lesson, a lesson, I literally had to practice every morning, half an hour violin, seven, 30 in the morning before school. And when I came home after school at four, before I could change it to my play genes, because then you had good genes, you were to school and play a change at home. I had to practice another half an hour. So I practiced an hour a day violin at the age of five and it becomes a part of your routine, becomes music, music is mathematical, it's physical, it's brain to fingers, a coordination, everything like that. And on a violin, what do you play lead? It's a lead instrument. It's like a flute, like a pickle. You're playing the lead. I get invited to join or audition for the Winnipeg Junior Symphony. 85 kids are auditioning. This is on the other side of Winnipeg, the upper side, where Neil Young lived at his high school, Crescent High or Calvin High, that was it. And I go there. Now I've been playing, I'm 14. I've been playing for like for nine years. We're playing a piece auditioning. As we get into the piece, it's a Mozart piece. I'm auditioning for second violin, which is a big deal. Because first violin takes over when the conductor's not there. And the second like then leads to everything else. And it gets to a certain part of the song and there's tap, tap, tap and everybody stopped playing. The conductor says bar 32, second violin, it's a, it's an E flat. Let's take it from the top. I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know what bar 32 is. I don't know what an E flat is. I had a teacher that she would put up sheet of music in front of me, Chopin or something, or Mary had a little lamb or whatever. She'd play it first and she'd say, okay, no, your turn. And I would play it because I had heard it in my head. So I learned to play by ear. So now what I'm trying to play with is symphony, junior symphony. And he says, let's take it from the top. We go to the top, we go to bar 32 again, which I now really, I know where it is. I didn't know there was like eight bars, eight bars, eight bars. I didn't know what he meant. And we get to it again. I play the same note and he says, stop second violin. Can you play an E? Yes. It's an open string on the violin. Can you play an E flat? I'm stumped. How can you go any lower than an open string? Mathematically, I don't realize that on the string before that you go da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, and you go up the next string. At that moment, I don't do it. I say, no. So like there's 80 kids laughing at me. I pack up my violin, I'm in tears. I got a little six cent bus ticket. I go home the other side of Winnipeg, takes me an hour to get home on the bus. I go in the house, it's like, now, it's now noon on Saturday. My mother says, well, that's it. Are you in the symphony? I go, no, I'm never playing again. She says, what do you mean? I thought, I can't play violin. She says, you can. Well, I can't play with the other kids. I don't know what I'm doing. I'm never going to play it again. They were all laughing at me. So she, she figures I'll get over it. I say, I'm never touching it again. The next day, her sister comes over, her sister's 10 years younger than her. She's my cool hip aunt, who's like maybe 18 or 19. And they together watch Elvis on television. We have a little black and white TV. They're watching this little thing on, and they're screaming and I'm living with my father's going, oh, that's disgusting. I'm like, what is that? Why is this green black? Oh, he's shaking his hips. What does that mean? Like I'm a violin player. You stand a certain way and you play what's on the page. And they go, well, that's called rock and roll. That's called Elvis Presley. And that's called a guitar. And I go, I want to do that. It's wild. I want to go wild. Because classical violin, when you're adjudicated a couple of times a year, and it's Royal Conservatory, you have to stand a certain way. You can't rest your elbow like the country guys, the Cajun guys. You have to stand a certain way. It's all upstroke and downstroke. You got to play everything perfectly. And I wanted to do something wild. So is that when you made the move to guitar? I had two cousins chipped in to get a guitar. So one of them would use it Saturday from noon to noon. And then the other one would use it Saturday from noon to noon. So they took turns. They were both going away fishing. And I said, can I borrow you? Can I borrow your guitar? I wanted to play guitar. I just saw Elvis on TV. I wanted them to play that. And they go, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure. So they loan me their guitar, which I still have on the wall to this day. They go away for the weekend. I listen to the radio. I can play whatever's on the radio at the time, which is 16 tons, six pens, Ernie Ford. I walked the line, Johnny Cash, Hound Dog. There's a beginning of rock and roll and rockabilly, Carl Perkins doing blue suede shoes and stuff like that. They come home after two days and they say, well, okay, what have you learned? And I start to play everything. They go, what? How did you figure this out? What are you playing? I said, I don't know what I'm playing. I find a note. I hear it in my head. I find it. I play it. And they go, well, that's pretty amazing. Can you play a chord? And I go, what's a chord? There's a bunch of notes that are in harmony. So yeah, I can go, I can play. Yeah. I started to play lead guitar, like out of the blue. Then you learn the chords to back up what you're playing. Then I heard from my brother that the best band in town in Winnipeg, the top teenage band who played all the high school dances, and in Winnipeg at the time, this is like the early 60s all the way through the 60s, the drinking age was 21. So nobody went to nightclubs. Everybody went to a high school dance. When there was a high school dance, there was not 150 kids there. There was 450 kids. Everybody who was 20 or 21 who couldn't go to the clubs came to the high school dance. So we had kids from 14 to about like 24 all their dancing together. And if you couldn't dance, a bigger chick would take you and teach you. You stand here and do this and I'll twirl around. You'll look cool. And then you slow dance with them. You get them to bear hug you, waltz around the floor. But that was, that was the scene. So all these bands were playing and playing. I heard the top band in town, Alan and the Silver Tones, who changed their name to Chad Alan and the Reflections, needed a guitar player. And my brother was working with Jim Kale, who was the bass player in the band. He said, you want to go in on this for this band? I said, yeah, you said learn this. They gave me an EP, which is, you know, a four song, 45, with four song by the shadows. And it was Man in Mystery, Kanteke and four instrumentals. And I'm, so I'm learning the rhythm. And I go to my first rehearsal with them. The lead guitar player is playing the lead. He breaks the string and I finished playing the lead. And they go, what? You can play this. They ask and play the, all the lead, I can play all the rhythm, all the lead. Would you want to be the new lead guitar player? I said, okay, great. That's why I came. I'm, I play a lead instrument. Right. And then we got the song, Shake On Over from Johnny Kidd and the Pirates in England, which is number one in 1961 in England. We're, we're in 1963, 64 in Winnipeg. And Shake On Over was a heavy riff, guitar riff and bass, tune, tune, tune, tune, real heavy, which inspired John Paul Jones and John Deacon and all the other guys who, and John Antwes, all the other guys who became bass player were inspired in England by Shake On Over to record this song with one microphone. And we send it into a record label in, in, uh, Toronto, quality records. And they say, we love this song. It sounds very British, but you can't use the name Reflections. A band called just, uh, a song just like Romeo and Juliet was out by the Reflections. We want to release this. It sounds very British. And there was the, the mystery at the time that Joe Meek had recorded the Telstar in his, in his building in the hallway with this thing. And there was a number one instrumental around the world. And that Joe Meek had recorded his other party with guys from the Stones and the Beatles and the Fentones and everybody all playing together as partying. They couldn't put their name on the record because there were different bands with the Stones with other labels. So quality records wanted to put it out and just put out a white label that said Shake On Over and guess who, because we couldn't use the name Reflections. We couldn't find the name. Wow. It was a mean, mean while find the name. Okay. We're just going to put guess who on that. And as people are writing in that you might, because to try to find a new name for a band then in the sixties was really, really tough. Every butterfly and every bird was taken up by the doo-wop, the Orioles, the Sparrows, the Ravens, the honor on then the girl's name, the Cherelle, the Crystal, the Runet. They were all used by their names. We couldn't find the name. So they put out 50 CDs, 50, 45s to 50 radio stations with guess who on it and Shake On Over. That's it. Wow. It goes to number one. Everybody's voting in the radio station. Well, I heard from my cousin, it's Brian Jones on guitar. I heard it's George Harrison playing bass for the first time. And it becomes this urban myth that who are the guess who. And we're voting radio stations going, it's me. It's us. It's Randy back with them. No, it's not. It's Brian Jones playing league guitar. Wow. I didn't know that. That goes to number one in Canada. It gets leased by Scepter Records in New York City. Scepter Records is owned by Florence Greenberg. Her partner is Paul Cantor. They're really tight Jewish smart people. They're in the music business there. They're a block from the Brill building. They have Scepter Records and Scepter Studios. On Scepter Records is the Kingsman, Louis Louis, Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson, Maxine Brown, the songwriters for Ashford and Simpson, Backerrack and David did their pitching songs to Dionne Warwick all the way along where they're hanging out recording our album. So we have this mentorship by Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson and Bert Backer and how they were, these guys are wearing penny loafers. They're out of, they're just like the Juilliard. They're wearing, you know, T-shirts and penny loafers with real pennies and the loafers. Right. And all that stuff. And they're there playing message to Michael and everything to, for Dionne Warwick. And we're hearing all this stuff. It's really, really inspiring. We could ask through the Kingsman Louis Louis Tour in 1965. We've got Shake On Over. We've got one hit song, but we are a radio band. Most bands, when you're starting, you play what's on the radio, you copy what's on the radio. Right. So we get asked by Florence Greenberg who wrote Soldier Boy and manages Sherelles. Could I back to Sherelles? Could we back the crystals? Could we back the run at the three or four chicks who sing their demos with a studio band? When they get on the radio, there's no band. There's just the three girls. Right. So can we, can we play the do run run? Can we play, he's a rebel. Of course we can. We sound like the record. So we went out as the guests who we would open the show with Shake On Over, back the crystal, the run at the, sing their hits. And then we closed it. Okay. Close it was Shake On Over like 40 minutes later. Oh, wow. We got to meet and tour. And for us being from Winnipeg, and we're all white and we're all either Ukrainian, Polish or Jewish. Right. And a black person is a hero to us. It's like Joe Louis the boxer, the champion of the world. He's black. Ray Charles, he's black. You know, BB King, the black guys are like super heroes. So us backing, backing the black chicks was a thrill. It was phenomenal. Except it's now the mid 60s and everywhere we go, there's a race riot. Okay. If a black guy dances with a black chick and gets in a fight, we're told if a fight starts, never stop playing that song. Play that song forever until the police come in. Because if you stop playing, they're going to notice there's a skirmish and the whole place would be in a mad fight, black against white, whatever. Right. So we're touring with the with the charelles, like I said, the the pop staples, the staple singers. Okay. We're touring with the staple singers. We're both in two station wagons. We pull in to get gasoline or thing and they the guy comes over the shotgun and shoots at the air and he goes, you can come in here, you can't. He points at our car and they can't. So we say, what do you want? We go and bring them hamburgers out from a Howard Johnson's or something. For us, this was amazing. And then you play New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, there's race riots in your dance and you got to keep playing the song until the police come in and break it up. We went through that whole thing. It was quite an amazing thing. But in the tour on the tour with the Kingsman, do you know what, in the Belmonts, I mean, the most the greatest do what bad. I mean, hurt, hurt, hurt, hurt, all these big run around sue. That was it. We're all the big hits at the time. And the Kingsman Louis Louis and Jolly Green joint everywhere. This is the rock and roll summer. Right. We come home after that summer. The lead singer, Chad Allen wants to quit the band. Nobody knows who he is. We're called Guess Who. That was the time of the Abbott Castello. Who's on first? Who's on first? What's on second? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, but who's on first? Yeah, you're right. No, that whole thing. And every time they say who are you, we're thinking then the who started up shortly after that. And then the wonder who came up with Frankie Valley in the fourth season. And then question mark and the Missyrians. There was all these Abbott Castello jokes going on. Oh, I bet. So our lead singer said, I'm leaving. I'm going, I'm going back to school. I went to university in Manitoba. When we left town that summer, the next band taking our place fighting to take our place was Neil Young and the Squires, Burton Cummings and the Devrons, Fred Turner and the Rockin Devils. I still see those guys today. I was at Neil's birthday party November. I still see Fred Turner. I'm touring Burton Cummings at the Guess Who. Right. The four of us guys that made it out of Winnipeg, out of the ghetto, we got out. And then so I go to my dad and I say, I want to go see this band called the Devrons. The lead singer is both really good. He's been playing piano since he was five. I've been playing instruments since I was five. I don't want a guy to learning an instrument. I want a guy who knows his instrument. We can just hear a record and play it. Right. I said his name is Burton Cummings. He goes, Oh, I went to school with his mother, Rhoda. Let me give her a call. He calls Rhoda Cummings. Rhoda, I go over to my dad takes me to see Rhoda. And she says, okay, I know you're a big brother. You got three younger brothers. Burton is 17. He cannot play with you, but I will sign his contract if you will promise to pick him up before a gig or rehearsal and then bring him home after. I don't want him hanging out with all his friends, getting high and getting drunk and all this stuff. So I say, okay, I'll be a big brother to him. And Burton joined the band. We start to write together. We take the summer and go to Regina. And at that point we see Joni Mitchell for the first time. She's just married Chuck Mitchell. Her name's Joni Anderson. She married Chuck Mitchell. We see them play. I meet a woman there who I marry. I go to her house to pick her up for our first date. I sit down, I write the beginning to these eyes. That's originally called these arms because I'm waiting for her for our first date. I'm in a room with only a piano and a plant in the couch. There's no radio, no TV. I sit at the piano and I go, boom, boom, these arms long to hold you. I'm trying to sing to her upstairs. Right. She's not, she's not ready. We're missing our date. And when I show up to Burton Cummings, you go, that's a great beginning. But let's make these arms long to hold you the second line. And let's get a better first line. Okay. These eyes cry every night. These arms long to hold you again. Then let's get to the Thomas Wayne thing, which was a song called Tragedy. The Hurteons on Me. Because we're in Winnipeg learning English language, but we're getting stuff that's on stuff from Chicago and New York. And we're getting black language like the Hurteons on Me. You never heard that before. Right. To put in a song like the Hurteons on Me and I'll Never Be Free. That was like really big deal for us. You know, so, and every night we listen to WLS and WNOE, which is New Orleans and Chicago, with a little rocket radio, with a thing like this, a little earphone you put in your ear. There was no speaker. So you could go to bed, you plug this thing into your wall, go to bed and put it in your ear. And your parents would think you were asleep. You're laying there and listening to WNOE, Chicago, and you're hearing blues records. Because that night that Beondi would be playing blues like Buddy Guy, BB King, all this stuff. Howl and Wolfe and everything. You never heard this in Winnipeg. It was like a country rock town, like middle of the wheat field, of the mid of the plains. So we had a great growing up there. And there was 100 bands in Winnipeg working at that time because of all the high schools and all the burn myths for us and all the community centers. And you couldn't get in a nightclub until you were 21. The Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Zito. The Celebrity Jobber Podcast with Jeff Zito. So Chad Allen leaves the band, goes back to college. You go to college, majored in business administration. Did you have any clue of what you were going to use that degree for? I already knew I was a musician. I didn't want a normal job. I hated normal jobs. I had a couple. My dad got me a couple of jobs. What were they? Well, he was an optician, which a dispensing optician. So they actually would make your glasses. They would carve them into a machine, right, with water and all this stuff. So you'd go and pick a frame. You send them the frame. They take out your things that aren't prescription. They then put them in a machine that trace them. They put them in a U-deliver. So I got, I was 14. You get a bus pass. You get on the bus free. You take all the prescriptions to the opticians. They grind the glasses. Then you take it back in a little brief case on the, to all the doctors, eye doctors downtown who then give you your glasses with your new prescription. They polish them up. So I did like two runs in the morning, two runs in the afternoon of that. I hated it. I made 20 bucks a week. I'd go out on a Friday night and make 20 bucks playing a high school. So my dad, the money doesn't make sense here. I'm working my tail off from seven in the morning till five or six at night. I go and play two hour dance. I get the same amount of money. This went on for my whole life. Right. But when I wanted a guitar, a certain guitar, I went and worked. I had a paper route. I mowed lawns or three houses. They're pretty rich people. I get 10 bucks a lawn. I worked at a car wash from six in the morning till six at night every Saturday for 10 bucks, working 12 hours for $10. And then go home and have a shower. Go to my gig and make 20 bucks playing high school. I made more money playing in the band for less time. Right. So I pretty much knew my destiny. I didn't want to get another normal job where your paycheck is $22 after a whole weekend and deduct money for unemployment insurance or for something that I'm not okay. That kind of thing. So it didn't make any sense. My dad got me a job selling shoes, data shoes, which probably doesn't even exist. They were B.A.T.A. shoe store. And because I was the new young guy and I'm like 14, they gave me the old farm ladies that came in and we're talking bobbas, big legs, legs like telephone poles, calluses on their feet. And I'm trying to fit them or, or they'd give me the new hot chick that came in who sits down and you're looking at these legs and they've got a short skirt and they're putting their feet up and you've got their feet and you're, you're putting, so I was like, God, you normally, you normally get a new reaction, right? And you can't stand up. You're in the, you're in the shoes store. You can't stand up and go get the other shoes. I mean, it's like, unbelievable. I went and started that at five o'clock at seven 30. They gave me a break for 15 minutes. I felt to work till nine. I left at seven 30 and never went back. I got on a bus with my guitar, went to my gig, played, made 30 bucks, came, came home that night. My dad said, what happened? You didn't go back to work. I said, I hated it. He said, well, here's your paycheck at $12. They took off three bucks. I said, look, dad, I made 15 bucks. I made 20 bucks. I'm going to make 20 bucks tomorrow night. I'm making more at the bank. He said, you win. Got it. So they were pretty supportive of, of, of your, your musical dream. Yeah. Well, when you're poor, you can't neglect good, honest money. Right. I wasn't selling dope. I wasn't stealing. I was going playing. I was using the music lesson they gave me that they paid for it for five years. I wasn't playing violin, but I'm playing it on guitar. Right. You hear that we hear my solo on American Woman. It's like I'm playing a viola, you know, a cello. Like I'm playing, I'm blowing the instrument. It's interesting. So, so when you're telling this fantastic story about, you know, joy, the time you joined the band all, all the way until American Woman hits number one back in 1970, was there a moment like a monumental moment? Cause you gave me a lot of them when you told that story. But is there one moment that you can think of between the time you started in the band, the time American Woman hits number one in 1970? Was there a big break, a moment that changed everything for you to where, you know, success was on its way? Well, I've had a lot of people say to me, what is the path to success? And I say, failure, failure, failure, failure, keep going, failure, feel, keep going. And then suddenly you don't fail in your success. You keep doing it and doing it until you get better than the other guy. Do you have a guy who laughed at you or beat you up and you got your little violin, you're going to your violin practice and they call you a sissy. They're the guys who come to your dance later when you're rocking and rolling and they say to their girlfriend, oh, I went to school with him. Yeah, I remember he's my high school buddy. Yeah, you're the guy who used to beat me up, you know, that kind of thing. Right. So I remember grade one, I'm five and a half when I start grade one because they age difference and this is up in Winnipeg and they do and there's 40 kids in each class. There's a lot of kids in each class. So in the first day of school, they do a seating plan. So the teacher will have a sheet of paper in front of her and it's row one desk, one desk, two, so she knows your name is Iris Smith and you're Johnny Jojo. And what's your name? What does your dad do? And what do you want to be when you grow up? My name is Randy Backman. My dad's an optician. I'm a musician. But what do you want to be when you grow up? I'm a musician. Yes. What do you want to be when you grow up? I run home. It's the first day of school. My mother's doing the laundry. We lived a block from, I lived a block from the school. I go in the house, it's like 10 in the morning. She says, what are you doing home? I just left you at school. I said, I'm quitting. She's, what are you, you can't quit school. It's the first day of grade one. I said, I keep answering the question, I keep getting it wrong. She's, what's the question? It's like, what do you want to be when you grow up? I say, I'm a musician. I've been playing violin for like a half a year now. I've been singing. You know, you're, you're my sunshine and beautiful brown eyes. I am a musician. She said, okay, she takes my violin, we go back to school. She says to the teacher, he is a musician. I play Zardus by Chopin or something. The class all the plots. I'm accepted as a musician. I knew my whole life. I was going to be a musician. I didn't like working. I didn't like school, but I was good at school until I discovered guitar and then I didn't practice an hour a day. I practiced four and five and six hours a day. I would take it to bed and sleep. And I wake up in the middle of the night and play it. I had a record player where I wouldn't even turn on the volume or just hear from the needle. I'd hear Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, you know, all this stuff that I'd get records from Chicago. We'd go on tour. I went to the radio stations, everything they threw away, they'd give to me. They only played like pop music and a little bit of country. They'd throw away all the R&B stuff they got. And so, I mean, I have this obsession with learning all the music I could learn and to try to be like the moment I saw Elvis on TV, then that got relives later on the same Ed Sullivan show with the Beatles. They get relives later with the Beach Boys. They get relives over and over. You as a nobody, a truck driver, a kid from Liverpool, a kid from West Golan, who went to pick from the North End, you can be an Elvis, you can be a John Lennon, you could be a Brian Wilson, you could be it. These guys have proven it. So, you go out and you prove it and you fail and you fail and you fail. How do you write a hit song? I've been at that question a million times. It's really easy. You write a hundred songs. And if you're lucky enough to get one out of there, guess what? You're one hit wonder. Right. And if you have two, if you have three, you're an accomplished songwriter. You keep trying and trying. And I also learned this recently. Everything that happens in your life, it doesn't happen to you because if it does, you're a victim. It happens for you. Changing that one word to that happened for me. I'm going to get over this. I'm going around that guy. I'm going to crush that guy. He said no again. He threw me out. He won't let me go with his daughter or he won't let me do this or that. I'm going around this guy and you go around the obstacle. And so you learn that it happens for you. So, you become stronger and your dream becomes more defined in your head and you begin more focused, more focused, more focused and screw the world. This is what I'm going to do. So, Chad Allen left the band. The band broke up. I had a meeting. Burton Cummy joined a week later. The guest who was resurrected. Newly singer. A punk. Four years younger than us. When you're 19, that's somebody's 14. They're a punk, right? Okay. But I liked his punk attitude. You know, like, you know, and he was like, he could sing Danny Boy. He could also sing House of the Rising Sun. Do you know what I mean? He could scream and he could sing ballads. He had a beautiful Irish voice and which also had the roughage of Eric Burton at the time or Stevie Wynnewood who was brand new with the Spencer Davis group. Then we went to England in 67. We had a record that made the top 20 in Billboard. It was called His Girl. We're so naive and stupid. We got on a plane with new equipment and new suits. We were 40 grand in the hall. Oh, man. We flew to England with no contract. We walked into King Records owned by Philip Solomon who also owned the pirate radio station there. He was the head of the British mobster scene, whatever you want to call them. And he offered us a weekly salary and he said we would be the next Beatles. So this is 1967. So we're there with Burton, Cummings, Jim, K.L. Me and Gary Peterson and the four of us are there. And he offers us a certain amount of money, 400 bucks a week. We're going to be the new Beatles. He's going to send us on tour in Australia and over the way. Everywhere the Beatles meant. Okay, great. So is the 400 a week each? No, it's 400 a week for the four of you. Oh, how about record sales? What do we get for record sale? What don't you understand about 400 a week? That's the deal. Take or leave. You have no contract here. You have no gigs. You can't even pay for your hotel. You've got four rooms in a hotel. What are you going to do? I didn't even need to talk to the band. We walked out. We walked out. A lot of kids wouldn't do that. We walked out. We had nothing. If you got nothing, right, you got to give it all away. Whatever you're going to get, you're going to be giving it away. This guy controlled the pirate radio. He owned the record label. He owned everything. So what did you do? I get the band together and say, okay, we got to get out of our hotel rooms. We've got four rooms at the Regent Palace there in Piccadilly Circus. Let's all move into one room. They have a little tiny bed there. Let's push them together. We'll sleep this way on the beds. Okay. And you guys go out all night. We stay home all day. We'll sleep at night. You guys sleep during the day. We'll trade this room. And then with your room, you've got free breakfast in England, the full breakfast. So we made friends with all the maids. So when they would collect a breakfast tray, you hung a thing on your door, full breakfast, or you just want oatmeal or whatever. For two solid weeks, we stayed in one room. We ate bacon sandwiches for two solid weeks. So they bring us all the bacon on the toast in England. It's cold anyways. Like the butter doesn't melt on it. It's just like lard. We ate bacon sandwiches for two weeks. We hung out. They went to Mills Music, which published Shakin' All Over. And so we met Tony Hiller there, who was the main president. He said, you guys are a great band. And you're smart enough to walk out on Philip Solomon. Good for you. Because he's a crook. He shot at me, shot at everybody else. I'm doing a session a couple days. You want to come and be the band? I'll give you a chart, just a chord chart. You'll play the chord. And if you want to sing the demo, great. I've got two songwriters, but I can't pay you. But if you bring two of your songs, record four songs, you can have them all. Right. They're just demos for me, but you want to take them back to Canada. And so you recorded in England, so you're not a complete failure. So we go in there, they give us two songs. This time long ago, Miss Felicity Gray, I write a song overnight called There's No Getting Away From You. And Bert and I don't know what did we get. Neil Young's song that he had just played for us called Flying on the Ground is Wrong. We're in the Buffalo Springfield first album. We record, we're the first band to record a Neil Young song, other than Springfield or Neil Young, we record Flying on the Ground is Wrong. We go then home, home to Winnipeg, broken, no gigs, nothing, but four songs that we sent to Quality Records since trying to go, this is great. You song like the Beatles, you song like the Fortunes. This song this time long ago is a great song. Flying on the Ground is a great song. It's Neil Young, love, love this whole thing. After that, the song came out. We had a big fight with our management. And I said, you guys sent it, there was no contract, no guarantees, no money. We're now 40 grand in the hole. We don't know what to do. We've got to break up. I've got to go and sell shoes. I got a job as a messenger boy again, to start mowing lawns. Right. We walk out of this management deal. He tells us to F-O. No one's ever told us this. We're like 18, 19 years old. We've not even heard this language. And we get out and I say to the band, well, I can't think of any more guys I'd like to be in a band with than you guys. So now that we've broken up with our manager, let's just see what happens. Let's go back in the circuit. And two days later, I get a call from a guy named Larry Brown, who's producing a weekly TV show in Canada called Let's Go. It's on every single day of the week at five o'clock. So every kid in Canada is watching this. On Monday, it's from Halifax. The band there is Ann Murray and her band. Then it goes to Ottawa Montréal. The band there is JB and the Playboys, who become Mash McCann. It goes to Toronto. The host of the Toronto show is Alex Trebek, who's from Jeopardy, right? Alex Trebek. Sure. Okay. And the band there is, you know, another hip band. It comes to Winnipeg. It's us. It goes to Calgary at the Stam Peters. It goes to Vancouver. It's the Chessmen, who become Chillowack. So this show in 1967, 1968, on CBC, every single day from a different city, we were on every Thursday. But he says to me, we want you to play the hit parade. And when we know you can play it really good, can you read charts? And I said, of course, of course we can't. I can't read music. I said, who's doing the charts? He said, oh, guy named Bob Mcmahon. I said, okay, I know Bob. Bob Mcmahon doesn't know I'm not supposed to know this, because we're supposed to show up Monday and they're going to put charts in front of us. And we have to play four songs because we're backing up other singers. And we're also doing what we, our own song, the rest of the hit parade. We're backing up different singers. And so Bob Mcmahon says, yeah, I've done Daydream Believer. I've done a solitary man. I'm doing Last Train to Clarksville and that. So I say to Burton, we got to get some money. Gather all your drink bottles. Then if you collected Coke bottles, you got two cents a bottle. We take down a hundred, couple hundred bottles. We get enough for a dollar. We buy two, two 45s and learn them. So we go in Monday morning and they put the chart in front of us and we go, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. The producer comes out of the room and he goes, you can't read a note, can you? I said, what do you mean? He says, you have the chart upside down. hilarious. I said, okay, you got us. We can't read a note. He said, yeah, but you were exactly what you sound like the record. So if you could just do this, write yourself a quarter, you can learn it. You've got the gig. We got that gig for two years. It went on for 35 weeks a year with repeats in the summer. So suddenly we're in every household in Canada every Thursday and everybody from Halifax to Victoria. There it is. It's about the guess who in Winnipeg. Burton Cummings becomes an expert singer. I become an expert guitar player because I'm now copying Hendrix and Cream and Glenn Campbell is playing all the Beach Boys. So Burton now copies Mick Jagger, Steve Winland, Ray Charles, we're copying everything and we're doing it perfectly. That was like the Beatles stopping going on the road and going to Abbey Road every day and recording and recording and recording and recording. So in that period of time in two years, we do like 70 shows where we're playing hit songs over and over and over and over. And finally the producer came and said, if you guys can write your own songs that are good enough to fit in between Ruby Tuesday and Lady Madonna and I get around, you will put your own songs on the television show. So in the middle of this half hour show we're doing the hit parade, we put in a new song and we put in No Time. We put in these eyes, songwriting, a guy in Toronto who does commercials for Coca-Cola, Jack Richardson. Here's these eyes, calls us up and that's a hit song. I'll mortgage my house, I'll take it to New York to fill our own studio, A&R studios and we record an album, write a whole album. So we write a whole album and on there is these eyes and then from that on it's boom. That was it. That was the big break. That was the moment that changed your lives. The Celebrity Jobber podcast with Jeff Zito. Celebrity Jobber. A two-parter here, Randy. At the height of your success in 1970, number one single, you leave the band. I wanted to know why you left the band. Was it health reasons? Was it what the other guys were getting into that you weren't quite on board with? I wanted to know why you decided to leave number one, number two. What did you do in the three years between when you left the guess who and when BTO became something? Well, the reasons I left you stated them all. We were all going different directions. We started when we were teenagers and when you start to turn 2021, you have different ideas on politics, religion, music, girls, dope, drinking, whatever, all that stuff. But what really with a catalyst was every single night after the gig, I'd have a gallbladder attack and I didn't know what it was. But you just get this pain right in the middle like somebody turning a knife in your chest and you're vomiting blood, both ends. You're sitting on a toilet and throwing up in the bat, the blood and my Rody would take me into the hospital and they'd say, okay, we need to keep you overnight. We'll give you some stuff to drink. We'll x-ray your insides and see what's wrong. And my Rody would say, well, we got to drive 200 miles to play Pittsburgh. Then we got to drive to Cleveland. We got to drive to Toledo. We're on the road. We had five days off. I said, I got to go home. Went home to my doctor, drank the berry and found out I had 12 or 14 gallstones that would with the pain every time after the gig, you'd have a greasy cheeseburger then or something, a Coke. And then your gallbladder starts up. So you say, you need to have a gallbladder thing and I'll schedule it for August. What do you mean August? This is like, this is like, this is April. I need this now. He said, well, unless you're in an emergency, you're scheduled for like middle of August. I can be an emergency. I'll just go and have a Coke and a cheeseburger right now. Don't do that. I said, look, I've got to go back and play one more gig with this band. And we've had number one, we're probably going to be taking a break. We've been on the road for months and months and it's at the Fillmore East that I've got to play the Fillmore East. So he said, okay, all you can eat is lettuce, salty and crackers with no salt, sugar-free jello and skim milk. Can you do that? Yeah, I said, I could do that. Talk about weight loss diet. Oh man. And so I took that. I went and played the Fillmore with the guest who was my last gig, May of 1970. Came home, waited, had to leave town because suddenly the number one band, I'm the idiot. I leave the band, or I got thrown out, whoever said what. So I go on and I produce a couple of bands because I've had the experience now in England recording with Tony Hiller, recorded Regent Sound there. I recorded Phil Ramon at A&R, recorded Hallmark in Toronto. And I've got this, I don't know, credibility that I know what I'm doing there and learning from Phil Ramon. I'm telling you, it's like probably the best thing in the world that could ever happen to anyone. And I find myself at like 11 o'clock every night wanting to do something. You gear up for your whole gig on stage, which just started eight or nine o'clock or 10 o'clock and you go on and you have this energy. It's your football game. It's your Friday night football or Monday night football week. I found my wife said to me, you got to start another band. Because I was going crazy every single, because all my life I had practiced and recorded and played and practiced and recorded and played. Nobody in Winnipeg will play with me. I'm the loser who quit the band. The number one band in the world. So I go to my three younger brothers who I, you know, taught to play. My brother Robbie played drums on pots and pans with wooden spoons and those round Ogilvy Quaker Oats porridge. We cut those in different things and put them in those are his Tom Toms. We cut the Bray Belt album with no drums. I had a boroseta drums for Robbie. He was used to playing pots and pans and was Neil Young who came back to Winnipeg. He had left Buffalo Springfield. He didn't want to. He just had a solo album coming out. He just said, let me just do whatever you want. But don't try to copy the guess who. And I didn't. You can't beat Burton's voice. You can't beat the momentum you've got of American woman at no time. And all these, you hit after hit after hit, and they're getting bigger and bigger and bigger. You can't compete with that. So do something different. I said, well, I love the Springfield. I love Foco. I got a pedal steel violin and accordion. I did two country rock albums called Bray Belt. Neil got me the deal with Mo Austin and Rapese Records. So I'm down in LA. I'm doing that whole thing. And I do two albums for them. I'm into the third album and putting out my own money. They call me back and say, we've hit the bottom line. We can't accept your third album. We're going to have to let you go. And I go, oh, really? And so we don't have the record deal. I got my couple of brothers. And I also got Fred Turner in the band at the time because he's a great vocalist as well. And I've got the third album cut, Bray Belt 3. I send it to 22 labels. This takes me a year and a half. Then you send out an album on seven and a half inch reels. And I get passed on by everybody. I got beautiful letters of pass from Jack Holzman, a lecturer with a butterfly from A&M from Herbalpert with the trumpet in the middle, that the A and the N, the M. And I've got all these wonderful letterheads saying, we passed. You're not ready for our band at the time. I'm ready to call it quits and go and sell shoes again. No. Suddenly I get a call from Charlie Fash, F-A-C-H, from Mercury Records in Chicago. And he says, remember you had a meeting with me last year? I said, yeah, and what I told you about your band, Bray Belt, is to put your name on it. Nobody knows what Bray Belt means. Put your name backman on there. Guys look for a name they recognize. If you've written some hits, you've been in a band, you've got to mention that. So use the name Backman. Okay. And instead of like, there's three backmans in a turner. He says, okay, call yourself Backman Turner. So at the time, there's seals and croffs and brewer and Shipley, two guys with mandolins and acoustic guitars doing folk music. We call ourselves Backman Turner. And people are booking us in coffee houses. We're showing up with amplifiers because Fred can now sing like John Fogarty. We're doing Creed and Clearwater, the Stone of the Beel, and our own originals that were blowing these little coffee cups off the table. When everybody passes, Charlie Fash called me. He says, remember you had the meeting? I told you when you're sending out your new record, write your name on the front in red sharpie. Don't use black sharpie. And I said, Charlie, I've got it right here. This is your Mercury letterhead. You passed on our album in January. He said, oh, that was Bud Scopa. He took over my office for a while while I was at Meet Him in Cans and the first in the NAMM show, then Meet Him in Cans. And we got a new budget in February. So I'm back now with my new budget. And I was clearing off my desk. All the tapes that came in are going into the trash. One didn't get into the can. It fell on the floor. It had backman on it in red. I'm playing it right now. And in the background here, give me your money, please. Which is side one cut money. He's put on real one. He said, is the whole album like this? Oh, yes. It's a new kind of heavy pop rock and roll. I'm trying to reinvent myself going nowhere with two country rock album like Poco's Gone. Flying Breeder Brothers are gone. It's like a Passet thing. The birds are gone flying, you know, Sweetheart the Rody. It's all over. It's going to have your stuff. And he said, well, I'm flying to LA on Saturday. I'll play this for my A&R meet. I want to sign you. We just lost your right heap. I'm taking my chance. I'm signing Rod Stewart. We just left the faces and I'm signing you. He calls me Saturday morning and he says, you got a deal. How much you got in the album? I said, like about 90 grand in the album. Paying guys' salary so they don't get another day job. I want them to practice every day. And he said, well, I can't give you that, but I can give you a three album deal over five years. And I'll give you like 75 and albums. You can recoup your money from that. Okay. And I said, okay, that's a deal. We signed it. We signed it. It comes out. Nobody plays the album. It's too new. It's too heavy rock. It's like nobody understands what we're doing yet. We got a call from Scott Shannon, who's the right, who's a program director in St. Louis, Missouri. Oh, okay. So this is before Tampa. This is before New York. This is in his hometown. This is when he was a young kid. This is KC radio with a pig with a headphone. KC radio. And he says, my name is Scott Shannon. I'm the PD here. We are having a rock and roll weekend where we're going to play the girl can't help it rock around the clock, clock and hard day, night or something like that. And we just lost our band. So it's had to drive in the movie theater. Everybody would be driving in their cars. They'll have beer to have hot dogs. And we're going to have a stage with bands playing. And when it gets dark, we'll play the rock and roll movie. It's a long weekend. And if you guys will come and play, you've only got eight songs out. Everybody will know every song. We've got two. We're going to play one of your songs in every rotation. I can't pay you any money. I said, forget the money will come. We go to a truck stop in Detroit. A Charlie Fatsch has said to me, get a new name. I'm not putting break belt on this album. And you can't be called back when Turner's too much like seals and crops that had diamond girl. I remember all those hits they had. And one took over the line with Brewer and Schiffley. So we're playing at the truck stop in Detroit. And I say to Fred Turner, look at this, a magazine called Overdrive. Look at the fold out in the middle. It's not a naked chick. Right. The inside of inside of a guy's truck with leopard skin. And it got a little stereo. And he got a little lunchbox. I said, this is a great name for an album. Fred said, it's a great name for the band. Our music is all overdrive. So all I have is a napkin. So I write down on the napkin. The napkins are like this, right there in those tall, I write down backman, then Turner and overdrive under it. So I can't write it outside. Between the cash register and I'm paying. I call Charlie Fatsch the next morning and say, I got a name for the band. Bachman Turner overdrive. He goes, wow, that is so strong, strong syllables. It's way too long. I look at the napkin and I go, how about BTO? Because man, that's it. Chicago with CTA then, Broadway, so it's naturally CS and N, you know what I mean? And our real speed riding was just coming out and the initials were like the ELO with like the big thing. So all this happened synergistically at once. We play for Scott Shannon and then from there from St. Louis, we start to get played in New Orleans. We started to play the sister station, start to play. It becomes a hit album. We hook up with Don Fox, who runs the warehouse in New Orleans. He has to come down there and play Mardi Gras a week for a whole week. And we're playing with other brand new bands who no one's heard of who are the Dubby brothers, Peter Frampton, ZZ Top, who were only just put out in the Grange. And us who've got nothing out, we have no single though. And then we came out and let it ride after that. And so we're still friends with all these guys. I just got a thing from Patrick Simmons and congratulations on your year of rock and roll, Burton Cummings. What are you doing the rest of the year? The rest of the year, September on, I'm with BTO. I'm touring my face off this year. This is like, this is my dream. My two childhood bands that hit number one with both bands with album and single sold as many records with BTO that I did with Geshu in half the time. I then had to leave because of the circumstances of things fall apart and things don't hold that center does not hold. And here I am today. And now I'm back with both bands, with both original guys touring for the fans. Yeah, it's incredible. The guess who.com, by the way, coming somewhere near you, these guys are all, you know, full tour for my listeners in Detroit, come to Pine Knob in July. My listeners in New Jersey. There's a few different dates, one in Atlantic City, there's one in Homedale this summer with the guess who Burton Cummings is back. You couldn't ever expect lightning to strike twice, Randy. And it did. And then 50 some odd years later, us Americans are still pronouncing your name wrong and calling you Randy Bachman. But we figured it out. At least I did the last time we chatted. So what an incredible story. And I'm so glad that you're not selling shoes. Me too. I think you are too. Me too. The guess who.com on tour with Burton Cummings and of course, BTO will continue to tour. You have plans to continue that after. Yeah, the last guess who gig is August the 23rd at the P&E, which is the Pacific National Exhibition in Vancouver. And we played there many times since the late 60s. The big deal from Winnipeg to come play Vancouver, because it was the West Coast. We were farm guys from Iowa. That's what Winnipeg was like. It was like Minnesota, North Dakota. Now it's going to be a really big deal. And after that, I'm with the BTO and we have plans to go to Japan and tour the states all down south. Because in the states, in September and October, all the state fairs are ending. I mean, harvest is later down south. In Canada, we have our Thanksgiving in October. In the states, it's in November, right? Because the whole season is later. So we've got a lot of state fairs to play and gigs to play September, October, November in the states as BTO. Randy, so awesome. Again, you're so gracious with your time. I really do appreciate it. Great luck. The rest of the way. Thanks. Send my best to Burton and until next time. All right. Thanks, man. Bye-bye. Thank you very much. Bye-bye. I mean, I asked for 20 minutes. The guy gave me over an hour. I can't believe it. And just an incredible storyteller. I mean, what a vivid memory that he has. Father was an eye doctor. Mother was a stay-at-home mom, four kids. And, you know, from the time he was just a little kid, he considered himself a musician. I mean, classically trained violinist considered himself a musician at the age of five years old. When I asked Randy about the big break, okay? He tells like a 16-minute story, but he doesn't jump around. It's in a perfect chronology where basically he's playing this hit parade, as they called it, or it's a traveling show. They're playing a lot of different people's songs, and it ends up becoming a television show in Canada. And they say, hey, if you have any of your own songs, we'll put them in between. One of those songs ends up being These Eyes. A guy in Toronto who does commercials for Coca-Cola hears the song These Eyes, calls up Randy, says this is a hit song, mortgages his house, takes them to record an album. Of course, These Eyes is on the album. And that was it. That was the guess who. And then, you know, for Randy, lightning strikes twice for this guy. He quits the guess who because he's having health problems. And the other guys in the band are all going in different directions in life and politics, smoking dope, whatever, takes three years off, produces some other albums, and then forms another band with his brothers and Fred Turner, the very famous DJ Scott Shannon, early in his career in St. Louis. Contacts Randy says, hey, we had a band back out of a show that we're doing. We'll play your songs on the radio if you can come here and play a concert. So they play the show, the station plays the record, other stations start playing the record. They change the name from Brave Bell to Bachman Turner Overdrive. And as they say, the rest is history. Randy Backman has another number one album with another band. It's just an incredible story. And by the way, his first job was running Aaron's first father, who is an eye doctor. And then of course, he tells the story about selling shoes to mostly big farm ladies. But the occasional hot chick would come in with her nice legs and Randy would remember getting a boner and not being able to go into the back room to get the right size shoe for her. Oh, just awesome, man. Thank you so much for checking out another episode of the celebrity jobber podcast on Apple podcast, Spotify, iHeart or wherever you listen to podcasts, please subscribe. We'd love a five star rating. And of course, if you could please leave a review and check out past guests and episodes online at celebrity jobber.com. And don't forget the guess who.com for tour dates coming near your town this summer. I think Randy Backman knew he was going to be a musician from the time he was five years old. I don't think I know. He told us, but he mentioned several times during the interview, he needed to make this work because he did not want to go back to selling shoes. Oh, that was so great. Randy Backman from the guess who and Bachman Turner overdrive. And that'll do it for this episode of the celebrity jobber podcast. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you next week. I'm Jeff Zito.