Randy Bachman Read online

  Gene Vincent’s lead guitar player, Cliff Gallup, originally played a Gretsch guitar. But he didn’t play a big hollow-body Chet Atkins model. Instead, he played what was a copy of a Gibson Les Paul solid-body guitar called a Duo Jet or Rock Jet. George Harrison played one in the very early Beatles, and he’s pictured with one on the cover of his solo album Cloud Nine. Cliff Gallup played his Duo Jet on Gene Vincent’s “Be-Bop-A-Lula.”

  Bo Diddley played a Gretsch Rock Jet but, just to be different, he had Gretsch make him a rectangle-shaped model. It was a deep red, and with all the gear on it, it looked like a Christmas present. Bo Diddley would tune his guitar to an E chord so that all he had to do was bar it anywhere up the neck. That’s how he got his sound. Gretsch has since reissued Bo Diddley’s rectangle guitar.

  RICKENBACKER GUITARS

  Listen to the beginning of “A Hard Day’s Night.” That’s the chord that shook the world. Imagine playing one chord and everybody around the world instantly knowing what’s coming after it and knowing what song it is. It’s the most amazing chord that George Harrison plays—a suspended chord on a twelve-string Rickenbacker guitar that has a lot more high strings on it. Most twelve-string guitars had the low string first in the double strings, but Rickenbackers reversed that. Having the high string first gave it a more jingle-jangly sound, which became a signature sound of the Rickenbacker twelve-string electric guitar.

  When the Beatles were in New York to play The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964 George Harrison was presented with a Rickenbacker 360 Deluxe. That was only the second one made, and that’s the one he played on “A Hard Day’s Night.” He also played it on “You Can’t Do That,” which was filmed for the movie but didn’t make the cut.

  The sole identifiable sound of the Byrds was Jim (Roger) McGuinn’s Rickenbacker 360 twelve-string guitar. He played it through a compressor and cranked up the treble. When you do that you get the sound of mid-60s folk rock, that jingle-jangle “Mr. Tambourine Man” folk rock sound. The Byrds invented the sound that everyone copied after that. McGuinn saw George Harrison playing a Rickenbacker twelve-string in the movie A Hard Day’s Night and went out and got one when the Byrds were just starting out. He used finger picks because he’d been a folkie before the Byrds. They took a Bob Dylan song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and changed the world with it.

  I had a Rickenbacker guitar, a 360 six-string model. It looked like McGuinn’s, only it had six strings and was black. Chad Allan played the little John Lennon Rickenbacker model, a three-quarter-size guitar. Rickenbackers had so much clarity. The pickups were originally designed for lap steel guitars, for Hawaiian music, so they had a very clear, clean, high trebly sound. Listen to Creedence Clearwater Revival and John Fogerty playing one of those smaller John Lennon Rickenbackers; he gets a very clear trebly sound. That became his signature sound and style. You can really hear that sound on Creedence’s “Up Around the Bend” or “Fortunate Son.” Not as twangy and sharp as a Fender Telecaster, but very clear and clean. That’s the sound of swamp rock.

  RANDY’S GUITAR COLLECTION

  When my Gretsch 6120 was stolen from my car while I was in Toronto mixing BTO’s last album, Freeways, I offered a reward for it but never found it. What resulted instead was that I started collecting Gretsch guitars. It became a routine for me in every city or town I was in on the road to scour the pawnshops and vintage guitar collectors in search of my Gretsch. In doing this I started buying different Gretsch models. What began as a search for my lost guitar became a hobby to pass the time on the road. That then turned into an obsession. I wanted to own as many Gretsch guitars as possible. It was my midlife-crisis diversion, collecting guitars. And I approached it with a fixation. It became the thrill of the hunt for me and gave me a great deal of pleasure.

  Wherever I went I checked out guitars. I had contacts notifying me if a particular Gretsch model came across their counter or if they heard about someone with a rare model. At first I asked to be notified only if they found my original orange Gretsch, but they started calling if any Gretsch came their way. My curiosity would be piqued, I’d go see what they had, and more often than not I’d buy it. I became known as “the Gretsch Guy” or “Gretsch Guru”—collectors and dealers would call me whenever they found one. I wasn’t a “Gretsch-aholic” with a family waiting for me to come home with money for food and instead I’d spent it on a guitar. I just spent extra money I had. My wife, Denise, got into it as well. She’d be in San Francisco visiting family and would make a detour to a second-hand guitar shop. She’d call me if they had any interesting Gretsch model.

  I still have players or dealers show up backstage at my gigs with rare guitars for me. I don’t just buy Gretsches; I collect Gibsons and Fenders, too. On the Van Halen tour, Eddie and I would be playfully fighting over these guitars that dealers brought in.

  When I lived in White Rock, B.C., I had my entire Gretsch collection on the walls of my big basement room, and it was stunning to walk into that room. I remember taking Fred Gretsch there just to see the look on his face. It was unbelievable. I had a white wall of all white Gretsch Penguins and Falcons, an orange wall of Duane Eddy 6120s, a coloured wall of Sparkle Jet models, a blond wall. It was insanely over the top, but I loved it.

  When I moved, I didn’t want just any moving guys to pack them up. I rented a truck and I hired my son Brigham and my nephew Paxton, my brother Timmy’s son, to pack each guitar individually in its case. We had hundreds of cases spread out on the driveway and the boys matched guitar to case. They’d look at a closed case and say “What’s in that one?” and open it to find some exotic, one-of-a-kind guitar, a Black Falcon or a Penguin. My collection was recently sold to the Gretsch company for exhibit purposes. I never did find my lost 6120, though. Soon you’ll be able to see the “Bachman Gretsch Collection” at the Georgia Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

  BURNS GUITARS

  Although not necessarily a staple guitar like a Stratocaster or a Gretsch, Burns guitars have a special history. The Shadows had the perfect blend of lead and rhythm guitars, bass and drums. A few years after the Shadows were going strong they made a deal with Burns guitars in the U.K. to play their guitars. Burns designed a special Hank Marvin model with big horns on it, a vibrato arm, and a kind of scrolled headstock. On the headstock it was inscribed with Hank Marvin’s name. I’m lucky enough to have a white 1964 Burns Hank Marvin guitar. Right after that Burns went out of business. So they only made a few of those. Jim Burns passed away and the company went bankrupt. They closed the warehouse and the company sat in litigation for some forty years. But when Jim Burns’s son came of age, he untangled the legal mess and was able to get the Burns Guitars trademark back. He resurrected the factory and started making guitars under the Burns name again.

  I had a friend in the U.K. named Trevor Wilkinson who was a Shadows fan and also a good friend of the Burns family. Trevor took me to the old Burns warehouse that had been padlocked for decades and opened it up, and there were four guitars on the bench. “Do you want one?” he asked me. “Absolutely!” They weren’t finished yet, so he asked me what colour I wanted. I told him I wanted a white one just like Hank’s. Trevor got a red one and I got a white one. I took the pick guard from that Burns guitar with me when I went to see the Shadows and got Hank and Bruce Welch to sign it.

  My Picks

  “ALL MY LOVING” by the Beatles

  “ALL RIGHT NOW” by Free

  “AMERICAN WOMAN” by the Guess Who

  “BE-BOP-A-LULA” by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps

  “BELIEVE ME” by the Guess Who

  “CARAVAN” by Les Paul and Mary Ford

  “CAUSE WE’VE ENDED AS LOVERS” by Jeff Beck

  “CLOCK ON THE WALL” by the Guess Who

  “DON’T MAKE MY BABY BLUE” by the Shadows

  “DOWN BY THE RIVER” by Neil Young and Crazy Horse

  “FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH” by the Buffalo Springfield

  “A HARD DAY’S NIGHT” by the Beatl
es

  “HEY BO DIDDLEY” by Bo Diddley

  “I FEEL FREE” by Cream

  “I WALK THE LINE” by Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Two

  “JOHNNY B. GOODE” by Chuck Berry

  “LET IT RIDE” by BTO

  “LONG TRAIN RUNNIN’” by the Doobie Brothers

  “LOTTA LOVIN’” by Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps

  “MR. TAMBOURINE MAN” by the Byrds

  “OH BY JINGO” by Chet Atkins

  “REBEL ROUSER” by Duane Eddy

  “SHAKIN’ ALL OVER” by the Guess Who

  “SHAKIN’ ALL OVER” by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates

  “SULTANS OF SWING” by Dire Straits

  “SUMMERTIME BLUES” by Eddie Cochran

  “SUSIE Q” by Dale Hawkins

  “TURN! TURN! TURN!” by the Byrds

  “UP AROUND THE BEND” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

  “THE WIND CRIES MARY” by the Jimi Hendrix Experience

  “WONDERFUL LAND” by the Shadows

  “YOU CAN’T DO THAT” by the Beatles

  Close Encounters of the Six-String Kind, Part 1

  I’m a bit of a rock ’n’ roll gadfly. I’ve been fortunate to be seren-dipitously at the right place at the right time to meet many of the movers and shakers in rock music. I’ve met many of my heroes or artists I respect as influences, and I’m often surprised that they know who I am. I’ve reminisced about many of those encounters over the years on Vinyl Tap. Here are some of the highlights.

  GENE VINCENT

  After Elvis Presley’s success in the mid 50s, record labels went in search of Elvis clones, young rock ’n’ roll singers with an edgy attraction. America’s Gene Vincent was one of those early rockers who was discovered and launched as a post-Elvis teenage phenomenon. But he wasn’t just a copyist; Gene Vincent had the goods. “Be-Bop-A-Lula” is his signature song, a true rock ’n’ roll classic.

  I remember reading in one of the Winnipeg newspapers that Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps were playing the Dominion Theatre downtown near Portage and Main. They’d be playing three consecutive days in a row in April. This would have been 1958. Needless to say, I wanted to be there for every show. It was the closest I was ever going to get to Elvis. Gene Vincent had a guitar player in the Blue Caps named Cliff Gallup who became very influential. Jeff Beck even recorded a tribute album to Cliff Gallup. I would buy Gene Vincent records because they were so similar to Elvis—very simple chord structures but really wild stuff.

  At the time back in Winnipeg I had a friend named Victor Zahn who owned an old army-brown Harley Davidson motorcycle he’d bought from army surplus. Victor used to ride around town on the Harley with me on the back. My parents would never let me own a motorcycle! When Gene Vincent came to town, Victor Zahn and I hopped on his Harley and drove down to the Dominion Theatre. At that time Gene Vincent had three songs on the Winnipeg record charts on both radio stations: “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” “Dance to the Bop,” and “Lotta Lovin’.” The Dominion Theatre must have held about eighteen hundred people, but that night there were maybe thirty-five people in the audience, including Victor and me. Gene and the Blue Caps came out and did the most incredible set.

  It really was no big deal back then to go backstage and get autographs, so Victor and I went to meet Gene Vincent and his band. We were the only ones. I told Gene that it was too bad he was booked to play Winnipeg this particular weekend. He said, “What do you mean?” When you’re on the road you tend to lose track of days. It was Good Friday and Sunday was Easter. Passover was around then, too. Back then Winnipeg was a fairly strict city with plenty of religious groups and denominations, so on Good Friday everything was shut down except for the theatres, I guess for all the non-Christians. Gene made a couple of phone calls and cancelled his Sunday gig, but he kept the Saturday gig, which I went to as well.

  After Friday’s show we were all standing around talking in the back alley of the theatre, and Victor went to get his motorcycle. As soon as he saw it Gene Vincent said, “I wanna ride it!” All the guys in his band are yelling, “No! No!” Gene had a brace on his leg from breaking his shin bone in a motorcycle accident. But now that it was healed he wanted to get back on the horse. He wanted to get on the Harley. So Victor let him ride on the back for about twenty feet and then asked, “Is that enough?” Gene said, “No. I’ve gotta have a long ride on this motorcycle.” At that point we had to go home, but said we’d see them the next night.

  We came back the next night and the band let us back in because we didn’t have enough money for another night’s tickets. We sat through the show and again there were very few people in the audience. Like the night before, they came out and played an incredible show as if the place was packed. Afterwards I asked Gene what he was doing now that he’d cancelled the Sunday show for Easter, and he said they were just going to hang around in the hotel.

  “Would you like to come over to my house for Easter dinner?” I asked him.

  And he replied, “Will your friend give me a ride on his Harley?” Again, the band is saying, “No, don’t do it! You can’t get on another motorcycle!”

  So I went home and told my mom that we were having another seat at the table for Easter dinner, a musician friend of mine. That was no big deal to her because with four boys in the family, we were always bringing friends home for dinner. The next afternoon Victor pulls up in his Harley and, sure enough, there’s Gene Vincent on the back. Unfortunately he couldn’t stay for dinner because the guys in his band were freaking out about him on a motorcycle and he had to get back. But he gave me his blue cap and signed it, and I still have it. He signed it in ballpoint pen and the signature has faded. But that was my brush with Gene Vincent. He was a great singer, a nice guy, and pretty normal.

  JOHNNY AND THE HURRICANES

  Behind the Hudson’s Bay Company store downtown was the Winnipeg Auditorium, which used to be a great place for concerts. I remember seeing the Supremes there, wrestling matches, Ferlin Husky, Johnny Cash. We once opened for Eric Burdon and the Animals there, and Burton Cummings played an electric harpsichord that night on “His Girl” and “A Wednesday in Your Garden.” And I remember I saw Johnny and the Hurricanes from Ohio at the Auditorium.

  They had a hit out called “Crossfire,” and in the Red River Valley they had a hit with “Red River Rock” with sax and organ playing the melody lines. Instrumental music was the big thing then; everybody loved it. Back in those days I’d take a notebook and a pen with me and would always try to get a seat in the front row so that I could watch the guitar players. I’d take notes on what they were doing, where they put their fingers on the neck, and how they did it, like “fifth fret slide to eighth fret on top two strings.” Then I’d go home and try playing it from my notes. Nowadays, kids buy or download videos of how to play guitar and specific solos, but there was nothing like that back then.

  So when Johnny and the Hurricanes came to town I was there in the front row with my notebook. I wanted to watch how the guitar player, Dave Yorko, did the slide line in the middle of “Crossfire.” He had a beautiful red Gibson double cutaway with a Bigsby vibrato tailpiece. But every time it came to a guitar-lead part he’d turn his back to the audience. I couldn’t see what he was playing. After the show I went backstage, hoping he would show me how he did his solos. But Dave Yorko wasn’t a very nice guy. I thought that maybe if I was nice to him backstage he’d show me how he did his solos.

  Then I heard Johnny, who went by the name Johnny Paris but was really Johnny Pucisk, tell someone that he couldn’t get any decent Polish food in Winnipeg. It turned out that the guys in the band all had a Polish or Ukrainian background. So I said, “Hey, my mother’s Ukrainian. Do you want her to make you some perogies and stuff?” and Johnny and the guys went, “Yeah!” So I went home that night and got my mother, who was a Dobrinsky of Polish-Ukrainian background from the North End, to make up some perogies and holopchi, and I took them to Johnny and the Hurricanes, who were thrilled. As I
’m giving out these cabbage rolls and sausages to Johnny, Dave Yorko is there, looking on hungrily. He was a Ukrainian guy, too. So I said to him, “Why do you turn your back when you take a solo?” and he replied, “Because I don’t want anyone to see the solos I make up.” So I said, “If you just show me where you put your fingers on the fretboard, you can have some of this food.” So it became a tradeoff: He got some food, and I got to see how to play the guitar leads on the Johnny and the Hurricanes songs.

  It was perogies that also led me to meet legendary movie actor/comedian Danny Kaye in the early 70s. BTO had recorded their first album at RCA studios in Toronto. We were still Brave Belt then, but Brave Belt III instead became BTO I. So when it came time to record the second BTO album, I checked out a studio opening in Seattle, just south of Vancouver. It was called Kaye-Smith Studios, but not after the 40s and 50s singer Kay Smith. The Smith was Lester Smith, a broadcaster who owned many radio stations, and the Kaye was actor and comedian Danny Kaye.

  I went to the opening of the studio, and because Danny Kaye was Ukrainian Jewish they had knishes and perogies. Now, I could relate to that because my family was pretty much all Ukrainian, and in the North End of Winnipeg and West Kildonan where I grew up just about everyone was Ukrainian or Jewish. Most of my friends as a kid were Jewish. So what could be a better studio opening?! I met Danny Kaye that day and he was a really nice guy. It was a thrill for me, having seen his movies as a kid, although he had no idea who I was. He was very funny in person. I was impressed with his studio, and we ended up recording two BTO albums at Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle.

  BOBBY CURTOLA

  It’s fair to say that Bobby Curtola was Canada’s first rock ’n’ roll teen idol. He began his career selling his records from the trunk of his car and touring the country using local bands to back him up. Bobby was from Thunder Bay—back then it was called Port Arthur. He was a big Canadian pop star at the time, with several hit records such as “Fortune Teller” and “Three Rows Over.” They used to play his records on the radio in Winnipeg and I remember thinking, “Man, if someone so close to us can make it”—Port Arthur was about an eight-hour drive east—“then maybe I could, too!”