Bachman-Turner Overdrive: FOUR SIDES of HAPPY PORK

Joplin, Missouri has two highlights. The stereo equipment store is called the Insound Asylum,” and the Holiday Inn there sports the “Mickey Mantle Cocktail Louge” ’cause the Mick played for the American Association farm club there before making the big time. And if you’re ever stuck there, don’t buy a music box at the hotel gift shop. They’re all off-key.

Just like the Joplin Memorial Hall, where the scene backstage on this typically freezing winter night is strangely schizophrenic. The boys from R.E.O. Speedwagon are ducking in and out of the hallway, groupies are hustling from every corner, and beer cans lie strewn all over the place. The members of the second billed act, though, are calmly minding their own business in their little dressing room. No dope, no booze, no broads. Just two buckets of Col. Sanders (one regular, one extra crispy) and a few cases of Fresca. The band is sitting around loosening up with their practice amp, running through such personal favorites as “I Am a Rock,” “Brown Eyed Girl” and a medley of Doobie

Brothers hits. Welcome, friends, to Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

The band is composed of Randy Bachman, former guiding light of the Guess Who, on lead guitar, brothers Tim and Robbie on rhythm guitar and drums respectively, and C.F. (call me Fred) Turner on bass and lead vocals. This crew of soft-spoken and clean living maniacs have been together just a short while, yet their newly released second album (together with the slow but steady rise in sales of their first record) is pushing them to the top of the hard driving boogiebelch heap. Their physical presence onstage brings to mind a bunch of bloodthirsty linebackers out for a night of fullback crushing, and their music is the same way. Randy and Fred spearhead the attack, bulkily manhandling the vocals and solos, while Tim and Randy bend and contort their faces and bodies to the squelch of the music.

The band is trying to alter their image a bit; but unlike most bands, it’s not the music that’s being changed, it’s the weight factor. “I was watching Midnight Special a few weeks ago and

there was a real rotunda fat guy jumping around the stage, and when I realized IT WAS ME, I said to myself, ‘I don’t want to know from HIM anymore. So here I am on a diet [solution to the Fresca question], and Fred and Tim are also slimming down. We might as well look good now that we’re making it.”

Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s success is particularly satisfying for Randy, who spent over a decade with the Guess Who playing to audiences that were primarily interested in hearing hit after hit after hit and were bored when the band tried to stretch out. Also involved is the less than friendly attitude that the Guess Who has shown him since he left in 1970. “It was strange,” he reflects, “when I first left them it was pretty amiable. I was sick, gall bladder problems, and I had to leave the band in the middle of a tour. I was having tests done at a hospital and’ while I was home it was one of the nicest times I’d had in. years, just being with my wife and my son, doing normal things. When I found out I needed an operation, I was kinda glad to go back to the band and tell them that I wanted to leave the group.”

“Things suddenly got very heavy. I was in the hospital and almost every day I’d read some story about the Guess Who saying that I had either been kicked out for not playing well or else that I’d just deserted them with no reason. The band had hired some new publicity men and everywhere I turned I was getting bad-mouthed and blackballed. It’s still going on too — I just heard about a story where they accused me of purposely taking the band to Memphis so I could moonlight with Steve Cropper. The truth of the matter was that we had a day off in Memphis and I just wanted to meet Cropper and look at his studio. We hit it off well and the Staple Singers recorded one of my songs. But I’ve never even seen Cropper since. I suppose they need something to get themselves back into the headlines. I saw them on TV awhile back and they looked like they’d just stepped off a garbage truck, really strung out.”

It takes some prodding to get Randy to talk about all of this. He’s warm and friendly, your stereotypical big, strong (yet gentle) man. Kinda like Harmon Killebrew. “I mean there had been differences. Look, I’d been in the band for almost eleven years, there were bound to be fights. I’m not really very keyboard oriented, and I often found that Burton [Cummings, the Guess Who’s lead singer and pianist] would gefreally competitive about solos. You know, like he wanted to show that he could play piano better than I could play guitar. And there were major lifestyle difference. I’m a converted Mormon, don't smoke or drink or do dope, and during the time that the Guess Who had the bulk of their big hits, there were always parties and groupies and the rest of the band was heavily into dope. Maybe they resented me because I was religious. I do remember that when I told Burton I was leaving, hetold me that I’d never make it straight. I didn’t think he was right then, and now that we’re getting popular, I’m certain of it.”

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Bachman-Turner Overdrive is, in Randy’s words, “an evolution of Brave Belt. That band was basically an idea, an experiment that didn’t quite work. But with the addition of Robbie and Fred, we decided to go for some really heavy rock which we all enjoyed playing. We had a real hard time selling the album. So much crap had been laid down about me that Brave Belt never really had a chance. Radio stations wouldn’t play us, magazines wouldn’t do stories on us. So we were a bit uncertain ourselves about how Bachman-Turner Overdrive would go over. But we decided to go out on a limb and go crazy, and once the record came out, it got great response. Now we know we have a market and we’re a lot more confident in our writing and playing.”

The band’s game plan has worked well. They’ve toured the States twice, hitting mainly the smaller pockets of towns and cities across the country, “We knew we had to go out and work for acceptance, and we played many places for little or no money, hoping that the next time we’d come, people would remember us and buy our records and come see us play. And they have, actually more so than we expected. It’s really neat to know that the people

coming to see us are up for a night of heavy boogieing, and that we can please them. I’m really happier now than when I was in the Guess Who, because these kids are accepting all of our music, not just waiting for the hits to crop up.”