Randy Bachman (2 page)

Putting together a show takes us many hours of listening to music, getting the original or best performance of the song, and finding ones for which I know something about the artist, writer, producer, or musicians so that I can tell an original story. We then sequence the songs in a strategic order (like a stage show) and I burn a CD for Tod Elvidge, our producer. Denise prints out the info, I get a guitar, and we usually record three shows at a sitting.

Denise is the only other voice on
Vinyl Tap
. CBC didn't want it to be a show that featured guests. They wanted it to be all me, my song choices and stories. CBC and I agree that it's really about my storytelling. The music is secondary to that. It's my ability to give an insider perspective and personal insight, experience, and knowledge about the music that is the strength of
Vinyl Tap
. I have so many ideas for concepts and so many stories to share with listeners. I love doing the show and hope to continue the fun and the run for many years.

One of the great features of
Vinyl Tap
has been the feedback we receive from our listeners. We get emails and letters from around the world. Sometimes some of the fact junkies take me to task about a date or fact I got wrong, and that's cool. I'm not perfect. For me, it's the story that matters, not the exact date. Often we get suggestions for themes for future shows, many of which we've followed up on.

Some of my favourite themes have been “Mondegreens” (Denise's idea), “From Demos to Hits,” “The Cowbell Show,” and “Guitarology 101.”

I never realized the amount of work involved in preparing a radio show. In my naïveté I just thought I would show up with an armful of vinyl, 45s and albums, play them and talk in between. Not so. But once I got into the rhythm of doing the shows, it was great fun. Initially I taped the shows at my home recording studio in the Gulf Islands, but now we do it at CBC's studio in Victoria. For thousands of Canadians and millions of listeners on Sirius
Satellite Radio, their Saturday night routine involves tuning in to
Vinyl Tap
. I'm very proud of that and I don't take the responsibility lightly.

What started as a summer replacement series has turned into a wonderful thing for me. It's a dream come true. After more than forty years in rock 'n' roll, I've finally got a real job.

Over the years many people have asked me when I was going to collect many of the stories I've shared on the show in a book. Well, for all those who asked and for all the other
Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap
listeners, here it is. Enjoy!

Randy Bachman's Vinyl Tap Stories

Portage and Main

Winnipeg is a working-class city that breeds a toughness and durability in its inhabitants. It's a city of extremes. The winters are brutally cold and long while the summers tend to be hot, humid, and mosquito infested. In between is the occasional flood. But for those born and raised in Winnipeg, the city never leaves you, no matter where you go. Although I haven't lived in Winnipeg since 1972, it is and always will be my home and hometown. The thing about Winnipeg is that it's built on two rivers, the Red and Assiniboine, and the two big important streets follow those rivers: Main Street follows the Red River and Portage Avenue follows the Assiniboine. Where they meet is just behind Portage and Main, the centre of Winnipeg. That was the most famous intersection in the city because not only did it follow the meeting of the rivers but you would also change buses there going from one end of the city to the other. And that was also where all the radio stations were and all the big buildings downtown began. So Portage and Main meant a lot of things to me growing up. I remember that when the Winnipeg Jets hockey team signed “The Golden Jet” Bobby Hull, they did it at Portage and Main, and thousands of Winnipeggers blocked the intersection to witness the event.

In 1993 I wrote a song about growing up in Winnipeg entitled “Prairie Town,” and in the chorus I sang, “Portage and Main, fifty below.” As a kid in Winnipeg I would pass by Portage and Main, and right at the intersection there was a great big Coca-Cola sign that flashed the time and the temperature all day long, back and forth. So you'd pass by on the bus or in your car and see “8:25 a.m.” and then “45 below 0.” And the radio stations there would simply say, “The time is …” and look out the window at the Coca-Cola sign. Then they'd say, “And the temperature at Portage and Main is …” So when I wrote “Prairie Town” I remembered that sign and put in the line “Portage and Main, fifty below.”

Music was always such a big part of my life growing up in Winnipeg. My parents wanted their children to play a musical instrument. We couldn't afford a piano, so my older brother Gary was given an accordion and I received a little half-size violin. I wasn't even school age yet, but I started taking violin lessons. I remember my first day of school and the teacher asking everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. Of course you had the typical responses like bus driver, nurse, and fireman. When it came to my turn, I said “musician” because I'd already been playing violin. As far as I was concerned that was who I was and wanted to be.

After about a year of lessons in the neighbourhood, I got a different teacher and was required to ride the bus to his house. Alone. I was six or seven years old and I couldn't even read the street signs. So I'd look for the toy soldiers outside Toyland at Eaton's Portage Avenue department store, get off the bus with my green transfer in my hand, and wait there right downtown all alone for a bus that had “Cor” on it. I could read that much. That was the Corydon bus, and I would take it all the way to the south of Winnipeg until I saw a big school and playground. I would get off the bus and walk two blocks to Mr. Rutherford's house for a one-hour lesson. Then I retraced my steps, transferring at Eaton's to my bus, which took me near my home in West Kildonan in the
North End. I'd walk the rest of the way home. I did this every Saturday. I didn't even know where I was going, but I remember my parents telling me not to daydream on the bus because I might miss my stop: “Pay attention!” Every Saturday I was terrified I might miss my stop, and then what would I do?

One Saturday that happened. I wasn't paying attention and I missed getting off at the toy soldiers. Crying, I ran to the driver. “Stop! Take me back to the soldiers! I have to get off at the soldiers!”

“I can't,” he told me. “It's a trolley bus. It doesn't back up.”

I thought I was lost forever and would never see my parents and my house again. The driver managed to stop the bus in the middle of the street and let me off. Here I was, this hysterical little kid with a violin case, walking back to the toy soldiers. As I'm walking I look up and see the Corydon bus pass me by. I was panicking because in my mind I thought that was the only “Cor” bus and I'd missed it. Nowadays even little kids have cell phones. I had nothing. I didn't know where I was going or even how to get home. So I started running after the bus. The driver saw me and stopped to let me on. He recognized me, the little kid with the violin from every Saturday morning. The sheer terror of that moment has never left me. It astounds me to this day that a six-year-old kid rode the bus in a big city like Winnipeg all alone. I would never let my kids or grandkids do that today.

But of course, I wasn't going to be playing the violin forever. Music was changing. There was a television commercial a few years ago that I used to get a kick out of watching. It was of a young boy, supposedly Jimi Hendrix, looking in the window of an accordion store, and across the street is a guitar store. He's trying to decide which one to go with: accordion or guitar. I think the commercial was for a soft drink, but it was one of those ads that are more than the product. In the background someone is playing Hendrix's “Purple Haze” on an accordion. I can relate to that scene. Can you imagine hearing “Takin' Care of Business” on a violin?

My mother always had the radio on around the house. I grew up with the radio. We didn't even have a television for several years. My brothers and I would come home at lunch and tune into CKY or CKRC for a whole hour listening to rock 'n' roll. Country music was still big in Winnipeg and the Prairies, but they were starting to play rock 'n' roll.

I used to go to all the country-and-western package shows at the Winnipeg Auditorium to see the fiddle players. Ray Price, Patsy Cline—they all had great fiddle players. On one occasion they introduced this fellow with neat curly blond hair who sat down at the piano and played “You Win Again” and a Johnny Cash song. Then he jumped up, kicked the piano stool aside, and started pounding “Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On” with his hair falling over his face. It was Jerry Lee Lewis. I'd never seen anything like him. It was a country show where people sat there and politely applauded Kitty Wells or Patsy Cline. The next day on CKRC, Doug Burrows played “Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On.” Rock 'n' roll was just catching fire in Winnipeg, and the phones lit up. So he played it again back to back. I was mesmerized.

I had a friend, Shelly Ostrove, whose dad was an electrician, and they had the first television set on the block; it was black-and-white TV only back then. Needless to say Shelly's place was
the
place to go after school for all us kids to watch
Range Rider
and
Howdy Doody
. One Sunday night I got invited to his house to watch
The Ed Sullivan Show
and saw Elvis Presley for the first time. That moment inspired me. It was the first time I heard “Tutti Frutti.” Forget the violin, I wanted to play this!

My brother Gary had some friends who went to the ProTeen club, a teen dance hall on Pritchard Avenue off Arlington Street in the North End, a really hip spot for dancers. His friends had dropped out of school and were working so that they could afford the coolest clothes. They were way hipper than I was. Gary brought them over one day and they said to me, “You like Elvis's ‘Tutti Frutti'?”

“Yeah!” I told them.

“Have you heard Little Richard?”

“No. Who's that?”

“He's the guy that wrote ‘Tutti Frutti.'”

So the next weekend they brought over a Little Richard album, and man, if I thought Elvis was wild, this was out of this world. Ten times wilder, screaming and shrieking. I'd never heard anything like it, the ferocity of that sound. When I played classical violin, it was all very structured and formal, playing the notes on the page written hundreds of years before. Now to hear rock 'n' roll and hear the freedom in the notes and playing was liberating to me.

Once I started playing guitar, I would sit by the radio with my Silvertone guitar and try to play these incredible songs. At night I'd be playing guitar in the bedroom that I shared with Gary, and when my parents would tell me to turn the lights out and go to bed, I'd turn off the lights but continue playing. That's why I got so good at not having to look at my fretboard when I played, because I learned to play in the dark. I remember Gary telling me that one evening he went out with his friends—I guess it was a weekend—and left me playing guitar on my bed. When he came home after midnight, I was still in the same spot and the same position playing my guitar.

My cousins, the Dupas brothers, lived out in the town of La Broquerie near Woodridge, southeast of Winnipeg. They had a blond, jumbo-sized Gibson hollow-body electric guitar, the kind Scotty Moore and Chuck Berry played. It was the coolest instrument I'd ever seen. While the grown-ups would be visiting, these guys would let me play their guitar and show me things. They would teach me Johnny Cash songs because they were into country music. Years later I bought that guitar from them.

I've played thousands of gigs in my career, but never one as memorable as my public debut where I was upstaged by a Christmas tree.
Garry Peterson and I went to Edmund Partridge Junior High on Main Street in West Kildonan. For the Christmas show, we put a band together called the Embers with another schoolmate of mine named Perry Waksvik. We were going to play Buddy Knox's “Rockabilly Walk.” The curtain opens and Garry starts to play the drums. He's set up in front of this giant decorated Christmas tree. I emerge from behind the curtain playing my guitar, and the crowd gasps. I thought to myself, “Wow, am I cool with my Elvis wave in my hair and my cool guitar!” I thought they were gasping for me. Instead they were gasping because the cord for my guitar was tangled in the giant Christmas tree and I was pulling it over, about to topple it on Garry and his drums. Thank god someone grabbed the tree and unplugged it in time before it crashed down on Garry. Needless to say I didn't get to play my big song at the Christmas show. The teachers stopped it and sent us off the stage. All my buddies applauded and yelled out, “Yay for Bachman!”

In the 1960s, Winnipeg was the rock 'n' roll capital of Canada. It was like a mini Liverpool. We didn't know it at the time, but in hindsight you realize that Winnipeg was the hotbed of Canadian rock. It must have been something in the water, or in the cold. We grew up with different ethnic communities throughout the city, and in every neighbourhood there was a community club. As a kid you played sports at your community club, whether hockey or baseball. And when rock 'n' roll came along, if you had a band and could play a few songs, you could get a gig playing your own community club. All your friends from school would come out and dance to the music you were making. I started out playing records at my community club before graduating to playing there in bands.