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Bachman taps rock ’n’ roll memories

Winnipeg rocker Randy Bachman offers a lifetime of rock ’n’ roll memories in his new book, which is full of such minute details as Little Richard’s habit of toting a travelling makeup case, Johnny and the Hurricanes’ fondness for Bachman’s mother’s homemade perogies, and the Pointer Sisters volunteering to clean up Bachman’s then-three-year-old daughter after a bout of car sickness.
Randy Bachman
Randy Bachman is pictured in a Toronto hotel as he promotes his book "Vinyl Tap Stories" on Monday

TORONTO — Winnipeg rocker Randy Bachman offers a lifetime of rock ’n’ roll memories in his new book, which is full of such minute details as Little Richard’s habit of toting a travelling makeup case, Johnny and the Hurricanes’ fondness for Bachman’s mother’s homemade perogies, and the Pointer Sisters volunteering to clean up Bachman’s then-three-year-old daughter after a bout of car sickness.

But how does Bachman — who will be 68 later this month — remember his past with such stunning clarity?

“I’ve never done any drugs, I’ve never drank, I’ve never smoked — so I think I remember the ’60s like nobody else remembers them. And the ’70s and the ’80s,” the affable rocker said during a recent promotional stop in Toronto.

“When I left the Guess Who, it was the summer of 1970 — that was the height of ‘drugedelia’: hash, grass, pills, Quaaludes, acid, LSD, things like that. I was allergic to smoke so I never smoked anything, and then I saw my friends having radical personality changes, even when they would drink heavily.”

Back then, Bachman didn’t have a manager, so he would wake up early every morning to go to the bank and stash away the haul from his latest gig. He didn’t have the time — nevermind the inclination — to indulge.

“I’d go to the party, and see Jimmy Page and Robert Planet and Sly and the Family Stone, and say, ‘Hi, nice to meet you, great gig we did together,’ and as it would go down the tubes . . . I’d say: ’Bye, see you guys tomorrow, I’ve gotta get up early and go to the bank.’

“There were other guys (who did the same). It was Frank Zappa, it was Sammy Hagar, it was Ted Nugent — straight, sober guys who went and took care of their business.”

But those are only a few of the rock stars whose run-ins with Bachman are documented in Vinyl Tap Stories, which hits stores on Saturday.

Bachman, who penned a series of enduring hits as part of the ’70s stalwarts Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, began his second career as rock ’n’ roll storyteller in 2005 with the launch of his popular CBC-Radio show Randy’s Vinyl Tap. The book is something of a greatest hits of Bachman’s most memorable tales.

Among the countless anecdotes in the breezy new tome?

Bachman recounts recording with Little Richard, and the fact that the flamboyant rock icon would only play piano in the keys of G, C and D. He recalls his experience sitting in a hotel hallway, listening for hours as a forlorn Eddie Van Halen — whose best friend had just committed suicide — noodled sadly on his guitar. And he reminisces on his brush with blues legend B.B. King, who advised Bachman to start wincing when he played guitar, lest he make it look “too easy.”

But the one rocker whose path intertwined with Bachman’s again and again was fellow Winnipeg product Neil Young. They knew each other as teenagers, kept in touch as Young travelled to California and joined Buffalo Springfield, and have recorded several collaborations, usually after Young spontaneously summoned Bachman to his West Coast home with about a day’s notice.

“When he introduced me to his kids, he’d say: ‘This is Randy Bachman, my good friend from Winnipeg. We went to different schools together. We grew up in different homes together,”’ said Bachman, an animated presence even early in the morning, who becomes even more excited each time he launches into a story.

“(Young’s influence) is very hard to measure.”

Aside from Bachman’s tales of other musicians, his book also delves into his own songwriting catalogue. And, as it turns out, some of his biggest hits seem to have been written almost by accident.

For instance, the memorable riff from American Woman was conjured spontaneously during a 1969 gig in Kitchener, Ont. And Takin’ Care of Business, which Bachman says remains the most licensed song in Sony Music’s publishing catalogue, features a piano solo played by a pizza deliveryman who wandered into Kaye-Smith Studios in Seattle, overheard the band playing and thought the song could use some keys (the band didn’t know that Norman Durkee was a classically trained pianist who only delivered pizza to make extra money).

The songwriting process almost had to be spur of the moment for Bachman — less organic methods didn’t suit him. He remembers studying the lyric sheets of Bob Dylan, Stephen Stills, Joni Mitchell and Joan Baez, before sitting down with a thesaurus and a rhyming dictionary and trying to laboriously craft something meaningful.

He tended to wind up with “wonderful lyrics that didn’t really speak to anyone.”

“I was no Shakespeare. I was no Dylan,” he says cheerfully.

“And then I just found that when I would relax and I was my normal, average, Canadian Joe self, and did a song by accident or by letting it just happen, that it was so absolutely simple and so inane and so silly in a way, that that’s what everybody liked the best.”