Randy Bachman

23:27You're getting me all mixed up now. Anyways, I just learned the wonderful thing about I have phonographic memory as a kid. I hear it once, I know it in my head, you just got to figure out.

23:51And it's Chuck Berry. Yeah. That kind of stuff. And every time I was going to produce an album, I produced BTO, I produced a band called Trooper, I would listen to A Dozen Berries, the Chuck Berry Greatest Hits, phenomenal album, who took 12-bar blues and made every song a story of Johnny B. Goode or Maybelline, incredible lyrics that this guy had, over 12-bar blues songs. Rock and roll music, roll over Beethoven. and the guy was a poet of unprecedented rock and roll lyrics. I mean, really. Compared to Shoeba Doobie, you know, and Yip, Yip, Yip, Boom, and Get a Job. Chuck Berry wrote like Shakespeare and obviously affected the Beatles.

24:32And besides A Dozen Berries, which I would get the simplicity of an intro of guitar, I would play Revolver or Rubber Soul to get what the Beatles did with four guys to sound like six guys. and I'm dealing with BTO which are three or four guys trying to sound like six so every time I produced a BTO album I made sure that in the verses we had a cowbell muted or in the chorus or we had a shaker going so if you listen to the Beatles behind every section the middle eight the verses, the intro there's a different percussion thing and a lot of times they're clapping and I would take the Beatles thing like there's a song called Hold Me Tight and it goes hold me tight it's been a hard day same thing taking care of business same clapping and under it ringo playing bongos let's still let it ride goodbye it's got the bongos we didn't have bongos we used a milk jug empty a big one gallon milk jug fill it with paper my brother put it between his legs and did the gallop on it so we're doing all these things for bto to sound like more than four guys on a record.

25:44And it's so easy to do it live. You just crank up loud and you play louder. It's interesting you wrote about that because I was listening to some Beatles the other day, and I thought I heard some little, like a little gallop under it all. And I thought, well, is that in the music? I don't. But listen to Hard Day's Day. When I'm home, the gallop stops. When I'm home, clank, clank, cloudbell. And that drives that. Homey feeling, homey tight. It's been hard. They get back to Hard Day's Day, and you get into the groove again. so their percussion and the shakers and Ringo played a lot of claves but he didn't do it one three just every once in a while every fourth beat or third beat and I love her he didn't go like the Latin thing click click every other time now when you played with him did you ask him about things like that?

26:36yeah he was the guy who said it's been a hard day He said, I love this chick eight days a week. John Lennon gives him no credit. I mean, if somebody gives me a title, I give them 10 % of the song. I mean, it inspires your hook. It's your course, basically. Good news for Bob Dylan, who's still looking for that check for Undone, by the way. You have my check for Undone? Yeah. Yeah. What pissed me off is Wally Lamb wrote a book called She's Come Undone, which Oprah had in her book club of the week and sold millions of copies. And he thanked Burton Cummings in the intro and not me. I wrote it all by myself.

27:05Oh, you're kidding. Yeah. So I sent Wally Lamb a letter going, but I never got a reply back. I want to ask you more about writing, but you're talking so much about guitar, and there is something about your guitar playing, which has always been noticeable for me, which is how melodic your solos are. They're not solos the way we think of... The violin. Do you think it's a violin? They're very, they're almost, I'm not saying they're sing-songy, but I could, even now, it's been years and years, I could sing the solo from No Time or American Woman. What do you... Well, that's what Lenny Bro taught me.

27:46Sing your solo in your head first. Don't think of a blues run or a Les Paul lick or a Chet Akin lick and piecing it together like a jigsaw puzzle. Play your song. And in your head, sing a solo. I'm going to do one right now. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Da-da-da-da-da-da. You just go up. Da. That becomes your solo.

28:15So when we're doing any solo that I've got, like Let It Ride.

28:26Mickey Baker.

28:31Guys, I've heard that solo. How could you play those notes in a rock and roll song where you're going.

28:39That's so jazzy, but it's so passing that when I get to that, it's a relief.

28:49That's all jazz stuff like Howard Roberts, but it's in.

29:01There's that chord again.

29:15And I got that from Anton Dvorak, Piano Concerto in D. Because I read about John Lennon listening to classical music, Stockhausen and things like that. And I can't afford anything, right? Most of your life, you're broke. And Philip Glass. So I have a friend that has Philip Glass. and listen to it and he's smashing a piano with a sledgehammer I can't do this and I get a Stockhausen thing and I can't even understand it and I go into Kresge's which is a cheap five and dime store oh I remember Kresge's they turn it to Kmart right and buy a classical album for$1.49 Anto Dvorak Piano Concerto the whole side and the fine one is the piano concerto very boring but in the ending it goes

30:13So I'm going to make chords out of that.

30:29Don't cry, would you let it ride? Okay, he's waiting for his check too, I think. Yeah. Yeah. That's great. And the Doobie Brothers, I was writing that with Fred Turner at Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and I'm showing it to Fred. I got these chords, Fred, and we just heard a trucker say, no big deal, buddy, let it ride. He'd cut us off and we almost had an axe on the highway, and we're accosting this guy, and he says, no big deal, just let it ride. So I said, what does that mean, Fred? It doesn't mean chill out, because in 1972, we don't know any trucker lingo. and he said, oh, it's just a chill out thing.

30:59So I'm sure, and the Doobie Brothers get this.

31:06Long train running. But I've already done. Showing it to Fred, and Patrick's watching me play, and so does Tom Johnson, and we both got the same Anton Dvorak thing. You created two hits from one$1.49 classical record. We all realize that there's a pool of things you share. they don't necessarily need to pay for. But if there's things you directly steal, you pay. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I remember talking to Gordon Lightfoot and I said, how do you like your song? He said, what do you mean? I said, Whitney Houston. He said, what do you mean? I said, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. I just can't take it.

31:46That's from If You Could Read My Mind, Girl. What a tale. He said, really? He said, yeah, he called the lawyer. He got a check for a couple hundred grand. As he said. From Michael, whoever's name was, who wrote. who wrote the yeah yeah good for him yeah uh did you remain friends with him you saw him very early in life lightfoot yeah you guys wrote us you wrote a song about gordon lightfoot before he was a big just joined our band and because we had a television show national like american band then right across canada that monday was from halifax who that had ann murray on it mm-hmm Tuesday was Ottawa or Montreal Wednesday was Toronto bands like um who became David Clayton Thomas yeah the host was Alex Trebek right from from Jeopardy uh Winnipeg was us Calgary Edmonton and BC with band that became the collectors are Chilliwack we're still around the guys that were on this show but it was on every single week for two years so everybody in Canada would see the guess who every Thursday and we get to do the hit parade after a while the hit parade then lasted six months.

32:49Now it lasts six weeks. So we'd be repeating songs. So the producer came and said, write your own songs and if they're good enough, I'll put you in between the Stones and the Beach Voice, but it's got to be good enough. So Bert and I started writing songs. We do a tour and we go to Montreal and Lightfoot's playing in a little nightclub there. And we go and see him. We know each other because we all would hang out at the Riverboat, which is manager owned in the village in downtown Toronto. And we go and see him and he does three hours painting pictures of tiger lilies and leaving on a jet plane kind of thing and incredible early morning rain and all these songs of his.

33:26And we sat there stunned and went to meet him. And how do you write songs? And he said, you have to have a gift. And I had the gift as a child and so did Burton Cummings. And I know a lot of people that don't. And I only found out they don't because I went through several counseling sessions with my family that was getting divorced me and Tal and my other kids and after sitting there for weeks and weeks, every week for years and years with your ex-wife trying to get back together and work out your differences and stuff and the doctor kept saying to me what are your feelings forget my feelings I'm pissed on, you know, whatever finally he said what's in your head right now because I'm not sharing anything with him.

34:15I said, well, besides the music, I'm a little angry. What music? Well, I have music in my head. What kind of music? Well, ever since I was born, I have music in my head. What do you mean? I said, there's music in my head. And I play it. And if somebody said, do you make it up? I say, I think so. But if they say they heard it somewhere, then it's from somewhere else. That's how I write songs. They're in my head. I craft them. I move them and switch them around. And he said, I hear nothing. And I said, well, I really feel sorry for you. And this doctor goes, whoa, he's like the shrink of all times, right?

34:46Nothing in his head. His head is blank. Yeah. And I find people that are musical, even right now, this song's going in my head. I have a soundtrack. I'm never alone. You can lock me up in solitary. I enjoy it. Nobody's interrupting my broadcast. It's in my head. And it's old songs, and it's new songs, and I don't know what it is. It's just there. It's just a stream. Yeah. Yeah. You put your hand in every once in a while and pull something out? Yeah. After one last quick break, we'll be back with the rest of Bruce Hedlund's conversation with Randy Bachman. In today's super competitive business environment, the edge goes to those who push harder, move faster, and level up every tool in their arsenal.

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38:16machines that make you feel more human because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing experience amazing at your lexus dealer we're back with bruce edlam and randy bachman well let's talk about i think most people think that burton cummings came up with these eyes because he was the piano player but it was you yeah tell me about that well my mother and my father was German my mother was Ukrainian these people partied they had house parties drinking like mad and then in the middle they would clear the chairs and do the kola make the Russian kick the guys jumping in the air and doing they went crazy they were like real Cossacks and so my mother beside the classical violin she made me watch every Sunday night Dawn Unmessage Jubilee, which was from Halifax, Newfoundland, where they played Celtic and fiddle music, jigs and reels and stuff like that.

39:14And she wanted, so I would pick it up and I'd play, and they would all do polkas to it. And my brother, who was younger than me, the brother who studied, who I wrote, ain't seen nothing yet for, bought the ultimate polka instrument and accordion. He's five years old. I'm seven. You get an accordion, you can't play it. They strap it to you, you can't see it. This finger has to play notes. this hand has to pump it and these fingers have to go oompa on these little buttons and we would be sent to our bedroom to practice and he'd cry saying i can't do this i'd say okay turn it sideways and i'll put he turned it sideways and i pulled this and he i said you pulled this and i sat there and i played in the key of c i figured out well c's much different than guitar or violin don't me so don't don't you just sit i can play anything on a piano, the key of C, all evenly spaced.

40:05I get him to pump the accordion, I'd sit there, and my mother would think he was practicing. So this is my formal training on a keyboard. So Burton Cummings has joined the Guess Who? We're in Regina for the summer doing gigs to get out of Winnipeg because he had broken up the Devereaux to join me, to join the Guess Who, and all the fans were upset. So we have a night off in Regina, Saskatchewan, and the new queen, the new female Gordon Lightfoot is playing in Regina at the 4D, the fourth dimension coffee house, Joni Mitchell, Joni and Chuck Mitchell. Joni Anderson just married Chuck Mitchell. And so it's a sellout.

40:41We go to see her. We know the promoter. It's a little coffee house, 120 people. There's a table that says reserved. The place is full. So I'm there with the band and in walks these two really good looking chicks, a blonde and a brunette. And I go, oh my God. That happens to most guys. You see a woman, it's like, wow. I said to my road manager, I don't know how to pick up a chick. Like I had three brothers and there was no females in the back. All boys. My cousins were all boys. Everybody was all boys. Maybe some of those Russian dances, dance moves would have helped. Yes, yes. And so I said, can you go and talk to those two chicks?

41:15And if you get lucky, call me over and don't talk to the brunette. Just talk to the blonde. We find out later they're sisters. He calls me over. I take them home. I ask the brunette for a date the next night. I go to her house. Usher into the house. There's a potted plant, a piano, and a couch. No radio, no TV. And I'm waiting and waiting. She's late. I'm there early for the date. She's late. She's late. She's late. I go over to the piano, and I go boom, boom. My training in the key of C on the accordion. Boom, boom. Oh, da, da, da. And I start to sing, these arms long to hold you. When are you coming down?

41:50We've missed the beginning of the movie. It's supposed to start at 7. And I'm singing this stupid song, these arms long to hold you. I forget about that. Bert and I sit down to write some songs. I say, here's the beginning of a song. It's called These Arms. He goes, well, that doesn't go anywhere. Why don't we call it These Eyes? These Eyes cry every night. These arms long to hold you. And the minute he said that, boom. And out comes my Bert Bacharach training. Because before Bert was in the band, we had shaken all over a big hit, 64, 65, got invited to New York to do the Kingsman Louis Louis tour.

42:27we were on Scepter Records, owned by Florence Greenberg, who had Dionne Warwick, Chuck Jackson, the Shirelles. She wrote Soulja Boy for the Shirelles. Her songwriters were Backrock and David. They came and played songs just like this in the studio for Dionne Warwick every single day. I mean, I heard San Jose and Raw with Burt Backrock and Hal David singing this stuff. But Burt Backrock is singing. All these chords. I also found out that intro was the zombies. Because the zombies did a tour with Dion Warwick, and Rod Arjun would sit and listen to Burt Bacharach's songs. So if you listen to the zombies tell her no, it's just like Undone.

43:17She's coming down. Same chords, but different era. So when you listen to these eyes, it sounds like a normal pop song, like three or four songs, I think there's 22 chords in it. Yeah. Besides the... The other part is very jazzy, like F major 7 over G.

43:41These eyes... No one would go. That's standard pop, but jazziest.

43:51These eyes... Are crying. These eyes have seen a lot of life. Never gonna see you. Change key like you. What?

44:02These are. Change key again. Like you. Change again. These keep changing key and going up. And for Burton to sing that, he was 18 at the time. You can't sing that song. Nobody can sing that except him and maybe Elton John or Stephen Tyler. You gotta have like a three or four octave voice and hit every note. Oh, crying, like really like that. I got really lucky to get this guy as a singer. Really, incredible singer. Even today. I'm listening to old tracks that we did years ago. Just incredible voice. He's still touring. And if we get the Guess Who name back, we'll be touring with the Guess Who next year.

44:41The real guys who wrote the songs. Not the guys who... So you mentioned laughing. That's from the Platter song. Heavenly shades of night are calling. It's twilight time. Da da da da da da Da da da da da da da da Together it lasts a twilight time I should laugh But I cry Cause you laugh Passed me by Took me by some Didn't realize you were laughing Also Dave Clark Give me one chance I'll be happy

45:18Just to be with you Give me, give me a chance to be near you Because, because I love you Dave Clark took the same thing and wrote just because. They're all there. And I learned this trick from Brian Wilson. When I toured the Beach Boys, Brian, how do you get these chord progressions? He said, get a fake book. every musician in New York they're jazz, fake, they're all the Broadway hit songs so I said give me an example okay here's an example five foot two, eyes in blue oh what those touch two can do has anybody seen my instead of those changes keep them half as long or keep them double I said what do you mean I get around my side of town I'm a real cool hit Making real good bread I get around Woo-hoo!

46:26And it's five foot two. Five foot two. It's going five foot two. Ah, it's a blue. He just made it longer. Get a fake book. They tell you how to put chords after chords and end up where you started, where you should when you're singing a song, with these transitional things and middle eights that are unbelievable. Broadway, middle eights are what prompted the Beatles. The middle eight of every song is another little song that gives you relief from the verses and the choruses. So a lot of the Guess Who songs had middle eights or pre-choruses, whatever you want to call them. Give me a good example of a pre-chorus from...

47:04Beatles? Or from the Beatles or from a Guess Who song? Well... The hurtin's on me I will never It's another Instead of going over and over we sing that's a pre-chorus and then these eyes then the big chorus comes in the ba-da-ba-da-ba-ba thing and we were very lucky to record that here in New York at Phil Ramon's studio with Phil Ramon being our engineer and mixer because you hear these eyes on the radio it sounds phenomenal even today everything is fat and thick and roomy and juicy and phenomenal, where other stuff sounds very dry from that era. You did two songs, I think, off that record in New York, didn't you?

47:52Well, the whole album, well, here's what happened. The whole album, The Wheatfield Soul, was done at Phil Ramone's studio, Arian R Studios. Sounded great. Then we signed with RCA. We were independent before that. These Eyes became a hit, RCA signed it. We get to New York and they say, guess what? You now get to use R Studios. Really? Where are they? Oh, they're in Greenwich Village. It's where Bing Crosby cut White Christmas. Oh, really? So we're going there. The room is dead. It's an anachiaic chamber. It's for having strings. You don't want big, boomy strings. We go in there. We can't even get a drum sound.

48:25We're trying to do - Is it because the room's too big or - Carpet everywhere. It's like there was no room sound. Your clap vanished. It was dead, right. And had weird little pockets in the corner of oomph, bass oomphs and things like that. It wasn't really a great studio. So we're in there trying to record the follow-up to These Eyes, which is now a million seller, and RCA is screaming, do another song, do another song. And we're saying, we're a rock band. We only did one ballad. It was These Eyes. We don't want to be Gary Puck at the Union Gap with Young Girl Get Out of My Mind over and over and over.

48:59And Rocco Lagunestro, who was the head guy at the time, said, radio ain't going to play a rock song by you guys, not for a couple of years. We want another ballad that's just like These Eyes. OK, Rocco. And I heard the Bee Gees song. in the event of something happening to me. There's something I was like, so I said to Burton, I started These Eyes with a piano, which gives you a break. And he's on stage. He goes, boom, boom. That little intro, everybody knows that. And it's so simple. Yeah. I'm going to take the Bee Gees and put the platters over it and go. I should laugh, but I cry. And he said, well, do you have, I don't have any lyrics yet.

49:40He said, what should we call it? I said, well, we're representing that a song called Crying. Why don't we call this laughing? You're laughing at me. You're breaking up. You're crying. You're laughing. I'm crying. You're laughing. And then you're crying. I'm laughing. Laughing. You're crying. I'm laughing. Laughing. You're crying. And he goes, first song. It's first song that anybody ever laughed in that became a hit. And so that song becomes Rocco's thing. And then they flip it over and play Undone. And I've heard other guys say, when they heard Undone on the radio, it was life-changing for them to hear jazzy chords like that with a pop voice and a flute solo played on top 40 the first time i heard ipanema on the radio was the same thing the middle of all this stuff of beatles and beach boys and over the radio and rolling stones out comes girl from ipanema with the sexy voice of astra gilberto and the sax of stan gets it's like nothing on the radio sound like you want to hear it over and over again because it was so unusual and the same thing i was told the same thing with Undone, to have major and minor sevenths in these songs over and over and over with a pop melody over it and a great voice like Burton's, which was now a recognizable voice because of these eyes and laughing, and they're playing Undone.

50:50And finally, we rocked out with No Time and then American Woman. But even in Undone, which is, as you said, a jazzy song, it's got that heavier middle section, the too many people section, which has like a heavier guitar sound. Well, I was trying to write a middle eight. It didn't fit. It had so many chords. So one thing you learn when you're writing a song, and I saw a great show a little while ago, many years ago, Paul Simon and Sting. Together. Two or three songs alone, a couple together, two or three alone, switching back and forth. And I noticed a similarity. Every Paul Simon and Sting song, solo songs, have got incredible verses with very, very lot of lyrics.

51:33And when it gets to the chorus, it's boom. Simple three chords, simple verses.

51:42Keeping that in mind, I did the same thing with Undone. A lot of chords, a lot of verses. I get to the middle, and I got to make the middle boring. And I don't know what to do. So I just take...

52:02Too many mountains. And I don't know what I'm doing, but it's kind of like a cello line. Ooh, the nature. And then I go, too many people and not enough eyes to see. Too many lives to live and not enough time. Too late. Too far. And I stole that from the zombies, too, that at the end of Tell Her No. Oh, yeah. And that's Burton hitting his face. Oh, really? He hits your cheek. Yeah. Before you started hitting him. No, we stole from everybody. Well, yeah, but you can't tell. That's the genius. We told him so. When you meet Rod Arjun and say, man, we stole your thing. He said, I know it. I knew it the first time I heard it.

52:51Congratulations. You did a great job. You know, so. You also recorded in Minneapolis, right? That's where we first went. Okay. When we were in Winnipeg, we got shaken all over with one microphone. We had a Fender concert amp, which is two channels, but four inputs in each channel. So I had my guitar through a little echo tape recorder into one channel with the bass. The other one had a rhythm guitar, mic on a piano, a little what we call a mouse pickup. These are stuck on a piano, a little contact mic. So our mixing board with the Fender amp. One mic in the middle of a room just like this, a set of drums, and Chad Allen, the singer, stood in front of the mic and sang Shake All Over.

53:31We heard a playback. The drums were too loud. We moved the drums back a foot. Chad moved in closer. I turned my guitar up. We did five takes. We picked the take that had the least amount of mistakes. It was mono. You had to do five or six takes. And everybody kept making mistakes. You picked the one with least amount of mistakes. We sent it into the record label. We were called Chad Allen and the Reflections. We couldn't use the name because the Reflections had a hit called Just Like Romeo and Juliet, band from Baltimore. And we had to change our name. We couldn't find a name. so they said we like this record a lot take advantage of the british invasion it sounds very british it is a british hit it was number one in 1961 by johnny kidd and the pirates and here we are in 64 and this could be a hit here and the kids in winnipeg love it at the dances it's it's british invasion but it's heavy rock and roll it's not pop like the beetle stuff was poppy and um they put out 50 white labels 45s shaken all over big black letters and put guess who with a question mark hundred and it came out in canada and everybody in the radio thought it was a british band that it was brian jones and george harrison and a guy from the pretty things and a guy from all these bands together at a party who couldn't put their name on it because they're all signed with different bands and different labels so they put guess who on it so this mystique starts above the song and we're calling radio station saying it's us it's us and they're saying no it's not it's a british band anyway that goes to number one in canada florence leases it for Scepter Records here, and it goes top 20 in Billboard.

54:58We're in high school. I quit school before my final exam to come here to do the Kingsman Louis Louis tour, which was incredible. Dionne and the Belmonts, Barbara Mason, Eddie Hodges, the Turtles, Sam the Sham, the Pharaoh down in Memphis, and the Kingsman. The Louis Louis tour is incredible. You mentioned American Woman, and that song came out of almost an accident, right? It came out of a jam. It was an accident? we had been playing the states backing up other groups like crystals run s stuff like that and when you do that you played one song you played shaken all over and maybe another song in the middle we might have played louis louis saying we just on tour at the kingsman and then you back up another band or the four or five bands you each play 10 minutes we suddenly got a gig in canada a three hour dance at a bond spiel which is curling a curling tournament so there's ice it's a half moon in the prairie of aluminum with no heat they freeze the they pour water in the ice there's targets and they're sliding rocks around and it's a bond spiel it's a curling tournament so we get a dance in there to celebrate the bond spiel they put plywood on the floor there's a stage and body heat warms it up and we're playing on stage it's a three-hour set so by then you'd have a set written out we would take a break and then when the next set starts instead of calling each other because there were no iPhones or nothing then.

56:25The band would start to play do-do-do-do-do-do, an animal song. We'd all know that's the beginning. We'd all come to the stage and finish the song. In the middle of a song, I break a string. I'm playing my 59 Les Paul, which have the Bigsby on it. So your string has to come from here. It's got to go over the bridge, under a bar, over a bar, and the little hole in the string end, that's got to fit a little nipple on your Bigsby. and then so you do your Bigsby so you've got to bend a string and put it under and put it on this little nipple yeah it's in the dark I have no roadie I have no tuner so Burton Cummings says Randy broke a string talks about yourself he's got to change a string so I go I'm on my floor in front of Burton's piano I don't have a tuner so I'm going gong gong gong on the piano playing an E and a B and I'm tuning up my guitar putting on my string and as you're tuning a Bigsby there's a spring in it so it's up this high so as you're tuning it the handle and the spring goes down you have to keep tuning it over and over until all the strings are in tune because every time you tighten the string the spring goes down and they all go out of tune so I'm tuning and tuning and tuning finally I'm going

57:41that's how I like to tune a guitar octave, octave, five, five, five, one

57:57And I'm on my knees playing that, and the audience, their head snaps around. I go, oh my God, I can't forget this riff. And I'm in the dark. I stand up in front of Burton's piano. And I go like this. The drummer comes on, he starts to play. Jim Hill comes on, starts playing bass. Burton is out at the back of the hall, hanging out with some guys. And it's not a recognizable song. So he's in the audience talking. We're not playing the next song in the set. We're not playing Also the Rising Sun or whatever the animal song is. In that dirty old part, we've got to get out of this place. We're not playing, we've got to get out of this place.

58:32And somebody says to him, why aren't you on stage with the band? He looks and we're on stage. He goes running on, I'm doing. Play something. He does a harmonica solo. He does a piano solo, a very broad, Argent, zombie solo. He plays a flute solo. Sing something, sing anything. Because I know when you have words, it'll help you remember the riff. The riff is so simple, you forget it. So he sang American Woman, Stay Away From Me, four times. That was it. We soloed. He did it again. That was it. We go to record. We tell Jack Richardson, we got this song. But I forget how it goes. What do you mean?

59:05I said, well, it was, he said, OK, everybody, this is RCA Studios in Chicago. Everybody out of the studio, Randy, get on your knees in front of Burton's piano. Put a string on your guitar. Go back to that place. Oh, wow. See if you can tune the guitar, see if you can play the riff. And we'll run the tape recorder. Play the riff. Play what you think the riff is, and then we'll come in. And meanwhile... So I got a version of that. It's terrible, but it's the riff. And I'm doing it.

59:38It's almost like...

59:43It's almost like that, just playing the riff like that. And out of that, we taped it. We listened to it. I played the rhythm on my Gretsch and my Fender Stratocaster. And then to sit on top, because there's no foot pedals then. You had one amp and three guitars. The Fender was thinner. The Gibson was thicker in sound. And the Gretsch was more ringier. Or you had a Rickenback or something like that. So on top sits this Les Paul. This sits right on top of the track. And it's just floating there. and it's magic happened in the studio with that. How did you get that on that solo? Is it the sustain?

1:00:23There's something on that solo. Way, way, way back, because I grew up playing violin and I love viola. I have a viola now because I got too big for violin. You're too hunched. A viola is just a bigger violin. I put the violin strings on, tune it like a violin. I always wanted to play melodic solos and melodic solos aren't

1:00:50they're like national anthem kind of things or hymns there's no fast hymns it's onward Christian soldiers like everybody can sing it so I want to play the line thing and I can't get to sustain so I figure out if you put a little amp into a big amp the little amp can be loud and you take the speaker out most Fender amps had a little output to your speaker into a big amp. And you get this sustained sound like a cello or viola. Like you're bowing and you're using the vibrato in your hand. And that would last maybe 10 or 15 minutes. And then the amp would blow up. It literally would go into flames because you're putting electricity into electricity.

1:01:30And if it goes on too long, literally I would take the amp into a guy to get it fixed every Saturday or Sunday or Monday morning after I'd done the gig because it had burn marks all over the amplifiers. And he'd say, what are you doing to these amps? They're on fire. I'd say, well, his name was Gar, Gar Gillis, Garnett Gillis. I'd say, Gar, I plugged this into there, and I get this really great sound. He said, you can't put an amp into an amp. You can put a preamp into an amp. Preamp's about one and a half watts output. You're putting 15 watts into 30 amps. It's like gasoline in a match. It's going to burst into flames.

1:02:02I said, it does. He said, I'll build you a preamp. What's that? Well, stereos have a preamp. They have a big amplifier, the 150 watts. You have a little preamp. you put your tape recorder in or your turntable. It's a one and a half watts. You have a volume control. The other one is the big power to make it loud. This has your tone control and everything. So he makes me a thing, and we just called it the noise machine. And I was reading a book at the time by Werner Herzog. And I would call him up and say, Gar, I'm coming down. Let's work on the noise machine again. And then we had three noise machines.

1:02:35He said, we need to get a name for this thing. And my wife kept saying to me, how do you know what you're talking about? Why don't you call? I said, well, I would call and say, I'm coming down to work on the thing. No, the other thing. All you guys talk is about is things and the other things. I said, okay, I'll call it a Herzog. I had this book called Werner Herzog, a pocketbook. I'll call this thing a Herzog, rather than a buzz face or whatever you want to call it. So he made me a thing with one 12AX7 tube and another 12AX7 tube. You can put it in your drive one tube by turning up your volume.

1:03:04Tube gets really hot. Your other one, you can squeak in a little bit and you make your sustain. and it goes out to your amplifiers about one and a half watts out or even half a watt out to your power amp and he built me a power amp because I blew up all the fenders. He would buy a normal DynaCo Dynakit which was a home stereo at the time. Nice and clean. Turn it up loud, it's clean. You want your home stereo to be clean. But this little preamp, this Herzog, made me distortion and a little off-on switch on the front which we made the extra switch be a little bit longer. I'd be playing a solo on stage, I'd flip it on, do my solo.

1:03:37At the end of the solo, I'd hold my note and reach back with my elbow and turn it off. And then we'd run through it to my note. Play the outro, turn it on again with my thumb, play the solo. And as I'm, my notes are singing into the song again, flip it off. I said, OK, can you put a switch in there, a foot switch off and on switch? So we made this thing called the Herzog. That plug into a Garnet amp got me the sustain on that thing, as well as my Les Paul had a Bigsby on it. So when you're bending a note on a guitar, you go from there, up, which you can't go below. All right. Unless you go. That's not the same.

1:04:14When you have a Bixby, it's...

1:04:22So you're bending a note here, and you're getting a shake below and above pitch on American Woman, and I double-tracked it. One thing we learned to do in that television show is Burton double tracked his vocals immaculately, down to the syllable, and I double tracked my guitar. You listen to No Time, they're all double track guitars, and it sounds fat and thick. It sits right on top of the track no matter what you're listening to. So those all came from accident and trying to be a little bit different. I loved Eric Clapton's solo, and I Feel Free. That's what I'm copying in American Woman. You listen to the middle of my solo, it's pretty much I Feel Free.

1:04:57The do-do-do-do-do-do. They're going, I feel free. it's the same thing. Now there must be, you must have had a million pedal makers come up to you and say, how do I get that sound? I did, a little while later, somebody invented a thing called a Sons Amp, because you're now recording at home and the Sons Amp, you plug into it and it emulates the speaker and different sounds. And I had a Sons Amp, it was really good. And then they made a Sons Amp rack mount. And when I got to number 48, it said Amlo, American Woman. I turned it on, it was my sound. Now, it was my sound from the record, which was my 59 Les Paul through a Garnett Herzog, through a Garnett amp, through an RCA ribbon mic, something like this, through a Uri compressor to 16-track tape, but with the final sound that was on the record.

1:05:47And so I called up the guy. He's in New York here at Sons Amp, famous guy. And I said, hey, I'm number 48. Can you make me an American woman pedal? He said, sure. All I want is number 48 in the pedal. So he made me a couple of pedals. They're very rare. Because at the time, he didn't have a big enough case for it. So he jammed it into a normal-sized case. Yeah. So because it's jammed in that pedal, if part of the circuit board touches the outer case, which is metal, it shorts out. So you've got to take it apart and maybe put duct tape in there so it's like isolated, and then it's American Woman pedal.

1:06:23So there's very few of those out today. But if you get a rack mount, sounds amp. Number 48 is American Woman. Amazing. Yeah. And then Garnett, Gar called me, oh, maybe 12, 15 years ago. And he said, look, I'm 85. I can hardly do this and that. I'm gearing down. I'm going to be passing away soon. I've got this wrong with me and that wrong with me. But I found a box of parts from 1966 when we made the original Herzog. And he said, I can make some. I said, how much do you want from him? He said, I don't know. I said, make as many as you can. And how many, these are all military, high-duty, heavy-duty parts.

1:06:57He said, I can make maybe 11 or 12 or 13. I said, make them all, send them all to me. Tell me what you need, I'll pay you. I'll pay you double. So he sent them all to me. So I gave one to Neil Young, one to Lenny Kravitz, one to Bob Rock, the great producer, one to Steve Cropper, several to the national musicians who want to get that sound. When you hear Let It Ride, we're going... This thing goes...

1:07:23This low thing comes up, which is my Les Paul with the Bigsby through the Herzog. It's like a cello. It's better than a cello, actually, because a cello, you run out of bow and you've got to go up, up, down. When it's the Herzog and you've got to sustain and you've got the Bigsby, the note can last forever. Oh, amazing. So those came out of a dream of wanting to play and have my guitar sound like a cello or a viola. I like the term slow hand because Eric Clapton used to play very slow and I played very slow. I always got compared to him playing with the slow hand because you play one note and put so, like B.B.

1:08:01King, you play one or two notes, you put more into it than guys going crazy. All this kind of weird hammering stuff. You can see kids on the internet now and I saw somebody joking. It was Alex Van Halen and Sammy Hager. We're joking about these whiz kids Now that you Google, they're 13, they're eight years old. They're doing all these incredible hammer-on stuff on YouTube. The world's fastest guitar player. But they can't play in a band and they can't play a song. They just learn a whole bunch of licks that maybe their dad taught them. And they're really cool. And maybe someday they will realize there's something to holding back and playing with some guys and letting him do the groove.

1:08:35And then you get a chance to groove. But things are so much different now with YouTube. I mean, when I learned it was one record at a time, you saved up your money, you bought a 45, you learned the A &B side, who wrote it, who recorded who published it who wrote you learned everything you traded it like superman comic books to your friend who had a 45 i would trade neo young singles i get his single and traded my shadow singles back and forth those were the days and the the singles were so precious i mean we couldn't afford anything you know it was like amazing yeah well listen we might be fragile you're not fragile we've determined that survivor thank you so much i am my doctor's worst He called me his worst patient because I don't have to come back to him.

1:09:14Only last Wednesday I was certified cancer-free two years. And he said, I'll see you in another year. We've got to check you every year. But I had non-Hodgkin lymphoma. I had five cancers. Wow. Stomach, appendix, prostate, thyroid, and non-Hodgkin's all gone. Wow. Looky, you look amazing, and you're back playing. Thank you. Thanks to Randy Bachman for chatting with Bruce and bringing his guitar along to play through some of his great hits. If you want to hear a playlist of some of the songs mentioned in this episode, you can hear that at brokenrecordpodcast.com. Subscribe to our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash brokenrecordpodcast where you can find all of our new episodes.

1:09:55You can follow us on Twitter at Broken Record. Broken Record is produced and edited by Leah Rose with marketing help from Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Tolanay. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin Plus. Pushkin Plus is a podcast subscription that offers bonus content and ad-free listening for$4.99 a month. Look for Pushkin Plus on Apple Podcast subscriptions. And if you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by Kenny Beats.

1:10:32I'm Justin Richmond.

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