(Randy was married.) He enforced those rules to the point that he fired his brother Tim from the band, possibly for breaking those rules, before they even made Not Fragile. On the road, Randy had strict policies about how nobody in the band should drink, do drugs, or have premarital sex. There is a beautiful irony in Randy Bachman, the guy whose religious principles wouldn’t let him remain in the Guess Who, forming yet another quintessential hesher band and coming up with one of the most giddily horny classic-rock anthems of the ’70s. Eventually, though, Randy assented, and his dumb joke-song about his brother’s speech impediment became the biggest thing his band would ever make. The song embarrassed Randy he didn’t want it out there. Fach had to plead with Randy Bachman, first to release “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” at all and then to make it a single. At their engineer’s suggestion, the band played him “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” and he loved it. But Charlie Fach, the band’s A&R guy, said that he liked the album but didn’t hear a hit. Third album Not Fragile was generally more of the same: a whole lot of fired-up and vaguely bluesy arena-rock songs that seemed engineered to sound good on road trips. They sold albums and concert tickets, but they didn’t have any songs in the top 10 before “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.” (The closest thing was “ Taking Care Of Business,” a rewritten Guess Who song that BTO used on their second album, which peaked at #12 earlier in 1974.
Like Grand Funk, BTO weren’t really a pop-charts presence in their early years. Basically, Randy Bachman ended up filling the same role he’d abdicated when he left the Guess Who a few years earlier.
BTO first got their foothold in almost-Canadian cities like Detroit and Buffalo, and they spread quickly but organically, making simplistic and revved-up blooz-rock for the kids who wanted to party. They toured hard and got love from rock radio stations in neglected Midwestern markets. It took a while for BTO to get signed, but when they did, they went the Grand Funk Railroad route. Possibly at the suggestion of Neil Young, Randy hooked up with Fred Turner, a local Winnipeg bassist and singer, and the new band became Bachman-Turner Overdrive. (Gary, the brother with the stutter, was never in the band, but he was their manager from the beginning.) Randy noticed that Brave Belt were getting bigger reactions when they played rock covers, so he overhauled Brave Belt, turning it into a rock band.
Randy’s drummer brother Robbie had been in the band since the beginning, and another Bachman brother, guitarist Tim, eventually joined up. He and the former Guess Who singer Chad Allan started a new band, Brave Belt, which recorded a couple of albums but didn’t really go anywhere.Įventually, Allan left Brave Belt, and the band went through some lineup changes. So he returned to his Winnipeg hometown, intending to make laid-back, country-leaning music. Bachman had converted to Mormonism, and the life of a traveling rock star suddenly didn’t agree with him. Randy Bachman left Winnipeg dumb-rock greats the Guess Who shortly after he co-wrote “ American Woman,” the Guess Who’s sole #1 hit.