Randy Bachman, right, and Fred Turner of Bachman-Turner Overdrive: Ruling FM radio when FM radio was still worth ruling.
Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are back. On Tuesday, they released a self-titled album of rugged new material as Bachman & Turner. The disc is warmly familiar - the same blue-collar, Winnipeg-ready, taking-care-of-business, pre-MTV, chugalugging, cowbell-plinking, power-chording, highway-rollin' rock 'n' roll that ruled FM radio back in the days when FM radio was still worth ruling. "The best feedback we've received so far is that the new album sounds like it should have been recorded in 1977," Randy Bachman said recently. "That's a great compliment. We are a mid-seventies rock band, and we bring this back."
The knee-jerk rally cry is destined to be that we "ain't seen nothing yet," which is not only atrocious grammar but altogether untrue. Because we have seen it: In the music biz, post-heyday regroupings of pop and rock bands are par for the course.
In the case of Bachman & Turner, the situation is a veritable photocopy of another reunion experience, that of Bachman-Cummings. That going concern couples the Guess Who's two principals, who legally aren't able to tour under that iconic group name. Same deal with Bachman & Turner: They don't hold the rights to operate as Bachman-Turner Overdrive. (Incidentally, the guitarist Tim Bachman, former BTO member and younger brother of Randy, was recently charged with sexually assaulting an underage girl.)
Bachman, with Turner beside him, spoke from a corner booth at Toronto's Hard Rock Café. Look around on the walls: A pair of black and white platform shoes worn by Paul Stanley of Kiss here; a black Gibson Flying V guitar of Tom Petty's there.
Not under glass but rock artifacts nevertheless, here sit Bachman and Turner, all white hair, beards and 66-year-old translucent skin. They speak with enthusiasm of a reunion that encompasses not only an album but tour dates. They debuted their re-emergence at the mammoth Sweden Rock Festival in June. A couple of casino gigs are next on the docket, with a slew of festival dates likely coming in 2011.
Why now? "The world kind of prompted me," Bachman explains. "Everybody, wherever I went, asked me 'Are you ever going to get back together with Fred Turner? Are you ever going to get that Canadian rock thing back - the band that ruled Canada in the 1970s?' "
Bachman, the historically informed host of Vinyl Tap on CBC Radio One and Sirius Radio, had no answer for his fans. In 1976, the optimistically entitled compilation Best of BTO (So Far) was released. The title was a jinx; the hits stopped coming, and the band plodded on with various lineups and reunion efforts. Last year, Bachman began work on a solo album that involved various collaborations, including a renewal with the retired Turner. Things clicked, the solo album was shelved, and the two fully reunited.
Would the new material stand up to the old? "I never thought about it, to be honest," says Turner, his speaking voice soft in contrast to his rumbling singing. "It's just another adventure down the road."
In the 1970s, BTO's brand of gasoline-guzzling rock filled a need - it was a double-fisted response to disco, singer-songwriters and progressive rock (1974's Not Fragile answered the comparatively namby-pamby Fragile, by Yes). But now, in 2010, do we need more cowbell? "Well, maybe the younger bands can learn something from us," Bachman suggests. "A lot of young bands, honestly, can't rock."
Bachman-Turner can rock. Turner's I've Seen the Light, for example, chugs heavily and with raw, overdriven gusto, with Bachman's solo summoning the oversized spirit of Mountain's Mississippi Queen. Still, it's doubtful that anything off the album will approach the status of Taking Care of Business. "I don't even know if it's about trying to write another hit," says Turner. "You just try to write another good song."
We have seen something yet from Bachman and Turner; their legend is secure. The reunion is about rollin' down the highway - about letting it ride one more time. And who would deny them that?