Randy Bachman: Legendary Music Man "Takin' It Back" with Burton Cummings and The Guess Who!
- Todd Beebe
- 2 hours ago
- 19 min read
By Todd Beebe
When it comes to living legends in the music business, you'd be hard-pressed to find a more qualified candidate than Randy Bachman. Starting with The Guess Who, Bachman and the band found huge success with a string of singles released in the 1960's. "Shakin' All Over", "These Eyes", "No Time", "Laughing", "Undun", "American Woman", "No Time", "No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature", "Share The Land" and countless others put Randy and The Guess Who at the top of the charts. Those songs are still in heavy rotation on classic rock programming around the world. It's a major accomplishment for any artist to achieve huge success with one band or project. But Bachman didn't rest on his laurels, and went on to have even bigger success with the 1970s music giants Bachman-Turner Overdrive. "Lookin' Out for No.1", "Roll On Down the Highway", "Hey You", "Takin' Care of Business", You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet", "Let It Ride" are still being heard in 2026, proving that Randy Bachman and his art are truly timeless. A Winnipeg native, he has been inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, holds an honorary doctorate from Brandon University and is in the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum. His "Vinyl Tap" show ran on CBS Radio and is cited as one of the most successful programs ever. For many years, the name "The Guess Who" was used by lineups that didn't include Bachman or Burton Cummings. Many fans attended shows, expecting to see the Bachman-Cummings team on stage, as they were responsible for writing the classic songs that are loved around the world. Instead, fans were shocked to see a band that was "The Guess Who" in trademark name only. Bachman and Cummings set out to change that, and in 2024 it was announced they had gained control of "The Guess Who" name. Randy spent 2025 playing several Bachman-Turner Overdrive shows with his son Tal. Now, in 2026, Randy Bachman and Burton Cummings are touring, loud and proud, with the "Takin' It Back" Tour! Fans from all over the world, including this author, can't wait to see the classic Bachman-Cummings team fronting what they can rightfully call theirs: "The Guess Who!" I had the honor of speaking with Randy recently. We talked all about his early years, learning to play guitar from the great Lenny Breau, how he writes a classic song, why practicing every day remains important to him, and of course, the incredible dynamic and the upcoming tour with Burton Cummings. He even gives a shout out to Portillo's Hot Dogs! (A Chicago classic!) It's always great to see people like Randy, who've had success on such a huge level, yet still remain humble, down to earth and easy to talk to. Just a super guy! Thanks for a great interview Randy!
Todd Beebe: Thanks so much for talking to me today Randy! So the upcoming Takin’ It Back Tour reunites you with Burton Cummings, playing all your classic songs as The Guess Who! As one of the greatest songwriting duos of all time, how would you explain the dynamic and the magic that you and Burton have?
Randy Bachman: Well, I can't explain it. I know that it exists. There's some kind of magic that happens between people that is unexplainable. And… you can't explain it. When it happens, it's wonderful and you acknowledge it. I once jokingly said, "Burton and I, 1 plus 1 equals 3!" There's something there that, when we're together, we're Jagger and Richards, we're Paul McCartney and Lennon, we're Brian and Carl Wilson, you know what I mean? We're Bacharach and David. We're those guys, you know?! And we always wanted to do that. We got together every Saturday and played each other records and said “we need to write a Motown song! We've never done anything like that in Winnipeg, it's all country music. We need to do this! We need to do British songs; we need to do Beach Boys songs!" Everything that was on the radio, we tried to write.
TB: Burton sounds incredible, and your guitar playing is as great as it's ever been! I've read that you still practice every day, which I think is great! You’ve said that you initially got that discipline from playing violin? Let’s talk a little about the need to practice every day and how important that is.
RB: Well, when you're a little kid, and I was 5 when I started. And your parents are making 20 bucks a week, and they're feeding 4 boys, and you scrape up $2 a week for your violin lesson… YOU PRACTICE! (laughs)
TB: (laughs) But that's amazing that's carried over to 2026! Randy Bachman could go out and just coast, and people would still be happy just to see you. But you don't do that. I think that's incredible!
RB: You know, it changes over time because, first, you practice because you feel this obligation to your parents. Even before I'd go to school, I'd have to get up in the morning from 7.30 to 8 and practice a half an hour of violin. Then when I came home after school at 4 o'clock, before I put on my play jeans… because you had jeans you wore to school and jeans you'd climb trees with and to play hockey with- you’d put on your play jeans, and I’d have to practice a half an hour before I could go outside and play. So you're practicing an hour a day when you're 5.
TB: Wow! Yeah, that's a big commitment at 5!
RB: And by the time you turn 11 or 12,13,14, it's not classical music anymore. Because it was all Royal Conservatory classical. Then I saw Elvis on TV! I'm going “what is that?!” And I start to hear it on the radio. It's called Rockabilly, it's called Rock and Roll, he's called Elvis Presley, that's called a guitar! I said, “I want to do that!” And they said, “well, we can't afford lessons.” I said, “I don't need lessons anymore!”
TB: OK so talk about that initial encounter with the guitar.
RB: Well, I had two cousins that were going fishing for the weekend, and they had chipped in and bought a guitar. So one of them would use it Saturday noon to next Saturday noon, then the other brother would get it the next week. And they're both going away fishing. So I said to them “hey, you guys, can I borrow your guitar for the weekend? I want to learn to play.” And they go “oh yeah, sure!” So they lent me the guitar, and they came back two days later and I could play everything that was on the radio. They said “what happened?!” I said “all you play on violin is lead, it's a lead instrument.” My teacher would put Chopin in front of me, or Tchaikovsky. She'd play it first, and I'd get it in my head, and I would play it exact. Then she'd say “okay, take that home and practice it for a week.” And I’d say “Why? I already know it!” And I played it again. She made the mistake, which was a good mistake that, when she put the score in front of me, she played it, and I heard it, and I remembered it. So I have this phonographic memory, that when I heard a song on the radio, I remember the whole thing. I just sit there and figure out the notes. I didn't know what notes I was playing.
TB: Ok, so you would remember things you heard from other guitar players too, right?
RB: Yes! I would go to a concert with binoculars. I'd watch The Ventures and Johnny and the Hurricanes, or Chuck Berry. I'd just go “oh, the solo was on the 8th fret”, and I'd write it down. Johnny B. Goode solo, 8th fret, and I'd go home, and once you get to the 8th fret, it's all there on the guitar. When you don't know the guitar neck, you don't know where to go. And as you… you learn from different guys. You watch everybody playing everywhere and you just pick it up. And so I went from “You're not being a good boy, you didn't do your homework. Go to your room and practice”, as a punishment, to me saying “all I want to do is practice!” My mother kept saying “you have to stop playing the guitar, because you're flunking at school!” And I said, “I don't care about school, I'm a musician!”
TB: Earlier we were talking about the time I spent around B.B. King when I was a kid. You were around B.B. quite a bit too.
RB: Yes! I remember doing a show in the mid-60s. The Guess Who lived in Winnipeg. We had to go down to Texas to play, and maybe 80 Universities came there for a weekend, and you each got to play for 10 minutes. So they would block book you to come to the state of California to 12 colleges: Sacramento, then you drive to Fresno, then you drive to Eureka, and you're back and forth. So you're playing all around the state. Or you go to Texas or you go up to the Northeast. So we're up there, and we're on stage, and I’m in between Roy Clark, who's a phenomenal guitar player, and B.B. King! (laughs) So, all we have is Shakin’ All Over, and we play that song. And then I'm goofing around in the dressing room when B.B. King comes in, and he says, “um… the stuff you're playing is really, really good! And you make it look too easy. Watch Roy Clark.” So, Roy Clark, when he would play a note, he would go like (makes a painful face), always with that amusing face, he would do this thing. And B.B. King goes, “You gotta feel pain in those notes!” So, when you see me do that, I'm literally going back to B.B. King going “when you bend your 8th…(makes string bending sound) pretend somebody's stepping on your foot or somebody's stepping on your toe kind of thing!” (laughs)
TB: (laughs) Oh, that’s great! OK, so somewhere along the way you ran across Mickey Baker’s Complete Jazz Guitar lesson book. Did Lenny Breau introduce you to those books?
RB: He did, yes!
TB: They’re fantastic! So many players mention that book and how important it was in their development as a player. Robben Ford, Hendrix, the list is endless. I believe those books came out in 1955, and so many players, including yourself, have referenced them. Let's talk about how important the Mickey Baker Jazz Books were to your development.
RB: Well, when I first saw Elvis on TV, I had just quit playing violin. I wanted to play guitar. And on violin, all you play is lead. So with guitar, I learned to play lead. Then you learn chords. I got a call from my brother who worked downtown in Winnipeg. He said, “the best band in Winnipeg is looking for a rhythm guitar player. Do you want to play rhythm guitar? Go try out Saturday at this guy's house and learn this." He gave me an EP with 4 songs on it by The Shadows. Kon-Tiki, Man of Mystery, and a couple other great instrumentals. And so I learn it in about 5 minutes. I go to the rehearsal and I start to play the song. Then the lead guitar player breaks a string. I finish playing the song and they all look at me and go “Oh, you play better than Alan on guitar! You want to play lead?” And I said, “that's why I came, to play lead!” So then I kept saying to Lenny Breau, “I want to play like these jazz guys. They play all 8th notes, but it's just not regular playing. Something's going down, something's moving.” He said “oh, you need to play your major chord, your major 7, your seventh, your major sixth.” I said “what is that?” He said, “get this book.” The black and yellow Mickey Baker book changed my life. Whenever I see those at a NAMM show, I buy a dozen of them. Because everybody I see says “how did you write Undun and Lookin' Out For #1?" I say, “well, the chords are in there, I just took the chords and put them in a different order.”
TB: Yeah, those books are incredible! Did you ever work with Mickey Baker or get to meet him? He passed away in 2012 I believe.
RB: No. I saw him once at the Winnipeg Arena on one of those Rock and Roll Caravans. It was Mickey & Sylvia and they had the big hit Love Is Strange.
TB: Oh yeah!
RB: Even in it's time, he’s got a black Les Paul, he's going “Do Do Do” (mimics the song’s signature line) When we heard that on the radio, we were like “what is that?!” That was like, really amazing on Pop radio at the time!
TB: Right! Incredible stuff! So, sadly, you've said you'll probably never make another instrumental record. Your Axe album is one of my all-time favorites! I got it as a kid, at a used record store and I wore it out! I love that album! That was recorded in Chicago at the RCA Studios right?
RB: Yes, in one day!
TB: Wow! Really?!
RB: Yes! In one day, I sat down there, with a drummer, and said, “Here's a bunch of vignettes for a song. I'll play bass on them.” We were just trying out a new studio. They built a new studio for American Woman, for The Guess Who. We didn't want to drive from Winnipeg to New York to record all the time, so they put one in Chicago.
TB: Unbelievable!
RB: So we're there, kind of, like, fooling around, goofing around in the studio. I got to know Brian Christian really well. He was the Engineer. Because The Guess Who were getting very successful at that time, and they wanted me and Burton to do this. They said “Jack and Jorma from Jefferson Airplane are doing a thing called Hot Tuna, and we want you and Burton to do a guitar and piano album called Bachman and Cummings. The way you write the songs, like, no flourishing, just piano, just like you're sitting in Burton's house, writing them every Saturday morning when you wrote the songs.” So we were going to do a Bachman-Cummings album that was strictly acoustic. So I went to the Chicago studio. They said “You really like Chet Atkins and Lenny Breau, why don't you do a guitar album?” And I go “well, I'm not Hank Marvin. I'm not The Shadows. I don't have a band. I'll just do a bunch of stupid little things and I'll give it to you.” So, it wasn't supposed to come out as my solo album. It was like “since you're buying American Woman or Canned Wheat, why don't you buy Randy's crazy album?”
TB: Yeah I love it! And that album definitely has a cult following for sure! I’m one of them!
RB: What was cool about that album was, many, many years later, decades later, we're doing this show in Cleveland or Toledo or something like that. Our opening act is Roy Buchanan.
TB: Roy was incredible!
RB: Yeah! He shows up with a Telecaster in a little soft case. Has an amp, has a bass player and a drummer, and a set list of 8 songs. He does the sound check, does the 8 songs and it’s all he does. He plays like, Purple Haze, a Blues in B-flat, Killing floor, and a couple of things like that. And The Messiah, oh my god, that song, The Messiah Will Come Again!
TB: Yeah, that's beautiful! What a song!
RB: That song is amazing! When it's all done, I go to him and say, "That was great!""He said, “Do you know what my favorite thing to do is?” And I said “what?” He says “I put on your Axe album every night after dinner. I'll sit there and play to it.” I go “what?!” He says “I love that album! It's like background music. I get a nice slow song, I can do anything I want. Once in a while you solo, or Domenic Troiano solos once in a while, and it's in a different key, and it really throws me off and it's really great. I just… I love that album!” So, that alone made the album worth doing and worth coming out with! Danny Gatton told me the same thing. I’m like “what?!”
TB: Yeah, I completely agree! Axe is incredible!
RB: Well, maybe I’ll release Axe 2!
TB: There you go, I would love that! Randy, that would be fantastic!
RB: Okay!
TB: American Woman and some of your other songs just came together, I'm going to say, as a fluke. You pulled them out of thin air. It's just mind-boggling that something that came together so quickly has stood the test of time for so long! Tell us the story of how American Woman came to be.
RB: Well, we had been touring as The Guess Who, on one song, Shakin’ All Over, which Burton didn't even sing. Chad Allan had left the band, and we’re there, trying to recover. And then we start to have These Eyes and a couple other songs out. This is, like 67, 68, 69, and everywhere we went, in the States, there are no men our age. Everybody is drafted. They're fighting in a jungle somewhere. Between 18 and 35, there were no guys our age. We're all around 20. We're going to a city, it's like… women are, like, bowing down to touch your pant legs! I mean, you're the only guys there between 18 and 35. And they were a little…ambitious or overzealous? And Burton couldn't stand it! We liked nice, more reserved Canadian women that kind of teased you a little bit! American chicks were just like “okay, let's rock! Let's do it!” (laughs) So, we had a big gig in Canada, in Kitchener-Waterloo. And it was a Curling tournament, you know, the ice with the rocks on it? And it's freezing in there, and it's on the prairies and it's in February. And there's like, one of these half-moon, aluminum buildings with ice. They put plywood on the ice, and the audience is there in rubber boots and parkas, and we’re on stage with gloves, playing. So, in the States, we'd play 20 minutes. We're on with The Kingsmen or Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, or another band. You know, we're sharing the night with them right? In Canada, we're doing a 3-hour set, like our own dance in Winnipeg. So we had three 1-hour sets, and we would take a 10 minute break every 45 or 50 minutes. So we’re ready to start the next set, we're gonna start to play the next song, and everybody knew it was time to come on stage. We knew our opening song was gonna be Crossfire by Johnny and the Hurricanes or something like that. And so I break a string on a ‘59 Les Paul with a Bigsby.
TB: Oh no! That’s the worst!
RB: You’re a guitar player, so you know what I’m talking about: to put a string on a guitar with a Bigsby, you've got to go around that little thing on those weird little posts, and it keeps popping off. I had no roadie, no tech and no tuner. So Burton says “Randy broke a string, he's got to change it, so we're gonna take a break and talk amongst yourselves.” And the whole band leaves the stage. I go and get a string. Burton's got a little Hohner electric piano. I kneel in front of the piano, in the dark, on the stage, and I'm going "gong, gong", (simulates playing a piano) hitting an E and a B, and an E and a B, back and forth as I’m tuning. I go… I'll show you right now. (Randy grabs a guitar to show me!)
TB: Oh great! I love it!
RB: So I'm tuning, right? And then I go… (starts playing the iconic American Woman riff)
TB: Amazing! And there's the riff!
RB: The stage is in darkness. They're all talking, and they're having popcorn, or you know, hanging around and the whole audience's head snapped towards the stage! And I go “oh my god, I can't forget this run, this riff!" So I stand up and I see the drummer and I go like this (mimics playing drums) and Gary runs on stage and starts to play drums. Jim Kale runs onstage and goes “wow, keep playing!” Burton's in the back of the hall. He doesn't recognize the song to bring him on stage, because it's a new song right? So somebody says to Burton “why aren't you on stage with the band?” He looks, and goes “what?!” He goes running on stage and says, “what are you doing?!” This is unbelievable! I yell “do something! Play a solo!” He plays a harmonica solo, plays a flute solo. Then I yell “sing something, sing anything! Sing some words so I can remember this riff!” So he sings “American woman, stay away from me”, because they were all over him all the time.
TB: Wow! What a story!
RB: So we did that on stage, and then I said, “You know, I think we’ve really got something!" So Burton said "Should I try some other lyrics? Can I put in war machine and ghetto Scene?" I said “yeah!” That's what we thought, that's what we saw!
TB: So you were seeing completely different scenes in America compared to growing up in Canada?
RB: When we came from Winnipeg....can you imagine- we're like little country bumpkins in Winnipeg, Manitoba, which is kind of like way, way north of Minneapolis. It's like weed country, corn country. It's the top of the Great Plains. And everything was kind of like country music there, because it was farm country, basically. Guys are into tractors and riding horses and stuff. So, it was a pretty incredible place to grow up. It had 3 radio stations that were competing with each other, and we heard really, really great music there that influenced me, Neil Young, Burton Cummings and Fred Turner. And we're all still around today, as Neil Young or the Guess Who or Bachman-Turner Overdrive, or whatever. Just the same 4 guys. We're playing the same 2 dozen songs that we played 40 years ago, that nobody knew. We played these songs in 1969, in the tent at the Pan Am Games in Winnipeg. And by chance, where the athletes ate. So there's a lineup, like you see in school, and they're just putting stuff on a plate, you know, beans and rice on a plate and their backs are to us on stage. We're singing American Woman and No Time and nobody cares. They invite us back 20 years later to play the same four songs and pay us, like, blank hundreds of thousands of dollars to play the same songs! So it's funny how you get into a groove and you do the same thing over and over, and people's… their liking of it changes. Their adaptability changes. They see what you meant by the song.
TB: OK, perfect segue Randy, as I wanted to ask you to talk about your process for song writing.
RB: A lot of my songs are incredible accidents, and I've learned as a songwriter to, say, when you wake up and you have a horrific dream, write it down. It might be the next Stephen King novel. I have a little songwriting kit in my truck. It's a McDonald's napkin and smash crayon. (laughs) I just write down song ideas… song ideas I hear on the radio. Or I'll watch TV, or I'll be on an airplane. Something I'm seeing on the screen will get me, so I'll reach into the bag, the pocket in front of me, and get out the barf bag. And the person next to me will go “oh no, oh no!” I’m saying “I'm not throwing up, I just want to write the lyrics on this white bag! Do you have a pen?" (laughs) You're always writing… you're always writing stuff down. Because you never know when you're going to forget a phrase like Takin’ Care of Business. It gets said so many times, every day, that you never think of writing a song about it. But I did, by accident, on stage. Even when I was in LA and I walked out on Sunset Boulevard trying to shop there at North Beach Leather, getting a leather suit. A guy comes out of the store and he yells “Hey, you!” And everybody on the street turns and looks. I go, “wow, what a great name for a song! Hey You! Everybody will look at me!” So, I wrote a song called Hey You! So, you never know what's gonna prompt you to write a song.
TB: Very interesting! I always love asking writers what lights a fire inside of them. Gregg Allman said “there's as many ways to write a song as there are songs.”
RB: That's true, but like I said, I've learned to be open, and let things come to me and write them all down as if from some angel of God somewhere. Angel of song, whatever you want to call them. They’re like “ I feel sorry for this poor guy who's been trying to write a song for 3 months. Here's one, here's a gift!” And you’ve gotta take it! And I wrote Undun just like that, in like 7 or 8 minutes. And of course, I showed it to Burton Cummings and he said “amazing! You wrote a great song!” And that's the Mickey Baker Black and Yellow Jazz book. The chords from Undun are in there, I just put them in a different order. But I learned the chords from that book and also hanging around Scepter Studios in the mid-60s, when I went there with The Guess Who, we were doing the Louie Louie tour, The Kingsman Tour. The songwriters there were Burt Bacharach and Hal David. They came every day to Scepter Studios and played songs for Dionne Warwick and Chuck Jackson. And we heard Burt Bacharach play. It's all major sevenths, minor 7th. He'd just come out of Juilliard. And I hear all this stuff, and we go to Phil Ramones, who's recording them on the corner there at A&R Studios. And it was just a great environment for me. Then I found out that when Dionne Warwick toured England, because she had a lot of hits there, Burt Bacharach went as the bandleader. I mean, he was a young, hip guy out of Julliard, right? And the opening act was The Zombies. So Rod Argent hears all these chords, and he writes Tell Her No and Time Of The Season. They're all major and minor seventh chords, and I hear it, and I put them in our songs. That’s the first time these jazz chords came into rock and roll! I mean, came in properly. I remember the first time I heard The Girl From Ipanema on the radio, I couldn't believe it! At the time, everything was pop music, and out comes this sexy thing! Stan Getz' sax is right in your face, her voice is caressing you, João Gilberto on the guitar! There was nothing like that on the radio. And I've heard DJs say that when they heard Undun they thought “this is the next Girl From Ipanema! There's nothing like this on the radio! It's catchy, it means a lot, it'll appeal to older people and younger people, and guitar players are gonna love the song!” Whenever I see a guitar player, they’ll say “can you teach me how to play Undun? What's the first chord in Undun?” I go “It's a flamenco thing from Malaguena." Play an E, you move everything up to an F, but you leave the open string. So I did it in B, and “it's too late, she's gone too far…”, it's just… I'm just stealing things from Malaguena, you know, that kind of thing.
TB: Wow! Thanks for sharing that Randy! That’s an incredible story, and I know tons of people will love reading it! OK, so, one of my favorite pedals for the guitar is your American Woman Pedal by Tech 21.
RB: Oh yeah!
TB: So who initially had the idea to design this pedal? Did you approach them to do this, or did they approach you?
RB: Somebody said to me one day, “how do you get the American Woman tone?” I started to tell them and they said, "do you realize if you get a Sansamp rack mount, number 48 says "AMWO." That means "American Woman." I go, "what?!" So I get a Sansamp, the little rack mount, and I dial it in. That's my American Woman sound! Not only is it the sound of a '59 Les Paul burst played through a Herzog, which is a 12AX7 preamp tube into a Garnet amp into an RCA ribbon mic, onto tape- they've got the whole sound captured on number 48 on the Sansamp. So I asked Tech 21, "Can you please take number 48, take that number out and put it in its own pedal?" And they said, "Well, can we call it the American Woman pedal?" I said, "Well, yeah, okay." I called Burton Cummings and asked "Can we call this the American Woman Pedal?" He said, "Yeah, it's your guitar tone." So, we made that pedal, and it's a phenomenal pedal.
TB: It definitely is! The tone is spot on for American Woman, No Time and many tunes you recorded during that time!
RB: Yes, it's a phenomenal pedal, and it has two preamps in it!
TB: Right! Well thanks so much for explaining that Randy, and for speaking with me today! I'll see you in Chicago on June 30th!
RB: Yes! We'll do Portillo's and pizza in Chicago! See you soon- bye!
Make sure you catch Randy with Burton Cummings in 2026 on the Takin' It Back- The Guess Who Tour, and keep up on all things Randy Bachman online:https://www.facebook.com/RandyBachmanOfficial
https://www.facebook.com/TheGuessWhoOfficial https://www.facebook.com/BachmanTurnerOverdrive https://www.randybachman.com/https://www.theguesswho.com/https://www.btoband.com/
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