These mooseburger-loving Peggers weren’t flashy, but they’ll always be the band of choice for diesel rig mechanics and ice fishermen. They also happen to be one of Canada’s largest exports, and it shocks me that Donald Trump has yet to slap a tariff on them.
That said, he has renamed them on maps to America-Turner Overdrive.
BTO were one of the least flamboyant bands ever to come rolling down any highway, and I defy non-fans to pick ex-Guess Who guitarist/occasional vocalist Randy Bachman and bassist/vocalist Fred Turner out of a police line-up. And their rejection of foppery in all of its forms carried over to their music, chiefly because they had the collective imagination of your average logging crew.
And good thing. You won’t find a single trident or mythological beast in their musical canon—although I think they do have a song about slow-roasting a Hobbit on a spit—and they’d have slow-roasted the producer who dared suggest they employ a flute, harpsichord, or horn section in their songs. They were down-to-earth Everymen who stuck to what they did best—write anthems for ice road truckers.
But their populist, four-on-the-floor, stripped-to-the-basics music also resonated with folks, like yours truly, who can hardly weather a Los Angeles winter. It didn’t hurt that they boasted two distinctive vocalists in Bachman and Turner, two fine guitarists in Bachman and his brother Tim, and a rhythm section (which featured “third Bachman” Robbie on drums) to put the over in the drive.
And while their music tended to be tree-knocking Yeti primeval, it was more complex than given credit for. Bachman had an excellent knack for writing pop songs—who do you think wrote the music for most of those great Guess Who songs? And he had hidden depths. Who’d have thought the same guy who wrote metal monster “Sledgehammer” was the same fella responsible for such snazzy Canadian jazz songs as “Welcome Home” and “Lookin’ Out for #1”?
Bachman-Turner’s downfall was sadly characteristic of the time—their contract with their label amounted to indentured servitude, seeing as how it obligated them to release two albums per year, which was fatal for a band that spent more time on the road than the USS Abraham Lincoln. As a result, they had to write and record songs in a between-tours rush, and the songs suffered as a result.
It’s for this reason that, unless you’re a Bachman-Turner Overachiever, your best bet is to buy one of their best-of compilations. My vote goes to their first, 1976’s no-dead-meat/all-red-meat Best of B.T.O. (So Far), even if that “So Far” ended up being wishful thinking. By the time the comp hit record store shelves, all of their hits were in the rearview mirror.
And so it goes with the band’s 1973 sophomore album Bachman-Turner Overdrive II. Hits rub elbows with filler, including the only Fred Turner solo contribution “Give It Time” (primal reductionist stomp and Turner moose bellow) and the failed pop metal of “Tramp” (turns out Randy’s the tramp, not some groupie or other, and when I say tramp I mean street bum).
Then there’s the embarrassing Tim Bachman-penned Black Sabbath rip “I Don’t Have to Hide,” which throws in some cliched TV Western music for flavoring. The tested-in-Manitoba guitar solo and some T. Bachman demon gibberish are salutary, but the fact that Tim was allowed to write a song in the first place tells you just how desperate the road-frazzled BTO were for material.
“Welcome Home” is downright schizophrenic, unsuccessfully welding Bachman’s jazz lite music and “Canadian Suave” vocals to Turner’s speaker-blowing, moose-in-heat bellow of “WELCOME HOME!!”, which never fails to knock my Journey poster off the wall and may one day trigger a second Tunguska event.
That’s four wastes of space on an eight-song LP, hardly an auspicious sign. Fortunately, all is not lost—”Blown” is speedy, “Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” pops with tasty guitar licks and zip galore, to say nothing of a zooming guitar effect that comes out of nowhere. Throw in some fine and dandy dual vocals by Bachman and Turner on the choruses and a guitar solo that does our Nation to the North proud, and what you have is deep-cut gold.
The same goes for the hard rock with good melodic sense, “Stonegates,” which I say is a penitentiary, but everybody else says is a gated community or something dumb like that. Turner’s chopped hog vocals are pure 10-gauge testosterone, but what really makes the song is the extended “Free Bird” guitar solo that takes the song out.
“Let It Ride” is classic Bachman-Turner Overdrive—a sanguine, no-nonsense number that opens with some lull-you-into-thinking-pop strummed guitars and humanist Bachman vocals only to morph into hair-raising power chords over which Turner roars, roars even louder, screams, screams even louder, and even hits a few high notes ala Geddy Lee. And the truculence carries over to Bachman, who plays a surprisingly belligerent guitar solo. As for the drums, brother Robbie hits ‘em hard enough to be arrested for grievous bodily harm.
“Takin’ Care of Business” is one of the band’s signature songs, a high-spirited number that defines “business” as doing “nothing all day,” written and sung by one of the busiest show-bizzers of the era. What did he have—maybe two days off per year to do nothing? In short, it’s sheer fantasy, but Bachman makes you believe it. The crunchy guitars playing a pop melody are a gas; the honky-tonk piano is as close as BTO gets to adding color. Bachman gives us a primer on how to get ahead in the rock biz and say goodbye to the subway 9-to-5 forever, the guys do some shouting over bang the drum all day, and the sing-along at the end is contagious.
On the one hand, Bachman-Turner Overdrive achieved minor miracles on their second album, but too much highway and too little time to write great songs and polish them in the studio took their toll. When two of a BTO album’s songs are written by a guy not named Randy Bachman, you know Randy Bachman was burned out.
But here’s a paradox: five of the nine songs on 1974’s Not Fragile were written by guys not named Randy Bachman, and it’s the best studio album BTO ever produced. So there goes my thesis, shot to shit.
Long live America-Turner Overdrive!
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B-
