The Lenny Breau Show

Transcription

[pause] Alexandra Wilder: Now let me turn things over to our partner at the Toronto Star and bring up Bob Hepburn, Director of Community Relations and Communications. [applause] Bob Hepburn: My role here tonight is to formally introduce Peter Howell and Randy Bachman. The notes are for Peter Howell. [laughter] BH: Peter's been a published journalist since 1976 and has covered the Canadian music scene for well over 30 years. He's worked with the Star for some two decades and currently is our acclaimed film critic. And yes, he loves The Oscars. But before he switched to reviewing films, Peter was our acclaimed music critic for years. He knows the history of the Canadian music scene. He has interviewed stars of the '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s, right up to today. As a music critic, one of Peter's most interesting accomplishments was that he was one of the first journalists ever to write a regular online column, which he created the online blog Cyber Pop years ahead of the curve when it came to what is today known as social media. Today, Peter is followed by thousands of people around the world on Twitter. BH: Randy Bachman. A quote I like about Randy Bachman, the best is one I read just a few weeks ago. And it was Randy talking about himself. "I don't want to be 'Whatever happened to?' I want to be, 'Look at what this guy is doing now.'" Well just look at what Randy Bachman is doing these days. Previous weekend, he was inducted for the second time into the Canadian Musician's Hall of Fame and Bachman Turner Overdrive was honoured at the Juno Awards. Guess Who were inducted in 2001. He performs more than 100 times a year. This Friday, he's in Tacoma, Washington. His award wining radio program Vinyl Tap is heard by millions of people around the world every week and he's on tour right now and here tonight talking about his second book, Tales From Beyond the Tap, which is a follow up to his first book which was a top 10 bestseller. Not bad I'd say. BH: As you all know, Randy started his fabulous 40 plus year career as a guitarist, songwriter, performer and producer in Winnipeg. He has earned over 120 gold and platinum albums and singles around the world and has sold more than 40 million records worldwide. He produced his first album with Burton Cummings and The Guess Who in 1966. I actually remember that one. Together they wrote such hits as, These Eyes, No Sugar Tonight, Laughing, I'm Done, No Time, American Woman. I know the words to all of them. [laughter] BH: In 1973 he performed Bachman Turner Overdrive with Fred Turner. The band had such huge success with hits, Takin' Care of Business, Let it Ride. Unfortunately, I know all those words too. [laughter] 0:04:22 BH: His awards over the years are phenomenal. He's received an honorary Doctorate of Music, he's received The Governor General's Performing Arts Award, he's an officer of The Order of Canada. So whatever happened to Randy Bachman? A lot, I'd say. Please welcome Peter Howell and Randy Bachman. [applause] Peter Howell: It's my word. Randy Bachman: Nice to meet you. Thanks everybody for coming. We've been here... Thank you everyone. PH: Last time Randy and I talked was about 20 years ago. I was telling him he was kind enough to come to down to Toronto Star, which rock stars normally don't do; usually you have to go to them. He's a very approachable guy. And this book is a great read. I really enjoyed it. RB: Thank you. PH: And you sort of, like I said, outtakes. These are a hell of a... great stories. RB: Well, they're the stories that I tell when I'm doing my radio show, but if they only put those in, it would be a talk show and I have to play music, so the producer kind of cuts off the story and then we play the song. So this says it's Beyond the Tap, it's the stories that kind of keep on going. Like you're telling your kids a bedtime story, kinda keep on going and going and going. So these are a little bit beyond the other endings. PH: Yeah, I thought we'd begin by... It's funny, I've always called you Randy Bachman, but that's not necessarily your preferred pronunciation of your last name, is it? RB: All I care about is that they say it. [laughter] RB: In Canada it's Bachman. In the States, if I say Bachman they have no idea who I am. I have to say Bachman. And in England it's Bachman and in Germany it's Bachman. So you kind of learn that all over the world. In fact, when I'm doing an American PR for radio say, "Hi, this is Randy Bachman of Bachman Turner Overdrive" then it's both in the same... It's all done. [laughter] PH: So it's good that he's also ambidextrous, right? Which is handy because his thumb is broken, right, from what happened? You wanna tell people what happened? RB: I was shaking hands with a biker at Sturgis, the big bike fest, the Harley-Davidson guy, and he just squeezed and squeezed and my hand kind of crunched. I thought nothing of it and then four or five months later it hurts and you shake it out and then you can't hold a guitar pick and then you can't open a bottle like that and you start to worry and you start to ice it and then you find out you have got broken bones in your thumbs and twisted tendons. I had it worked on in Winnipeg about, last weekend, by a hand doctor. There's actual foot doctors and hand doctors. So he works on it for three hours and he starts up here and he does all the bones and all the ligaments, 'cause there's something there it's all connected. So he gets my thumb absolutely perfect. And then I walked on stage at the Juno's and I shake hands... [laughter] RB: With Chris Hadfield. [laughter] RB: The astronaut, who's like one of the worlds strongest guys. Our conversation before that was, "How do you work out is space?" You lift up a weight, hit yourself in the head, there's no weight, you gotta do it with elastic bands in space. Then when you get back to earth, it's very hard to work out 'cause you're use to having no resistance. Like when you're in a swimming pool and you get out suddenly you go, "Am I this heavy?" cause you're getting out of the pool and suddenly the pressures there. So I walk on stage with him and the first thing I did... You'll see it if you watch the rerun of the Juno's, there's this, "Huuh! I shouldn't be doing this." Here he is grabbing my hand and he's got a really incredible handshake. So, it kind of hurts again. PH: Sidelined by a biker and an astronaut. Top that. One of the neat things about this, you find a lot of time with rock stars and movie stars and I talk to them all the time, is that they're often not willing to really share, literately. They're afraid to talk about their influences, they're afraid to talk about where they get their ideas, as if somebody will steal it from them or you might accuse them of stealing it from you. But Randy you just tell these stories and I wanted to ask you one about, the one song you seem to reference most in the book is American Woman the big Guess Who hit, right? I was really surprised. I hadn't heard this story before, that you said American Woman was inspired by A Whole Lotta Love Led Zeppelin. That's where you got the hook for the song? RB: I don't know what came first, it's just a riff in E. American Woman I kind of wrote that in late '68, we recorded it in '69, and then it was out in 1970. So I don't know if that beat A Whole Lotta Love or not, but I could just sit here with a guitar and play My Sharona, da-da-da, it's the same thing, or I'm a Man, do-do-do-dot, it's the same notes, it's just different timing on the notes and American Woman is just a variation of that. PH: So you go from da-da-na-na-na to the American Woman? RB: Yeah. I've got a couple of live sound checks of Led Zeppelin actually at Madison Square Garden, where in the middle where they're playing Whole Lotta Love, they sing American Woman. So I don't know what came first, but I don't care. [laughter] RB: They're getting paid, I got paid, and theirs was kind of borrowed by I think Willie Dixon and that's a great story. PH: Yes. RB: Willie Dixon's walking through his house, his grandson comes in with a big ghetto blaster, and Whole Lotta Love is playing and somebody's rapping over it, do-do-do-don, and they're doing a rap part and he says to his grandson, "I wrote that song." The kids says, "No, you didn't, it's Led Zeppelin." So a couple of lawyer phone calls later, Led Zeppelin writes him a check for a couple of million dollars and now the new Zeppelin things say, "Plant Page and Willie Dixon". PH: So it should too. RB: Yeah. PH: Well further to American Woman, what's this I about you, you say in the book that you would like to do a bossa nova version of it? Like the American Woman from Ipanema? [laughter] RB: Exactly. I am prepping now, this is quite exciting. I got a call from the Winnipeg Symphony. Many years ago, I played with a symphony when Beethoven had his birthday, 150 or 200th year, it was called "From Bachman to Beethoven". So they wanted me to play... Classical Gas was a big hit then, it was like late '60s. So with the Winnipeg Symphony I did Classical Gas and then I did some... Beethoven did Ode to Joy and stuff like that. I stumbled through it and the symphony covered for me and it was great. Since then, they've asked if I would play with them again and as it comes up, they offered me some concerts in early December, which I said yes to. I just spoke with the arranger today, his name is Charles Cousins, and we're gonna do a show in October here in Kitchener, where they have a nice little symphony, maybe Koerner Hall where they have the young kids symphony, Royal Conservatory, and one in London, Ontario, where they have a nice symphony. So we're rewriting the songs that our introducer... Sorry, I forgot his name. PH: Bob Hepburn? RB: Yes. American Woman in that bossa nova style, She's Come Undone in a Led Zeppelin style. We're taking all my songs and totally flipping them over as if somebody brought me in sheet music, which I can't read, brought in sheet music and the lyrics saying, "Do this as a song." So I'm thinking let's use as a template for this While My Guitar Gently Weeps. Let's use this template for this Whole Lot of Shaking Going On. Let's use this template for this My Sharona, or something and taking that song and adapting it to that and then he's writing an 89 piece symphonic arrangements to go around and behind that. So that'll be a fun project. So American Woman is being done in a bossa nova style for that. PH: I'm there. You probably heard the line from Keith Richards that he says, "There's only one big song up in the sky, and you just reach up and pull down the parts you need." RB: Little bits, yeah. PH: Yeah, yeah. You actually have one of Keith's guitars that you mention in the book, right? You bought a guitar and it turned to be one of his. RB: I did, I bought two of them and I gave one... Stupid. I gave one to Blair Thornton the other guitar player in The Guess Who. We walked into a music store in the mid '70s. It was in West Chester, Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia. And two black Les Pauls on the wall. One had P90s and one had humbuckers and those are pickups, for those of you who don't know. And I said, "Wow, those guitars are amazing, can we play them? What are they in here for, are they for sale?" He said "No, they were in for fret jobs". And when they were first made they were called Fretless Wonders 'cause Les Paul did all this fancy stuff so the frets were very low. But if you want to play blues or rock on them, you need a higher fret so your string will have a sustain to it or else it just kind of flops against the neck. And he said, "No, they're in for fret jobs." And I said, "How long they been here?" And he said, "A couple years." [laughter] RB: And I said, "Well, who didn't pick them up?" He said, "Well, Keith Richards' roadie brought them in. They were on a tour and so we needed to get them done." I said, "Well, can you find out if they're for sale?" He said, "Well... " I said, "You know that you can do a thing called... How much is each fret job on a guitar?" He said, "$120." I said, "You know you can do a mechanic's lien." Which a mechanic will do to any of your cars. If you take the car in and suddenly he puts in new brakes and everything, you don't pay that, he can sell that car for the amount that's on there and the rest of the money is gone. But if he's put $200 into a brake job he can sell it for that, as the bank can do with your house. So I said to the owner of the store, "Would you do me a favour?" RB: Stones had just started their label then, you know the tongue when the Rolling Stone record's Atlantic. "Could you send a registered letter to Tongue Records, whatever it's called, Rolling Stone records at Atlantic Plaza in New York City, with the mechanic's lien? Say if they don't pay you for these things within 60 days, you're gonna enact this lien and you're gonna sell the guitar for what the fret jobs are." And he said, "Okay." So I then proceeded on the road with BTO, we were on a big tour, and I call him every couple of months, "Have you done it?" "Yeah I did it." "Was it a registered letter?" "Yes it was." "Did they reply to it?" "No they didn't." And now we're waiting for the required 90 day period, and I call him after that and he says, "They didn't reply, so I guess I can sell them." And I said, "So what do you want for both Black '59 Les Pauls?" He said "$750." [laughter] RB: So I didn't say, "Each." I said "Okay, so if I send you $750 you'll send both of those to my address in the states?" "Sure, no problem." So I got them. I said to Blair, "Do you want one? Pay me $375." And we still have those guitar. We started to play them on Four Wheel Drive, you notice the BTO sound changed? PH: Yep, yep. RB: Four Wheel Drive we got heavier and thicker sounding. So I went from playing a strat to playing this heavy black Les Paul, which is so heavy I only can play it sitting down. And so I still have that to this day. PH: I think Keith took that lien and rolled it up very finely. [laughter] PH: You mentioned BTO which is the other great band you're in, and then I want to ask you about the song most identified with BTO which is Takin' Care of Business. RB: Yeah. PH: I had always though that, maybe I wasn't paying attention, I always thought that you got it from Elvis. The story I heard, let me tell you the story first, is that you saw it on his belt buckle or something, TCB and that you got the idea for the song. But apparently I got that totally wrong, he got the idea from you. RB: You're totally wrong. [laughter] PH: It's not the first time. RB: Or the last. [laughter] PH: Yeah, tell us. RB: In the late '60s... This is a long story do we have time for a long story? PH: Yeah, tell us. It's about Elvis. RB: Okay, this is the late '60s. One of my favourite songs growing up was Johnny B. Goode, the Chuck Berry song. The story of a kid who plays guitar, lives in a cabin made of earth and wood, and it's the day in the life story of this kid who learnt to play guitar. PH: Just like ringing a bell. RB: Yeah, like ringing a bell. And then the Beatles copied that with PapePHack Writer. They told the day in the life of a story of a guy who wrote papePHack novels like this. And in the middle as we all know it went, "PapePHack writer, papePHack writer." PH: I think they also stole it from the Harry Belafonte riff, but yeah, go ahead. RB: Yes. And so I wanted to write a song like PapePHack Writer or Johnny B. Goode. I was in New York in the middle and late '60s in the recording studio. Shakin' All Over which was The Guess Who's first hit in Canada and in the states, was out on Scepter Records in the states. PH: Chad Allan. RB: Chad Allan. And we went to Scepter Records, it was owned by a lady by the name of Florence Greenberg, she owns Scepter Records. She also wrote Soldier Boy for The Shirelles and managed The Shirelles. And they had their own little recording studio. Their songwriters, who they had on staff, were Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson, and these people would pitch us songs to do. And they were just like us, they were our age and they like teenager 19, 20 years of age, writing songs and pitching us songs. RB: And her son, Stanley Greenberg, was our engineer. And we recorded an album. There was Ashford and Simpson writing some of the songs and singing on them with us. And the thing about Stanley Greenberg is he was blind. I would sit there in amazement and he would be there and he would be turning the knobs. Somebody else would set up the mics for him but he had the ears and he would mix us. And so every night, he had to leave the studio at about 10 o'clock. And as a musician, you're just getting going at 10 o'clock, that was when we start work. Eight or nine. PH: Just waking up. RB: When you guys are done dinner you go out, we're there entertaining you at dinner or dancing whatever and our work day is pretty much eight at night 'till one or two in the morning. And so, just as we're getting rolling in the studio, he'd leave every night. I said, "Stanley why do you leave?" "Well I gotta go home." So let me back up a little bit. Everyday at the studio, Stanley would wear a white button down shirt, a tweed tie, a tweed jacket with leather patches here, pleated pants and those British shoes with little leather doilies on, like Brogs or whatever they call it. [laughter] RB: And it's like 80 above, it's August and 90 above in New York and everyone's in tank tops and this guy comes in everyday in a tweed jacket and a white collar. And so I said, "Stanley why do you dress that way?" And he said "Because I wanna look like George Martin, the producer of the Beatles, he's the best producer in the world," and I goes, "Stanley, you really do look like George Martin, that's really great." And I said, "I wanna write a song about you, because you wear this white collar. I'm gonna write a song called White Collar Worker, and I want this to be like PapePHack Writer." So I say that... When he's leaving that night I say, "You know, how do you get... Where do you? Where do you live?" And he says, "I go to the train station, I take the train home." RB: "You take the train home. Where's that?" "Grand Central station." "How do you get there?" "I walk." So I said, "Can I go with you?" I wanna see this blind guy walk. To train, Grand Central Station... The Scepter studios on West 54th Street, so he's got quite a ways to walk to get to Grand Central Station. I say, "How do you get there?" He said, "Well, you count steps." And I was intrigued by this whole thing. So I go with him and it doesn't matter to him if it's light or dark. You know what I mean? It's dark, it's 10 o'clock at night. [laughter] RB: And he counts the steps. And he says, "One thing if you're coming with me, don't touch me." He doesn't like me to take his arm. He's on his own. He's got his white tie and everything. And I appreciate that. So I'm walking beside him and he's counting, "785, 786, time to turn right." And we end up at Grand Central Station. I wanna write a song about this guy and there's nothing to write about, the streets are empty. I mean Madison Square Garden isn't out yet, whatever is going on that night, so it's pretty much deserted, then when that gets out and all the theatres get out, blam, New York is full, from maybe 10:30 till one o'clock in the morning. So I say to him, "There's nothing here to write a song about. I'm trying to write a song the day and a life of this guy, the white collar worker. So when do you come in in the morning?" And he said, "I take the 8:15 into the city." And I said, "Oh, when you take the 8:15, when does it get here?" He said, "It gets about quarter to nine and I get to work by 9:00 and start work." PH: Yeah. RB: So the story starts. So I go the next morning. I meet the 8:15, it's about quarter to nine. He's getting off the train, all the girls are getting off the train. Their doing their hair and their make-up. Their going to look pretty and I write you get up in the morning from alarm clock's warning, take the 8:15 to the city. There's the whistle up above and the girls trying to look pretty and if the trains on time you get to work by nine. Then, work started at 9:00, now it starts at 10:00. [laughter] The evolution of the work day. And so I wrote the song. But in the middle it stopped and it went, "White collar worker." Just like "PapePHack writer." And so I played it for Burton Cummings and he goes, "Gag me with a drumstick." [laughter] RB: "We can't do this song because we'll be sued by Lennon and McCarthy." And I said, "Yeah, but we'll get to meet them." [laughter] RB: "I get to meet the Beatles in court face to face." [laughter] RB: And so that didn't happen. So that song never got on any of The Guess Who albums because after that we did the Wheatfield Soul album, I kept pitching the song and Burton kept saying, "Great verses, incredible verses, those are your Johnny B. Goode verses." PH: Yeah. RB: "They tell the story in the day of the life of a guy but you need a better hook, get rid of the white collar worker." So fast forward many years, I pitched that, after The Guess Who, I started a band called Brave Belt, it's a country band. And I pitched it for Brave Belt I and II and it goes nowhere. I pitched it for Brave Belt III, it goes nowhere. Brave Belt III becomes Bachman-Turner Overdrive I, we just changed the name we got a different record label and I'm still pitching the song and nobody's wanting to do the song. Now, as I'm going to work one night over the bridge in Vancouver to North Vancouver, my old friend Darryl Burlingham, Darryl B who is on air here, you might know him, he's on air here in Toronto a lot. PH: Yup. RB: He's on the air there in Vancouver and he said "This is Darryl B on Seapoint radio, and we're taking care of business." And I went, "Wow, what a great song title. What a great song title." So I have a song writing kit in my car, which some of you might have, it's a smashed crayon on a McDonald's napkin. [laughter] RB: So you write down all the ideas, so I'm driving over the bridge the Lionsgate bridge and I'm getting a napkin and I'm writing down "Takin' Care of Business," because if you don't write it down, you'll forget it. Just like the great dream, "Hey, guess what, I had a great dream last night," "What was it?" "Uh... I forget, it's gone." So you gotta write all these ideas down and you learn, if you're a journalist or a writer, a little collection of words is a ka-ching headline or a song title. So I write that down and I'm going to the gig and this is Saturday night now, we're playing in North Vancouver in a club. We were playing six nights a week, Monday through Saturday. Five 50 minute sets a night. PH: Wow. RB: With 10 minutes off each hour. So by the time it gets to Saturday night, the last set, Fred Turner comes to me and he says, "I can't sing anymore. You gotta sing the last set." So I had to sing the last set and not really being a singer or called upon to sing, having been in a band with Burton Cummings, one of the greatest voices in music and then Fred turner was this Harley-Davidson, Hugh Channic, John Fogerty kind of voice, I had to sing the last set. So I went up on stage and I'm trying to wing this last set, and I didn't really have a whole lot of songs and I'm on stage and we're doing Oye Como Va, the Santana song, and none of us know any Spanish but it doesn't matter, because I figured nobody in Vancouver knows any Spanish either. [laughter] RB: So we bluff our way through that song and while I'm playing the "da da da da da da dit da da" the big solo, part of me is thinking, "What are you gonna do next?" And the thing about a club, rock and roll clubs do not exist for you to dance, they exist for one thing. PH: Drinking. RB: Drinking, just like radio stations don't exist to play your music they exist to play commercials. If your music's good enough, they'll play them between the commercials, that's how they get their money. Not by playing our music, they gotta play commercials. So while the night's going on, the club owner's going like this, and it's the last night of the set and he's going like this. He's going like, "Nobody's drinking." And when we start Oye Como Va, they're all up dancing 'cause that was a big song on the radio. So he's going, "Great, great, great, great." Right? They're drinking now. He's giving me motions from the bar. RB: The trick is you can't let them sit down. You've gotta keep them up dancing, 'cause the minute we end Oye Como Va, they're gonna sit down. And I'm gonna go, "Duh, what am I gonna do next?" So I'm on stage just like this, and we're a three piece band, me and Fred Turner, my brother Robby on drums. And the light comes on in my head being ambidextrous, this side's working, this side's thinking, "This is your big chance for White Collar Worker. The band is your hostage. They're on stage, they've already passed on the song." [laughter] RB: "They pass on the song like six times for six albums. This is your big moment." [laughter] RB: So I'm thinking, I'll take the lyrics to White Collar Worker, I'll take what Daryl B said on the radio, "Takin' Care of Business. Instead of doing that break down, 'White Collar Worker,' I'll just go right into 'Takin' Care of Business,' see how that fits. I have no chance to try this ahead of time in the dressing room. It's just right on stage, an instant kind of thing. And similar to tuning my guitar and putting a string on, in Kitchener-Waterloo coming up with that riff to American Woman which I played on stage the audience felt the arrow coming from the angel who... PH: The gods. RB: Shoots an arrow, he once write a song on it. That happened on stage. I turned around, I said, "Follow me, it's three chords," and I started to play the chords. I got to the hook, I didn't stop and do White Collar Worker, I sang Takin' Care of Business. The next time around I did my second verse exactly to White Collar Worker. The next time around the band sang Takin' Care of Business, and I didn't know how, I answered them "Takin' Care of Business every day, taking care of business every way, taking care of business, it's all mine. Taking care of business and working overtime." And... PH: Boom. RB: I had that feeling like, "Wow." The audience had that feeling. It was electric. We got to a great jazz or blues concert and the band gets into it, they go somewhere. If you can go with them on that journey, it's wonderful. You leave behind all your worries and woes and cares, and you're on this journey for one or two or 20, or three or four or five minutes, or whatever. So we're all on this little journey together, and everyone is dancing and going crazy. We try to stop the song, they're all clapping, singing, "Takin' Care of Business." My brother keeps it going. We play the song for 20 minutes. [laughter] RB: It ends the set. So we go to record a couple of weeks later, and I write out the lyrics for Fred Turner who basically was the lead singer. And he says, "Why are you writing out the lyrics for me. I don't want to sing this song." I go, "Oh, Fred, you don't want to do the song? The audience loves it." He said, "I'd like you to sing this song, and give me a real rest 'cause I just can't go out there screaming and singing all night long. So you really sing a song that's on a real BTO album, and you've done it twice and the audience loves it." RB: So, we go into the studio and we record the song, and I sing it once 'cause it's no big deal. And the song speeds up and slows down, and falls apart in the middle, and it's no big deal. It's only an album cut. And while we're in the studio, it's like one o'clock in the morning, I've done this as an afterthought, done this song. And there's a knock at the door, I open the door to the studio. This is a great big studio complex a lot like this. There's studio A, we're in studio A. Studio B is Steve Miller doing his Fly like an Eagle album. In studio C is War doing their Why Can't We Be Friends album. So we're all there in this brand new studio in Seattle. RB: And so there's a knock at my studio door, and I open the door. There's a guy about six foot four, frizzy black hair, frizzy big black beard wearing army fatigues. He's standing there with three pizzas, and he said, "Did you guys order pizza?" I said, "No, we're going home. We've been here since 10 in the morning. It's now like one o'clock in the morning. Try down the hall, Steve's in that door and Steve's in that one." He's like, "Steve Miller and Steve Goldstein who's producing War." No, Jerry, Jerry Goldstein. And we're playing this song, too putting on our coats, and there's a knock on the door again. I open the door, the same guy's there without the pizza. I said, "So you got rid of the pizza?" He said, "Yeah, but I'm listening to this song. It's really a great song." And I said, "Thanks very much. I kind of put it together on stage. I co-wrote it with myself." [laughter] RB: I wrote part of it in 1967, and I wrote the other part like last month. There's no better co-writer to have than yourself. You split the money two ways in your... This pocket and that pocket. So he said, "That song sounds like it could really use a piano." And I said, "Yeah, I'd like to get Elton John or Little Richard, but they're both going crazy in LA Tonight." And he said, "I'm a piano player, will you give me a break?" "What do you mean?" He said, "I really don't just deliver pizza, at the end of the month I gotta pay my rent. I'm a piano player. I can nail this song." RB: So I said, "You know we're really too tired and I don't have time." He said, "Please give me a break." And I thought, "Who am I not to give a guy a break?" So I said, "Okay, we'll give you a break." Normally you tune a piano when you're gonna record. There's no piano tuner at one o'clock in the morning. So I said, "Okay." We lifted the lid up, threw on a mic and covered up and said, "Okay, play your take, and play a little bit of Little Richard, a little bit of Elton John, a little bit of Dr. John, a little bit of Jerry Lee Lewis, everything." And so he did this potpourri of piano tracks, he never sticks to one style. So if you listen to it closely, and you're a piano player, you see this guy's really switching piano styles. And then I'm supposed to listen to it and pick a style and say, "Okay, do the whole song that way." When he was done, "I said, thanks a lot, goodnight." We were so tired we were falling asleep. RB: So he left and went on delivering more pizza. We went and slept. We came the next day back to the studio, and we were gonna hear it for the first time. The head of our record label came, his name was Charlie Fash, and he came to the recording studio a day ahead of time. He was supposed to come the next day. He came a day ahead of time and said, "I wanna hear the album." We said, "The album is not done yet. We need another day here to sort things out, listen to tracks." He said, "I'm only here for a day. I'm on my way to LA, let me play it." So I say to the engineer, "Will you play Takin' Care of Business? Don't play the piano track, just play it the way it is." RB: So we played Charlie Fash the whole album, he said, "Pretty good, Let it Ride's a pretty good song." I think I can get that on the radio. And, halfway through Takin' Care of Business, the engineer pushes up the volume on the piano track and in comes this piano. And Charlie jumps out of his chair and he goes, "That is amazing. That's what you guys need to do, Elton John is all over the radio. And all you guitar guys are the same, you're two guitars, bass and drums, you and ZZ top... " [laughter] RB: "And Aerosmith and Peter Frampton, The Doobie Brothers, you're all guitars and bass and drums. The keyboard is the key to getting on the radio now. It's the early '70s and Elton John has like eight songs in rotation. So let's hear this whole song." Because he'd only heard the back end, we'd backed the song up. We play him the whole song Takin' Care of Business, he said, "That is incredible, I want to put it on the album the way it is. It's a really great feel-good party track. I know it speeds up and slows down, I know it's out of time, I know it's imperfect, but in a way it is perfect because it's a bunch of people... It's like a party. Who's playing the piano?" [laughter] RB: And I said, "A pizza guy." [laughter] RB: And he said, "No, all kidding aside, who's playing the piano?" [laughter] RB: And I said, "All kidding aside, a guy came here last night delivering pizza. He asked to play piano, I let him play piano. He's gone, I don't know who he is." [laughter] RB: He said, "That's an incredible rock 'n' roll story." PH: And it gets better. RB: We need an ending. PH: Yeah. RB: "Well you've gotta find out who he is or we can't release this record. And this is gonna get you on the radio, this is the song." So I go down the hall to Steve Miller and knock on the door and say, "Stevo, where'd you guys get pizza from last night?" "It wasn't us, it was War." So I go down to War's studio, knock on the door. I open the door, it's like, foggy in there. [laughter] RB: I part my way through the haze, the smoke, and I get to them, and I say, "Where'd you get pizza from last night?" And they go, "What, man?" [laughter] RB: They're like, "Did we get pizza last night?" [laughter] RB: Anyways, they couldn't remember where they had got the pizza. [laughter] RB: When you're all done in the studio, a maid comes in and cleans it up, 'cause you don't have time to clean up and most guys don't. It's like having TinkePHell as a maid. You mess up your apartment, you go to work, come back, it's clean. So when you're in the studio basically for three or four weeks, you ordered Chinese and pizza and Chinese and pizza, back and forth all night long. You never really leave the studio. So they say to me, "We don't know where we got the pizza from." So I go and get the yellow pages, I go to the lady at the front of the recording studio and I say, "Would you do me a favour? Here's the yellow pages, you're gonna start at Antonio's, I'm gonna go half way through it, Mario's. We're gonna phone all the Italian places within three blocks of the studio who deliver pizza and ask if they have a pizza delivery guy that looks like Fidel Castro." [laughter] RB: "With the big beard and the army fatigues." And she goes, "You're kidding." And I say, "I have no other way to describe this guy. This is what he looked like, I don't know where he is. We've gotta find out who this guy is." So on about the fourth or fifth phone call, I've got lucky, I got a guy, said, "Yeah, we have a guy that looks like that." I said, "Can you tell me his name?" "No, we can't give employees names over the phone. Would you like to order a pizza?" I said... [laughter] RB: "Yes! I'll take yesterday's pizza! If you have a leftover pizza, just send this guy that looks like Fidel, okay?" He starts work at six, I said, "Great, send him." And five after six, he comes in with a pizza and we find out his name, it's Norman Durkee. That's the piano you hear on Takin' Care of Business. PH: Wow. [applause] PH: Yes, we haven't even got to where Elvis fits into this, you wanna hear Elvis fits into this? RB: Okay, Elvis is coming. PH: Okay. RB: Elvis is coming. PH: Yep. RB: Then... [laughter] RB: Do you have time? [laughter] PH: Do you have time? RB: This is why this book is the stories that ended, this is the rest of the stories. PH: Let me pour you some water. RB: I got some, I'm good. Then he went on to become Bette Midler's musical director on her first North American tour. And then when I toured the world with Ringo Starr's All Star Band in '95, the whole tour ended in Hollywood Bowl in LA and the pianist for the LA Philharmonic was Norman Durkee. So I met him again there. Now, a few years ago, maybe 10, after Elvis had passed away, Priscilla Presley was on TV on HBO Special and they've asked her, "Where did Elvis get the TCB from?" And she said, "We were driving to the airport in LA to fly back to Memphis and a song came on the radio by a Canadian band." She didn't name the band, "By a Canadian band." And Elvis said, "Turn that up, that is great rock 'n' roll. I love that song, I want TCB to be the name of my band. I want a lightning bolt, I want something TCB right away." That's what the lightning bolts were. That became the name of his band. RB: The reason I switched from violin to playing guitar is when I saw Elvis on television that first night he was on, doing Don't Be Cruel and Tutti Frutti and Hound Dog and stuff. That changed my life and then Elvis takes TCB as his logo. It's now on his tombstone at his grave site. And if you go to Graceland, you get a t-shirt or a mug that says TCB on it. They have it so trademarked and copyrighted, nobody can use that except me, because I wrote the song. PH: Are you to blame for the white jumpsuit as well? RB: No. [laughter] PH: My fat Elvis days are over. [laughter] PH: But there's more to the story because the line "I love to work at nothing all day" comes from your dad. You wrote that in the book. RB: Yes. PH: Yeah. RB: My dad kept saying, "You gotta get a real job." [laughter] PH: You work at nothing all day. [laughter] RB: Good line. PH: I said, "Musicians look like they're not working, but you're thinking of songs and things you hear and you're planning your tour. And then when you'd go away it's full tilt on, like 24 hours a day for three solid months at a time like for 90 days at a time. So we are working all the time as most writers or painters, whether if it's a paintbrush in your hand, you had a typewriter or a computer. You are thinking of stories to formulate, then you go and write it down. Same with the musician. So I said in there, "We love to work at nothing all day." PH: Just to finish this anecdote off, great, I love this story. Apparently Elvis actually performed it once when he was rehearsing, right? What you said in your book that you've never heard his version of it. RB: No, somewhere in... There was a big pop fest in the Maritimes about four or five years ago. I played it with Cummings, we flew in there, Bon Jovi was on the show as well. And for some reason Elvis's band was there, I think they played at a big casino. Or they had some sort of Elvis anniversary and the guys in the band who I knew came up to me and they said, "We're pleased to meet you. You're the TCB guy, we're the TCB band." And I said, "Did Elvis ever record that song?" And they said, "Yes, we have it recorded, we did it in Las Vegas." And it's somewhere in the Elvis archives that they're going through right now, but they didn't want to go through it until the family took a position with RCA records who said they owned everything... PH: Mm-hmm. RB: Just like the Hendrix people had to do with Hendrix. They had some tapes of his that they didn't want to throw in under the old shafted record deal where we get 99 cents a dollar and, by the way, Elvis you get a cent. PH: Right. RB: Or Hendrix should get a penny. So they waited until the position got better. So apparently there is a version of Takin' Care of Business done by Elvis and the TCB band that I would love to hear sometime. PH: Me too. RB: Yeah. PH: I guess that says another question. RB: Why? [laughter] PH: You have a great quote in your book which I'm gonna quibble you about because I wanna ask you about it. You say a band is not a democracy, no band is. It's a benevolent dictatorship. Now I want you to explain it, but also, how does that explain REM and the Tragically Hip? Those two bands are sort of known for being like to split all song writing royalties and they would be pretty much a democracy and maybe even Russ as well. How do you square that with your philosophy? RB: I had an experience where I... I had the experience of being a leader, being an older brother, I have three younger brothers and you can waste your time having a committee meeting and get nothing done or you can make what you hope is a considerate, loving kind decision. Just like if you got five or six kids, you all can't go... You can't take your girl to ballet or dance, you can't take the kids to Little League, you got to decide as a family, "We're gonna go to Little League this time or we're gonna go to ballet next time." You have to make those decisions. I look at governments around the world and nothing much gets done except these guys lie and take your money. That's a whole other issue. You can't disagree with that. [laughter] RB: But here's the thing, I fly a few years ago to Denmark and Sweden and I had been there five or six years before. And I think you fly into Denmark and you have to take a highway and a bus and everything to get to Sweden. To get to Stockholm. And then when I go next time, it takes 15 minutes. I said, "What happened? How did this happen?" "Oh, we built a bridge." "You built a bridge? I was here three years ago, how do you build a bridge?" "The king said we're building a bridge." [laughter] RB: The king of Denmark, we're building a bridge with the king of Sweden. They got together, they built a bridge. Everybody pays $20 dollars, they built a bridge." "Wonderful." So that is to me a nice benevolent dictator who looks at what is needed and the tax are shared equally by everyone and they build a bridge so kind of that's what it's like. I know there's other bands that do a communal kind of thing like that. I had financed BTO with my own money from The Guess Who, which wasn't a lot of money at the time. Because we had one of those bad record contracts where they get 99 cents and we got a cent to split five ways, that kinda thing. And that's still enforced, that contract lives forever even with all the iTunes and all that stuff. That's why every band is now into a revolt. Because they're selling everything now, they're not even selling anything it's in the sky. You download it from iTunes, they're still taking 95, 98 cents per dollar. You're just getting one or two or three cents and that's totally inadequate. PH: You know how you start a small business in Canada? You open a big one and wait. [laughter] RB: That's pretty good. That's a song. [laughter] RB: Going out of business, there's our new song. [laughter] RB: So anyways, because I was risking my own money with several inexperienced guys being my younger brothers. And I had been out in the jungle, so to speak, in New York and all over the world and got shafted by everybody, I couldn't sit there and say, "What do you guys wanna do?" It's like you're taking four 12-year-olds on a wilderness trip. "You guys wanna camp here or camp there?" They don't know, but you've been in the wilderness before, you're a survivor man or something, you know where to go and what to do. You say "Here's what we gotta do and here's what we gotta do to get through the night and the week and this trip." And so you gotta lay it out and that's it. If they don't want to come with you, you go without them. And so that's kind of was my philosophy. PH: Like Monty Python, you're a cruel person but fair. RB: Yeah. PH: Yeah. RB: And you will find in everyone of those bands that is a so called democracy, there is a spokesman, a leader who makes the decisions. It's a natural thing. It's Geddy Lee, it's scored down. You know what I mean? PH: Oh yeah. RB: Okay, so whether they say it or not, it's there. There's people who are leaders who make the right decision six out of ten times, they're the leader. The one who makes four to ten times is the follower. That's how you survive. You find somebody successful who knows what to do and you follow them. The biggest bands have really great strong leaders. And if you're the drummer of that band like Foreigner or whatever... Led Zeppelin, you let Plant and Page go along, you go along for the ride you make millions of dollars, you bang the drums, life is good. [laughter] PH: Yeah, we were talking about politics... RB: It's not easy being a leader making decisions for all these people, 'cause like I said, four out of ten might be wrong, five out of ten might be wrong. You just hope that the average is in your... And you're not a failure, or you're a success. I learnt that in school long ago. To graduate you only need 51%. [laughter] RB: And then you're out of school. PH: You just gave me a great segue into my next question. There's not too many rockers, well not too many people, that can say they had dinner at 24 Sussex with Stephen Harper, right? You had dinner with him? RB: I did. PH: You pitched him your idea of an improved tax system for Canadian musicians. RB: I did, which he totally ignored. [laughter] PH: Which he totally ignored, yeah. What happened? RB: And I tried to pitch Chretien on that when he was in Winnipeg for the Pan Am games. I had it all written out. PH: On a t-shirt? [laughter] RB: No, I had it in my inner pocket. A beautiful letter, "Dear Jean Chretien." It basically was my critique, which I still feel strongly about, how wonderful it is to be a Canadian songwriter and musician, how the CRTC regulates that three or three and a half songs out of ten are Canadian origin or fall under the CanCon thing. And they will help you if you provide... You fill out an entry form, basically a lottery form ticket, and you send in some demos. They'll give you money to do an album. Then they legislate that radio has to consider that for play and they play maybe six or seven out of 20 songs are Canadian. That has helped the Canadian music industry. RB: They then, if you have a good song for video, you'll get a video in fact, then they'll give you 25 grand to shoot a video. Which then Much Music has to play or CMT 'cause they also have to follow the content regulations. And the minute the band makes millions of dollars, they leave Canada and pay tax somewhere else and live somewhere else 'cause the taxes in Canada are so unusually cruel, to just Joe Canada and musicians, in general. So I was trying to say to Chretien and Harper and I'll probably say it to Trudeau who'll be the next prime minister, whatever. [laughter] RB: Maybe. We need somebody in there that's young and fresh 'cause the other guys, it ain't happening. To change the Canadian tax laws... So the musicians, who are Canadian, who still keep a residence here, in case they get really sick, they come back for Medicare. [laughter] RB: Or in case they're gonna get a Juno or the Order of Canada, they come home but they go right back to southern France or Lichtenstein or the Isle of Man where they have this offshore thing in the Cayman Islands or something, and they pay relatively no tax there. But I'm not just talking about the superstars, because every superstar that's Canadian has around them a small village of roadies and techs and managers and assistants and their families. So wherever Celine Dion or Bryan Adams or whoever that is, Dan Aykroyd or Wayne Gretzky whoever, wherever they are, if they're athletes or actors or musicians or comedians, making billions of dollars, if you add up the list, I have 38 people on the list, billions of dollars where taxes are being paid somewhere else and not in Canada. RB: Joe Canada, the taxes the average guy would have to pay would be like 20% and our country would be overflowing with money. It's just it all leaves the country. So I met Justin Trudeau about six or seven months ago and we were joking in the dressing room and I said to him, "When you're the king of Canada, could I have a meeting with you?" And he said, "Certainly, by all means." Because I get emails from people all the time. On my radio show I get thousands of emails every week and they're all sorted out and I read a few on the air. Some of them I can't read, they're a little bit too political or some of them don't like me and I don't read those at all. [laughter] RB: I do read some 'cause I don't mind being criticized or somebody pointing out a mistake I made on the air, but to find a leader who's willing to look at that and reach and change Canada's tax structure would be amazing. 'Cause Canada could be the leading country in the world. Right now I think we're, with all our natural resources and all our money on the green list, if you want to call it that, we're something like 32. So we are a very polluting country. The rules and regulations here are horrific and archaic and all in favour of big business. I think Neil Young had a lot of balls and a lot of heart and a lot of brains to put his career on the line with that fracking thing in Alberta. [applause] PH: Yeah. RB: I have a daughter and her family live in Lethbridge and the whole city petitioned to not have fracking down there in Lethbridge, and they won. What we see on the news is nothing. When you go up there and you actually see it, you see we really don't need this. Because while they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars exploring this and trying to get it going, they're also spending hundreds of millions for guys to fly around the world to find markets for Canadian oil. Why are we paying $4 a drop for gas for our gas tanks when we have all this surplus of oil and everything, and try to market it to the world. Why don't we keep our gas here and if everybody driving here to fill their tanks from Buffalo. And why are we giving... I mean for Pete's sake, 60 something aboriginal people last winter walked on snowshoes from somewhere to Ottawa to meet Harper and he flew here to meet two pandas. This makes no sense. [applause] RB: It makes no sense. There's like weird priorities there. PH: This is great the... RB: So I'm changing my show, it's gonna be called Politics Tap. PH: I'll still listen. If anybody knows the country, it's you, you've been in every nook and cranny. RB: I've been everywhere. PH: You've been everywhere. RB: Most people don't travel. Thing about musicians, you see Canada and you see other countries, you see how fortunate we are. PH: Tell us a story from the road that most people would be surprised to hear. Do you have anything like that? Rock and roll musician on the road, what's a story that would surprise people? 'Cause we all have in our own minds what it's like to be on the road as a rock musician. RB: Well, a musician on the road... And I just came last Friday, I saw Buddy Guy at the Massey Hall and before that I saw Pat Metheny. So, I love music and I love going to see it and Toronto's a great place to see. You've got Koerner Hall and Massey Hall and all kind of theatres and everything. It's really a great city. RB: If you can imagine a vacation, I don't know how many kids you've got, but when you go on vacation, everything goes wrong. Flat tire, losing your cell phone, losing your wallet. It rains. It snows. It blizzards. Someone gets sick. You're in a new environment. You've got a bad bed. You hurt your back. That happens every single day on the road with every band and we show up having paid our hundred bucks or 50 bucks. We wanna see Mick Jagger go up there and strut around on stage, but all day long, he's got aches and pains. And, dealing with... How many wives does Mick Jagger deal with? [laughter] RB: You're dealing with your domestic affairs at home. So, you can take your vacation and what happens on your vacation, that happens every single day to every band that's on the road. With the tour buses, and the band and trying to get along, and deal with your wives and kids that are at home. You're only on a phone call. In the old days, I had to wait every two days to phone home to my wife. I couldn't afford to phone home. Now, with Skype and text and everything, it's a lot different to be in touch and to see each other face-to-face. You could literally have a time with your wife every night where you're having tea together and you kind of say good night to each other and go to bed. I had to wait every three days to phone home and only phone home for three minutes 'cause it cost $20 and that's all I had saved up. I didn't eat for days. So, I had to use that eating money to pay for my phone bill when I checked out of the hotel. So, you go through all that stuff. RB: On the road is not a picnic, but we show up wanting Buddy Guy or whoever you're gonna see that night, Edith Piaf or Nana Mouskouri's coming, we want them to do a perfect show and hit every note. We go saying, "Man, they sang sharp or flat in that song. They didn't look too happy." Are you kidding? They're gone for 90 and 100 days at a time and this just goes on and on and on. There's no end to it. You get your mind into a thing where you're a robot. It's like you're running a race. You're running a marathon and you're about to fall down and you're only at the 12 mile and you say, "I've gotta keep going. I've gotta keep going." And you keep going, you keep going, and when you get to the end, you fall down. RB: And when most people are done on tour, be it a month or two or three months, you pretty much go home and you lay in bed and all these things that you've been pushing away, they all come 'cause you have a great capacity in your mind to push off the sore throat, the aching back, the aching wrist, the broken thumb, whatever. You go on stage and play. I've played with dislocated hips. My discs have been out my back. I've had a broken arm, a dislocated rotator cuff. Put me on a stool. Put me in front of a mic and the show must go on. That's the same with Burton Cummings, or Fred Turner, or Neil Young, or whoever you like, Prince, or whoever. They go on stage and sing with a sore throat, or a bad back, or whatever is hurting you, hurts us. RB: Your legs, your knees, your back, your affliction with your... Your parents are bothering you or they're ill. You gotta look after them or your kids are ill, you gotta look after... That happens to all of us. People just think entertainers have this perfect life. It's so imperfect. It's hard to believe. Not only that, we have the heartache of being away from our home and everybody we love. You'd be amazed how much you miss your own dog, or cat when you go away, or goldfish. You just... You miss being home. You can't even go into a restaurant and get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. You can't get cookies and milk, stuff that everybody takes for granted. You gotta order room service where cookies and milk is like $55, like crazy. [laughter] PH: Your book describes that the best I've ever seen it. I've read a lot of rock books, but you also say in your book that you have a lot of ideas. You said you get up to three crazy ideas a day that you bounce off your manager, Gilles Pépin, right? What's the craziest idea you ever had? RB: You might think it's crazy, but it's a great idea. [laughter] RB: A while ago, I met some song writers in Nashville and they were very upset. Somebody had covered one of their songs or stolen one of their songs. So, to prove that somebody stole your song, you need to go and find your prior usage. So, the library of congress which exists for trademark and copyright, had a big flood. The roof leaked and they didn't tell the people about it. So, this guy went to recover the cassette tape he had sent in and the sheet music. It didn't exist. It'd been destroyed by water. In other words, he had no copyright. He couldn't prove that. So, I thought, "Gee, this being the digital age... " So, this is maybe 15 years ago. There wasn't hard drives. The computer and Internet was just starting, but there were CDs. RB: But I thought, why don't I start a thing called the Ark. The Ark, the boat that sails and would be the... Where people store their intellectual property, song ideas, book ideas if you're gonna write a book, game ideas, any idea you've got, send it to me on a CD. Send me two copies. I'll store it in this facility and then, when you want to recall it later, I've got it on a CD. You pay me to store it and you pay me for a recall. I get a notary public that notarizes that because the way, a lot of times, I protect my songs, I put them all on a CD. I go to the post office. I send it to myself registered mail. So, they stamp it. They put a big seal on it with the seal. I sign for it and get it. I get it right then. It costs you about $16. You can put 40 songs on a CD and then, you never open that. You write on the outside what the song titles are and later, that gets opened by a judge when you're challenging, "I have prior... I wrote this song five years ago and this guy copied it 'cause I sent out a demo to him or his manager five years ago." RB: So, having all that in mind, I went to SOCAN, ASCAP, BMI. They said, "Brilliant idea. Can you handle this?" I said, "What do you mean?" They said, "You're gonna get 10 or 20 thousand or maybe a couple hundred thousand a day. People from all over the world are gonna be sending you CDs. And even if you're charging them $20 a CD, you're gonna have hundreds of thousands of dollars. That's okay, but where are you gonna put this? You need a mountain, to hollow out a mountain inside to put this. Where are you gonna protect this?" Since then, that has changed. There's now hard drives, that you can do back ups on hard drives. But this was in the era of CDs. That was an idea I had that I took around. People said, "This is brilliant. You'll be a multi-billionaire in like a couple of years." PH: I don't think that's so crazy an idea. I think that's a good idea. RB: And so I had this beautiful logo. PH: Yeah. RB: The ARK, A-R-K intellectual property. And I have a little... A boat floating on water, with a rainbow, saying there is hope. "I will copyright and trademark your songs, your books, your ideas, your video games, anything." Because everything out there now can get stolen and moved around so much on the Internet, you can't find a way to protect it. So that was an idea that I had that everyone thought was great. It was so impractical to do for me to find a building that... Or a mountain, hollow out a mountain, this is like the American... PH: Yeah. RB: I have to buy some old silo that they used to have rockets in, in Alaska or something, to put these CDs in. So I have ideas like that all the time. PH: I wanna ask you a couple of legacy questions. We're gonna take questions from you guys pretty soon. But you talked in your book about how, and I think it's unfair too, that neither The Guess Who nor BTO have been in the Rock Hall of Fame, Cleveland's Rock Hall of Fame. It took Rush forever to get in there, right? They're just in this year, right? Who do you think's gonna get in first? Guess Who or BTO? RB: Neither. PH: Neither? No? RB: The Rock Hall of Fame is not the one in Cleveland. That's the Rock 'n' Roll Museum. PH: Right. RB: My American Woman guitar is in there on display. The name Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame is owned by Jann Wenner, who owns Rolling Stone Magazine. That's in New York City. The two are not connected. PH: I thought they were connected. RB: They've been trying to connect them for years. Jann Wenner doesn't want, apparently, to do that. So, he has his own party in New York City and has his own inductees. PH: But the Hall of Fame that the bands are inducted into, how do you think that's gonna go with your two groups? RB: I don't think I'll be in there if I'm not in now. Are there younger bands that bypassed us? I know when I was together with The Guess Who, we got together for 2000, 2001, up to maybe '04, '05. There's a petition going around the Internet with several hundred thousand signatures that went into Rolling Stone and they just ignore it. And I love Leonard Cohen, but I don't think he's rocked out in his life, and he's in the Rock 'n Roll Hall of Fame. [laughter] RB: And I love him and I respect him. He's a great Canadian icon, and basically our rock 'n roll poet laureate, as Bob Dylan is in the States, and I don't begrudge him being in there, but you kinda have to be on someone's favourite list, I think, to be in there. PH: I think fans helped get Rush in. I think it was sort of a fan effort that helped turn the tide there. Maybe that could happen for you. RB: I don't know, I don't think about it anymore. I'd stay awake all night worrying about why didn't this happen. Excuse me. I just wake up with new ideas and do them. Like I'm doing this thing with the symphony. I'm doing a new blues album in a couple of months. It's gonna blow me away and then hopefully blow 51% of the people away. [laughter] RB: 6 out of 10. [laughter] RB: I just keep going forward. Living each day and looking forward to what can I do tomorrow. PH: Another project you mention in the book is you'd love to have what you called the ultimate Guess Who reunion of everybody who's ever been in the band and still... Could that ever happen? RB: It's possible. I, a while ago, trademarked the name Canadian Invasion, that I envision both bands. I would play the first half of the set with The Guess Who. I would run off and take a shower. Put on a clean shirt. [laughter] RB: Play the last half with BTO, and the encore we do American Woman, and Takin' Care of Business. Over. Canadian Invasion and take that around the world. That would be incredible. [applause] PH: Yeah. RB: Everyone is still alive and playing and... PH: Can we make it happen? RB: They all have their own agendas, and they have their own issues to deal with. And I certainly did try that with The Guess Who. That didn't work. I tried it with Cummings. That didn't work. I'm going up to play with Turner this weekend. It was amazing to be at the Juno's two weeks ago, and to be on stage with my brother Rob and Blaire. I hadn't been on stage with them for, I don't know, 30 or 40 years. That was real fun to go out there. Luckily we had the comfort zone of The Sheep Dogs and The Sadies playing with us because I don't even know how we can... If we could play together. My brother Rob has a health issue with his heart, and I don't know how much he can play drums, or pound away on the drums, and all that stuff. RB: But we certainly could do a tour together for Canada Day, or for World Peace, or War Child, or something and give the money away. But we need somebody to do that. I can't do it. They would be looking for ulterior motives. So somebody like the Prime Minister, or Bono from U2 has to say, "I'm getting together The Doobie Brothers, and Led Zeppelin, and The Canadian Invasion of The Guess Who and BTO. And will you play this concert to benefit the victims of the flood and disaster reliefs, and the wars all over the world?" I'm sure we would do that. PH: Sounds hopeful. RB: Yeah. PH: I think we're getting ready to take questions pretty soon. Are we ready? Yep, okay. If people just go up to the mics right there. Ready for a few questions? RB: Sure. It's testimony time. [laughter] S?: I've just got a couple of trivia questions to ask of you. American Woman was basically... RB: Alex Trebek, right? [laughter] S?: Close. RB: Go ahead. S?: American Woman was basically a jam from stage, correct? RB: Yep. S?: Now I heard the last part of it that not many people know about is, it wouldn't have been anything, it was just a jam on stage, it wouldn't have come into a song, except that, I don't know, you and Burton recognized somebody in the crowd with a tape recorder and after the show they brought the tape recorder back stage and made a copy of the song, and that helped you remember that the song was something that you wanted to record. Is that true or no? RB: Can you take that to Myth Busters? [laughter] RB: I've heard that too. That's an uPHan myth. I've never seen a tape recorder. I don't know if cassette recorders existed when we wrote that. S?: I've heard that it just... It just came out, I heard, just at that time. RB: I don't know, I've never... I've heard that myth. I've never seen the tape. I recreated that song the next night on stage. I remember Burton Cummings saying, "I wrote a few more lyrics," and all he was saying the first night was, "American woman stay away from me." Sang that eight times and song was over. [laughter] RB: And I did the solo and he sang it again, and then he said, "How about if I make this into a song and put in war machines and ghetto scenes and it's great, keep putting it." So we got the rhymes. We just decided to leave at one cord. It was just one cord, kind of riff, kind of thing, and that's how the song developed. And when we went into the studio to record it, I couldn't remember it. And so Jack Richardson, who's our producer said, "Okay, you leave the studio. Randy, you go in there alone just like you did on stage, and tune up your guitar and see if you could recall the riff." I had no recollection of that riff. So if this tape exists, it would be worth millions of dollars, but it's... It's one of those myths. I don't know. S?: Oh, okay. That's good. That's cleared up. RB: So I got in the studio and tuned up and started to play, and I didn't even know it was the same riff that I played on stage. I don't know, but I did tan-tan-ta-da-da-da-da, and then Burton sang it, we did it. S?: That's amazing. And I'm wondering how did you get the song Shaking All Over? Was it just a fluke that you found it somewhere or... RB: What happened was, I was in the band called Allan and the Silvertones. We were very big fans of Cliff Richard and the Shadows. We didn't wanna be like any American band, we wanted to be like British bands. And so we chose the name Chad Allan and the Reflections which were just like Cliff Richards and the Shadows. [laughter] RB: To Cliff Richard... Chad Allan, two first names and "Reflections" was like "Shadows". So we did all Cliff Richard and the Shadows music all over Winnipeg, Acid Neil Young and Hank Marvin who was the lead guitar player was a big influence on us. Being 14, 15, 16 in Winnipeg, I had to save my allowance or newspaper money for weeks to buy a single 45 record. So Chad Allan and somebody in his circle of friends had a cousin in England, who for Christmas, they were also very poor, for Christmas, this cousin was a girl, would get all of her friends' singles from England and put them into a 7.5 inch reel and a tape recorder, and send over this as a Christmas present to Chad Allan. RB: This tape, as we'd get this tape and listen to it, and there's all these songs that had been top ten in England that we'd never hear in Winnipeg or they wouldn't even play it in Canada. So we'd get this music and it allowed us to be different. We played this... And they were all proven hit records because they were top ten in England, the kids had bought them as singles. One of the songs on there was called "Shaken all over" by Jonny Kid and the Pirates. RB: When I heard that guitar riff I went, "Wow, this is an incredible riff. It's not like the other bubble gum pop that's coming out. This is like a really great blues riff and it's a really tough song. And it didn't have the standard progression in it either." So we started to play that around Winnipeg and everybody would dance and we would stretch it out and make it four-five minutes long. And I said, "Why don't we record this song?" because we were writing really bad bubble gum pop right at the time. So we recored Shaken all over. And in the meantime we got a letter from a lawyer who represented a band called The Reflections who had a song called Just like Romeo and Juliet, you might remember that song, they were from Baltimore, with a cease and desist that we couldn't use the name "Reflections" anymore. So we chose the name Expressions because it sounded like Reflections, same amount of syllables, and about a month later got a letter from the lawyer... [laughter] RB: Who represented a band who had just signed with Motown, called the Expressions. So we couldn't use that name, so when we sent in Shaken All Over to our record label here in Toronto, to George Struth at Quality Records, he sent... This will show us how old this is, he sent a telegram saying "This is a hit. What's the name of the band?" We phoned him and said, "We don't have a name. Every time we get a name we're told that we can't use it." So he said, "I'm gonna put it to white label. This is Shaken All Over, and put Guess Who under it, find a name." [applause] PH: Let's get another question there... RB: So that came out was a hit, that became our name. We were called The Guess Who because of that. S?: Dear, Randy, my wife and I listen to your show almost every Saturday. Earlier this year, you were talking about you cannot copyright a guitar riff, and I couldn't quite figure it out, but I would go to work and I would tell the guys at work, "You know what? You can't copyright a guitar riff. You could copyright the tune, but not the guitar riff." And they're like, "Well, what do you mean?" And I'm, "Well, Randy Bachman says that." "What's he talking about?" And then I'd just start making up some stupid stuff, and no one had a clue what I was talking about so I thought... RB: You can't copyright a song title. S?: I thought you said... RB: If you think so, Google the word "Love", or "Jump", or "Rock", or "Dance". There's thousands of songs with those titles. S?: Did you not say guitar riff? Maybe I... RB: So you can take a great title of a song and write your own song to it, or else there'd only be a few songs or a few books or a few movies. You can take a title and change it by adding a "The", or making it a plural or whatever. Guitar riffs are unwritten... You don't steal them. You can't still Shaken All Over, you can't steal Day Tripper, you can't still that Hard Day's Night cord. It's an unwritten law that people just won't buy it. It's not... You're sucky... You're a suck, you suck and you're stealing a riff that, "Da da dah, da da daa," or "Da da da da," you know those "Pretty Woman" you know even though John Lennon got the Day Tripper riff from Roy OPHison who was touring with the Beatles, they were his opening act, and Roy OPHison was doing Pretty Woman. RB: John Lennon didn't know how to play, that's the best way I can get guitar riffs. Try to play something on a record and make mistakes, and suddenly it's my own riff. I don't do it note-for-note. So it's an unwritten law that you don't take a thing like Day Tripper or A Hard Day's Night or even Takin' Care of Business, that beginning, that's kind of like my own beginning. So even These Eyes is the most simple thing that "Bom-Bom da da dah" nothing else has ever started like that, it's an unwritten law. The minute you hear that, you start to sing, "These eyes cry every night." S?: Okay, thank you. So when I listen to the rap songs, you hear a little snippets of all these, like your song, other's songs, all little, little tiny bits and they get away with it, right? RB: That's called an honour. [laughter] RB: It's paying tribute to you, they're not using that much of the song. I've heard a lot of songs that use that "Bom-Bom da da dah " thing in there, or they use my middle parts of Takin' Care of Business, that "Da da da da dah dah da da da," that little part they'll use that. Sometimes they call you for permission. If it's a great big thing and you got a big estate and big lawyers, like the James Brown, that "I feel good," that woman is doing that commercial, you see it all the time, it's about sandwich or something, she's dancing in her kitchen, they called James Brown's estate, or they called Hendrix's, and they like it's called licensing and you pay a certain fee to the estate. S?: So if it's a big usage like that, it's really blatant, you could go sue them or go after it, or they usually come to you. There are companies now that specifically deal with usage of... Because hip hop music is basically taking all that stuff in little bits of its snippets and putting it together, and then rapping and doing their own rhymes over it. So it's a whole genre of music that you have to respect as it exists, and hopefully people are honourable and they pay you for it. If not it's called they're honouring you and they're using four seconds of your song. S?: Alright, thank you very much. RB: My daughter called me and said, "I saw this guy in Victoria, and he plays three bits of your songs isn't that great, Dad?" [laughter] RB: And I'm getting nothing for it, but I'm on this guy's album and it's a cool tribute to me or something. Something. S?: All right, thank you. Thanks for answering my question. RB: Okay. S?: Hey, Randy, how're you doing? Big fan for the years got all your albums. RB: Thank you. S?: Question I have is, you talk a lot about The Guess Who and BTO, would you ever play anything from your other albums like Survivor or when you and Fred went out and did the group with Union or Steel... RB: Well, when you have an unsuccessful album, you don't tend to want to go play that on stage. [laughter] S?: But there are some great songs on those albums. RB: I'm not Neil Young. He does that a lot. [laughter] RB: I love him for it, he's brave, he is a real brave guy. I go to a concert to hear hit songs and I believe my fans come to hear hit songs. I have a lot of guys like you who've come backstage and saying, "We drove 800 miles to hear Four Wheel Drive, you didn't play it." I'll say, "Stay right there," I get a guitar, I sing Four Wheel Drive, "Just for you, your own concert." [laughter] [applause] RB: But I'm in a fortunate position that I have maybe 15 to 18 songs that people want to hear, and that takes two hours, and so to play what those people want to hear, it doesn't make any sense to take out You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet or Laughing or She is Coming Out, and put in a song that I feel is really cool for my Survivor album. Nobody knows it except you. [laughter] RB: So just come backstage and I'll give you your own little concert. S?: Okay. [applause] S?: The other question I have is you're on Twitter under your own name in with Bachman Turner but you don't tweet that much? RB: I found it kind of annoying after a while, to try to tell people what I had for breakfast? [laughter] RB: And where I am? And these guys show up, you can't go anywhere, these guys show up. I mean the reason the paparazzi follow these people is they tell them where they are. Justin Bieber tells you where he is, you show up with a camera and you get a picture. That has its ups and downs, I mean Justin Bieber has 20 million people following him, and he could put anything out on record and they'll all buy it and he gets 20 million dollars... 99 cents a download. I just found it somewhat invasive and it takes a lot of time. And I know a lot of people who you think are twittering are not. They have professional tweeters or twitters who do it for them. [laughter] RB: You can't do that. You can't spend all your day telling everybody where you're going or you won't get anything done. So I think I have somebody who might do that for me. S?: Tweet Wrangler. RB: Yeah. There's actually guys who are very, very well paid who are in their 20s who deal with three of the top Twitter accounts in the world who have 16, 18, 20 million people on their accounts who actually get paid to do it. It's anonymously, I won't tell you who they are, but I know who they are, but you know who they are they got the biggest Twitter followings there are. S?: Yeah, yeah. Thank you very much. RB: It's a business after all. It's free advertising. Before, you had to buy pages in the Toronto Sun or whatever. Now you just go on Twitter and everybody knows you got a new record out or you're appearing at the Toronto Library or whatever it is and it's a really great means for that. So I would use it to advertise records and events, or the first 20 people here will get in free or have dinner with me or something for fun, give 20 bucks to charity. But to tell everybody where you're going all the time and what you're doing, these guys show up with truckloads of albums and t-shirts for me to sign, and if I don't sign it, I'm a jerk. You know what I mean? And I've got other agenda and things to do, so I just find what I'm doing now works best for me. S?: Thanks so much. [applause] RB: He's reading a Twitter, a tweet. S?: Just want to record this. What kind of advise would you give to a band that's just released their independent album? RB: I hope you have a benevolent dictator in your band. [laughter] RB: If you have a democracy, I hope you all can get along, 'cause that does work for a while. You'll find that if you get successful, make more money, the democracy changes. Money changes everybody, whatever your good or bad traits are they get amplified to the Nth degree. The best advice I can give to anyone if they're in a band or in any field whatsoever, you're accountant or a dancer or an actor, do not destroy your life and your career with drugs and alcohol. That will end it, sooner or later, it will end it. [applause] RB: Whether it's a big fun party or not, it's gonna get someone in your band. Someone will go down, and it will break up the band. You'll find the most successful best bands are the ones who were straight or have gone straight or go to rehab together. Honestly, or make that pledge ahead of time to not do that, because the odds against you of making it are so great, why would you make them any greater against you by being stoned or drunk all the time. Get up and do your best, honour the gift you've been given of singing, or playing drums or guitar, and writing songs. Honor that everyday. Get to be 51% better than the next guy, and he'll buy your record. Because it's better then him and he'll learn something from it. S?: Appreciate it, thank you. RB: Okay. [applause] S?: Hi, Randy. Like everyone else in this room, I enjoy your stories on the radio programs so much. I've been listening for years and I know everybody else has here too. [applause] RB: Thank you. S?: I'm almost at the point where the stories are so interesting, with all the little known facts and the sheer volume of the facts, is I'm almost starting to listen now to hear the stories rather than the music. [laughter] S?: The commentary is found nowhere else in literature. So the question I have for you is this. Having written two excellent books on the radio show, would you be able, legally, to put out on CD or some audio medium, parts of your show? I know you've done hundreds of shows on hundreds of topics, it would be impossible to capture anything close to all of them. But I know you have theme nights, for example, where you'll pick a certain aspect of a song or songs. Like the recent one I heard were spoken word only. I mean there's dozens of themes you've picked. With every TV show that's on today, no sooner is it run, you can go down to the record store and buy the season on DVD. I mean it appears immediately. So with the fantastic technological media we have available to us today, would you be able, would you want to, could you legally, release some of Vinyl Tap on a CD? RB: They're in the sky. CBC has them in the sky. You go to vinyltap/cbc. There's about 300 shows up there. S?: Okay. RB: That you can play in real time. S?: Forever. Okay. RB: If you want to record them, I'm not supposed to tell you this. S?: No, don't. RB: Plug a mic into the headphone of your computer, 'cause that's where you'd get it, on a computer. S?: Okay. RB: CBC.ca. And record it. S?: That's what I was wondering. RB: Put it on an old tape recorder. I'm sure you have an old cassette player. S?: Lots. Cassettes. [laughter] RB: Legally, I asked CBC that, it's so much to try to clear that we'd have to sell those records... S?: Hundreds of songs. RB: For 20 or 40 dollars a CD. 'Cause to clear every one of those songs it's two hours of music and story. But it's all up there in the sky, you can listen to it at any time. If you really like one, you can record it on your own. There's several ways to record it. You can even get an app for your laptop or PC, that'll actually record what you're listening to. S?: Okay. RB: I'm not familiar with them so. S?: Okay. PH: Another question? S?: Yeah, another quick question. My second favourite guitar hero, after you of course, is Hank Marvin. You mentioned the Shadows, in your literature, that they had a terrific resurgence in the 2000s. They're till recording, Bruce Welch has his own band. You may have said this already, but have you met and/or played with Hank Marvin and/or any of the Shadows, either early in their career or later on in their career? RB: Hank Marvin was my greatest influence along with Lenny Breau, who had grown up with in Winnipeg. S1: Yeah, I know that. RB: He was Neil Young's greatest influence as well. Every Neil Young solo sounds like Hank Marvin but with a bit of distortion. Of course, Hank, his guitar sound was very clean sounding. The Shadows had a 50th reunion about four or five years ago in London. I had met Bruce Welch earlier at a song writing fair in London, an ASCAP award thing, and got to know him and told him he was the greatest rhythm guitar player of all time. And he was, and still is. And so I got invited to the Shadows reunion at the Hammersmith Odeon. It was amazing, Bruce Welch told me to come down at four in the afternoon. I went there with my wife and daughter. My daughter had no idea who the Shadows were. RB: Sat down in the Hammersmith Odeon, it was empty, it was their sound check, sat in the front row. They played four songs. Walked to the front of the stage. Hank handed me the salmon red strap and said, "Do you want to play this?" And I went, "What?" I played it. He said, "Do you wanna play it in the amp?" I went and played it in the amp. I sat through the show that night. Then the following year, they had a reunion with Cliff, Cliff from the Shadows. I went to that at O2, which was a much bigger venue. I went to see The Shadows again, I took Neil Young with me 'cause we went there and he met Bruce Welch. So I am in touch with him. RB: We've earned, turned out to be really cool good friends and it's really something to meet your guitar idols and see that they're just guys like you who love to play guitar, who got lucky because there's a lot of guys who can play much better than me or Hank who didn't get lucky or who didn't have perseverance to stay there when everybody said, "No, no, no, no, you can't do it, you can't do it," and you said, "Yes, yes, yes I can do it, I can do it," you found a way to do it. So he's like really an idol of mine. S?: Thank you very much. RB: Thank you. [applause] S?: Hi there, Randy, it's your good friend Kayvan here. RB: Hi. S?: How are you doing? I just actually got back from the UK and the funny thing is as you know I'm a massive Bachman Turner Overdrive fan and now a Bachman Turner fan. And about two and a half weeks ago I went to see this band called The Move, very famous Birmingham band from about the time you guys were starting out, and when I went to this venue to see them in the jazz cafe in Camden, it seemed they were playing two or three BTO songs back to back to back, the Takin' Care of Business and Four Wheel Drive, and I just thought maybe they were fans of yours, so I approached them after the show and I talked to Trevor Burton and Bev Bevan, the original guys still in the lineup and they happen to say they really love the music of Bachman Turner Overdrive, which kind of you know I for a fan like myself I kind of got a kick out of that. S?: I was standing around in the audience saying well you know these guys are back from back home in Canada, you know they were a massive band. And everybody seems to know who they are in the UK. So you guys obviously have such a... It doesn't matter where you go really, it just seems that your music's carried over such a legacy. And since the revival of the band obviously back when you were with performing with Burton and Bachman Cummings, obviously, there was a thing going on where The Guess Who had toured at the same time with Kale and you know Peterson there carrying on you know. RB: Do you have a question? S?: Yes, the question is there a... It's actually a two parter. Is there a lot of confusion when you know there's a band like Bachman Turner Overdrive, with your sibling Robin obviously the rest of the guys carrying on doing dates in obviously other parts where I don't know what it is. Is there some sort of a thing where you couldn't get the name back and call yourselves BTO even though it's just you and Fred really and you're obviously the guys? RB: The answer is yes. [laughter] S?: But... RB: Yes, there is a resurgent and The Guess Who and BTO, I appreciate it. There are bands all over the world who go to that what they call garage Canadian rock. And yes there is a problem with the names. The wrong people own the rights to the names and that's something that I got to learn to live with. But I... Like I said to get every morning and rock on so... S?: The other question that... RB: Buyer beware. I mean if you're gonna go to a concert to see anybody, Thin Lizzy or any band, check who is in the band 'cause it could be five guys who are 20 years old. [laughter] PH: Like War for example. I think War just got one original member yeah. S?: And the other question I had when you and Fred had just got back, you'd obvious... I don't know how this came about but can you tell me the story of how you got approached to do this spot in the movie for The Candidate with Will Ferrell? How did that come about? RB: Somebody called my manager and said Will Ferrell loves BTO. He had... When he does that thing with the organ, remember on Saturday Night with that girl with the hairdo? S?: Yup. RB: They did the thing at Saturday Night. He did you Ain't Seen Nothing Yet or Takin' Care and one of those little organ skits, and heard he really liked and loved BTO. Would Takin' Care Of Business be in the movie? He was doing this thing he wanted as his Presidential campaign song. It was gonna be in the movie for three or four minutes, we flew to New Orleans. It was the first time New Orleans was below zero, it was February the 1st of like last year. We went into a theatre that had been reclaimed from Hurricane Katrina with no heat, we froze to death. We shot from six in the morning 'till midnight. They used 30 seconds in the movie. We loved it, it was good. We're in a Will Ferrell movie. The new one Anchorman 2 he put Let It Ride in. So his dad used to play keyboard in the Righteous Brothers but I knew his dad really well. And I said, "Oh, so you got your piano chops from your dad." He said, "I can't play an instrument. I can just fake really well." [laughter] RB: So that was... PH: Yeah, we've got one more question, the gentleman behind you I think... I think we could do one more in? S?: Thank you Randy. Cheers. Thank you. RB: Okay. S?: Hi Randy. How are you? RB: Good. S?: I just want to say one of my good friends name is Randy so that's a coincidence. RB: No, it's not. S?: Yes, it is. I swear to God. RB: His named after me. S?: His name is Randy Stanley Thompson. He used to be my good friend for 18 years so... RB: Okay. S?: It's a two part question I wanna to ask you. RB: Closer to the mic I can't hear you. S?: Okay. It's a two part question. The first question is what any past, present or future musicians that you'd like to work with? And the second question is you mentioned earlier during your interview that some crazy things happened on stage. What are one of those really crazy things? And what was the worst injury you had to suck up to perform on stage? RB: There's just so many. One of the weirdest things that happened to me on stage was... I used to need glasses, since then I've had the LASIK thing, right? S?: The LASIK thing. RB: But you go on stage and you can't see but when you're wearing glasses and you're sweating they fall down your nose. S?: Right. RB: So you have to play and then push up your glasses and play and push up your glasses kind of thing or else you take them off. And we were playing outside once, so you have no idea sometimes how high the stage is especially at a pop festival. Some of them are 12, 15, 20 feet high, so you have people way in the back can see you. And I used to use a transmitter on guitar but it broke so I had a guitar cable that was too short. And sometimes in Takin' Care Of Business I wanted to go to the front of the stage and get the people riled up to clap their hands. RB: So I try to get to the front of the stage and I can't get there, my guitar chord is too short. And so I pulled it to the end of the cord and I pulled it and I do what I do, and then I go to my roadie and I say, "Get me a longer guitar cord." And then when the crowd goes home and the lights come on, if I had a longer cord, I would've walked off the front of the stage. [laughter] RB: Fallen onto these steel barriers that these things that are holding the crowd back as fence, which are like carjacks hammered into asphalt, and I would've really, really, really injured myself and you go, "Oh my God, thank you that this thing broke and I had to have a cord that was six feet long instead of twelve feet long. I would've walked out the front of the stage." Because in your face are these spotlights and they're so bright, it's like you're trying to do something to the headlights of a car. You're the deer in the headlights, you're like, "What is that?" That's why people like Steven Tyler and Ozzy Osbourne fall off the stage, you can't see, you're trying to get to your audience, you're blinded by the light like a flashbulb going off in your face and you're trying to go through a door, you bang into the door. So that's... A lot of things like that have happened on stage. S?: Wow. And any past, present or future musicians you'd like to work with? Paul McCartney, you wanna to meet, right? RB: I'd like to meet and have a conversation, maybe play with Eric Clapton. S?: Wow, he's a great guitarist. RB: I've been compared to him, I've been called the Canadian Eric Clapton. I'd like the Canadian Eric Clapton to meet the British Eric Clapton and have an evening together. Nobody there, just playing guitar, sitting around a fire or something, or doing a concert with him, whatever he would choose to do with me, I don't care. S?: You're better looking than him. [chuckle] PH: Let's hope that happens. I think we've done enough. Randy, it was great talking to you. [applause]