RANDY BACHMAN: New documentary on the way
Randy Bachman is the latest rock legend to be profiled in a documentary.
The Guess Who and BTO co-founder, who helped write such classic songs as "Takin' Care of Business," "These Eyes" and "American Woman," tells Billboard that Bachman made its debut earlier this year at Toronto's Hot Docs festival.
Along with guest stars such as Neil Young, Paul Shaffer, Peter Frampton and Alex Lifeson, there's archival footage, some of which hasn't been seen for decades.
Randy says seeing his life story told 75 minutes is, "pretty strange. It's like your dad doing a surprise and inviting out all your friends and showing all your old family home movies of going on vacation and the clothes you wore, and then have all your friends complaining about what a poor playmate you were or what a brat you were."
Bachman, now 74, is working on a book and DVD about his extensive guitar collection, which totals close to 400 instruments, but will soon be broken up. He's selling some to the Gretsch company for its new museum in Savannah, Georgia; others will be donated to Canada's National Music Center. Randy adds, "Every guitar has a story: I got it from so and so who got it from Stevie Ray Vaughan or something like that." He expects the most noteworthy instruments to become a traveling exhibit across Canada.
Bachman is also working on a stage musical based on Prairie Town, a song he recorded with Neil Young a dozen years ago. It's a tribute to the musicians of his native Winnipeg.
Randy Bachman says his name is one of many words that Americans and Canadians pronounce differently. OC: ...anything you want. :15
"I am Randy Bachman from Bachman from Bachman Turner Overdrive. It's the way we speak in Canada. We say falcon, you guys say falcon, Datsun-Datsun, Bachman-Bachman. Potato-potato -- long as you say my name and play my record call me anything you want."
MORE BIG 95 KBGO MUSIC NEWS: Friday, June 1st
U2: Not playing 'Joshua Tree' songs on their current tour
The Edge says this year's U2 tour is for the "more committed fans who really listen to everything and go to everything."
What he's really saying is: If you wanted to hear songs off their biggest album, The Joshua Tree, you should have caught last year's show in which they played it in its entirety.
He tells Rolling Stone, "If we can avoid playing any songs from The Joshua Tree it would inevitably clear the set list, which would be quite a change, quite fresh, a new sort of thing. Some of those songs we've played pretty consistently since they first entered a U2 set list. We liked the idea that we were forcing ourselves to think in a different way. We felt the result would be something different and fresh."
They almost left out another staple, "Pride (In the Name of Love)."
"The very first set list didn't have 'Pride' in it when we were kicking ideas around six, nine months ago. But as we started to really hone in on the set list we realized that was going to be a crucial moment... That's the fun and the jeopardy of the way these shows come together for us -- a lot of the most powerful ideas come fairly late in the process when you're starting to piece everything together and you start to see where things are pointing and what the opportunities are."
The band posted a portion of "Pride" from their last show, this past Monday in Atlanta, on their social media pages.
The Experience + Innocence tour resumes Tuesday in Montreal.
Joe Walsh will stage his second VetsAid benefit concert on November 11th (Veterans Day) at the Tacoma Dome in Tacoma, Washington. Guests will be announced over the summer. Last year’s show featured the Zac Brown Band, Keith Urban and Gary Clark Junior. Proceeds go to veterans’ service organizations.
Moody Blues bassist John Lodge and his solo band will tour the U.S. in the fall and the U.K. next spring.
Gibson, the renowned guitar maker, has received court approval for $135 million in new financing. The company's CEO says the plan will "reduce our leverage and allow us to quickly emerge from this process with a stronger balance sheet to support the company's long-term success."
Ann Wilson will release an album of songs by dead artists on September 14th. The songs she does on Immortal are by Leonard Cohen, Amy Winehouse, David Bowie, Chris Cornell, Tom Petty, George Michaeland the Eagles ("Life in the Fast Lane" in tribute to Glenn Frey, who didn’t sing it).
John Bonham’s 70th birthday was marked today (Thursday) by the unveiling of a statue of the Led Zeppelindrummer in his hometown of Redditch, England. The bronze sculpture of Bonham behind his drum kit is life-sized and weighs more than 5000 pounds. It’s covered in anti-graffiti paint and emblazoned with an ungrammatical sentence: "The most outstanding and original drummer of his time, John Bonham's popularity and influence continue to resonate with the world of music and beyond." Bonham died on September 25th, 1980 at the age of 32.
A guitar-strumming Joe Scarborough posted a photo of himself performing during the encore with Jimmy Buffett and the cast of Broadway's Escape to Margaritaville along with the message, “Great fun playing with fellow Redneck Riviera homeboy Jimmy Buffett. The crowd loved his Broadway show and everybody loves Jimmy!”
Willie Nelson has re-scheduled the concert at PNC Music Pavilion in Charlotte that he canceled due to illness on Saturday after twice walking on and off the stage. The new date is June 20th. Tickets from last week’s show will be honored and a few more have gone on sale.
Neil Portnow will not seek another term after 16 years as President and CEO of the Recording Academy.
Tony Bennett will be on hand Saturday in San Francisco when the portion of Mason Street in front of the Fairmont Hotel is re-named Tony Bennett Way. Tony first performed his signature song, "I Left My Heart in San Francisco," at the Fairmont in December 1961. It went on to win the Grammy for Record of the Year, and was later named to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry.
Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now or Never” is the soundtrack for a new Jose Cuervo commercial.