Bachman-Turner Overdrive remains a family affair

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on February 26, 2025.

Submitted photo - Randy Bachman has revived BTO and is hitting the highway this year on a tour that comes to Lethbridge on April 13

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Bachman-Turner Overdrive started out as a family band and to Tal Bachman, it still is.

BTO, which filled venues around the globe beginning in the early 1970s, originally started out with three members of the Bachman family and fellow Winnipegger Fred Turner.

Randy, who had left the Guess Who in 1970, originally formed a band called Brave Belt which included brother Robbie on drums. Turner joined after the release of Brave Belt’s first – and not highly successful – album.

A name change to Bachman Turner Overdrive came in 1973 after a suggestion from a label rep when the band was signed to Mercury Records. In May of the that year, BTO released their first album, the band then consisting also of Tim Bachman, who was replaced in 1974 by new lead guitarist Blair Thornton after he decided to leave.

That foursome would put BTO on the rock ‘n roll map as it released four albums over a four-year span with hits such as Let it Ride and Takin’ Care of Business.

Decades later, Randy Bachman has revived the band and is hitting the highway this year on a tour that comes to VisitLethbridge.com Arena on April 13. The Lethbridge show is among more than 20 dates on the tour. Supporting BTO will be two other Canadian bands, the Headpins and April Wine (sans Myles Goodwin, who died in 2023).

Performing with Randy is son Tal, a musician and songwriter in his own right who has earned acclaim with such hits as She’s So High.

For Tal, playing with his legendary father is “second nature,” saying in a recent interview he’s never not played with Randy, who in his 80s is still writing music and playing his favourite songs on guitar every night.

“It’s always been part of how we relate to each other as father and son,” says Tal.

Tal has very dim memories of Brave Belt, but BTO is a different story.

Randy will be the only BTO original performing most shows on the tour. Turner, says Tal, will join when his health permits. Robbie Bachman, who was Randy’s youngest brother, died in January of 2023 and Tim followed a few months later. Also performing in the current lineup are Mick Dalla-Vee on bass, rhythm guitar and keyboards, rhythm guitarist Brent Howard and drummer Marc LaFrance.

Randy Bachman is a Canadian rock institution who has earned more than 120 gold and platinum album/singles awards around the world. During the course of his long career, he has sold more than 40 million records.

Audience members can expect to hear the band perform not only BTO’s hits but also some Guess Who classics.

And while Randy is still writing music, Tal says that fans will be hearing the music they know, noting that the last thing he and his dad want to hear when seeing a band is new music that isn’t as good as the material that fans recognize and love.

“We’re treating this as a ‘BTO experience’ type tour. We’re trying to make it as close to what it would be like to go see BTO in their heyday in 1976. And frankly, Dad and I ourselves don’t want to go see ZZ Top or some classic rock band and they say ‘we want to play three of our brand new songs that we just wrote last week.’ We already know they’re not going to be as good as the ones that they wrote 50 years ago… the bar is very high for introducing brand new songs that nobody has ever heard of before.”

And Tal, who now handles lead vocals, has his favourite BTO tunes such as Looking After No. 1, Blue Collar, Hold Back the Water and Gimme Your Money Please.

BTO’s popularity has endured, says Tal, in part because “they incurred a whole lot of goodwill during their glory days.”

While The Guess Who was the first big pop act to come out of Canada, says Tal, BTO was the first big hard rock act to emerge from this country.

“For that generation of Canadians, BTO is a very big deal,” he says. “Here’s a Canadian band, four guys from Winnipeg now based on the West Coast, who were conquering the world and had hits everywhere. …that was an era in which rock and roll had a cultural importance that it really doesn’t anymore.

“When you went to a concert as a little kid, it was a different vibe than it is now. When you went to a concert in 1975 to see one of those big acts, for everyone in that room, that was the most important thing in the world. That’s what it felt like – they knew every word of every song, not just the hits. They knew the album tracks, they were singing along. There was a much more raw and visceral and electric vibe in the air.

“The relationship between the bands and the music they produce is much different now. It’s not as intense for the most part, at least in the rock and roll genre. But I think those early experiences everyone from eight or 10 years old up to 30 in those years in the ’70s really had a lasting impact,” adds Tal.