Bachman hints best is yet to come
SOCAN lifetime-achievement honouree isn’t resting on his laurels
TORONTO — Randy Bachman is open for business.
Though the 71-year-old Winnipeg native will receive a lifetime achievement honour at Monday’s SOCAN Awards, he wants to make one thing exceedingly clear: We ain’t seen everything yet.
“It’s obviously a huge honour to get a lifetime achievement award — I just don’t want it to signify that my life is over,” the chatty Bachman said in a recent interview.
“As you write songs and be a musician, if you don’t selfdestruct with drugs and alcohol — which I never have — you get better and better and better.
“It’s not like an athlete that has their prime and their knees go bad or their shoulder,” he says. “As a songwriter, I get more intuitive, I write more.
“I will go anywhere and write with anybody. My publishing is called Write Songs Will Travel. If you’ve got a new artist or an old artist and you want me to write a song, I will be there.”
As Bachman gathers steam on this topic, it becomes clear it’s a track he’s been riding a long time.
Although his catalogue of hits with the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive has inspired impersonations from the likes of Lenny Kravitz and Mavis Staples, he’s found less success peddling his own solo tunes to established artists. And it’s not for lack of trying. “I’ve sent songs to everybody: Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Sheena Easton, Tina Turner,” he says.
“They’d be playing Vancouver, I would buy a cassette player when they were brand new — the little ghetto blasters in bright pink and bright turquoise — put my cassette in there and deliver it with 12 roses to their dressing room.
“Anything to get a song to these artists,” he says. “But no one’s ever done one.”
Though perhaps mainly known for his supple guitar work, Bachman has three U.S. No. 1 hits to his name (and seven at home in Canada) and he’s certain there’s more gold lurking within his ample vault.