Randy Bachman Read Online Free

lucky if you had a deejay working with your band.
    It was like one big family in the Winnipeg music scene. We shared amplifiers and instruments, went to each other’s gigs, and hung out together. Neil Young used to borrow Jim Kale’s Fender Concert amp from us whenever we weren’t playing. I made friends with CKRC’s Doc Steen. I’d pop in every week and Doc would give me a box of 45s that they weren’t playing anymore or that didn’t fit in with their format. I got some great records that way. I remember a Nina Simone 45 that was very cool called “I Loves You, Porgy,” but I loved the flip side, “Love Me or Leave Me.” I always thought Nina Simone was some coolFrench chick, but she was a black classically trained pianist and singer from North Carolina.
    By the early 60s the music scene really changed, from rockabilly, doo-wop, and Elvis to rock groups—and the best of them seemed to come from Great Britain. Beatlemania hit Winnipeg hard. All of a sudden everything was Beatles and the British Invasion.
    I loved the Beatles. So when the first Beatles movie, A Hard Day’s Night, opened in Winnipeg at the Garrick Theatre in the summer of 1964, I was right there on opening day. I went with a few friends for the matinee, and in those days you didn’t have to leave the theatre between shows. My friends went home but I stayed, mesmerized, memorizing everything. I completely lost track of time. It was like a how-to video for me: how to be a rock ’n’ roll star. How to run from crowds of screaming girls, how to write songs in a boxcar, how to be cheeky to a reporter. Sitting in that darkened theatre, I decided that this was what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I must have seen the movie five or six times when I felt a tap on my shoulder. It was Phil Brown, the chief of police in West Kildonan, and my dad, who was an alderman in West Kildonan. They’d been out looking for me after the other boys had returned home and I hadn’t. My dad had phoned the hospitals and the police were looking for me. They decided to go check the theatre, and there I was, immersed in Beatlemania.
    When the Beatles first appeared on the scene, John Lennon played harmonica on several of their early recordings, including “Love Me Do” and “There’s a Place.” So I decided I would learn to play the harmonica, and began listening to and watching other guys. I ended up playing harmonica on some of the early Guess Who records, like “I Should Have Realized” and “Use Your Imagination . ”
    One thing about the harmonica is that you have to keep it wet or the reeds dry up and you can’t get any sound from them. Youcan blow your guts out, but all you get is tweets or nothing at all. If you’ve ever seen Neil Young when he’s doing a solo acoustic show, he keeps his harmonicas in glasses of water on stage with him. That keeps them lubricated and easier to slide around on your lips, because of course they’re made of metal and wood. When Neil needs one, he just pulls it out of the glass, shakes off the excess water, and puts it in his harmonica holder.
    So there I was, the lead guitarist and harmonica player in the Guess Who. It was winter in Winnipeg, thirty below zero, and I was going off to band practice one morning. When it’s that cold you have to let your car warm up awhile before you put it in gear and drive. The engine and the oil in it have to warm up. So while I’m waiting, I decide I’ll use the time to practise. I pick up one of my harmonicas that’s been sitting in a freezing car all night, and guess what happens? I put it to my lips and it sticks to my tongue because it’s frozen metal and my mouth is wet and warm. It’s like when you were a kid and your parents told you not to put your tongue on a light standard or a metal fence. So I had to go in the house with this harmonica stuck in my mouth and