Randy Bachman Read Free Page A

to the ProTeen club, a teen dance hall on Pritchard Avenue off Arlington Street in the North End, a really hip spot for dancers. His friends had dropped out of school and were working so that they could afford the coolest clothes. They were way hipper than I was. Gary brought them over one day and they said to me, “You like Elvis’s ‘Tutti Frutti’?”
    â€œYeah!” I told them.
    â€œHave you heard Little Richard?”
    â€œNo. Who’s that?”
    â€œHe’s the guy that wrote ‘Tutti Frutti.’”
    So the next weekend they brought over a Little Richard album, and man, if I thought Elvis was wild, this was out of this world. Ten times wilder, screaming and shrieking. I’d never heard anything like it, the ferocity of that sound. When I played classical violin, it was all very structured and formal, playing the notes on the page written hundreds of years before. Now to hear rock ’n’ roll and hear the freedom in the notes and playing was liberating to me.
    Once I started playing guitar, I would sit by the radio with my Silvertone guitar and try to play these incredible songs. At night I’d be playing guitar in the bedroom that I shared with Gary, and when my parents would tell me to turn the lights out and go to bed, I’d turn off the lights but continue playing. That’s why I got so good at not having to look at my fretboard when I played, because I learned to play in the dark. I remember Gary telling me that one evening he went out with his friends—I guess it was a weekend—and left me playing guitar on my bed. When he came home after midnight, I was still in the same spot and the same position playing my guitar.
    My cousins, the Dupas brothers, lived out in the town of La Broquerie near Woodridge, southeast of Winnipeg. They had a blond, jumbo-sized Gibson hollow-body electric guitar, the kind Scotty Moore and Chuck Berry played. It was the coolest instrument I’d ever seen. While the grown-ups would be visiting, these guys would let me play their guitar and show me things. They would teach me Johnny Cash songs because they were into country music. Years later I bought that guitar from them.
    I’ve played thousands of gigs in my career, but never one as memorable as my public debut where I was upstaged by a Christmas tree.Garry Peterson and I went to Edmund Partridge Junior High on Main Street in West Kildonan. For the Christmas show, we put a band together called the Embers with another schoolmate of mine named Perry Waksvik. We were going to play Buddy Knox’s “Rockabilly Walk.” The curtain opens and Garry starts to play the drums. He’s set up in front of this giant decorated Christmas tree. I emerge from behind the curtain playing my guitar, and the crowd gasps. I thought to myself, “Wow, am I cool with my Elvis wave in my hair and my cool guitar!” I thought they were gasping for me. Instead they were gasping because the cord for my guitar was tangled in the giant Christmas tree and I was pulling it over, about to topple it on Garry and his drums. Thank god someone grabbed the tree and unplugged it in time before it crashed down on Garry. Needless to say I didn’t get to play my big song at the Christmas show. The teachers stopped it and sent us off the stage. All my buddies applauded and yelled out, “Yay for Bachman!”
    In the 1960s, Winnipeg was the rock ’n’ roll capital of Canada. It was like a mini Liverpool. We didn’t know it at the time, but in hindsight you realize that Winnipeg was the hotbed of Canadian rock. It must have been something in the water, or in the cold. We grew up with different ethnic communities throughout the city, and in every neighbourhood there was a community club. As a kid you played sports at your community club, whether hockey or baseball. And when rock ’n’ roll came along, if you had a band and could play a few songs, you could get a