Randy Bachman is no slouch when it comes to writing hit songs. Between his tenures in the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive alone, the Canadian treasure has likely pegged more than 50 million in
Randy Bachman is no slouch when it comes to writing hit songs. Between his tenures in the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive alone, the Canadian treasure has likely pegged more than 50 million in album sales. But he may have brought his formidable songwriting, arranging, producing, and guitar chops under fire when he endeavored to radically recast the music of “serious Beatle” George Harrison for By George [Universal].
Populated with 11 Harrison classics and one original song about Harrison (“Between Two Mountains”), the album veers more to Bachman’s jazz sensibilities in that it holds the sacred rather, well, unsacred. Melodies and chords are dispensed with and replaced, grooves are re-engineered, and everything is approached as material ripe for almost catastrophic revision. While a couple of songs get a light or jazzy treatment, most of the set is like a stomping, frenzied arena-rock explosion of huge, overdriven guitars and heaps of badass solos. It’s all a brave, interesting, and, yes, even respectful celebration of a musician whose shadow looms eternal over rock culture and society in general. But… would you have taken such a risk?
Well, man, you really punk-rocked George’s sh*t. I didn’t expect to hear those classic songs so severely rearranged.
[Laughs.] You can’t outdo lightning in a bottle. Any time those four crazy lunatics got in a studio with [producer] George Martin this lightning bolt came out. That’s pretty hard to replicate. So I thought, “I’m going to retake this body of work, and put some new clothes on George.” It’s 50 years on, it’s his 75th birthday—and it’s my 75th this year, as well—so let’s f**king celebrate! Let me sing his songs the way I want to sing them. Let me put them through a ringer. I just hope his fans will appreciate