Takin’ Care of Business With BTO’s Randy Bachman

Randy Bachman is a founding member of two legendary rock bands and he's bringing one of them to the Wellmont Theater in Montclair on Thursday March 7th with Bachman-Turner Overdrive on BTO's 50th anniversary tour.

The show will include all of BTO's huge hits like "Takin' Care of Business," "Roll On Down the Highway," as well as those from The Guess Who like "American Woman," and "Undun."

We have so much requests from the fans that in the show, we can't go by without doing "These Eyes," "American Woman," "No Time," "She's Come Undun."

We put them in the show because fans have come a long ways and maybe never seen that song on stage. And I'm the guy who wrote it and I sang and played guitar and then it's stuff like that.

According to Snopes.com, this story never happened. But since Randy Bachman was actually there, we're inclined to believe him.

We're recording "Takin' Care of Business" and there's a knock at the door of the studio, I open the door and there's a guy standing there, he's about six foot four, a big frizzy black beard, frizzy black hair, an army hat, an army jacket, and he's holding four pizzas. And he says, pizza.

And I said, not us. We're leaving. We had been there since 10 in the morning. It's now one o'clock the next morning.

I said, try down the hall - Studio B with Steve Miller recording his Fly Like An Eagle album, and Studio C was War doing their Why Can't We Be Friends album.

There's a knock at the door again. I opened up, the same guy there. I said, what can we do for you? We're just leaving.

And he says, I'm a piano player. That song sounds like it could really use a piano. Give me a shot. Please give me a shot. I don't deliver pizza all the time. At the end of the month, I got to deliver pizza to pay my rent.

So I figured, who am I not to give a guy a shot? It's two o'clock in the morning.

We throw a mic on the piano, cover it with a blanket and say, okay, you get one take. Try a little like Dr. John, Elton John, then Little Richard. He plays it through once, we're so tired we say, thank you very much. He goes delivering pizza.

We come back the next day to the studio and haven't even heard it back.

The head of our label comes, Charlie Fasch and he's pushing me to expand BTO and do more...our first album, it was album cuts, right? Four and a half minute album cuts, jazzy and rock and everything else. He wanted more top 40 stuff.

So he comes to listen to the album and I say to the engineer, when you play the song, don't play the piano track. We haven't heard it back.

We play the whole album. It's got "Let It Ride" on it. He's very thrilled with "Let It Ride," which is a very good guitar pop song.

Then it gets to "Takin' Care of Business" and halfway through the song, the engineer pushes up the volume control on the piano and Charlie goes, what is that?

It's a piano guy. He said, that will give you Elton John real estate. I said, what does that mean?

He said, Elton John has real estate on FM radio and AM because of the piano. It's Top 40. You guys are all the same. Frampton, Doobies., ZZ Top, BTO. You're all guitar, bass and drums. Elton John owns AM and FM radio. You put in a piano and you're going to get some of his real estate.

We play in the whole track. He said, who's playing the piano?

There's dead silence. And I say, a pizza guy and he said, all joking aside, who's playing the piano?

I said, hey Charlie, I'm not joking. I have no idea who this guy was. He was here like five or 10 minutes, played on the song. He wrote his chart on a pizza napkin. Three chords and taking a break. He's gone.

You've got to find this guy. He's got to be in the union. You're going to get sued. This song you'll be playing the rest of your life. This is a party song. This will make white men get up and dance. OK?

I go down the hall to Steve Miller. Hey, Steve, where'd you get pizza last night? Not us, man. Try War. I go down to War's room. It's like Cheech and Chong's basement. Hey, guys, where'd you get pizza from? and they go, hey, man, it's still last night. Like, they're still in there. No, they don't remember where they got the pizza from.

So I go to the lady at the front and say, here's the Yellow Pages. You start at Antonio's. I'll start at Mario's, call all the Italian places near the studio within two blocks, ask if they have a pizza guy that brought pizza here last night and looks like Fidel Castro.

Because that's the only way I can describe this guy - Army thing, big beard, frizzy hair.

I get lucky on the third phone call.

Yes, we have a guy like that. Really? What's his name? We can't give employees names over the phone. Does he work tonight? Yeah, he works at the end of the month. He works every end of the month for like three or four days. Send him again with a pizza. What kind of pizza? We don't want any pizza. We want this guy.

He comes in, his name as Norman Durkee and he was really a piano player. He actually did work at that studio doing commercials sometimes during the day.

That's the piano. One take. So when you listen to it, you hear one verse is like, t-t-t, like "Honky Cat," like Elton John. The other one's like Dr. John. And then at the end, it's like all Little Richard stuff.

I've heard that compared to "Girl From Ipanema," which when it came out, there was nothing like it on the radio. Everything was like pop transition. The charts then had the Stones and Frank Sinatra. Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gormè, do you know what I mean? And then the Beach Boys.

The charts then were phenomenal. The Top 50 was amazing. And out comes "Girl from Ipanema," like the samba with her great voice, Astrid Gilberto, and Stan Getz.

Years later, it's pop music, it's the Beatles, it's the Stones, everything. And out comes "She's Come Undun," this incredible jazzy song.

I had always dabbled in jazz. And I was inspired to write the song by Bob Dylan, who said those words in "Ballad In Plain D," somewhere he said, "she came undone, she came undone."

So I took that and wrote the whole song around that. It had like a Bob Dylan thing, I had 12 verses, so let's pick three of the verses and repeat them. I don't wanna do a Bob Dylan epic that's 12 minutes long. This could be a hit song.

It became the B side of "Laughing." And some DJ in Boston flipped it over and boom, "She's Come Undun" became a monster song.

Randy Backman with Bachmann Turner Overdrive and performing the songs of the guests who as well at the Wellmont Theater in Montclair on Thursday, March 7th. You can find all things Randy on the web at Randybachman.com. Check out his YouTube channel as well, which is Bachman Video and BTOBand.com.

Greetings Rockers!

I'm thinking about summer, Parking Lot Parties, and a few of our most memorable "WDHA Exclusive Performances".
The greatest thing about having an almost 50-year history as a rock station is that WDHA- The Rock Of New Jersey -has an amazing amount of exclusive artist performances from just about everywhere! In studio audio and video, concert video, on location exclusives, we have it all.

Back in the day, the "audio recording" was the most modern way to capture our performances. Bon Jovi, Bad Company, Def Leppard, we have some fantastic archives, however, when video started to emerge, we made sure to capture these exclusive moments to watch and listen to.
While so many of our WDHA performance video exclusives are SO GOOD, I chose a few that I have always remembered for different reasons.
Audience reaction, choice of song, vibe, and what the moment of the performance actually felt like.WDHA is committed to giving our listeners "experiences" as many of you know. The music beyond the music as we like to say. That should always be the mantra of local radio stations.
So please watch the 8 videos below. They are all pretty epic.
Some of you may have been present for a performance, OR perhaps you heard it on the air, OR better still, it's the first time you are experiencing it, years later and it gives you chills!

Don't forget to check out some of my other content pieces-

The TC Reconnect With Rockers Series

Do You Remember Jamming At These New Jersey Rock Cliubs

The Queens Of Noise Returns

5 AWESOME New Rock Videos To Check Out

Do you have a WDHA performance that you love? Hit me up with your feedback @TC@WDHAFM.COM and follow me on Instagram @TCRockDog

Rock On!
Terrie Carr

I decided to post the "FIRST" time Dorothy performed live for WDHA almost 8 years ago. I remember seeing her open for Halestorm AND Lita Ford, being completely knocked over and saying "I need to put this girl and her band on the air"!
Shortly after that she stopped by for a visit and I saw even stripped down what a rockstar she was!
Since then she has released two more records and is not only a friend of the station, but a friend of mine. It's hard to blow me away. Dorothy does every time I see her.....

Mark Tremonti blows me away in whatever he does. Alter Bridge, Creed and especially his solo band "Tremonti", where he not only handles guitar work, but also lead vocals. Mark and bandmate Eric Friedman stopped by to perform a rare acoustic set on my show AND knocked me over playing one of my favorite covers from one of my favorite bands! "Just What I Needed" from The Cars!

One of the greatest players EVER! Allman Brother and Govt Mule founder Warren Haynes in the studio is always moving. His effortless playing and emotional vocals make him one of my personal favorites over the years and he is such a lovely person too.

One of the MOST epic WDHA performances in station history. Rival Sons are one of the greatest and most underrated bands in rock music and when we had the opportunity to bring them into an exclusive space at "The Raven Room" in Morristown New Jersey for an intimate listener experience (win your way in!) I jumped at the chance and flipped my lid. I have loved them since I first saw them open for Black Sabbath and I heard their "Pressure & Time" record. The band BLEW US AWAY and when they busted out this Stones cover- the room of 100 winners was absolutely mesmerized.

We love Myles Kennedy! And when he stopped by on Valentine's Day to perform live with his manager and co-guitarist and solo collaborator Tim Tournier , everyone's jaws dropped. No enhancements, no special requirements. Myles, Tim, guitars and mics. Easy Peasy. And AMAZING! Myles vocals are mind boggling.  No effects ever needed. Myles, come back....we love you.

While Monster Truck may not be the most well known band, this one was one of the most memorable performances because the band was FULL electric! FULL gear in our small studio space. The power of this performance was off the charts and so was the volume.....watch the camera shake as we get the overhead shots! You could hear this one on Route 10! SO MUCH FUN!

One of the most classic R&B songs EVER! Written by Don Coway and made famous by  the iconic Queen Of Soul,  Aretha Franklin, Crobot performed "Chain Of Fools" March 1st, 2020- for our "WDHA Sunday Funday" celebration at The Raven Room in Morristown. This performance was so incredible as the band was literally performing any and every song that listeners were yelling out! "Sledgehammer" -DONE, "Outshined"- DONE, "Chain Of Fools" -DONE! The vocals on this impromptu version proves how Brandon Yeagley is one one of rock's greatest new vocalists.  And I will always remember this incredible day because two weeks later, the world shut down!

All of our WDHA Parking Lot Party Performances (which we started in 2022) have been pretty epic, but when Coheed and Cambria comes to town, you know the entries are going to be off the chain!

We had so many entries for this one, including people out of state willing to fly in for the performance. WDHA has had that experience with Coheed before, when we put them in a brewery for the fans, so we knew that their PLP performance would be awesome. Especially when they whip out this Coheed classic.