Chords for Was "Freeways" the Album That Broke up Bachman Turner Overdrive? - Interview

Was Freeways the album that really broke up Bachman Turner Overdrive?
We talked to Randy Backman about that.
I'm John Bowden from Rock History Music.
_ _ _ We had a live thing on _ YouTube.
We do it every Friday night.
I asked folks a few weeks ago,
_ I was saying, what's the perfect BTO album?
And you know what came up the most, Not Fragile.
Not Fragile, Not Fragile.
I told you when I met you the last time that Freeways, that album really
hit me.
It really, really, I was ready for it.
I was at that point with the band, personally,
that I went, when you guys, wow, there's like, so much going on on this album.
And I know that
people call it the album that broke up BTO.
_ _ But for me, personally, I was ready for that album,
because I was into a lot of genres and a lot of things.
So was radio.
Radio was then playing disco.
They're playing long tracks by like, yes,
like Roundabout and stuff like that.
They're really progressive rock.
And I thought, I've
got to get out of this thing.
I mean, we should have broken up then.
We should have dissolved.
ZZ Top broke up.
They toured the world.
Doobie Brothers broke up and they just disbanded.
Allman Brothers disbanded, like for four and five.
Then they came back.
I tried to keep going under
the pressure.
And going back to these eyes days, got Ben McPeak to write the string arrangements
for Easy Groove.
Got some guy from Dr.
Music in Toronto to write the horn charts for My Wheels
Won't Turn.
I had a lot of fun doing that.
And music then, they were taking, they took A Listen
to the Music by the Doobie Brothers and put a kick drum disco beat in it.
And Elvis, with a
suspicious mind, they did a disco version of Elvis.
So I thought, I'm going to try to go with
the trend here.
I'm going to take a chance.
I took a chance.
What did the band think? _ _ _
By then, they were to the point, which happens with most bands,
_ _ _ _ a band, because I financed the band, _ _ I produced the band, I gave them a salary so they wouldn't
have to have a job, up to like 100 grand.
This is in 1971 and two. _
I said, this is my band.
These are my rules.
I'm your older brother.
I will be a benevolent father or dictator.
But you must keep my rules because I'm risking.
I have two kids at the time and my house and
mortgage.
I'm paying you guys a salary, 175 bucks a week to do nothing.
Sit around, get musical
ideas and don't work at a day job.
Were you living in the big house then?
No, no.
This is back in Winnipeg before I left.
_ And _ as you get popular and famous,
and I said, look, I'm the songwriter.
I'm writing songs for us.
I'm going to write with you.
I'm going to write with you because I'm smart enough to know I can't write 12 great songs that
are all different.
They're all going to be the same.
So I bring a Fred Turner and I bring a
Blair Thornton and my brother, Tim and Robin.
The song is a little bit of them and I tailor it a
little bit and we'll have different kind of song.
Suddenly it gets to album three and four and it's
like, okay, there's eight songs on an album.
We want two. _ _
_ Okay.
What are you bringing?
What are
you bringing?
Or there's 12 songs.
What are you bringing for your one third?
What are you bringing
for your three songs?
Well, I've got one written.
I'm going to write two more.
Oh, _ Fred, what are
you bringing for your three songs?
Well, I've got one and a half written.
I'm going to write one
and a half more.
Okay.
I'm bringing 22 songs _ out of my songs.
We can pick 10.
You had 22 songs for
freeways for every album.
I write songs every day.
I write songs.
I just pick and choose the one that
fit the project.
If you call me and said, my daughter's 14, she's like jewel.
I said, great.
I can write a song like jewel.
I'll produce your daughter.
I'll do the album.
I can write that.
I've
written everything.
So everybody wants equal shmequel.
So outcomes, one good song from one guy
and two mediocre songs.
When I write 10 or 12 or 15 songs out of there, like three or four really
good songs.
So the album's got watered down.
This happened with credence.
_ John, I want to write a
song.
Okay.
Write a song.
It's terrible.
Yeah.
But I want it on the album.
So outcomes, whatever it
was, Cosmos factory with a bunch of songs that go nowhere.
And John Fogerty had the magic.
How
tough is it to stay on the John bus and ride another couple of miles and put another couple
of million in your pocket, then do your own solo project, a vanity project that totally flops,
but don't spoil the band.
_ So that's what kind of happened to start to happen on a fifth album,
_ head on.
And then it really happened on freeways.
What happened in that?
What happened in that
period?
Somebody invented a thing called an even tight harmonizer.
Do you know what that is?
_ _ When it says zero, it's that pitch.
_ When you turn to zero digital, put a zero plus one,
it'll sharpen that note.
100th of a percent.
It'll sharpen it to 100s because it's all digital.
So I remember playing back head on for the band, which had little Richard on playing a couple of
songs. _
And I had heard them having a fight later saying, I thought you were going to sing flat and
sharp on that song.
So they told Fred to sing off key.
So the album wouldn't be done.
They wanted
their songs on the album, but I ran it through the harmonizer and I on one syllable, I sharpened
Fred's vocal or I'd flatten it on a vocal.
He sang sharp.
So I had everything in pitch and I had to
do this thing by hand.
I made notes.
This lyric goes up plus two, this go down plus one, everything
with it.
So head on came, it was a pretty good album.
That's some really good stuff.
And then
Total Sabotage with Freeways.
I think I wrote most of the songs.
They all refused their songs
unless I picked a whole bunch of their songs.
And they were not really songwriters.
They wrote
songs, but they weren't songwriters.
I've been writing songs since I was 10, 11, and 12.
I had
songs on the Guess Who album with Ashford and Simpson way back then.
My songs were good enough
to be on their thing.
And Bert Bacharach loved my songs.
I did _ Phil Ramone and Florence Greenberg.
Now keep in mind the entire interview and the link is in the bottom in the description of this video.
If you want to see the whole thing, it's on our sister channel, Rock History Book.
It's also going
to be a podcast and the links are in the description as well.
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I'm John Boatman.
This is Rock History
Music.
Take good care of yourself. _
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