Randy Bachman has revealed that Neil Young had the guitarist on speed dial during his early Silvertones days, because the Heart of Gold songwriter had eyes on his amplifier.
Before forming The Guess Who, Bachman traded under the Silvertones moniker for a number of years, and during that period their backline caught the fancy of Young – who, at the time, was playing with the Squires, and who labeled the Silvertones the best group in Winnipeg in the early 1960s.
The pair had a well-established friendship, having bonded over Gretsch guitars, Fender combo amps and Hank Marvin, and Young was ready to make the most of their relationship.
“When I joined the Silvertones, the band had a rare thing – an amplifier,” Bachman reveals to Guitar Player. “Jim Kale had a Fender Concert amp. It had two channels, and each channel had two inputs, so we could put a microphone in one for the singer to sing. We had no P.A. system, so we put rhythm guitar, bass, and my guitar into that amp. That was our P.A.
“Whenever we weren’t playing, Neil would call up and say, ‘Are you guys playing a gig next weekend? Can we borrow the amplifier?’”
It wasn’t the only slice of Silvertones gear that Young admired, either. The band had shown a knack for getting close to Hank Marvin’s fabled guitar tone in atypical ways.
“He [Young] wanted to be Hank Marvin,” Bachman develops. “My piano player had a tape recorder, and if you moved the recording head a little bit, you'd get an echo like Hank Marvin. We had no pedals, but suddenly I had an echo.
“Play with the tape a little, and there was the sound of Hank Marvin and the Shadows. Neil loved that sound. That's why we played together on the Hank Marvin and the Shadows tribute album [Twang!, 1996].”
The pair shared the honor of tackling the Shadows' 1962 hit, Spring is Nearly Here, together on a release that also included Ritchie Blackmore, Brian May, Tony Iommi, and Andy Summers. It was the first time they'd played on a record together, despite having been friends and gear nerds for decades.
They've now taken their tandem a step further, with Young delivering a rough and ready guitar solo to close out Bachman-Turner Overdrive's comeback track, 60 Years Ago. The song had been in the tank for a while, but was dragged into the public eye in bizarre circumstances.
“I got a call that they were renaming a bridge in Winnipeg on the Disraeli Freeway and calling it ‘the Bachman-Turner Overpass,” he reveals. “I went, ‘Wow, that’s incredible! I’ve got a song all about Winnipeg. I’ll rock it up with BTO. I’ll get Neil to play on it.”
Elsewhere, a look into Young's unusual live rig reveals why it's a setup like no other, while Lindsay Ell has given an insight into what it's like having Bachman as a guitar tutor.
