Bachman–Turner Overdrive’s biggest hit was never meant to be released: “I was fooling around”
You might be able to walk down the street and not meet a single person who could recall their name, but the Canadian rock band Bachman–Turner Overdrive have six certified platinum albums in their back catalogue.
That’s the kind of fact that might baffle the most ardent music fan. But, in the 1970s, selling records was a little bit easier than today. Sure, there were fewer opportunities for promotion, but if you did get some radio airplay and managed to cultivate a small fanbase, things could escalate quickly. It could mean a big hit could land without much hint it would ever happen.
That’s exactly what happened for Bachman-Turner Overdrive. Founded by the brothers Randy and Robbie Bachman and Fred Turner (hence the name of the band) in 1973, interestingly, the band’s biggest hit was not actually meant to be released.
The 1970s were littered with rock and roll bands. Especially in America, rock music had broken big in the 1960s and expanded to a vast array of different genres and local scenes. Just about every major city had a major rock band or ten. Some groups decided that the only way to stand out was to name themselves after their local city, which is how we got Boston and Chicago. But up north in Canada, things were a bit different.
“There was no one in Canada to sign you,” Rush guitarist Alex Lifeson recalled in the documentary Beyond the Lighted Stage. “There were no record companies here. They were outposts, really. You had to get an American deal if you wanted to do anything.” One of the early exceptions was Winnipeg’s The Guess Who, who managed to snag a record deal with American record company RCA Victor.
After scoring a number one hit with ‘American Woman’, singer Randy Bachman opted to leave The Guess Who at the height of their fame. Citing health problems, deteriorating relationships with his bandmates, and his then-recent conversion to Mormonism conflicting with the band’s substance use, Bachman formed a new band with his brothers Tim and Robbie. When bassist C. Fred Turner joined the group, they christened themselves Bachman-Turner Overdrive.
The band’s biggest hit was ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’, released as a single in 1974 from their third studio album, Not Fragile. The song was such a hit that it reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and marked their only major track in the United Kingdom.
Interestingly, though, the final version of the song that was eventually released was not the way it was intended. The chorus features a famous stuttered vocal by Randy Bachman, in which he sings, “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. B-b-b-baby, you just ain’t seen na-na-nothin’ yet. Here’s somethin’ that you’re never gonna forget. B-b-b-baby, you just ain’t seen na-na-nothin’ yet.”
Bachman insisted that he performed the vocals as he had done as a joke for his brother Gary, who has a stutter. He had merely intended to record the vocal stutter on a demo version, send it to Gary and be done with it. The song had initially been an instrumental track, but then Bachman started messing around with lyrics on the spot.
“It was basically just an instrumental, and I was fooling around,” Bachman said. “I wrote the lyrics out of the blue and stuttered them through.” That ‘work track’ was later used in the proper recording sessions for Not Fragile. During the sessions, the album’s producer Charlie Fach said that the band were still missing a bit of “single magic”.
Some of the band felt that the ‘You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet’ work track seemed to have some of that magic within it. Bachman was reluctant and responded: “We have this one song, but it’s a joke. I’m laughing at the end. I sang it on the first take. It’s sharp; it’s flat; I’m stuttering to do this thing for my brother.”
However, when Fach heard the demo, he was blown away and said: “That’s the track. It’s got a brightness to it. It kind of floats a foot higher than the other songs when you listen to it.” Bachman decided to redo the vocals but felt that he just sounded like a Frank Sinatra imitation. When Fach suggested leaving the vocals as they were, the song subsequently became Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s biggest hit.
Earlier this year, Robbie Bachman sadly passed away at the age of 69, prompting a flood of tributes from his band members. Check out their biggest hit below.
