Kevin O'Leary Jamming with Rock and Roll Legend Randy Bachman

Randy Bachman is a legend in the world of rock and roll. He's earned over 120 gold and platinum albums and singles and sold over 40 million records over his long career as both a performer and producer. CBC Music has declared November as guitar month. In honor of the occasion, they have announced Randy Bachman's upcoming Vinyl Tap tour coming to a city near you starting in February.

Randy Bachman joins us in studio to share some of the stories behind his songs.

"Thank you very much! Real pleasure to meet you."

"Thanks! Pleasure to be here."

One of the things I was interested to learn was that you actually started out playing the violin. What made you transition to guitar?

"EP Elvis Presley! After about seven years of classical, I started when I was five. I got very bored and then saw this thing on television, black and white too. They blocked out the bottom half of the two because he was shaking his legs. My mother was there and her sisters, who were younger than her, screaming, like my father going, 'This is crap! Get this off to you!' I said, 'I want to do that!' Because compared to classical music, which is very dull—Royal Conservatory—this was exciting. You did anything you wanted; there were no rules. You just played from inside you, and I got a guitar.

It's very fortunate to me a guy named Lenny Bro, who spent a couple—I was 15 then, and he was 16. I spent a couple years with him, learned my vocabulary, so to speak. And then from then on, I've had a great life."

Let's turn our gaze to the business of music because you were sort of, in some ways, in the classic era. You could record an album, sell a ton of it, make a lot of money off the recording itself. Everybody was happy. And then the internet hit and changed everything. What advice do you give to young musicians today that want to make a living making music? Because it is damn hard.

"It's very, very hard. We just—Canadian Congress just passed on a bill that was supposed to give us more royalties than they did. They didn't, and that was a very hard thing. If it's your passion, and you're like doing it—like when I started out, you play for nothing. It's like when you start a business; you work 20 hours a day to get this thing up and going because you love it and you're passionate about it. You've got to like that because when things go bad, you've got to like what you're doing.

So, I've had maybe a dozen or 15 hit songs; people celebrate those. They don't celebrate the 300 strikeouts. I mean, when Mickey Mantle was the king and Hank Aaron—people celebrated their home runs. They don't realize they were also the strikeout kings. They struck out 8,000 times, but they hit 400 home runs. You get a check every quarter from the music you wrote? I do! That's a great thing.

If I make a door and sell you a door, I'm Michelangelo. Or I paint a painting, you know what I mean? Like, whatever. You sell that once and maybe get three dollars, thirty dollars years later—it's like for three million dollars, it's a Van Gogh or something like that, you know what I mean?

When you do a song, every time it's played on the radio, you get one or two pennies. And if you have dozens of songs that are getting played in every radio station, those couple of pennies per play end up being thousands a day. And with the classic rock format back now, that's a wonderful earning. It's an annuity, so to speak. But that's taken me 40 years, and I didn't do it for that reason. I didn't know that was going to happen."

Are you doing your first record deal?

"You get nothing. Everybody takes pieces of you, and there's nothing left. Like, there's no piece left for you. So, the royalties obviously are important. You've had longevity for other reasons though as well. I know a reviewer of your recent book characterized it as 'rock and roll minus the sex and drugs.' Is that...

'If there are drugs and it's a family show, so yeah.'"

What do you attribute to your longevity, seriously?

"Well, I knew at the age of five when the teacher went around and said, 'What's your name and what do you want to do as for when you grow up?' There's... 'I want to be a fireman' or 'a doctor.' I said, 'My name is Randy Bachman; I'm a musician.' And she said, 'But what do you want to be when you grow up?' And answered the question again, 'I'm Randy Bachman; I'm a musician.' I already was! I'm playing classical violin! And she kept asking me again.

I ran home; it was the first day of school. My mother said, 'What are you doing home?' I said, 'I hate school; I quit! I can't—I don't know the right answers!' So she took me back to school and explained to the teacher that I'd hardly been singing and playing, and I was a violinist. So, I knew that at an early age. So knowing that, I honor that every single day. I never take it for granted. I've never done drugs, I don't drink, I've never smoked. I've never smoked, I've never drank coffee. I just rock and roll."

When that's your whole thing, when shooting hoops is your whole thing, you become the next... you know what I mean?

"The next... right? The only 30 seconds left, but quick question. Paul McCartney was recently interviewed and he was asked who he really admired as songwriters. Guess who was his answer?"

"That's remarkable! It just shows you the legacy you've built there. What do you say to that?"

"If you guys want to jab, are you kidding?"

"Yeah, I'll speak. You feel pretty good?"

"Yeah!"

"We got to take a break because when we come back, we're gonna take a break first. Randy Bachman unplugged—the legendary guitarist—is going to join Kevin on the Langan O'Leary stage for a little blues jam. It's 53 years in the music industry. Randy Bachman has played with just about every guitar great of the rock era, but there is one anecdote he hasn't shared—lighter notes—with Kevin O'Leary. So stay with us; we're going to be back with more of it. First, here are Randy Bachman and Kevin O'Leary unplugged. Thank you!"