June 29 – BTO Did A1 Job Of TCB!

They were takin’ care of the business of becoming stars 50 years back! Bachman-Turner Overdrive– BTO – would hit the U.S. top 40 for the first time this day in 1974, with “Takin’ Care of Business.”

The song would only hit #12 (#3 in their native Canada) but would go on to be not only their trademark song but one of the most enduring rock hits of the decade – much more so than their follow-up “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” which was at the time a bigger hit. BTO formed out of Winnipeg and out of the Guess Who. Randy Bachman had been an integral part of that band and its early success (writing hits like “No Sugar Tonight” and “Undun”) but left in 1971. This song might have had something to do with that. He wrote an initial version of it while still in Guess Who, and Burton Cummings hated it. He also felt it was a rip-off of The Beatles “Paperback Writer” and they’d be sued if they recorded it. After his first post-Guess Who band, Bravebelt split up quickly (after Chad Allan, another Guess Who alumni, quit), he formed BTO with his brothers Robbie and Tim and Fred Turner.

They quickly became one of the first “hard rock” acts to hit mainstream radio in the ’70s and in Canada would place seven songs on the top 40 just in ’74-75 alone. Some were surprised they were out of Canada. In fact many assumed they were a “Southern Rock” band in the mode of Lynyrd Skynyrd. The similarity isn’t lost on the members of the band; Randy described their sound back then as “just good ol’ dancing rock and roll.” Bachman had originally planned on calling the song “White Collar”; his band had experience in writing work songs. They’d already had a hit in Canada with an uncharacteristically laid-back song called “Blue Collar.” If you happened to be in Vancouver in May 1994, you might have heard “T.C.B.” going on and on – Bachman led over 1300 guitarists in a 68-minute version of it!  No word on whether or not Neil Young was among them – Neil says “I feel Randy when I hear him play. He was my biggest influence when I was starting out” . Elsewhere, you might have heard the song in movies like About Schmidt, Two Weeks Notice and appropriately, the ’90 flick Takin’ Care of Business or in TV shows as varied as The Sopranos, That ’70s Show, Cold Case and King of the Hill.

BTO have broken up a few times but are active again with a fairly busy tour schedule across North America this summer.  They were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of fame in 2014, at which time they played… well, do you even need to ask which song?