The story of Randy Bachman’s guitar came full circle this week. In case you missed the story when it broke last fall, Bachman lost the 1957 Gretsch guitar — one he bought as a teenager with his lawn-mowing money — when it was stolen in 1976. He searched for it fruitlessly for decades, until last fall an internet sleuth tracked it down in Tokyo, being played by a young Japanese musician named Takeshi.
Bachman contacted Takeshi, whom he described as “the Brian Setzer of Japan,” and arranged to give him another nearly identical model in return. Their Covid-delayed exchange took place in Tokyo on Canada Day, July 1.
I often chide record executives for not having recognized hits when they heard them, but in this case it was the band that didn’t know what they had. Bachman came up with the riff while fiddling around with Dave Mason’s “Only You Know and I know,” but the lyrics were just ad-libs he delivered with a stutter to bust on his brother, who stuttered.
When a record company exec for something with more pizzazz to add to their third LP, 1974’s “Not Fragile,” Bachman played the song but explained he just used it for studio sound checks and the stuttering vocal was an in-joke. No matter, the exec loved it. Bachman tried recording a more serious vocal, “but I sounded like Frank Sinatra. It didn’t fit.” So the stutter stayed. The tune became the band’s only No. 1 single.
It was the second No. 1 song Bachman wrote on his treasured Gretsch. The first was the Guess Who smash “American Woman.”
