“She said ‘You ain’t been around'”
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet/BTO
Here's a nice tale that may be new to some. It's the story of legendary Canadian rocker, Randy Bachman, of The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive fame and his stolen guitar.
In his teens in the early 1960s, like a lot of young dudes, Bachman became obsessed with music and the guitar. He worked multiple jobs to save up money for a decent axe. The one he landed on was a 1957 Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model. It cost him $400. It was on that guitar that Bachman wrote multiple Guess Who and BTO songs, including American Woman and Takin' Care of Business. Musicians often develop and deep affection and attachment for their instruments and that was the case with Bachman and his Gretsch.
Then one night in 1977, someone swiped it from his hotel room in Toronto. He was devastated, “I cried for three days. It was part of me. It was very, very upsetting.” He bought 300 different Gretsch guitars trying to find one that could replace his beloved. None filled the hole.
Over the next four decades, Bachman lamented the loss of his stolen guitar in numerous interviews. In 2020, a Canadian man named William Long heard one of the interviews and launched an internet search. He was able to locate the stolen guitar within two week. He used a “digital fingerprint” of the woodgrain from old pictures of the instrument and somehow found a match in Tokyo. A young Japanese musician named Takeshi had purchased it in 2012 at a music store and had been playing it since. Contact was made between Bachman and Takeshi by Zoom and Bachman recognized the guitar immediately, “I was crying. The guitar almost spoke to me over the video.”
Takeshi agreed to return the guitar on the condition that he receive a comparable replacement. That was going to be tough because there were only 300 of that model made in 1957. To find a mint one…well. Bachman put out feelers to all the many vintage guitar dealers he knew and, lo and behold, one was located.
Bachman made the trip to Japan and the exchange was made. Takeshi said he agreed to give up the guitar because he knew how Bachman must have felt, losing something so personal. “I owned it and played it for only eight years and I'm extremely sad to return it now. But he has been sad for 46 years and it's time for someone else to feel sad. I felt sorry for this legend.”
Bachman said he will lock the guitar up in his house and he will NEVER lose it again. Good story.
Here's one other Bachman item that's interesting: Bachman-Turner's only #1 hit was You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet." You know it; the song with the stutter. It was written and recorded as a goof and never meant for commercial release. Bachman had written it to tease his brother Gory who had a stutter. I think Gory would be the first to tell you, you had to be tougher back then. Bachman later re-recorded it without the stutter, but the record company insisted on releasing the original. So there you go. I hope Gory got some of the royalties.