Fact #77229

Randy Bachman (co-founder, Bachman-Turner Overdrive) : I had this work song that didn't have a title, and I was kind of playing a riff like Dave Mason's Only You Know And I Know, but, in my song, I always had a heavy rhythm part and a light part, so i could use it as a 'test' track to hear how the band sounded playing loud and quiet..

Anyway, I was playing these riffs and thought, 'Gee, this could be really interesting.'

At the same time, my brother Gary had decided to stop being our manager, and I was ticked off at him, because we'd decided to move from Winnipeg to Vancouver because we couldn't get any work, but he didn't want to move with us.

Gary spoke with a bit of a stutter, so i thought, 'Right. I'll get him. I'm going to stutter through this song, I'm going to mix it and send it to him. He'll have a fright that it's on our album.' In fact, it wasn't supposed to be. It was really meant just as a joke.

So I did this track and I was stuttering this 'b-b-b-baby...' kind of thing. It was really done without any thinking. I was singing any old lyrics. It was almost like me rapping with myself. I'd throw in a line and I'd think, 'Gee, two lines later I've got to make this rhyme.'

And I did the whole song that way and ... boom! ... it was literally written in the instant that it was being played and when I tried to change it, it just didn't work.

I don't even know what it means. It seems this song means something different to everybody, as most things do. But I didn't sit there and say, 'I'm gonna write a song about whatever' I was just playing this Dave Mason rhythm and out came 'I met a devil woman, she took my heart away', and the rest followed.

I think we did two takes of it and it was over, and I pout it away. We then did the album, with one or two attempts at each song, until I had all the tracks over-dubbed.

Then a guy names Charlie Fach, who was the head of our label, flew into Seattle, where we were recording, and listened to the album and said, 'Oh, great. It's just what they need for FM Radio, but where's the pop masterpiece, the single?'

I said, 'We don't have one and, in two days, we're back on the road. I can't write one, we can't do it, this is the album.'

The engineer then digged me in the elbow and said, 'Play him the work track, you know, the one with all the yelling.'

I said, 'You've gotta be kidding.

And he said, "No, play him that track. It's great.'

So I played it for Charlie who jumps up saying, "It's a monster! It's a smash!.

And I'm saying, 'It can't be! You're crazy, but at least let me re-sing it.'

This was all about two o'clock in the morning and I came back the next day and tried to sing it again, but it just sounded terrible, like I was doing Tony Bennett or something.

However, Charlie then persuaded me to put the original on the album and that was our first one that had nine tracks. I put the four longest songs on one side, and the four shorter songs on the other side, and added this fifth song. I buried it somewhere near the end of the second side, just to make Charlie happy.

However, I was still embarrassed whenever I heard the track, and then the album came out and Fach phoned me every single day saying, 'This son'g a monster. It's No2 in Detroit on phones, it's No1 in Portland, it's No3 in Dallas. You've got to release it as a single.'

I had approval because I was the producer, and I kept saying, 'No, no, no. I'm embarrassed, I'm singing flat.' I mean, I'm not even a singer to begin with.

However, Charlie persisted and said, 'Look, there's magic there,' and I eventually said, 'Okay, release it as a single, but you'll be sorry. It'll be the end of BTO.'

Boy was I wrong. It came out as a single and it did unbelievably . I think it went to No1 in sixteen or eighteen countries, and it's been re-recorded several times since then, four, five, six times in different languages. I've got it in Austrian, in Finnish, even in some sort of Egyptian language.

The funny thing is that every time we see each other, my brother Gary has never mentioned it. I'm sure he's read this because I've told this story before, but he's never said, 'Why the F*** did you do that to me?'

But it was never meant meanly. I have nothing against people who stutter but, you know, when you're an older brother, it';s kind of a brotherly jab, so to speak.

However, from that point on, he stopped stuttering and stammering so, whatever it did, it achieved something therapeutic at least.'
(Source : Inspirations by Michael Randolfi, Mike Read and David Stark, published by Sanctuary, 2002)

Randy Bachman : At that time, I was inspired by Traffic’s Dave Mason and his song Only You Know And I Know, which had a dang-a-lang rhythm, and the Doobie Brothers’ Listen To The Music. So I copped those jangling rhythms, changed the chords and then added some power chords of my own. I had a work in progress, in two parts: a great rhythm and a heavy riff.

The first seconds just brighten your day. Heh heh. It’s the Fender jangling that does that. That’s a Stratocaster with a Martin mixed underneath. So as to get one guitar sound combining electric and acoustic.

As soon as we started doing it live. Once it starts, it takes over. It’s got that galloping-horse rhythm, a trick that makes you move. It’s four on the floor – a dance beat with a galloping triplet snare. And then in the middle this hypnotic cowbell comes in, which is stolen from Free’s All Right Now. And then, keeping the rhythm, we contrived bits I stole from the Who’s Baba O’Riley – the bit that goes ‘Out here in the fields,’ the Teenage Wasteland piece. And then I mixed it all with a light tambourine and a broken kick-drum. And it’s all a glue to fuse this funny joke song so that it sounds good, and not laughable.

I sang the storyline off-the-cuff. My first wife used to say to me: ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ The ‘Devil woman’ or ‘gentle woman’ was my wife. Then when I sang: ‘She said I had it coming to me and I wanted it that way’ I was riffing. Like John Lennon, I threw words into a pot just to get the rhythm and the rhyme. I’m aware of the connotations. I’ve been in gas stations in America, in the maddest parts outta nowhere, and seen women’s panties and brassières for sale outside – even some men’s underwear – with ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet’ written on the crotch. And there’s me thinking: ‘I own this phrase!’

It became a million seller, a monster song that’s been cut the oddest ways. A group from Manchester called Bus Stop even did a rap on it. And I get wonderful royalties because it’s used to sound-bed the Formula 1 on European TV. And thanks to Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse for using it for their Smashie and Nicey skit over four years.
(Source : https://www.loudersound.com/features/story-behind-the-song-you-aint-seen-nothing-yet-by-bachman-turner-overdrive)