West News Wire: Drummer Robbie Bachman, whose 1970s singles included “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet,” was a member of the Canadian hard rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive. He passed away at age 69.
Randy Bachman, his bandmate and brother, shared the news of his passing on social media on Thursday without giving any further details.
“The BTO’s thumping beat has abandoned us, “wrote Randy Bachman. We rocked the world together, and he was an essential component in our rock ‘n’ roll machine.”
The Bachman brothers are natives of Winnipeg and have been involved in music since they were little.
Randy Bachman, a vocalist, composer, and guitarist, was the first musician Robbie Bachman collaborated with in the band Brave Belt, which the elder Bachman helped create in the early 1970s after leaving the top-selling act the Guess Who.
The two Bachmans, along with brother Tim Bachman on guitar (later replaced by Blair Thornton) and Fred Turner on bass, formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive in 1973 and sold millions of records over the next three years with their blend of grinding guitar riffs and catchy melodies. “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” topped the charts, and the band’s other hits included “Takin’ Care of Business,” “Hey You” and “Roll On Down the Highway.”
One well known fan, Stephen King, adopted the pen name “Richard Bachman” as a partial homage to BTO.
Randy Bachman left the group in the mid-1970s, and gave the remaining members permission to call themselves BTO (But not Bachman-Turner Overdrive so as to distance himself from the band). As BTO, Robbie Bachman and the others continued to tour and record, but their popularity faded and they broke up in 1980.
Over the following decades, the band had sporadic reunions and occasional legal battles, as Randy Bachman and Robbie Bachman fought over royalties and rights to the band’s name. The brothers rarely performed together after the early 1990s, with Robbie Bachman once telling The Associated Press that Randy had “belittled” the other band members and likened them to the fictional parody group Spinal Tap.
In recent years, Robbie Bachman had been semi-retired. Bachman-Turner Overdrive was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
