The 1970s was, in part - for me, anyway - defined by this Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO) record, and when it came out it was heavy, man! It was the music equivalent to a heaping plate of meat and potatoes slathered in gravy, and Randy Bachman and C.F. Turner looked as though they ate a lot of meat and potatoes and gravy. This LP was released when I was 14, in 1974, and I played the hell out of it. I had to buy another copy, which I got the band to sign when I met them years later when they played a bar in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
The title track has the word thunderhead in it, and it’s an apt descriptor of the music on this LP.
Turner’s sandpaper-on-pavement voice is truly one of the greatest rock and roll voices ever. Without it, the band could never have been as powerful or as distinctive. Randy can’t really sing, but his vocal talents (such as they are) offset Turner’s perfectly. Randy needed Turner standing beside him, if only to counterbalance his weight so the stage didn’t tip over, and their two voices harmonize magically in a who’d-a-thunk-it’d-work combination that elevates this LP to true greatness. When I met him, I told Randy he was responsible for writing a large part of the soundtrack of my youth. He seemed to like that.
The name Not Fragile was a tongue-in-cheek response to the name of Yes’ Fragile LP, which was released in 1971. In a 1995 interview, Randy Bachman said he thought using the word "fragile" as a title for a rock album was strange. He thought BTO's music could be dropped and kicked around without breaking, and so the band decided to call their next album Not Fragile.
The album marks the debut of guitarist Blair Thornton, who, unlike his predecessor Tim Bachman, is billed on the album liner notes as "second lead guitar". Thornton's dual-guitar solos with Randy are prominent features on this record. Roll On Down the Highway and You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet were monster hit singles, the latter hitting #1 on the singles charts in November, 1974, and receiving gold certification by the RIAA. Other cuts received significant airplay on FM radio.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet was a leftover track that was not originally intended to be included on the record. But after Charlie Fach, VP of A&R at Mercury Records, heard it he convinced the band to add it to the album, insisting it was a hit. He was right.
Not Fragile would go on to triple platinum success, and Randy has called it the band's crowning achievement.
BTO was a funny band. They were the biggest band in the world for about 10 minutes, and then quickly fizzled out of favour. Later releases never replicated the success of this recording, and personnel changes - some that didn't really make any sense (Turner on lead guitar?) - dogged the band in later years. None of the subsequent versions of the band were ever as good as this line-up, and they never really hit a home run beyond this point.
For some reason, my signed LP cover has no record inside it anymore. I must have misplaced it when I hung the cover on the wall. But you can't play a record cover and this is a record I simply had to have! So I chased down and paid more than I should have for a relatively hard-to-find Music On Vinyl (MOV) 180-gram reissue, which sounds pretty good. But the cover is a mess. It’s awful. The colours are blown out and the detail is terrible, as though MOV used an old Sony Mavica camera (you could store dozens of photos on one 1.44 MB floppy disc) and took a photo of the original LP cover to use instead of the original artwork. So I’ll just toss the MOV cover and put the record in my signed cover.
BTO music is somewhat harder to find these days, although that doesn't mean it's collectible. It just means nobody is looking for it so nobody's repressing it. But a recent excellent box set called The Classic Album Collection has been released and it includes every BTO CD (yes, CDs) from BTO I through Rock n’ Roll Nights. They've all been skillfully remastered and every album sounds fabulous. If you are looking to fill a BTO hole in your collection this CD box set is the way to go. It's not expensive and the covers look great, although none of them are gatefolds. But it's also cheap! Once I acquired this box set I traded in the LP (I found the cover in a closet). No need for duplicates, and as the CD sounds even better than the MOV LP I suspect MOV may have used an old CD as its source. I've heard they sometimes do that.
This is a really good record overall. It has a couple of weak spots - Second Hand? Given' It All Away? - but its strengths outweigh them enough to almost carry the record on their own. In concert they were fun to watch, and I saw them a couple of times back in the day as well as in that bar in the Soo so many years later. Interestingly, it was almost the exact same show!
Not Fragile will always remain one of the greatest Canadian rock and roll records and it deserves to be in everyone's collection. I may not pull it off the shelf all that often anymore, but it's there when I need it
The 1970s was, in part - for me, anyway - defined by this Bachman-Turner Overdrive (BTO) record, and when it came out it was heavy, man! It was the music equivalent to a heaping plate of meat and potatoes slathered in gravy, and Randy Bachman and C.F. Turner looked as though they ate a lot of meat and potatoes and gravy. This LP was released when I was 14, in 1974, and I played the hell out of it. I had to buy another copy, which I got the band to sign when I met them years later when they played a bar in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
The title track has the word thunderhead in it, and it’s an apt descriptor of the music on this LP.
Turner’s sandpaper-on-pavement voice is truly one of the greatest rock and roll voices ever. Without it, the band could never have been as powerful or as distinctive. Randy can’t really sing, but his vocal talents (such as they are) offset Turner’s perfectly. Randy needed Turner standing beside him, if only to counterbalance his weight so the stage didn’t tip over, and their two voices harmonize magically in a who’d-a-thunk-it’d-work combination that elevates this LP to true greatness. When I met him, I told Randy he was responsible for writing a large part of the soundtrack of my youth. He seemed to like that.
The name Not Fragile was a tongue-in-cheek response to the name of Yes’ Fragile LP, which was released in 1971. In a 1995 interview, Randy Bachman said he thought using the word "fragile" as a title for a rock album was strange. He thought BTO's music could be dropped and kicked around without breaking, and so the band decided to call their next album Not Fragile.
The album marks the debut of guitarist Blair Thornton, who, unlike his predecessor Tim Bachman, is billed on the album liner notes as "second lead guitar". Thornton's dual-guitar solos with Randy are prominent features on this record. Roll On Down the Highway and You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet were monster hit singles, the latter hitting #1 on the singles charts in November, 1974, and receiving gold certification by the RIAA. Other cuts received significant airplay on FM radio.
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet was a leftover track that was not originally intended to be included on the record. But after Charlie Fach, VP of A&R at Mercury Records, heard it he convinced the band to add it to the album, insisting it was a hit. He was right.
Not Fragile would go on to triple platinum success, and Randy has called it the band's crowning achievement.
BTO was a funny band. They were the biggest band in the world for about 10 minutes, and then quickly fizzled out of favour. Later releases never replicated the success of this recording, and personnel changes - some that didn't really make any sense (Turner on lead guitar?) - dogged the band in later years. None of the subsequent versions of the band were ever as good as this line-up, and they never really hit a home run beyond this point.
For some reason, my signed LP cover has no record inside it anymore. I must have misplaced it when I hung the cover on the wall. But you can't play a record cover and this is a record I simply had to have! So I chased down and paid more than I should have for a relatively hard-to-find Music On Vinyl (MOV) 180-gram reissue, which sounds pretty good. But the cover is a mess. It’s awful. The colours are blown out and the detail is terrible, as though MOV used an old Sony Mavica camera (you could store dozens of photos on one 1.44 MB floppy disc) and took a photo of the original LP cover to use instead of the original artwork. So I’ll just toss the MOV cover and put the record in my signed cover.
BTO music is somewhat harder to find these days, although that doesn't mean it's collectible. It just means nobody is looking for it so nobody's repressing it. But a recent excellent box set called The Classic Album Collection has been released and it includes every BTO CD (yes, CDs) from BTO I through Rock n’ Roll Nights. They've all been skillfully remastered and every album sounds fabulous. If you are looking to fill a BTO hole in your collection this CD box set is the way to go. It's not expensive and the covers look great, although none of them are gatefolds. But it's also cheap! Once I acquired this box set I traded in the LP (I found the cover in a closet). No need for duplicates, and as the CD sounds even better than the MOV LP I suspect MOV may have used an old CD as its source. I've heard they sometimes do that.
This is a really good record overall. It has a couple of weak spots - Second Hand? Given' It All Away? - but its strengths outweigh them enough to almost carry the record on their own. In concert they were fun to watch, and I saw them a couple of times back in the day as well as in that bar in the Soo so many years later. Interestingly, it was almost the exact same show!
Not Fragile will always remain one of the greatest Canadian rock and roll records and it deserves to be in everyone's collection. I may not pull it off the shelf all that often anymore, but it's there when I need it
BONUS TRACK
BTO was enjoying a first flush of success with Takin’ Care of Business and Let It Ride when the group entered a studio to record their next record, which they hoped was going to take them to the next level.
Released in August, 1974, Not Fragile delivered on that hope in spades and produced two massive hits - You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet and Roll On Down The Highway. To this day, this is the record that is widely regarded as the band’s best.
BTO's music was not pretentious in any way and steamrollered over the FM prog rock that was at the height of its own popularity at the time.
The biggest hit on this record, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, grew out of a joke Randy Bachman tried to play on his brother, who stuttered. It was originally to be used in the studio to set recording levels (and also so Randy could tease his brother), but the label bosses somehow heard it and immediately thought it was a hit and insisted it be included on the record, much to Randy's disbelief and dismay. But in the end he relented and the song became a number one hit in 21 countries. It was the group's only million-selling single.
Not Fragile is an artifact of its time but it stands up. Randy would leave the band just a few years later and that was pretty much the end of BTO, although the rest of the band continued in various incarnations after Randy split.
But it wasn't the same. This version of BTO had a good run while it lasted and this is their masterpiece.
BTO was enjoying a first flush of success with Takin’ Care of Business and Let It Ride when the group entered a studio to record their next record, which they hoped was going to take them to the next level.
Released in August, 1974, Not Fragile delivered on that hope in spades and produced two massive hits - You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet and Roll On Down The Highway. To this day, this is the record that is widely regarded as the band’s best.
BTO's music was not pretentious in any way and steamrollered over the FM prog rock that was at the height of its own popularity at the time.
The biggest hit on this record, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, grew out of a joke Randy Bachman tried to play on his brother, who stuttered. It was originally to be used in the studio to set recording levels (and also so Randy could tease his brother), but the label bosses somehow heard it and immediately thought it was a hit and insisted it be included on the record, much to Randy's disbelief and dismay. But in the end he relented and the song became a number one hit in 21 countries. It was the group's only million-selling single.
Not Fragile is an artifact of its time but it stands up. Randy would leave the band just a few years later and that was pretty much the end of BTO, although the rest of the band continued in various incarnations after Randy split.
But it wasn't the same. This version of BTO had a good run while it lasted and this is their masterpiece.
