Interesting to hear Randy Bachman channeling not the Guess Who — with whom he made an early mark before co-founding Bachman Turner Overdrive — but instead the actual Who. “The Edge,” from his forthcoming album Heavy Blues, is as unexpected as it is fizzy and fun, like when the Beatles nicked the Beach Boys that time on The White Album.
The overt influence of “Won’t Get Fooled Again” is, by the way, no accident. Randy Bachman’s new trio, simply called Bachman, features two died-in-the-wool Who heads in Dale Anne Brendon and Anna Ruddick. In fact, Randy Bachman tells Billboard that he first heard Brendon playing drums as part of the London theater production of Tommy — and that Ruddick showed up for his new trio’s lone rehearsal wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with her bass-playing hero John Entwistle.
The results are something at once old and new, familiar but yet thrumming with visceral power. “The Edge” is also entirely different from earlier advance items for Bachman’s Heavy Blues, in that boasts no big-name guest stars. No Peter Frampton, and no Neil Young. (Randy Bachman has credited the latter with pushing him to try something new on this project, due April 14, 2015 from Linus Entertainment.) Instead, you get an unvarnished look at why Bachman is so excited about this new threesome. They look like they are having a complete ball.
Of course, Randy Bachman is no Pete Townshend. So — thankfully, really — “The Edge” isn’t part of some long-labored-over rock opera. Instead, once they get past the song’s happily bashing intro, his trio settles into the kind of meat-and-potatoes groover that has made Randy Bachman a cornerstone figure in classic-rock radio for decades. Some things change, and some things (again, thankfully) do not.
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