Growing up in Winnipeg, Canada, Randy Bachman became friends with another local guitar player teen by the name of Neil Young.
“Neil lived on one side of town, I lived on the other," Bachman told Guitar Player in 2024. "And we would both take the bus downtown and look in the window of Winnipeg Piano at this guitar and go, ‘Man, if we could ever play that...’”
The two men would grow up and go their separate ways. Young became a guitar legend in Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, while also developing his solo career and launching psychedelic-folk-rockers Crazy Horse. Bachman went on to form the Guess Who — with whom he would pen hits like “American Woman” and “Undun” — before relaunching his career with Bachman-Turner Overdrive, where he delivered smash tracks like “Takin’ Care of Business” and “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.”
Despite parting company, they never lost touch.
So when Young turned 70 in 2015, Bachman received an invitation to attend his birthday party. As he told an audience at a recent gig, this created quite a dilemma for him as he sweated over what to buy a guy who has everything.
But the occasion also resulted in Bachman meeting and having a hilarious exchange with a guitarist he’s long admired: Neil Young’s former Buffalo Springfield/CSN&Y bandmate, Stephen Stills.
“Many years ago, I got invited to Neil Young's birthday party in L.A.,” Bachman says. “He was turning 70. I’ve know him since we was 16. He’s Richie Rich, he can buy anything he wants in the whole world. What do I get him?”
Bachman soon came up with an idea that hearkened back to their days growing up in Winnipeg. Young lived along Route 70. So Bachman decided, “I’m gonna get him a Route 70 sign.”
“Rather than try to steal a sign, and get filmed doing it and be shown on Youtube,” he continues, “I called the city of Winnipeg and said, ‘This is Randy Bachman, I want to buy a road sign.
“They said, ‘It’s impossible. Nobody can buy those.’
“I said, ‘I want it for Neil Young’s birthday.’
“They said, ‘Okay.’”
Once he had the sign in hand, Bachman had to figure out how to fly it to Young’s birthday party. The reflective green sign is four-by-three feet, he says.
“When you see this thing on the highway, it looks normal,” he says. “When you've got to check it on an airplane, it’s gigantic.”
Somehow he managed to get the sign delivered and handed it over to Young at the party. Bachman doesn’t reveal Young’s reaction to his gift, but he tells what happened soon after.
“Neil goes, ‘Well, a couple friends of mine want to shake your hand.’ And I say, ‘Who?’ And he says ‘Graham Nash and Stephen Stills.’”
As Bachman explains, he’s been a fan of Stills throughout his career.
“I’ve loved Stephen still since Buffalo Springfield,” he says. “Him and Neil, the guitar duels, the songs he wrote, Crosby Stills & Nash — it’s just incredible. He's like the whole thing behind all those bands.”
Bachman felt compelled to tell Stills how big an influence he was to him.
“So I’m meeting Stephen for the first time. I go, ‘Wow you’ve really been an influence on my career.’ He says, ‘Thank you very much.’
“And I said, ‘You have no idea the ideas I got from you.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, thank you very much.’
“And I said, ‘You have no idea how many things I’ve stolen from you.’
“And he said, ‘Yes I have.’
”Here’s one of them,” Bachman says as his band kicks into the Guess Who hit “No Time.” Written by Bachman with his former Guess Who bandmate Burton Cummings, “No Time” was a big hit for the group, reaching number one in Canada and going to five on the Billboard Hot 100 after its release in November 1969.
Bachman shared a video of himself telling the story in concert on his TikTok account.
@randybachmanofficial ♬ original sound - Randy Bachman
“That was our country-rock song,” Bachman explained to Songfacts. “Me and Burton trying to be like Neil and Stephen Stills.” They wrote the song at Cummings’ mother house after Bachman developed the songs main guitar line, delivered in the studio with his signature fuzz tone and performed on his 1957 Gretsch 6120 electric guitar. The instrument, which was stolen in 1976, was recovered in 2022 after an internet sleuth tracked it down.
