Randy Bachman and his son, musician Tal Bachman, have not yet seen the final version of Takin’ Care of Business, the Tyler Measom-directed documentary about the 45-year search for his treasured 1957 orange Gretsch guitar on which he wrote such classics as American Woman, Laughing and These Eyes.
The 80-minute film has its world premiere on Sept. 12 at Roy Thomson Hall as part of the Toronto International Film Festival, and a second screening Friday at the TIFF Lightbox.
While there have been other documentaries on Randy Bachman, including 2018’s Bachman, about his rise to success with the Guess Who and then Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Takin’ Care of Business captures the anthropomorphism of an instrument so precious to the legendary Canadian musician, the film should be retitled The Search for Randy Bachman’s Seventh Child or Randy Bachman’s Kidnapped Gretsch.
“When I first got it – same with anybody getting your first Cabbage Patch doll or whatever it was – you cling to that, you talk to it, even though it’s an inanimate object,” the elder Bachman tells Zoomer. “Thing about a guitar is you hold it next to your bosom, it feels your heartbeat, you’re breathing, you’re hugging it, you play it, it becomes a real part of you.
“And when you learn to play on it, and you start to write songs, dreaming they might get on the radio – and they do get on the radio, and they stay on the radio for a month and a year and decades – that goes on and on. It becomes very surrealistic, and your key to the world is that guitar. And then suddenly it’s gone, and there’s this huge void in your life. And I was a maniac trying to find this guitar.”
Bachman was so obsessed with finding the Gretsch that he bought 350 of them over the years, “trying to find this one,” he says. He ended up selling them to Fred Gretsch for the Gretsch Museum in Savannah, Georgia. “Because at the end of it all, when I finally gave up, we got the phone call, we got the message that ‘I found your guitar, and it’s in Japan.’ So that was a very fairy-tale ending.”
That revelation is not ruining the movie for anybody. The story of his stolen guitar has been widely covered in the media – including in a 2021 Zoomer interview with Bachman – but Takin’ Care of Business delves into just why he places so much value in this instrument, while also touching on his clean-living lifestyle as a Mormon, why he later denounced the religion, and his strong bond with his six children.
Meanwhile, Tal – whose 90s pop hit She’s So High still gets radio play and placements in ads for companies from Peloton to Progressive – understands the perceived magic of that guitar and why his dad found it so special.
“There are these things that you find through life, objects of some kind, tools that you form a kind of bond with, and that a kind of magic or energy develops between you and this one item,” he explains, later adding, “I’ve had my own kind of magic guitars.”
The like-father-like-son team, who had success during COVID with their entertaining Bachman & Bachman Friday Night Trainwreck acoustic jams, also says they have an album together they’re hoping to put out when the documentary is widely available.
“We wanted it to be unlike what we put out before, either of us put out before, so we do have an Americana-Canadiana-type rootsy album that no one has heard,” says Tal. “We’ve got it ready to go.”
Takin’ Care of Business premieres Thursday, Sept. 12 at TIFF and screens again on Friday, Sept. 13. Visit the TIFF website for more information about tickets and screening times.
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