Director Tyler Measom’s new documentary, Takin’ Care Of Business, will make its world premier at TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) on Thursday, September 12 at 5:30 PM at Roy Thomson Hall.
In this brisk, fun ride, Canadian rock legend Randy Bachman tells the stories of how he rose to the top of the charts with The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, married a Mormon, and launched an obsessive quest when his beloved Gretsch guitar disappeared.
Nobody tells stories like Randy Bachman. The Canadian rock legend, who co-founded The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive, has a perfectly pitched sense of humour and an ear for the telling detail that makes listeners lean in. In Takin’ Care Of Business, director Tyler Measom crafts a brisk, fun ride through the stories of how Bachman catapulted into the rock star life, married a Mormon, and fell dangerously in love with a vintage Gretsch guitar.
As Bachman tells these tales, Measom illustrates with previously unseen footage from the ’70s and ’80s, and counterpoints from the people who know the man best, including his son Tal Bachman, who had his own pop hit in the late ’90s with “She’s So High”. What emerges is a portrait of a man who balances the wild excesses of chart-topping fame with wry, Prairie humour. He recounts how The Guess Who’s megahit “American Woman” began with trying to tune a broken guitar string. In fact, that orange 1957 Gretsch keeps cropping up as Bachman’s muse and talisman. So when it goes missing on tour, he is shattered.
It’s here that Takin’ Care Of Business becomes a story of mystery and obsession. Bachman buys every similar guitar he can find. He thinks he spots his lost love in a Thompson Twins music video. And then, in the midst of health challenges and COVID lockdowns, he gets a lifeline to the Gretsch, halfway across the world.
Even if you know Bachman’s work well, it makes for a terrific story. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Randy’s son, Canadian singer-songwriter and guitarist Tal Bachman, has shared the following via social media:
“Growing up, my siblings and I heard my dad talk every day about his long lost magic Gretsch guitar.
That orange 1957 6120 was the guitar he’d saved up for as a kid. It was his best, and oldest, musical friend, and a guitar which seemed to write hit songs on its own. It also turned out to be a good luck charm.
After all, with it, Dad had risen from smalltown obscurity to conquer the world not just once, but twice, with both the Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. But since its theft from a hotel room in early 1977, everything started to go wrong – not just professionally, but personally, too. More than anything else in the world, Dad needed that magic guitar back.
And yet, every effort to find it failed – not just for years, but for decades. Almost five decades, in fact.
And then, one day in late 2021, I got one of the most shocking emails of my life. An amateur internet sleuth wrote me, claiming he had a lead on the whereabouts of Dad’s long lost magic guitar. It was just a clue, but it was enough to start a cascade of recovery attempts complicated by Covid travel restrictions, mystery surrounding the owner, and Dad’s recent cancer diagnosis.
We began filming every step of this story nearly from the beginning, and pulled in a team to help us turn the story into a documentary. We are now pleased to announce that this documentary, “Takin’ Care of Business”, will be shown this year at the prestigious Toronto International Film Festival.
A big thank you to the documentary team, Dad, my wife Koko, and TIFF for making this all happen!