Randy Bachman has rocked his way around Surrey over the years, including a memorable gig at Holland Park during Surrey's Winter Olympics celebrations in 2010. He also lived here for a time, during BTO's early days. I caught up with the Winnipeg-raised guitar-rock legend ahead of Bachman-Turner Overdrive's return to the Pacific Coliseum Aug.
20, during the PNE . What follows is a Q&A with the 80-year-old Bachman, who called from Victoria. Bachman: "When we left Winnipeg it had been minus-40 for 40 days — there was something biblical about those numbers, I don't know.
This is early BTO, and we drove out from Winnipeg and got to Chilliwack, looked in our rear-view mirror and it was all white behind us, looked ahead and it was all 45-plus, you know. I said, 'Wow, this is it.'" "We stayed a week at first, then I went home, packed everything up and came back and moved to Vancouver.
We weren't sure where to go and we had relatives this way. We'd hang out on the weekends and stuff, and they lived in Surrey on 125A Street on a big, beautiful hill overlooking the river and New Westminster, where I also lived, in the mayor's old house, when we got some money, you know, on Queens Avenue." "Yeah, he bought about 10 acres near King George Highway, a beautiful place with a creek running through it, big house with a pool and barn, everything.
He was a single guy who didn't have to spend any money on kids or a wife or anything, so he kind of went crazy. He had a big underground tunnel, one .
