Quotes from Randy Bachman

When you play all that as a body of work there are four great songs, four mediocre songs and four bad songs. I didn't know it at the time; I was just doing my best.

Change is inevitable, and you can't stop that change. You say, 'Wait, stop,' and it just drives right over you.

I don't like the word 'rock star' or 'super star.' I am a guitar player, a songwriter who got lucky because I stayed at it and didn't give up, long enough that people noticed me.

To add an AC outlet, for example, you just drill a circular hole in the wall, tap into the wiring, add the outlet and you're set. If you don't want it, pull it out and plaster over it with more earth to seal the hole.

You don't need a uniform color: We used a mixture of brick red, browns and grays, and then threw in seashells, branches and various types of rock, so our walls ended up looking like cave paintings!

I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears.

I think if you're a painter, you paint; if you're a golfer, you golf; if you're a fisherman, you fish; if you're a musician, you play music.

When I pull into a city and I rent a car and it's Nashville, or it's London, or I'm driving in the taxi to the hotel, and on comes one of my songs, it's like, 'Oh my God, they're still playing these songs on the radio.' And you still feel tearful and very grateful that somebody still likes these songs that you made up.

You don't have to have a great voice to sing, just a distinctive one. But make sure you say the words clearly and tell a story.

I listened to it last night for the first time since we started this project. I went out to my car and put it in and went to an empty parking lot and just listened and read the little pamphlet that came with it. After two or three songs I burst into tears.

Radio was my lifeline as a kid growing up in Winnipeg in the 1950s. It connected me with the wider world outside our little prairie city.

When one knows at an early age that their gift, talent and direction is musical, one tends to focus on that and let nothing interfere or impede the forward motion toward the end of that rainbow. And after 50-something years of rockin' out, you still realise there is no end to that distant rainbow until one's last sunset.

People have made a living deconstructing Lennon and The Beatles songs because of their compositional sophistication. But what's so exciting about John is that he never had any of that training on musical theory; something just spoke to him, and he just knew what sounded right.

I never get tired of performing to people who want to hear me. Hell, that's my handshake to the world. I'm doing just what I've wanted to do since that day I was 15 and heard Lenny Breau play the guitar.

Those two songs condense the two albums. They also show what the audiences wanted. I was desperate to keep the band together and find something that the public would like.

I learnt one thing in the past or in my life: the only person you can change is yourself, and it has to come from within.

I have chosen to keep my personal life separate from my music, as the two are exclusive from each other, and I want to remain that way. I'll talk music, production, writing songs, touring with anyone but keep religion, politics and world affairs off the table, as my expertise is in songs and music.

My love, growing up on the Prairies, was country music.

The fact that the internet is so active; people can now speak to me indirectly.

With The Guess Who, it took us fifty-something singles before we had hits.

The guitar is such an incredible instrument; it plays classical, flamenco, jazz, country, bluegrass, rock, acid, blues. You'll never see a clarinet playing Black Sabbath. But you will see a guitar in a clarinet band playing rhythm. It is the most popular instrument in the world; it is the one everybody loves.

I look on most religions as fear-based rather than love-based. I've drifted away from all that. Yes, I think I'm more spiritual. I just don't go and pretend every Saturday or Sunday that I'm in this wonderful club. I'm exploring.

It's nice to get any awards, whether it's lifetime achievement or the Keith Richards award for being alive one more year.

Generally, you are held to a sound and that becomes your sound. That gets branded as your sound, and all the copycats start with it because the labels are looking for that sound.