Released when Mercury Records was still located in Chicago, IL, back in 1973, the second album from Bachman-Turner Overdrive was the first to break through in a big way. First the hit single "Let It Ride" went Top 25 circa March of 1974, then the anthem "Taking Care of Business" went Top 15 the summer of that year. By October they would top the charts with "You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet" from the follow-up LP, 1974's Not Fragile, but their seven chart songs were all made possible by this album and these two songs, "Let It Ride" and "Takin' Care of Business," in particular. "Let It Ride" features one of C.F. Turner's best vocals; keeping that gargle-with-Draino diesel sound down to a minimum, the song has two major guitar riffs, one a strum, the other from Led Zeppelin's 1970 "Immigrant Song," an inverted mutation of Randy Bachman's own "American Woman" riff which also hit in 1970.
Following his 1970 departure from the Guess Who, guitarist Randy Bachman recorded a solo album (Axe) and planned a project with ex-Nice keyboardist Keith Emerson (later canceled due to illness) before forming Bachman-Turner Overdrive in 1972. Originally called "Brave Belt," the metal group was comprised of singer/guitarist Bachman, fellow Guess Who alum Chad Allan, bassist C.F. "Fred" Turner, and Randy's brother, drummer Robbie; after a pair of LPs (Brave Belt I and Brave Belt II), Allan was replaced by another Bachman brother, guitarist Tim, and in homage to the trucker's magazine Overdrive, the unit became BTO…
Freeways was the final Randy Bachman album of the first BTO era, released in 1977 after their first of many "greatest-hits" collections put much of their chart activity in a tidy package on 1976's Best of B.T.O. (So Far)…
The durable Bachman-Turner Overdrive is one of those bands with more greatest-hits collections than actual studio albums. Greatest Hits digs a bit deeper than the definitive Best of B.T.O. (So Far), which was released at the height of the band's fame but passes over stompers such as "Give Me Your Money Please" and "Blue Collar" for faceless late-era (sans Randy Bachman) tunes like "Can We All Come Together."…
Bachman-Turner Overdrive's Four Wheel Drive album is most often overlooked, mainly because all of the attention was focused on the singable "na na na naa"'s of one of B.T.O.'s biggest hits in "Hey You." But the rest of the album is made up of the band's lunch-pail rock & roll sound, combining ample amounts of factory-made blues to street-dirty guitar rock. Although it can't really hold a candle to Not Fragile, B.T.O.'s best album, there's still a fair amount of well-played radio rock to hold Four Wheel Drive up. "Hey You" gave B.T.O. their second last Top 40 hit, peaking at number 21 and reaching number five in Canada, but tracks like "Flat Broke Love," "She's Keeping Time," and "Don't Let the Blues Get You Down" are attractive arena rock efforts with both Bachman's Randy and Robbie sounding like they're still involved wholeheartedly.