“Not Fragile” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive
August 1974, Mercury Records
One of the best rock ‘n’ roll albums ever recorded.
Forget the other rockers of the time, when Bachman-Turner Overdrive rolled into your city your ears and body were pounded with a solid 90-minute musical barrage of rock songs designed to put a smile on your face, a buzz in your brain, and a ringing in your ears. Absent were the droning guitar and drum solos; left at the door were the “here are some new songs we wrote” that no-one wanted to hear. BTO gave you a well-crafted and tightly rehearsed show, adding only the excitement of a light show and the sheer volume of their live act.
And it was all thanks to their breakthrough album “Not Fragile” which is turning 50 years old this month.
“Not Fragile” features nine songs in 35 minutes that come at you with the thunder of a 670hp NASCAR engine; a rumble that hits you right in the chest, raising your adrenalin, and leaving you yearning for more. The title track starts off the first side with a chest-thumping bass-line that can be heard even on the worst stereo speakers; a tribute to the album’s engineering. The album then rocks you all the way to the end of side two with the riff-driven “Givin’ It All Away” with its falsetto vocals to match the fever pitch of the overdriven guitars.
“Not Fragile” went Gold four days after its release on August 15th, 1974 and was on the Billboard Hot 200 for 50 weeks. In early October 1974 it occupied the number two spot on the Billboard album charts bookended by Barry White and Olivia Newton-John. With “Not Fragile,” BTO went from playing gigs in small venues for $2,000 dollars a night to becoming the kings of stadium rockers, filling auditoriums from coast-to-coast and raking in as much as $25,000 dollars (or more) a night. “Not Fragile” created a wave that BTO would ride for two years, making the band a huge financial success.
Tucked neatly into this 35-minute salvo of rockers are two Top 40 hits. The rockin’ “Roll On Down the Highway” penned by C. F. Turner and drummer Robbie Bachman which features a screaming guitar solo by Randy and the driving rhythm guitar of newly arrived guitarist Blair Thornton, plus the toe tapping number-one single “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” which nearly wasn’t released on the album, that is according to Randy Bachman. Apparently Randy did not feel the song was good enough to be released, but the record company insisted it be included on the album.
“You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” debuted on the singles chart at number 65 on September 21st, 1974 and went to number one seven weeks later for a solitary week. The song was BTO’s one-and-only number one single and was an international hit to boot. In 1991, the “Not Fragile” BTO line-up would reunite and play a German toured billed as the “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet Live” tour. So much for Randy Bachman thinking the song wasn’t good enough!
For me, “Not Fragile” is the epitome of rock ‘n’ roll. I always aspired to play in a rock band that could play this kind of basic rock music with as much fun and gusto that BTO did whenever I saw them over the decades. I last saw BTO in the late summer of 2000 at Naperville’s Rib Fest. I, like the group, had aged gracefully and it only seemed fitting that my last concert was in a huge wooded park filled with food vendors. Gone was the great Chicago Stadium where I had first saw them in early 1975; gone was the purple haze floating over the audience; gone were the rows and rows of tens of thousands of screaming fans, but not gone was the adrenaline rush as the band kicked it into overdrive and I was once again 17 years old living in the summer of 1974.
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