Taking Care of Business

Randy Bachman’s Tales from Beyond the Tap is an atypical rock star memoir. It is not a careening down-and-dirty kiss-and-tell-all (unless you count the story about seeing Tina Turner naked). It is an open-hearted collection of musical memories and opinion from one of Canada’s most beloved elder statesmen. The book reads the way Bachman’s CBC Radio show Vinyl Tap sounds—full of affable anecdotes, career backstories and just enough celebrity name dropping to bruise all of your toes.

It is an engaging read from an old friend with whom most of us in the Great White North grew up. Randy Bachman’s songs with the Guess Who, Brave Belt and Bachman Turner Overdrive—“Taking Care of Business,” “American Woman” and about 120 more gold and platinum singles—were played so often, on so many radio stations across the country, that they are bound within us like musical...