NEW YORK—Drummer Robbie Bachman of the Canadian rock band Bachman-Turner Overdrive has died at the age of 69.
His death was announced on social media on Thursday by his brother and bandmate Randy Bachman.
“BTO’s pounding beat left us,” wrote Randy Bachman.
The Bachman brothers are from Winnipeg and have been playing music since childhood.
Robbie Bachman is the founder of the group he helped found after leaving his brother Randy, a singer, songwriter and guitarist, and the best-selling act Guess Who in the early 1970s, The Brave Belt. I first worked in
The two Bachmans, along with brother Tim Bachman (later replaced by Blair Thornton) on guitar and Fred Turner on bass, formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive in 1973. It sold millions of records in three years.
Randy Bachman left the group in the mid-1970s and gave the remaining members permission to call themselves BTO (but not Bachman-Turner Overdrive to distance themselves from the band). As BTO, Robbie Bachman and others continued to tour and record, but fell out of favor and disbanded in 1980.
In the decades that followed, the band had sporadic reunions and occasional legal battles as Randy and Robbie Bachman fought over royalties and rights to the band name. The brothers have rarely played together since the early 1990s, with Robbie Bachman telling the Associated Press that Randy “disrespected” the other band members, likening them to the fictional parody group Spinal Tap. Sometimes.
In recent years, Robbie Bachman was semi-retired. Bachman-Turner Overdrive was inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 2014.
