It seems that the band Yes influenced the title of Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s album title Not Fragile.
In 1971, Yes put out their album Fragile, considered by many to be one of their finest albums with songs like “Roundabout” and “Long Distance Runaround”.
Jump ahead three years to the making of BTO’s third album. They were coming off the success of Bachman-Turner Overdrive II with the hits “Let It Ride” and “Takin’ Care of Business” but the band was still fine tuning their sound. Out of the band was Tim Bachman and in was Blair Thornton who acted more as a co-lead guitarist with Randy Bachman, giving the group an even harder sound.
Bachman, thinking that this album was one that could be “dropped and kicked” without breaking, referenced the Yes album title from a few years before and decided that BTO’s latest music was most definitely Not Fragile.
Randy told the story earlier today (December 19) on Facebook:
Tom Burke asks: “Is there a story behind your ‘Not Fragile’ and the Yes ‘Fragile’ album coming out around the same time?”
Hi Tom. Thanks for your question. Yes there is, actually. Our music was getting very heavy and the head of Mercury, Charlie Fach, said “We need to find a way to define your music”. I had seen the album by Yes with a cracked globe on it. So I said to Fred, “how about this idea? since we’re rocking so hard, how about Not Fragile?” He said okay but we needed a title track of the same name. We each wrote songs and came together. When we did, mine was too light and Fred had this amazing, blaring base line and we went with it.
