Cheap Trick formed in Rockford in 1973…Nicknamed ‘The Forest City’, it is the largest city in Illinois outside of the Chicago metropolitan area. Located in Winnebago County, in the Midwest area of the United States, it was founded by New Englanders in 1834.
Their hometown played a big part in shaping the band’s music over the years and, in 2004, they returned there to record ‘Rockford’, their fifteenth studio album.
After their induction to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2016, four signs were put up around their native city, informing drivers that ‘Rockford Streets are patrolled by the Dream Police’, featuring a photo of the band members, from their 1979 album ‘Dream Police’. Bureaucracy intervened soon after however, and the signs were taken down because they ‘are considered advertising and don’t abide by other state sign rules’ – So much for celebrating your own! Cheap Trick’s legacy in Rockford, still home to songwriter/lead guitarist Rick Nielsen, is celebrated in ‘Trickford’ (www.gotrickford.com), a website dedicated to help visitors and residents learn about the band, including a ‘Cheap Trick Fan Trail’…
the infamous Rockford street sign
The classic Cheap Trick line-up is: Bun E. Carlos – drums, Rick Nielsen – lead guitar, keyboards, backing vocals, Robin Zander – lead vocals, rhythm guitar, keyboards and Tom Petersson – bass, backing vocals. The band is an unlikely mix of characters – Zander and Petersson being the blonde and dark-haired heart-throbs, Nielsen the quirky, geeky guitar hero and Carlos portly bespectacled, moustachioed, and not often seen without his trademark white shirt and tie (more academic or office worker than rock star). The chemistry worked though, creating much more than a sum of the parts…
band photo from the ‘At The Budokan’ booklet
In a 1979 interview in New Zealand, Bun E. Carlos, wearing a patterned green shirt and smoking a cigarette, summed up Cheap Trick’s raison d’etre:
”We saw a lot of bands puttin’ on make up and jumpin’ around and usin’ ten million dollar laser lights and things like that and we thought ‘We can do better than that! And we don’t have to spend ten million dollars and we’re a good band, a good musical band…’ We like what we do, so, we have fun on stage, we like to rock’n’roll, we like our audience to rock’n’roll…”
In The Budokan – from the album booklet
When they played The Budokan in April 1978, Cheap Trick had recorded three albums: Their self-titled 1977 debut, the follow-up ‘In Color’, released later the same year, and 1978’s ‘Heaven Tonight’. The Japanese tour was to promote ‘Heaven Tonight’ – As Robin Zander says: “This next one is the first song on our new album…It just came out this week and the song is called ‘Surrender’…” However, although it features five songs from ‘In Color’ (and none from their first record), the original Budokan LP contains only one song from ‘Heaven Tonight’ – It wasn’t until 1998 that ‘The Complete Concert’ surfaced, including three further tracks from that album – ‘California Man’, ‘High Roller’ and ‘Auf Wiedersehen’. Fifteen more studio albums have since followed ‘Heaven Tonight’.
The band showed their depth in their first few albums, from songs as diverse as the beautiful ‘Mandocello’ to the punky ‘He’s A Whore’, the almost glam rock ‘ELO Kiddies’ to the stoner sounds of ‘Downed’, the Beach Boys-influenced ‘Southern Girls’ (about Canadian girls allegedly) to the all-out fast rocker ‘Clock Strikes Ten’, the slow, slightly creepy Alice Cooper-esque ‘Heaven Tonight’ to the catchy pop of ‘On The Radio’…
Cheap Trick had a quirky stage presence in their prime, as evidenced by an appearance on ‘Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert’ in 1978: Rick with trademark baseball cap, goofy expressions, yellow shirt, bow tie, red cardigan (frat boy?), yellow guitar, jumping in the air a la one of his guitar heroes Pete Townsend; Robin a smooth glamourous model in flowing blonde locks and white suit, white guitar; Tom dressed in black with long black locks and strutting around with his bass; Bun E. with cigarette in mouth, white shirt, black tie, round glasses and deadpan manner…
Recorded on 28th and 30th April 1978 at the Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, ‘Cheap Trick at The Budokan’ is the live recording that catapulted them into the mainstream…Released on 8th October 1978 in Japan, and in February 1979 in the US, the record was mixed on the far flung coasts of the states – at The Record Plant, New York with master mix and assembly at The Record Plant, Los Angeles.
The promotional format is very memorable…As the round yellow sticker on the album cover says: “LIMITED EDITION in KAMIKAZE YELLOW VINYL ONLY 10,000 COPIES PLUS 12-PAGE BOOKLET EPC 86083 THIS STICKER IS REMOVABLE”
All songs apart from ‘Need Your Love’ (Rick Neilsen/Tom Petersson) and the Fats Domino cover ‘Ain’t That A Shame’ (Antoine Domino/Dave Bartholomew) were written by Rick Nielsen. The album cover features the glamorous Robin Zander and Tom Petersson on the front, looking happy to be there, and the geeky Rick Nielsen and studious-looking Bun E. Carlos on the back, no emotion shown – surely no accident!
So to the recording of the concert, and the MC’s intro:
”All right Tokyo? Are you ready? Will you welcome, Epic recording artists Cheap Trick!!”
’Hello There’, from the ‘In Color’ album, is the natural concert opener, specifically written for that purpose. Rick’s staccato guitar attack is soon pumped up by Bun E.’s rockin’ drum beat:
”Hello there ladies and gentlemen
Hello there ladies and gents
Are you ready to rock?
Are you ready or not?”
Bun E. finishes the song with a ‘Wipeout’ style drum freak out, then it’s straight into ’Come On, Come On’, the second track from ‘In Color’, and another upbeat tune… Zander really belts it out:
”Ooo I’m feelin’ good
Don’t you ruin it tonight tonight…”
Then the pre-chorus plea:
”Don’t be a sheep and follow the flock
Show me you really want to be mine.”
The song is infectious and the band is so tight…
”Woooh! This is a brand new one…starts with Mr. Bun E. Carlos…” This live version was the first release of ’Look Out’ – a studio recording eventually appeared on the 1998 reissue of their first album. It starts off with some ‘bubblegum’ lyrics, Zander’s vocals soaring over the backing groove…
“There is somewhere, someplace
In this world I want to take you
Look out – little girl, little girl”
…and then gets a bit deeper, although not clear what it’s all about!
”Sea over yonder when the rights are read your name
You search for the riddle clue to the river she came
Look out on the land to the south to the east three said
Cancel Colorado in the march by request
Don’t go on the look out of a whim, “Aye” she said…”
The band rocks out big time before a stop and repeat of the opening lyrics and a rockin’ outro…
Another ’In Color’ song ‘Big Eyes’ follows, started by a powerhouse beat from Carlos. Robin Zander opts for a much gruffer vocal delivery on the verses, then mimics the guitar melody on the chorus:
”Big eyes, I keep falling for those
Big eyes, they keep calling my name.”
Rick Nielsen goes wild with a compact solo over Zander and Petersson’s excellent powerpop riffing…Then it gets angry:
”You’re such a losing cause
Who says you write the laws
Why don’t you go get lost
Who says you write the laws
Go on get out of here”
The studio version of Side A closer ‘Need Your Love’ didn’t appear until the ‘Dream Police’ album, so this may not have been known to fans…Another ‘clap along’ drum intro by Bun E., slowing the tempo down a bit this time, then Robin Zander offers up some very angelic vocals and falsetto;
”Need your love, need your love, need your loooove…
Fell apart broke my heart, need your love…”
Although Rick and Tom write about needing love, they don’t seem very happy with the relationship, and Zander changes his vocal delivery to suit:
”You make me lonely, why should you care
I give you everything, that’s hardly fair
I give you lovin’, it’s what you need
I give you everything, everything in me
It might surprise you, but that’s not the reason…”
There’s plenty of guitar interplay on this longer song (over nine minutes) and the tempo picks up for a big rock jam at the end…Bun E. Carlos holds the whole thing together with his very tight but rockin’ drum style – Well respected for his steady, powerful but non-showy playing…
Side B opens with a cover of Fats Domino’s ‘Ain’t That A Shame’, a long way from the rolling piano-driven original…There’s a long rockin’ intro with guitar riffing and an insistent drum beat before the familiar song kicks in after over two minutes:
”You make”…duh duh…”me cry”…duh duh
”When you say”…duh duh…”goodbye
Ain’t that a shame
My tears fall like rain
Ain’t that a shame
You’re the one to blame…”
It’s a likeable cover and Cheap Trick make it their own.
The hit single from the album, the infectious ‘I Want You To Want Me’ is next. The studio version is on ‘In Color’ and the live recording 45 was backed with ‘Clock Strikes Ten’ from the ‘Budokan’ LP.
”I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I’d love you to love me
I’m beggin’ you to beg me…”
It all seems innocuous and deceptively happy sounding until:
”didn’t I see you cryin’
Feeling all alone without a friend you know you feel like dyin’…”
’Surrender’, from ‘Heaven Tonight’ is introduced by Robin Zander as the first song from the new LP. It’s another great, catchy tune:
”Mother told me, yes she told me
I’d meet girls like you
She also told me stay away
You’ll never know what you’ll catch”
The slightly cynical lyrics are about to get a bit darker…
”Just the other day I heard
of a soldier’s falling off
Some Indonesian junk
That’s going round”
The chorus is sing-along, if slightly twisted!
”Mommy’s alright, Daddy’s alright
They just seem a little weird
Surrender, surrender
But don’t give yourself away”
”Now I had heard the WACs recruited
Old maids for the war
But Mommy isn’t one of those
I’ve known her all these years…”
”Then I woke up, Mom and Dad
Are rolling on the couch
Rolling numbers, rock and rolling
Got my Kiss records out”
Cheap Trick are contemporaries of Kiss, and not a little influenced by their music – seemingly simple but very effective riffs/chord progressions, high-energy rock, changes between different vocal styles – there are similarities. Kiss ‘Alive’ is also one of the best live albums ever, and one that effectively launched their career, in the manner that ‘Budokan’ did for the band from Rockford…
Of course, ’Goodnight Now’ ends the set, a re-write of ‘Hello There’ by Rick as a closer, before the band are called back for an encore, hi-energy rocker ‘Clock Strikes Ten’ from the ‘In Color’ album…”This one, I’m sure you all know…”
”Clock strikes ten, it’s a Saturday night
Got money in my pocket and it feels alright
Not stayin’ home gonna stay out late
Gotta hear some rockin’ music it feels just great…”
It could be Rick as teenager out prowling the streets of Rockford with his mates…
”I’m crazy for some action tonight…”
Maybe some hints of MC5 and The Ramones? Intellectual music this isn’t! The band rocks like there’s no tomorrow!
”Gonna get down
Gonna get on down
Gonna get down
Gonna get on down…”
The ‘thank you Japan’ message from Rick Nielsen on the second page of the album booklet says a lot:
”Thank you Japan for Cheap Trick’s first tour of your country. We would like to thank the thousands of people that attended our concerts and the millions who heard us on radio and saw us on TV…This record which was recorded on tour is a sampling of the music and excitement we shared with you in our performances, and if you missed it we hope to see you next time when Tom, Robin, Bun E. and I come again to Japan to enjoy your country and play our music for you. You are number 1 with us. Domo arigato
Rick Nielsen”
Rick is usually quite obtuse in interviews and deliberately distorts the truth. Here are some excerpts from 1979 in New Zealand:
Interviewer: “Tell me about your stage act, your sort of madness on stage…”
Rick: “Well, eh, I’m still having trouble learning how to play guitar…”
Interviewer asks about the writing process for ‘Voices’ (from ‘Dream Police’)
Rick: “Well, I try to do most of the things in Russian and then I go to one of the dictionaries and I translate it to Spanish and usually, because I have such schizophrenic ideas, they usually end up to be almost coherent in English, so that’s how it happened…but that was just how the song ‘Voices’ went…and if you listen to the beginning of the song ‘Voices’, it has a , maybe, eh (whispers), it’s all the song titles from all our records…”
In a late ‘70s interview for ‘Rockola’, Rick answers the question ‘How did you form?’ “We’ve been around for many a year. We started the group in Leningrad, that was the last story we had when we were together last time…”
‘At The Budokan’ captures all the excitement and energy of a rock band in its prime in just over forty glorious minutes (less than one side of a C-90)! The high-pitched screaming of the Japanese audience, reminiscent of early Beatles concerts, serves to feed the frenzy…There is no filler on the recording and, of the ten tracks, six of them are under four minutes long. In the seventies, there was a trend for double live rock albums – Zep’s ‘The Song Remains The Same’, Purple’s ‘Made In Japan’, Lizzy’s ‘Live And Dangerous’ and the Scorpions ‘Tokyo Tapes’ to name but a few – but there was also a trend towards a more compact single album format for live recordings e.g. Blue Öyster Cult’s ‘Some Enchanted Evening’ and AC/DC’s ‘If You Want Blood…You’ve Got It’. To a point, both worked, but the single disc package definitely suited Cheap Trick at that point of their career….What a powerhouse of a record!
original tracklisting:
SIDE A
Hello There (2:27)
Come On, Come On (3:03)
Look Out (3:15)
Big Eyes (3:47)
Need Your Love (9:07)
SIDE B
Ain’t That A Shame (5:10)
I Want You To Want Me (3:38)
Surrender (4:40)
Goodnight Now (2:42)
Clock Strikes Ten (4:11)
Eddie's Rock Music A-Z 
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