Cheap Trick keeps it‘s edge

On a balmy spring night in 1976, a girlfriend and I drove 40 miles to Ann Arbor to check out a new nightclub called Chances Are. As bars go, it was a classy place with an intimate dance floor and a circular balcony up top. Not a bad seat in the house, and as luck would have it, there was a new band playing there that night called Cheap Trick.
At that time, few (if anyone) in the metro Detroit area had heard of these four power-pop rockers from the Chicago suburbs. Disco was on the upswing and punk was still around the corner. Live music was on the ropes in 1976 with bands such as Salem Witchcraft spoofing on already-tired old tunes like “Smoke on the Water.” In the mid-’70s, grassroots rock & roll was desperately in need of a recharge.
Yet as we heard that night, the unknown Cheap Trick had ample voltage to get zombified America up off its dead booty and dancing to a rock beat. Guitarist Rick Nielsen looked like a comic book character with a checkered two-neck guitar that twirled like a windmill through a show of lightning hooks. Drummer Bun E. Carlos had the look of a 1940s dimestore detective with a cigarette permanently glued to his lips. Singer-guitarist Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson provided the glamor for the band and the animal attraction of what a rock star should look, act and sound like.
Blown away by their sound and swaggering show, I approached Zander between sets and offered a prediction that his band was going to be huge -- the next big thing -- deserving of a national stage, etc. Uh, thanks, he replied; see ya later.
A year later, the band released its first of three albums, Cheap Trick, followed by Heaven Tonight, and In Color. The last album produced their first top-100 hit, “Surrender,” which had a pre-grunge sound of slashing guitars and a politically-incorrect lyric about a skanky mom who “just seems a little weird.”
It wasn’t until the 1979 release of the live album, At Budokan, however, that Cheap Trick really took off. Through the years the band had quietly built a fanatical following in Japan that roared through the speakers of your old Pioneer tuner. At Budokan was one of the great live albums of the ‘70s on par with Frampton Comes Alive and Bob Seger’s Live Bullet. The album hit number four in the pop charts; it stayed on the list for over a year and sold three million copies. The live cut, “I Want You to Want Me,” became Cheap Trick’s first top-10 hit.

BEATLESQUE?
Things started to slip for the band from that high precipice, however. The band followed up At Budokan with a fourth studio album that same year, Dream Police. Although it was a commercial success, selling over one million copies, Dream Police seemed rather flat compared to the raw power of their live disc.
Cheap Trick has often been described by music critics as having a side that pays homage to The Beatles. Perhaps that was true on the Sergeant Pepper-ish “Dream Police,” but being “Beatlesque” never really served the band well. They were more on their game with the full-throated T-Rex thunder of their live album and the bad-boy attitude of “Surrender.” It was undoubtably the latter aspect of the band which was said to have influenced Kurt Cobain, because you can hear echoes of Cheap Trick’s chiming guitar attack in the music of Nirvana.
Today, 30 years after I first saw them in their wolf-hungry youth, it seems odd to imagine Cheap Trick performing onstage at Interlochen. These rock killers are deadly at close range, up close and personal; and an old fan can’t help but wish they were playing in some smoky bar with a dance floor and a chance to see people losing it in the maelstrom of sound.

NEW CD
But give them credit: Cheap Trick has kept its edge through the years. While their older classic rock cousins have gone as mellow as jello playing the same old tunes from 40 years ago, the boys from suburban Chicago have kept sharpening their tools. Rick Nielsen, a “guitarist’s guitarist,” reportedly spends his time recording and fiddling with his collection of 300 guitars (out of an estimated 2,000 he’s owned through the years, according to Chicago magazine). And Bun E. Carlos keeps searching for the perfect beat with his collection of 40 drum sets and 200 snare drums.
The band has a new self-produced album, Rockford, which is a tribute to their hometown in Illinois, and the CD is getting the thumbs-up from reviewers at Spin magazine, GQ and Billboard.com. Cheap Trick has also had a renaissance on television over the past couple of years, performing on Soundstage, Conan O’Brien, and The Howard Stern Show among others.
Give a listen to Rockford and you’ll find Cheap Trick still serving their best shot with a blend of what Chicago magazine calls “sweet melodies and explosive guitars. Is Cheap Trick capable of producing another raunchy, raucous rocker like “Surrender”? Time will tell.




Cheap Trick performs at Interlochen’s Kresge Auditorium this Wednesday, July 5 at 8 p.m. Tickets are $24.50-$39.50 with VIP seats for $99.

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