Rock 'Til You Drop
with Cheap Trick

by John B. Moore

You’d have to dig back to The Beatles or The Stones to find a rock band as influential as Cheap Trick. From metal bands to punk rockers and a slew of top 40 groups in between, Rockford, Illinois’ favorite sons have been a musician’s staple for three decades now.

Last month, the band re-issued their groundbreaking live record “Cheap Trick at Budokan!” one of rock’s best-known live releases and the album that put Budokan on every group’s tour itinerary. The re-issue comes with amazing extras, including 3 CDs and a DVD of the show. 

More than 30 years with the original line up, the band is still a staple at concert sheds across the globe and manages to record new material every few years. Guitarist Rick Nielsen called in from Australia recently and was kind enough to answer a handful of questions.

What do you remember most about those shows in Japan 30 years ago?

Well, there were a lot of Japanese people there I noticed. In my mind, it was like finally there’s a crowd that actually likes us! People liked us everywhere we went, but it was always more like three people in the audience. T hen five people and it finally went from like 150 people to thousands of people in one shot that were there to see us. We weren’t just an opening band anymore. We were the headliners when we were playing the clubs and we got a record deal and now suddenly instead of playing for 21-year-olds we were playing for 14 and 15-year-olds on up. It was the first time people were there just to see us.

Did you have any idea at the time that you were that big in Japan?

We did in early ’77. Before our first record came out, Queen asked us to be the opening act for them on their American tour. Thin Lizzy was going to be doing the tour, but they wouldn’t be coming in until later. They’d heard our record and thought we were good enough to put us on in front of those guys. Here we are opening for Queen and because they were so big at the time, they had Japanese press at the shows reporting back to Japan about their heroes Queen. At one of the shows, they singled me out and said would you like to write an article for a Japanese magazine because you’re the writer. I said “Ok, I don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ll write it.” About a month later they would send us clippings and we were getting fan mail from people we didn’t know and people we hadn’t played for before. Because Queen asked us out, the Japanese radio started playing us and within a year we had three number one songs in Japan. And by the time we went there we were getting about 100 piece of fan mail a day to our address in Wisconsin. We had piles and piles of this mail with packages and origami. Before you knew it they were making dolls of us. We also played the summer of ‘77 with Kiss and Kiss were huge in Japan. So we got even more press. When we finally played there in ‘78, they really knew us.

When you were playing those shows at Budokan in 1978, did you have any idea they would be a part of your legacy?

No. We were just there for our 30th anniversary and it turns out I had been mispronouncing Budokan for 30 years and now they say it my way, because of my mispronunciation. Of course I didn’t get a royalty on it.

I write about bands all the time that split up after just a few years together. Why do you think you guys have been able to stick together for three decades?

Well, this is what we all wanted to do. Some people want to do the band for awhile and then the lead singer wants to leave or the guitar player thinks he has a better idea, so he leaves. But we had a good idea to start with and we stuck with it. Plus we’re good hard working Midwestern boys. Although only two of us still live in the Midwest, we’re still hard working.

I talk to younger bands about their influences and it seems like everyone from punk bands to metal bands cite you guys as a major influence.

That’s great, getting name dropped by musicians. I remember this one band, I think it was Kingdom Come and they said they had never heard of Led Zeppelin, but they sounded note for note just like them. Most bands don’t like to say who they like because it pigeon holes them. But with us, we had pop elements and we had heavy elements and we had success and we had failure, but we stuck with it and I think it’s that part that lends itself to other bands. Punk bands aren’t afraid to say “Hey I like these guys,” because not everything has gone great for us. It’s not so much that everything has gone horrible for us either, we weren’t afraid to do a ballad and we weren’t afraid to go heavier. And we could actually play live.  That’s what I grasp from it. From Nirvana saying we’re like Cheap Trick on…

Do you have a favorite Cheap Trick cover that a band has done?

Geez, I don’t know. Right now Anthrax is doing their second Cheap Trick cover.

Oh really? What song?

I think they’re doing “Big Eyes” and they did “Auf Wiedersehen” on one of their records. Then again, I like Dwight Yoakum doing “I Want You to Want Me.” There’s a Lindsay Lohan version of that and the fact that she’s doing our song and still getting arrested is cool.

As a musician, that’ s got to be a little flattering, to have so many people want to record and perform your songs.

Yeah. Besides the cover stuff, the fact that we’re in The Rock Band game and we’re in Guitar Hero and on The Colbert Report and That 70’s Show (Cheap Trick recorded the theme songs for both TV shows).  We’re a little but here, a little bit there and we keep making records. We don’t need some big smash hit to be relevant. Cheap Trick is always playing somewhere. And just recently we were asked to send Jerry Bruckheimer a happy birthday message.

Really?

Yeah, I guess he’s a fan. We all signed a “Dream Police” album for him… just like we were answering some fan mail from Japan.

In the liner notes to the 30th anniversary record, you mentioned something pretty interesting about security in Japan and how they made the audience stay in their seats during the shows. Obviously they didn’t stay seated during your shows.

Yeah, something had happened and someone got injured or killed from I think a Deep Purple show and ours was the first one where they couldn’t contain the audience, so they slackened a bit on the security and let them stand up. Something else interesting is that we were told that they wanted to hear bands speak between songs, so that’s why you hear “I want you, to want me,” very slowly (in the songs intro) because we were told to speak slowly because they want to hear what you have to say. Another deal was, if you guys are from Texas, which we weren’t, they said wear your cowboy hats. 

You had mentioned that you played the venue again this year. Was that your first time going back.

No, we’ve played there a few times over the years. We go back there about every year and a half or every two years since ‘78.

Do you ever run into fans who say they saw you at the first show?

Oh yeah, there’s a little thing on our website where I think you could get in if you still had your ticket stub from 1978. There was some famous Japanese pop star who was there and he came up on stage with us. Now we have fans and their kids coming to our shows. The president of our record company, 30 years ago he was our tour manager, so he went from being the young guy in the office to president of the company. The last thing he did before retiring was come to Budokan with us. So he came in with Cheap Trick and left with Cheap Trick.

As a band, you also continue to churn out really solid albums. Rockford was a great record.

We have another one finished that’s coming out soon. We’re too dumb to quit.

So I assume you’re just going to keep touring until you drop over?