Cheap Trick formed thirty-five years ago. Most of their contemporaries have long ago burned out or faded away and yet, here is Cheap Trick, not simply still going, but actually in the midst of one of their most generative years yet, with a major soundtrack cut, new album, tour and an ambitious stint in Vegas doing Sgt. Peppers coming up. Glide had an opportunity to talk to guitarist Rick Nielsen, as famous for crazy sweaters and custom guitars as he is for his songs, about what keeps the band going and what all these projects mean to him.
Of course, I’d heard At Budokan and for years people have drilled into my head that Cheap Trick is a great live act, but it wasn’t until seeing them play the Virgin Fest in 2007 that I was able to fully appreciate just how good they are, even today. So, what keeps them motivated and energized to play songs like "Surrender" and "I Want You to Want Me" that they’ve surely played thousands of times before? "I think we try to do our best every show. Every audience is a new audience and playing those songs, it doesn’t get old….We have no fire, we have no bombs, we just have the four of us and it was exciting to me," explains Rick.
Rick agrees that they still have it. He even says they played their best show the night before in Cleveland. A delay flying out of New York, a big storm as they arrived in Cleveland and a sheriff’s escort later they get to the show ten minutes after they were supposed to go on, ran on stage, played five songs and left. So why was that the best? Well, it exemplifies something that is at the core of who Cheap Trick is as a band. "We get there and it’s like the first show we ever did. It’s like our music and what we do, it has that ability still in it. Whether you can capture that everyday or not, you know, you just try to get that. Anything we ever had go wrong, it all goes by the wayside when you get up there," says Rick. "We played one new song and usually that’s like suicide. People, even if they don’t smoke, run out to have a cigarette," but not for Cheap Trick.
They were one of the first bands, if not the first, to play what we now know as Power Pop. Three decades later, you can hear Cheap Trick’s sound in countless bands and that could be perceived as gratifying or annoying by someone like Rick who did it first, but he sees it as a reflection of the how Cheap Trick operates more than an homage to their sound.
He explains, "We get our name dropped by a lot of people, ‘Cheap Trick, I like that band.’ I try to figure out why people say that stuff and I think it’s that we have a work ethic. If we’ve made mistakes, we brush ourselves off and keep going and we’ve had success and we’ve had failure and we still go out there and try to play do a good show or do a good record every single time. Other bands like that, because we’re real. We’re not put together by somebody. We’re not a lead singer and three other dopes. It’s a real band." So, the Cheap Trick legacy goes much deeper than a genre revival or some lifted licks. It’s more of a way to be a band for the long haul and that allows them to touch successive generations of rock bands.
June 23rd saw the release of Cheap Trick’s new album, aptly titled (until their next album at least) The Latest. So what goes into making a Cheap Trick record these days? Well, clearly there’s more focus on making the best record they can rather than trying to fit this or that formula. "If we end up doing an album that’s all ballads and they’re good, then tremendous," says Rick, "but if we gotta do a ballad, then the pressure’s on. I don’t think we’d ever work that way." So how does that play out? "We’ve been diverse, we still are," Rick explains, "We just try to make good albums. Some people are like we gotta make this single. We try to make a good album, but it starts off by trying to make good songs, good singles."
But these days, there isn’t a lot of airplay for a new Cheap Trick single, so what’s the point? "We’re not the Jonas Brothers or Britney Spears. We’re never gonna be the next big thing, so why do we keep putting out records? Because we have material inside us. It’s not about economics so much. Saving money by not recording seems idiotic to me." On top of that, Cheap Trick also recorded the Transformers theme for the movie soundtrack. It sounds like an odd fit and even Rick admits, "You try to make love to the lyrics about Transformers and robots in the sky, you make that sound sexy," but, he adds, "It sounded like Cheap Trick." And indeed it is a lot more fun than perhaps anyone expected, silly lyrics and all.
Despite having a new record as well as their sound popping up all over the current rock scene, Cheap Trick will be hitting the road this summer with Def Leppard and Poison. All three bands are well beyond their commercial peak and neither Poison nor Def Leppard seem to have the long term credibility that Cheap Trick has maintained over the years. Is this package tour just cashing in on nostalgia among 30 and 40 somethings? While that might be in the heads of the promoters, nothing could be farther from Rick’s. "Nortalgia? Nah, I never think of that. If you get asked to play a birthday party, which we’ve done, we’ve done it all, we’ve played every sort of venue there is, every size, for whatever occasion…we’ve never been a band that goes through the motions. We tour, because we want to tour."
For most bands, especially three decades into their career, a soundtrack entry, a new album and a tour would be plenty, but Cheap Trick isn’t most bands and, come September, they will take on one of the most ambitious projects of their career – performing what is perhaps rock’s most iconic album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band…in Las Vegas! It’s a daunting task, but there’s plenty of reasons why it will work.
Cheap Trick was never based on, as Rick says, "the Jefferson Airplane, the American kind of stuff," but rather the British pop groups of the 60s, like the Who, the Small Faces, the Kinks and…the Beatles. They even have some history working with George Martin and Geoff Emerick, the Beatles’ producer and engineer, respectively, and Rick and drummer Bun E. Carlos played on demos for John Lennon’s Double Fantasy back in 1980. Singer Robin Zander is flexible enough to sing both the Lennon and McCartney parts. Rick suggests, "Think of another band that could do a whole album of the Beatles; not just cover it, be true to it, but also be true to ourselves. Van Halen could do it? No. Sure, they know the notes, but…it just wouldn’t work."
So, they were asked by the Hollywood Bowl people, they accepted and now they have to learn it and play it. How confident does Rick feel? "Heck, I didn’t tell anyone that we were [doing Sgt. Peppers], because I didn’t even know how it would be." But they’ve done two preliminary shows and the reaction of the 38,000 attendees seem to point to success. Of course, playing Vegas brings to mind the likes of Barry Manilow or the fat, bloated Elvis. Is Cheap Trick coming down to the wire in their career? No, says Rick, "It’s not the end of our career where we’re gonna fade out in Vegas playing Beatles songs. It’s just another part of our career."
So, what’s coming next? "Isn’t that enough?" jokes Rick. But he said interviews are picking up in Japan, the home of their earliest success, so they may be looking at a tour there early next year. Beyond that, Rick is anxious to get back in the studio and make a new record. "I can’t wait to hear it," he says, echoing, I’m sure, the words of the thousands of fans who still can’t get enough of Cheap Trick.
One thing that was striking about Rick is that he seems to simply do what he does. It isn’t calculated or planned. He and his band mates appreciate the opportunity to play and record and not taking that for granted goes a long way to explain their continued success, both in their own music and their influence on others. "We just try to make a good record" and "we just try to play a good show" were recurring themes in our conversation. But what’s really behind Cheap Trick’s success? Rick says, simply, "It’s a real band. Success and failure. How come you’re not in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame? This is the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame. The fact that we’re out making records and playing. That’s success." Amen, brother.
