A Thousand Words on Cheap Trick

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For several years when all I knew about music was what they played on the '70s and '80s top-forty channels, I thought Cheap Trick was an English new-wave duo comprised of short-hairs that had one hit in 1978 and imploded soon afterwards. Up until I was a high school freshman I still thought they were English. To be fair to myself, they sure do sound like it–they took the term “Beatles-influenced” and ran to the high hills with it. 

I’m not sure how I was first formally introduced to the idea of Cheap Trick as a fully-formed band that had the capacity to contain depth. I guess once you’ve listened to the live rendition of “I Want You to Want me” off of At Budokan enough times, it just comes naturally. 

The first impression anyone gets of Cheap Trick is never not going to come from At Budokan. The first you ever hear of them is the catchy guitar riff of their biggest hit, and the first you ever see of them is the image of Zander and Tom Petersson in the midst of cavorting around the microphone on the album’s cover. And boy, what an image do they have. 

The manner in which Cheap trick choose to present themselves is as easily identifiable as the music itself: you have the two lounge-lizard pin-up boys (Zander and Petersson) to the right, with the erratic cartoon character and the man dressed up like a bank teller on the left (Rick Nielsen and Bun E. Carlos). It would take a surmountable amount of effort to get them confused with any other band–much more with each other. 

You’d think an image as eye-catching as that would lead to some pretty obvious stage antics–and for the case of Nielsen, it does. Pick any video of them performing in the seventies, and I guarantee Rick will be at the front of the stage, tossing guitar picks into the air and catching them on his tongue or making faces at the audience. But what about the rest of the members? 

Two long-haired pin-up boys slinking around a pair of middle-aged offenders–if they were to take even more pointers from the English bands they so adored, then a stage would have been the perfect place for homoerotic undertones in their presentation to come in full-force, to be lapped up by an audience desperate to witness something, anything even bordering on risque. 

But these are Midwestern boys–their original stomping ground isn’t exactly the kind of place where such connections can be bred and raised. That kind of behavior just wasn’t acceptable in Illinois, which left the band lagging behind in the collaborative stage presence department. The closest they could ever get to Zeppelin or Stones type affection being shown on stage is Zander belting out “He’s A Whore” for an audience of screaming girls. 

In Cheap Trick you have none of the unrestrained, capricious sexuality of someone like Mick Jagger or Robert Plant. Everyone stays in their little section of the stage, almost never trailing off to far from their microphone or drifting to close to another band member. All the attention is directed at the audience or the camera and no one else. 

The stage outfits are particularly reserved as well, with none of the flashy, open-chested shirts, dangly jewelry and leather trousers anywhere to be seen. Compared to the shows of their contemporaries, Cheap Trick concerts seem self-conscious and emasculated. Robin Zander in particular comes off as the kid who got caught in the crossfire. 

That isn’t to say a band’s existence is only validated if they play up the more off-colour sides of their personalities to the hilt. Plenty of bands have reached cataclysmic levels of fame without so much as even enjoying each other’s presence. The sheer catchiness of their music makes up for the distinct lack of public self-gratification, anyways. 

Speaking of their music, like their stage presence, their sound isn’t exactly flashy or rough, either. In the beginning it was certainly more macabre, but that only lasted the first album. 

Sure, on Heaven Tonight you’ve got the title track, which covers the dangers of overdosing, and “Auf Wiedersehen” which makes suicide seem like a fun past-time, but apart from that most songs on most albums come across rather straight and, apart from the occasional use of word-play, on the simpler-side. You wouldn’t have to crack open a dictionary to get what they’re saying, but I wouldn’t dare go so far as to call this band “safe”. That title can be reserved for people like Tom Petty. 

One of the key components of that endearingly simplistic sound is Tom Petersson’s iconic twelve-string bass. As an amateur bass player myself, I can’t help but admire the existence of such an instrument and the pure confidence Petersson exudes when he plays it. There’s no way to not admire something like that. 

What I don’t admire, however, is the amount of bass parts in Cheap Trick songs that distinctly lack any complicated components. 

I’m well aware of the fact that the twelve-string bass was made so the group could get a fuller sound out of a singer and a three-piece, but you’d think at some point over Petersson’s forty-seven odd years in owning such an instrument that he would think to get a little interesting with it. Apparently not, so now when I decide to find a new song to learn on bass, Cheap Trick doesn’t stand as an option if I’m looking to further improve my skill on the instrument. 

I don’t mean to deride Tom Petersson in any way by writing that. I just wish something would’ve possessed him to put those twelve strings to better use. 

What Cheap Trick lack in instrumentation that is interesting from a technical standpoint, they make up for a thousand times over in how easily loveable their songs are. Their tunes radiate pure energy and utter jauntiness, with Zander’s impeccable voice being the catalyst to carry it home. Cheap Trick are the best example of power pop America ever gave us.