It’s hard to fathom but 2016 may turn into one of the best years for Cheap Trick in the band’s 42 year career; better than when the group charted a worldwide number one single for “The Flame” and even when the Rockford, Illinois group became an “overnight sensation” after the multi-platinum Live at Budokan
Let me count the ways:
—In April, Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Tom Petersson and Daxx Nielsen released their 17th studio effort, Bang, Zoom, Crazy…Hello. The 11 tracks—from the opening powerhouse momentum heard on “Heart on the Line” to the single “When I Wake Up Tomorrow” and cover of “The In Crowd”—rival some of the group’s best work ever. It’s a testament to great pop songwriting, catchy hooks and the life-affirming qualities of rock ‘n’ roll that recalls the quartet’s classics yet maintains a freshness that leaves older contemporaries and younger artists in the dust.
—Giving the album the support it deserves, Cheap Trick found a lifelong fan in Scott Borchetta, who just happens to be the founder, president and CEO of Big Machine Records. With the approval of Julian Rymond, the label’s Vice President of A&R who also was a longtime associate and producer of the band, Bang, Zoom is the first of a multi-album deal.
—The timing of the new album’s release couldn’t have been better. April 1st (April Fools’ Day) saw Bang, Zoom available online and at retail outlets; this coincided with the annual Cheap Trick Day in Illinois. Just as it does more than 200 times each year the band celebrated the events by playing a concert.
—A week later, the celebration continued when Nielsen, Zander and Petersson (and original drummer Bun E. Carlos) were finally inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The band’s inclusion cements its reputation due to a timeless catalog and an influence that’s spanned generations.
“The songs are why everybody knows Cheap Trick,” Nielsen said. “We have some good songs. ‘I Want You To Want Me” has been around for 40 years but people still love it. And even if you’re sick of it, it’s over in three minutes!
“The songs are still relevant; they still have the right words and the right emotion to move 99 per cent of all humans.”
—In May Nielsen, Zander and Petersson’s appeared on Live at Daryl’s House. They collaborated on several of host Daryl Hall’s songs and then on their own numbers including “No Direction Home” from “Bang, Zoom” and classics such as “Surrender,” “Heaven Tonight” and “I Want You to Want Me.”
—Following more headlining dates Cheap Trick joins two other Rock and Roll Hall of Fame acts – Heart and Joan Jett & the Blackhearts – on a major summer tour.
JPG: First thing, I want to do is to congratulate you for being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. There are a lot of people that are very excited about Cheap Trick getting into the Rock Hall.
RN: Including us. How ‘bout that?
JPG: With some bands you wonder if they are being truthful when they say, “Oh, we don’t care. We don’t want to be in.” You wanted to be in.
RN: Yeah, well, we never thought about being in. When we were nominated, it was like, “Holy cow! Wow! Maybe we will…” Then, when we got in on the first time we were nominated on the first round, when you hear about these bands who were eligible — we were eligible years ago – and being nominated for 10 years in a row, like a Susan Lucci kind of thing (the soap opera star received a Daytime Emmy on her 19th nomination), and didn’t get in. We weren’t like, “Oh boy, I wonder if this is going to happen?” But we kind of were, “Wow! That would be cool.”
I figured Yes would get in before we would, of the people that were eligible this year. I saw the voting online. Somebody had the electronic telephone because nobody could dial that fast or whatever it was. So, I figured we don’t have a shot at it. We have a lot of fans but we don’t have fans that work at AT&T and Verizon to put us in time after time. But millions of people, holy cow…
And when we got it it was unbelievable. Every one of us thought, what a great honor. [Induction ceremony no-shows] Pete Cetera (of Chicago) and Richie Blackmore (of Deep Purple), they can play with us. We’re not fighting it. We’d be happy to have them if that would help. It’s too bad that those guys weren’t there.
JPG: Yeah. Every once in awhile, it’s that rock ‘n’ roll never forgets and problems remain…
RN: I understand where The Sex Pistols don’t show up. (slight laugh) That’s their MO. We’re just thrilled to be in there. The cool thing was, it’s not like how many records you sold. They said it’s how you influenced people. That to me meant a ton because everybody else probably sold way more records than we did. Although, we haven’t done so bad. Like I told people, everybody understands it. We go out and play 250 shows a year. We’ll see somebody, ‘So, Rick what’s new? Where you been?” Uhhhh, what do you say? The minute that we were going to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, everybody stopped me, “Alright!” People that didn’t know anything about what we did, it means something to a lot of people. They understand that.
JPG: You mentioned earlier about the reason for induction — the influence — but it’s also the enduring quality of the band and the music and spanning generations of fans. Jumping to the new album, Bang, Zoom, Crazy…Hello, I have to tell you, it’s up there as one of your best.
RN: Thanks. We were making it before we knew anything about the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. We were just trying to make a record. I used to tell people, “If we had to wait until we had a hit record to tour, we’d never tour.” So we just kept making records ‘cause we wanted to. It wasn’t like the world was clamoring for another Cheap Trick record. It was us and the fans that we did have, they complained when we didn’t put a record out. We do it basically for us.
We were lucky that the timing worked out really good. We never wanted to be a Beatles cover band, you know doing Sgt Pepper. We didn’t want to just be on the oldies reminiscent tour. Our band, we probably would have been more successful if we would have broken up and come back together but we never broke up. We just always played — big places, small places, lot of people, not a lot of people.
JPG: Do you think some of it is Midwest work ethic?
RN: I think so. Trust me, there’s lazy people in the Midwest, too. When I grew up, I guess for all of us, nobody owed me a living…I used to hear that from my grandmother, (imitates her) “Nobody owes you a living.” And it’s true, nobody owes you a living. I used to hear all kinds of malarkey. I never went to a Homecoming. I never went to anything unless I was playing at it. There were people that probably could play better but they did it more as a hobby where I did is as a hobby but I was serious about it. What I’m doing now is what I wanted to do when I was a junior in high school. Not knowing, I’d be so frickin’ old, obviously. But, when I play I don’t feel old. It’s pretty cool. I still like a lot of the stuff I did back then. I still dislike a lot of the stuff I disliked back then. I didn’t grow into liking stuff that I was supposed to like.
JPG: What you’re saying reminds me of, and I’m paraphrasing here, a Bruce Springsteen quote about making it in music. He was like, “What else was I going to do? There was nothing but music.”
RN: I never said, “What else am I gonna do?” It was like, “This is what I wanted to do. I can do it pretty good.” I was never in it for the money. There was no money but it was enough to get by. There’s some quotes that my dad in this article my dad had done in 1979 that I never saw until just recently and it hit me. It was pretty amazing. I wish I would have seen it when he was alive. He talked about his humor and his humor is my humor, some of the stuff I thought was quite, quite hilarious. He said, “I’m glad he stuck with it. I frankly don’t know how he’s maintained his enthusiasm over years of getting nowhere and approaching starvation.” (laughs) My dad was an opera singer. And he also bought a music store and turned that into something. This was in 1979 when he was closing his store after being in business for 23 years, kinda retiring. It was an interview called “My Son the Rock Star” or something like that.
JPG: Now if your dad was an opera singer, do you have any type of singing voice? I know you don’t sing lead in the band but…
RN: I know music and I know right notes from wrong notes and I appreciate classics, but it was never my music. I’m a good foil for a great voice. And the great voice is Robin. He can sing great. I can be pitch perfect. Being a songwriter…but I wasn’t the singer that could sing the songs I wanted. I always wanted to be in a band and have somebody that could. Robin wasn’t the first guy that I worked with but he was the first guy that could interpret what I would write, and me doing the background voices. His voice being so good and my voice being pitching fine but not being a lead vocalist in my mind; so, I sound crummy, he sounds great, together it sounds cool.
JPG: Speaking of Robin, it’s like having multiple lead vocalists in the band for the price of one. When you’re recording, do you just let him decide how he’s going to approach each song or are suggestions like, “Hey Robin, why don’t you do a take where it’s more punk, less Midwest or more this, less this…?”
RN: I think the songs usually dictate that. We worked together a long time where it’s like I know what key to write in to make it so it’s at the top of his range for songs that need to be at the top of the range. If you listen to our songs, they’re more complicated than they sound. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. The song dictates how things go.
JPG: Speaking of songwriting, what type of songwriter are you? Are you a Pete Townshend type where you have something fully fleshed out to show the band or do you just come in with a riff and a chorus?
RN: Sometimes the former, sometimes the latter. Certain songs, they don’t get fleshed out until 25 years after I came up with an idea. And sometimes it’s like this one works today, let’s go work on it. Some are finished and some are just an idea.
A song like “Dream Police,” that’s an older tune now. I had the majority of it but I never had the middle part. The middle part I got from another song I had done that was an instrumental. It was cool but it didn’t go anywhere. Then, when I wanted a part for the middle part, I wanted it to be elevated from the rest of the song but not be like the song. So, the parts just fit together but they were written at different times. Finally I said, “Oh man, this would be good there.”
Then, at the same time, like the songs on the new record, we don’t add an extra verse or a chorus for the sake of maybe we need more. Like “When I Wake Up Tomorrow,” it’s got emotions from this, that and the other and it’s over in three minutes. We didn’t need to make it a nine-minute song. It’s like, “This one needs a solo.” “Well, this one doesn’t.” The song dictates what you need.
JPG: I was reading that the band recorded 30 songs in making the new album. So, 11 made the final cut, leaving 19. Are you like The Rolling Stones where for your next album you listen back to all these older tapes or do you start fresh and if something from the past happens to comes back and works you now use it?
RN: We do a little bit of each. We don’t just start with what we didn’t finish. We don’t just start with…it’s got to be all of this or that. The songs on the new record, they range from here’s an idea we had 30 years ago just the time wasn’t right for whatever reason. When we did our early stuff, “I Want You to Want Me,” we recorded that for our first album but it wasn’t good enough until the second album (“In Color”). Being that that was such a Cheap Trick standard or hit it was, “How come it wasn’t…?” “It just didn’t feel right.” Actually, it never felt right until the live version because the original studio version that we had done was more like the live version than the studio one. After we left the studio, [producer] Tom Werman put the honky tonk piano on it and made it lighter than it originally was. That version became a hit in Japan but it wasn’t in the U.S. Trust me, I wish we could say we planned all of this kind of stuff but we didn’t.
JPG: That’s sometimes the best if it’s unplanned. I meant to mention this earlier. What’s good about the new album is it sounds fresh yet familiar. The songs are connected to the band’s history — “Longtime No See Ya” is like a spiritual descendant of “Hello There,” “No Direction Home” has that psychedelic bridge that reminds me of “Dream Police.” Was that in the band’s mind or was it producer Julian Raymond doing that?
RN: Well, “Longtime No See Ya,” originally that was the song “Bang, Zoom, Crazy…Hello.” It’s a guitar riff. You’ve got to listen close to it because it’s going (vocalizes the riff) and playing it as one guitar doing all that stuff. It’s kind of buried so it sounds like (vocalizes riff again). There’s a lot of stuff going on in there. As we first started doing it, the things in “…Crazy…Hello” didn’t match up with it. The lyrics on that one for example, it’s a song about drinking or drugging or womanizing or whatever. “I’ll have another and another and another and another…” It’s like long time no see. Oh, I forgot how good peppermint schnapps is. Gee, this tequila, that stuff is good. So, it moved from where it started from but it is kind of a “Hello There”…
JPG: I hear “Heart on the Line” and you’re playing the hell out of the guitar there. So, why do you bring someone else in for another song?
RN: That was a Julian thing actually. Wayne and myself and, I think, Billy Corgan and a whole bunch of different people…Julian produced the last couple Glen Campbell records, which we all played on all the different times. I was never in the studio with any of the other guys and they weren’t in with me. Julian was playing some tracks. We knew Wayne Kramer. We knew the MC5. Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith was a Cheap Trick fan. And I think Julian was playing the track, “Do You Believe Me” and I had some manic guitar part on there. He said, “Hey Wayne. You want to play on this?” “Aw, sure.”
So, there was a guitar battle but we weren’t in the same room at the same time. I didn’t know what he did and he didn’t know what I did. The last time we did something like that, we did something on “3-D” on the Next Position Please record with Todd Rundgren where I had Todd and we played back and forth. (vocalizes the guitar battle) There, we were together in the same room.
It was Julian’s idea to kick me in the ass and Wayne, he’s a crazy, knucklehead guitar player so, it fit him, too. It was like, “Yeah, why not?” I’m not vain enough where “We can’t have him on there because he’s too good.” (laughs) They’re all too good.
JPG: This is Julian Raymond’s third album producing Cheap Trick. You’ve known him for years. Is what he brings to the band as the “fifth member?”
RN: Yeah, but he’s also like a fan. He knows our good and bad qualities but he also knows stuff that we’ve done and we kind of toss it off. “Well, we’ve done that.” He’s like, “This reminds me of that.” We’re not afraid to steal from ourselves. He’s good at exploiting some of the things that we might not think about, which musically is a good thing.
He’ll suggest, “I really like that beat you had on “He’s a Whore” that The Ramones took later for this or that. How can we incorporate that?” Oh, it gets us thinking about what we do. He never says, “Here, we want to do something like this Tchaikovsky piece here,” not that he couldn’t bring that up. He’s a pop guy. He likes what we do. It’s better than somebody who doesn’t like what you do.
Plus, he’s a song guy. He’s always thinking about a song. It’s like, “Hey Rick, what kind of lyric can you come up with this?” and “This is too tame or something.” He gets me thinking. If someone said, “Hey Rick, write something cool.” I said, “Well, everything I do I think is cool, with lyrics, without lyrics, fast, slow, ¾ time.” When you have a bit of direction it helps you out.
I liken it to the “No Direction Home” song — “No matter which way you’re going, I want to go, too.” I can’t remember what the original line was. (He starts singing.) We kind of came up with a bunch of lines that fit as opposed to no matter which way you’re going, I want to go… The song’s “No Direction,” I thought of One Direction that band. I didn’t want to be that.
JPG: You may not be covering Tchaikovsky but you covered the classic song, “The In Crowd.” Your version reminded me of the Bryan Ferry version.
RN: We used to do that as a soundcheck years ago. It’s got four chords in it so… It’s just kind of a fun, good, simple song. It’s not the Ramsey Lewis Trio version of it. Was it Brian Ferry or was it Roxy Music?
JPG: I wondered about that too and checked. Bryan did on a solo album but I guess Roxy performed it live.
RN: We do it different than that. It always has some Brian Eno cacophony going on. Ours is just kind of a straight thing. I think we did it years ago. We were doing it at a soundcheck and we were doing it with Heart, as a matter of fact. And Ann and Nancy came out to the stage, “Oh my God! That’s cool!” “Oh yeah, we never even thought about it.” We’ve always done covers. We’ve done covers for years. It’s just a cool song that sets the tone or the mood.
JPG: Back to the idea of having fans around to help out the band. You came to your new label, Big Machine Records, because its owner is a fan.
RN: That didn’t hurt, did it?
JPG: No, not at all. It seems like a lot of things have aligned quite well for you in the last year or so.
RN: Yeah, nine years ago, I was the only one that was friends with a senator from Rockford. He said, “You guys have brought commerce back to the state of Illinois as opposed to shipping it away and you’re still here. I think we should have Cheap Trick Day. What do you think about that? What day were you thinking?” “Well, geez, Halloween? My birthday? Nah, nobody cares about that. How about April Fools’ Day? Either people will believe it or they won’t. Either way it doesn’t matter.” It’s like what an honor!
Then, this past year, having a record come out, I had to tell the record company, they didn’t know anything about that. Let’s tie that in with this. “Okay. The album’s gonna come out April 1st and by the way, you’ve been nominated by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. That’s April 8.” “Yeah, yeah, we meant to do that.” But we still had a record ready. So, a lot of stuff; it is amazing.
JPG: Speaking of amazing, you and your son Daxx are in the band together. Did you two have to sit down and create boundaries and go over “This is Rick the dad. This is Rick the musician. Don’t let one ruin the other.”
RN: Fifteen years ago, when Bun E. had his back operated on and Daxx was the substitute drummer for three months on the Aerosmith tour and Meatloaf tour. I can’t remember all the stuff we did. He was on his way. Then, he worked with Dick Dale for three years. He worked with Brandi Carlile over in Asia, Australia and with Maroon 5 and all kinds of different people he worked with. When the situation came up that we needed to make a change I made sure it was Tom and Robin who gave their blessing before I said, “Well, what about Daxx?” because I didn’t want to have, “Well, you’re a kid.” I didn’t want to have any of that, not that we would. I wanted it to be everybody else’s choice, too.
We had people that would have subbed for us, Dave Grohl and Tommy Lee and Chad Smith from the Chili Peppers but they had their other jobs. It would have been fun, but we wanted something that lasted. So, we contacted Daxx. He was leaving for Europe the next day…and, yes he does. He calls me Rick. He doesn’t call me dad. It’s not like he’s 15 either. He’s a busy guy.
JPG: I’ve traveled a fair amount throughout my life so I have some small understanding of what being on the road can do to screw up your mental and physical being. How have you kept it together all this time?
RN: I like what I do. It’s not like it’s a chore. Sure, the actual traveling beats the hell out of ya. Ever since 9/11, the airport shenanigans, just all the extra stuff, and different hotels and the rooms that aren’t ready and riding in the van too long…I can think of a million things why it’s not good but there’s only a few of why it is good, and it’s what we do. We’re lucky people.
