Brian J. Kramp - This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick

This Band Has No Past

How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick

Brian J. Kramp

A Jawbone book

First edition 2022

Published in the UK and the USA by Jawbone Press

Office G1

141157 Acre Lane

London SW2 5UA

England

www.jawbonepress.com

Volume copyright 2022 Outline Press Ltd. Text copyright Brian J. Kramp. All rights reserved. No part of this book covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or copied in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in articles or reviews where the source should be made clear. For more information contact the publishers.

by Jeff Ament

Hello there, ladies and gents...

Ralph Nielsen. Rockford. Baby Boom. Beatles. British Invasion.

Grim Reapers. Bol Weevils. Paegans. Destinations.

Otis Redding. Toastin Jam. Ken Adamany. Grim Reapers Mk II.

Fuse. Gary Schuder. Vietnam.

Summer of the Rock Festival. Phrenz. RIP Fuse Mk I.

Fuse Mk II. Toons. Ego. Zander and Kent. Fawn.

Philadelphia. Artemis. SIck Man of Europe.

Cheap Trick Mk I. Adamany and Toler. Cheap Trick Mk II.

Cheap Trick Mk II. Zander and Kent. Xeno.

Hello Robin. Cheap Trick Mk III.

Logo. Marshall Mintz. Mothers Day. Lou Reed.

Summer 75. Candy, why did you do it? Hamer. Checkerboard.

Starwood. Kim Fowley. Butch Stone. Capitol.

Jack Douglas. Sunset Bowl. Accordion.

Record labels. Broken arm. Hank Ransome.

ICM. Epic. Surrender. Hat.

Record Plant. Songs. Maxs Kansas City.

The daily grind. Queen. CBS convention.

The album.

Marketing. Press.

Support act. Starwood. Whisky. Tom Werman.

Can-Am Tour. Cheap Trix. In Color.

Heaven Tonight. 12-string bass. Europe.

Buenas noches bye bye... Japan. The live album. The legacy.

Acknowledgments. Bibliography. endnotes.

BY JEFF AMENT

In the summer of I977, I heard some older kids talking about going up to see KISS in Lethbridge, Alberta, which was ONLY 200 miles to the north of the swimming pool parking lot in Big Sandy, MT, where I was currently standing.

How was I going to see this show? Could I ride with the high school seniors who were going? (If you cant imagine this scene, watch DAZED AND CONFUSED.) Did Wilfred Knottnerus (real name) say that Cheap Trick is opening? Holy shit! I had just heard a Cheap Trick tune called HES A WHORE that sounded like the heaviest BEATLES song ever.

How do I talk my parents into seeing this ultimate event of a lifetime? After many schemes and lies, my dream show was not to be. I would be driving a tractor that afternoon west of town while the older kids drove north to Lethbridge on Thursday, July I977.

Missing that show made me love KISS and Cheap Trick that much more. Soon after I grew out of the cartoon characters of KISS and focused on what CREEM, CIRCUS, and ROCK SCENE magazines were telling us about, which included Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, Nugent, Zep, Queen, Alice Cooper, the Sex Pistols and the early punk records.

By 1978, Cheap Trick was my favorite band, bridging the punk rock of Ramones, Clash, Devo, and Sex Pistols with the heavy rock of Aerosmith, Zeppelin, and AC/DC and referencing the music of my youth, the Beatles and the Kinks.

HEAVEN TONIGHT was playing all summer with the first DEVO record and ROAD TO RUIN while we skated the skateboard ramp next to our house.

This music connected us to the exciting world that existed far away from the isolation of our little farm town. The world in the magazines and record covers.

One day.

Some day.

SERIOUSLY.

That one day my band would play shows with Cheap Trick?

Write up a setlist for them?

Id own a twelve string bass, built by Jol Dantzig at Hamer, the same guy who built Tom Peterssons classic basses?

Would I see them play in my childhood backyard of Great Falls, MT, with the Great Falls Symphony, 36 years after missing that Lethbridge show?

Who says I wouldnt play Ricks checkerboard Hamer Explorer on SURRENDER with the band in Spokane?

HA HA HA HA. Impossible.

Ive had a ten year text thread with a few friends, all music fanatics, about who is the greatest American band of all time?

Much discussion about criteria and what constitutes a band (Bruce and Petty are not bands in my very strict criteria). Three classic albums? Hit songs? Influence? Originality? Longevity? Great album covers? Classic logo?

My friends all claim some solid choices with their own criteria. E Street Band. Heartbreakers. Aerosmith. Grateful Dead. Black Flag. Metallica. Beach Boys. CCR. The Doors. Ramones.

My own choice occasionally fluctuates, but barely. I always come back to the one band that meets all of MY criteria.

Cheap Trick.

Three classic albums? Yes. More than three. Dream Police, Heaven Tonight, first, In Color, and Budokan if youre counting live albums.

Hit Songs?

I Want You To Want Me

Surrender

Dream Police

The Flame

Influence?

Nirvana, Guns N Roses, Green Day, Smashing Pumpkins, and yes, Pearl Jam.

Originality?

The CT mash up is all time. The Beatles, the Move, Yardbirds, AC/DC with some pop sweetness and a tinge of heavy classical tone.

The whole rock n roll package thru the lens of a small midwestern city. The juxtaposition. Black and white versus in color. The goofy carnival band members versus the heartthrobs.

Longevity?

They are still killing it. I saw them just before this COVID madness and I swear Robins singing better than ever and the band is swinging harder.

Album covers?

They took the heartthrobs/nerds imagery into the peak covers of the circus nightmares of Dream Police and All Shook Up.

Logo?

The best.

Rick, Tom, Bun E., and Robin created a furious and hopeful soundtrack for (especially) those of us in small town America (and fans all over the world). That there was hope, a chance to make real life from our dreams... with a little help from the DREAM POLICE. After all, they live inside of our head.

JEFF AMENT

HELLO THERE, LADIES AND GENTS...

Rockford.

A city in Illinois named for the point in the river shallow enough to traverse on foot: just shuffle across the limestone. What river, you ask?

The Rock River.

Where else would Cheap Trick be from? Rick Nielsen, Tom Petersson, and Bun E. Carlos all grew up in Rockford and attended the same high school, Guilford. Robin Zander was born twenty miles to the north in Beloit and grew up in nearby Loves Park. Robin would appear to be the odd man out in terms of his Rock roots, but wait: the Rock River flows through Beloit, and Beloit happens to be located in

Rock County.

This band has no past is the first line of the farcical biography penned by Eric Van Lustbader, future heir to the Jason Bourne saga, and printed on the inner sleeve of Cheap Tricks self-titled debut album. Cheap Trick, of course, does have a past, a past steeped in history. The history of the Midwestspecifically, Rockford, Illinois. The history of the Baby Boom generation, from post-war prosperity to the uncertainty of the Vietnam era. The history of the electric guitar and its unruly progeny, rocknroll. The Beatles hit stateside just as the Baby Boomers hit puberty.

The Cheap Trick origin story straddles two very different decades, from the tumult of the sixties, when hope clashed with hate and fear, to the anticlimax of the seventies and the subsequent cynicism, a regression perfectly encapsulated by author Bruce J. Schulman in his book The Seventies. The peace sign gave way to the finger, he writes, the single upturned middle digit. That obscene gesture lacked the hopefulness of the Sixties but still expressed a clear point of view.