CHEAP TRICK • Living the Rock ‘n Roll Dream

One of this summer’s more anticipated rock ‘n roll shows will be happening on Thursday, July 27th when the musical hit-making machine and merry pranksters known as Cheap Trick take to the stage at Saginaw’s spacious & luxurious Temple Theatre for a special performance at 8:00 PM at part of their 50th Anniversary Tour.

Formed in Rockford, Illinois back in 1973 by madcap guitarist Rick Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson, lead vocalist Robin Zander, and drummer Bun E. Carlos, the group released their first self-titled album in 1977 at a time when rock music was at a crossroads with other colorful, melodic, and harder edged hook-laden bands such as KISS and Aerosmith were beginning to redesign the landscape of popular & contemporary rock’ n roll.

The music created by Cheap Trick bridged elements of 60’s guitar pop, hard rock, and punk rock in a manner that would help set the template for subsequent power pop artists throughout the 1970s and ‘80s. Moreover, the physical image of the band was a unique factor that also helped propelled their popularity by mixing a seemingly incongruous line-up that consisted of two handsome & classic rock star pretty boys (Petersson & Zander) with a pair of nerdy looking outcasts - especially lead guitarist & chief songwriter Nielsen, with his ball cap flipped up like Bazooka Joe, cardigan sweater interwoven with band logos, shapeless, beige, essence of old man trousers held up by suspenders, white socks! & gym shoes, that despite their young age at the time gave the group a touch of senior citizen authenticity to bridge the generation gap: Rock & Roll for the Geriatric Age and then some!

When asked about this, Nielsen says: “I’ve always dressed like this - it’s taken this long for the rest of the world to catch up with me.”

After the release of their first album, a year later the band released their second ground-breaking album In Color, and also found success in Japan. 1978's Heaven Tonight included the power pop classic "Surrender"; and the band achieved mainstream popularity in the United States in 1979 with the triple-platinum live album At Budokan and a Top 10 single, a live recording of "I Want You to Want Me”, which critics described as being ‘Beatlesque’.

They followed that with Dream Police (1979), their most commercially successful studio album, which reached No. 6 on the Billboard 200 chart.   After struggling with declining popularity and lineup changes in the 1980s, Cheap Trick experienced a major resurgence toward the end of the decade when they topped the US charts with "The Flame".

The band has continued releasing new music into the 21st century and maintains a constant touring schedule, having performed live more than 5,000 times since their formation. To date the group has sold more than 20 million albums and built a dedicated following, having been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2016.

What’s amazing is that 50 years since they first started, Cheap Trick continues to churn out the hits. In 2017 they released We’re All Alright! With the album’s 1st single Long Time Coming, enjoying an unprecedented run of 14 weeks at No. 1 on the Mediabase Classic Rock Chart, proving that in addition to being an active rock band for more than four decades, they can still release hits with freakish consistency and continue to put out albums in the modern era that not only don’t embarrass the band, but repeatedly revitalize their career.

In May 2018, the band released their single, “The Summer Looks Good On You.” The Rock & Roll Hall of Famers co-produced the electrifying rocker alongside their long-time collaborator, GRAMMY® Award winner Julian Raymond (Glen Campbell, Fastball); and the song was the first glimpse at the band’s 20th studio album, In Another World, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard Rock Chart upon its release in Spring 2021, their highest first week chart placement in their long, remarkable career.

One of the band’s little known career highlights occurred back in 2007 when they were asked by the Hollywood Bowl and Los Angeles Philharmonic to perform the 40th Anniversary of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper. Notes Nielsen: “We’d done a couple of songs like Day Tripper before, but Robin has such a good voice, like a real voice that can do McCartney and Lennon, so even though I knew that music in my head, I still had never tried to put it together; and because we’re not real ‘session guys’ we didn’t want to do it exactly like the record, so that was a challenge because on the other hand you don’t want to start jamming on a Beatles song! Everybody knows how this stuff goes, so I had to play and learn it note-for-note. After we did the first two shows I think we had 18,000 people at the first two at Hollywood Bowl, and then we got asked to do more and more of it.”

Many people are also not aware that Nielsen played on John Lennon’s last album, Double Fantasy. “I played on I’m Moving On and I’m Losing You and used a Les Paul and that Fender Esquire with the string bender on it,” he recalls. “I gave John Lennon my Telecaster Esquire with a string-bender on it. Actually, I loaned it to him and also had a Hamer guitar made for him. He had never seen one of those and I said, “Well, I’m going to Japan tomorrow, so I’ll get it back from you later, and I finally got it back from Yoko three years after he was murdered.”

After all these years, one of the true phenomenon’s about Cheap Trick is they still have the drive and sound they had when they first started all those years ago.

As singer Robin Zander puts it: “We haven’t changed much. The thing about it is that when we started it was sort of a magical kind of thing. When we started, we rehearsed three days in Rick’s father’s garage and after that third day we started playing music elsewhere. In bowling alleys, backyards, bars and things like that. People’s garages even. And we knew right away after that third rehearsal that we had… there was that something that was different about all four of us put together.

“We’ll go on until we can’t write songs anymore….or until one of us dies!’

Cheap Trick will perform at Saginaw’s historic Temple Theatre on July 27th at 8:00 PM. Tickets start at $55.50 and can be purchased by clicking this link.