by Michael LelloWeekender Editor
With 20 years having passed since Cheap Trick’s most “recent” Top 10 hit song, it would be easy to write the band off as yesterday’s news. But in a rapidly changing musical landscape no longer ruled by radio, there are other ways to remain relevant. Like performing the theme song to the upcoming “Transformers” movie. Or one of the band members playing in the buzzed-about supergroup Tinted Windows.
“We keep playing,” Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen said in a recent phone interview. “I’m doing stuff for video games, and we had (the) ‘That ’70s Show’ (theme song), and we’re always on some kind of TV thing. I don’t know. …
“Nothing we do, to me, seems that significant or important, but the whole body of work over the years is like, ‘Holy cow, we have a lot of different stuff!’”
The band, which also features Robin Zander (vocals), Tom Petersson (bass) and Bun E. Carlos (drums), is opening on the Def Leppard/Poison tour this summer, which stops at Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain Sunday, June 28. A new studio album, “The Latest,” was released this week, and is available exclusively at CheapTrick.com and Amazon.com until mid-July, before it will be out in stores. In September, Cheap Trick will perform a nine-date stand billed as “Sgt. Pepper Live” at the Las Vegas Hilton.
An inquisitor looking for a secret to Cheap Trick’s 35 years of longevity — and there likely have been many, considering bands like Pearl Jam, Weezer and Fountains Of Wayne have cited the quartet as an influence — isn’t going to get much from Nielsen.
“I don’t know,” he said. “We still use the same 12 notes. We have three minutes to tell a story. Some stories have gotten better with age. Some haven’t. … I think people just see the work ethic that we have. And failure doesn’t destroy us, and success doesn’t destroy us. We’re a band’s band. We’re a working band. We’re Joe Sixpack, and we’re Courvoisier and we’re mojitos. We’re everything.”
Cheap Trick, from Rockford, Ill., and known for classic rock hits like “Surrender,” “Dream Police” and “I Want You to Want Me,” as well as the 1987 hit “The Flame” — its only No. 1 song — has sold 20 million records, earned gold or platinum status 40 times and has been featured on 29 movie soundtracks.
The visual focal point of a Cheap Trick show is Nielsen, with his ballcap and black-and-white checkerboard look, which he carries out from his suit and guitars down to the stage set and even his in-ear monitors. He owns “about four or 500 guitars,” he said, and tours with about 35, including the famous 5-neck model. Fifteen of his guitars, as well as a checkerboard car and John Deere tractor, are on display at the Henry Ford Museum in Michigan.
Being Nielsen’s roadie — he half joked they prefer to be called “techs” nowadays — is an interesting gig, to say the least.
“I think it’s probably pretty tough. …,” said Nielsen, who also throws a ridiculous amount of picks to the crowd during his performances. “I’m an easygoing guy. Um, well, not really. But because I want it done just right, because I get to be onstage just an hour, it better go rightly. I had one tech that worked for me for over 20 years, and I didn’t run him into the ground, and he runs a bus company now. And the guys I have, it’s fun to be the gatekeeper or the minder of my collection, because they get to talk about cool stuff all the time with guitar collectors, guitar players and reporters.”
The “Transformers” track came about when a Paramount exec visited Cheap Trick in the studio and asked the band to take a crack at it.
“It’s tough to make love to the lyrics from ‘Transformers.’ ‘Robots in disguise.’ OK. … Most bands would say ‘Forget this.’ We just did it, and they liked it.”
Meanwhile, drummer Carlos is playing in Tinted Windows alongside Taylor Hanson, former Smashing Pumpkins guitarist James Iha and Adam Schlesinger of Fountains of Wayne, and Cheap Trick is prepping for the “Sgt. Pepper’s” engagement in Vegas, a role it has played several times before, including a two-night run in front of 38,000 fans in Los Angeles.
“I honestly didn’t tell that many people we were doing it, because we’re not really known for being a cover band,” Nielsen said. “People really loved it. Since then, we’ve been requested to do this a bunch. And they want us in Vegas, maybe for a whole year. We still are Cheap Trick, and it’s thrown in some extra juice.”
As the band did in L.A., it will be working with original “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” engineer Geoff Emerick. Nielsen, like most people, was familiar with the album, but he still had to do his homework to prepare for the first round of shows.
“I knew the music, like a lot of people did — I heard it,” he said. “I quit learning songs and learning guitar riffs and guitar solos back in the ’60s, because that’s when I started writing stuff, so I wasn’t copying anyone anymore. … Mostly I knew them in my head, but I never put pen to paper or pick to guitar. I actually had to learn those and put in my own flair. We don’t wear any gold lam� or dress up like the guys on ‘Sgt. Pepper’ or fake our English accents or whatever. I think we do it justice.”
On Sunday, Cheap Trick will kick off a long night of music, returning to the mountain after opening for Journey last summer. Asked how he feels about opening for Def Leppard and Poison, Nielsen’s answer was simple.
“Lots of hits and a lot of good, fun bands,” he said. “I think the audience is in for some fun. If you like music and you like fun, this is the place to be.”
