Cheap Trick - 1977

* This article first appeared May 25, 2010 on Crawdaddy.com. *


Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick (Epic, 1977)


Before cutting their first record, reputedly armed with a repertoire well north of 200 songs, Cheap Trick was the kind of hardcore road dogs that could work the bar band circuit from Rockford to Rochester with their eyes closed. It is rumored that many roads were not even yet paved before Cheap Trick blazed their trail through the Midwest.

From the opening strains of “Hot Love”, the first song on their first album, Cheap Trick fearlessly and ferociously matched the fire and intensity of the burgeoning brats of the punk scene. Already a globe-trotting, guitar-collecting veteran when he and Tom Petersson assembled Cheap Trick from the ashes of their previous band (Sick Man of Europe), Rick Nielsen launched into the band’s 1977 rip-roaring raw debut album with a frenetic guitar riff that sounds like a yelping coyote leaping through fire. From there, the record does not let up, bringing the heat and the hooks for 40 unrelenting minutes of pure pop fire.

As evidenced by other cover tunes in their live repertoire, Cheap Trick takes possession of Terry Reid’s “Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace”, and there has never been any doubt as to its ownership since their rendition first appeared. A tentative groove pulses from Petersson’s eight-string bass to introduce the song. Soon, all hell breaks loose when subtle pounder Bun E. Carlos lays down a primitive beat to introduce Nielsen’s howling guitar. When describing Cheap Trick though, one must reserve that word—”howling”—for vocalist extraordinaire Robin Zander. Possibly one of the most criminally underrated vocalists of the rock era, Zander hits the ground running, immediately establishing himself as the new gold standard of cocksure crooning. By the song’s end, Zander’s voice is irrefutably without peer, springing forth fully-formed from the starting line.

The album’s go-for-the-throat sequence continues with “He’s A Whore”, a hook-laden rocker that contains the earliest clues of chief songwriter Rick Nielsen’s twisted sense of humor and remains a highlight of many of the band’s live performances. The high energy relents only briefly for the tender “Mandocello.” The only ballad on the record, it reveals an unexpected gentle side to Nielsen’s songwriting and Zander’s vocal skills.

You better catch your breath during that beautiful ballad because the intensity returns with homicidal vengeance for the next tune, the switchblade insanity of “The Ballad Of TV Violence (I’m Not The Only Boy).” Nielsen’s menacing guitar tone threatens to maul and shatter everything in its path (and in its past). By the song’s blazing and frenzied conclusion, you’ll be convinced that Robin Zander’s guttural howls are the sound of a man in primal scream therapy coming unglued and slashing to shreds everything, everybody, and every thought within reach. Listening to Zander’s performance is a breathtaking and exhausting exercise.

Side two scales back the gas-fire intensity only enough to spotlight the band’s incredible arsenal of pop hooks and melodic mastery. As “Elo Kiddies” and “Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School” introduce the second half of the LP with razor sharp distortion and nightmarish invitations to lechery, one realizes that this is not quite the usual pop song fare. “Taxman, Mr. Thief” eerily picks up the sentiment where George Harrison left off, but musically Cheap Trick paints a much more dire picture of the Taxman’s iron-fisted rule with a minor key jam that smells like it’s been singed by the flames of hell.

Closing out the record with “Cry, Cry” and “Oh, Candy”, Cheap Trick showed, perhaps for the first time in the rock era, that fire and fury, “strum und drang,” pathos and pain, can all inform a rockin’ pop song about lost love. And such is the case of “Candy”, one who took his own life and left not one but many to lament the heartbreaking loss.

Ironically, due to a mix-up in the mastering process, sides one and two were reversed at the time of the record’s original release in February 1977 (perhaps due to the band’s insistence that it be labeled with a “Side 1″ and a “Side A”, making the first Cheap Trick album the first “cheap trick?”). As a result, this incredible album was never heard as the band originally intended until the re-mastered, re-sequenced CD was released in 1998. Take this writer’s advice and listen to it as it was originally, albeit erroneously, sequenced. That is, after all, how it was heard for many years and subsequently how it earned its reputation.

Though it is considered an underrated cult classic and even the definitive hard rock record by many, Cheap Trick’s studio efforts would not return to the raw in-your-face sound of their debut until many years later. Amazingly, Cheap Trick continues to set stages ablaze with their incendiary live performances some 30-plus years after the band’s inception.


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[Afterthoughts: One of the regular features on Crawdaddy’s website that I found particularly suited to my writing style was their Crate Digger column. Basically, it was a forum for revisiting old records, hence the “crate digger” moniker. My normal routine for getting stuff on Crawdaddy.com involved pitching four or five story ideas at a time and praying that my editor would give me the green light on at least one of my pitches. Cheap Trick’s debut LP from 1977 is one of my all-time favorite albums so I was beyond ecstatic when I got the opportunity to write this review. It’s the perfect example of how fortunate I was to write for Crawdaddy, even though it would last for just a few short years. Time again my wonderful editor Angie Z. gave me the opportunity to write about something I loved and then see it run on the legendary Crawdaddy. An ocean-size Thank You goes out to thee, Miss Angie! –rh]