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Guy Record From The Vault: Cheap Trick's 'Heaven Tonight'
by William S. Repsher

published 9/13/99

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William Repsher is a LeisureSuit.net staff writer based in Queens.



MOST RECENT YAK ABOUT THIS ARTICLE:

Subj: Re: Dream Police
Uh, Mike, no. You're wrong. I just read through the liner notes from the Cheap Trick box set. You'll have to point out to me where it states that the Dream Police album was finished before the Budokan album hit it big in America. This just isn't true. I won't dispute that they were working on and nearly finished the album when Budokanwas released domestically in the US. (I bought it at least three months before this on Japanese import ...)

If you could find any documentation stating that Cheap Trick had finished Dream Polic before releasing Live at Budokan, I'd love to see it. Please, prove me wrong.

And I'll stick to my guns - the album is disjointed and extremely half-assed, especially compared to Heaven Tonight, which is a great album of 70s. The truth is Nielsen was working from a huge stockpile of songs that he had written in the early 70s (stuff like Need Your Love, Gonna Raise Hell and Dream Police were floating around in one form or another for a good few years before being released on this album). You'd have to talk to Nielsen directly about each song to find out when each was written and then actually recorded. Dream Police was the start of Cheap Trick losing its way ... which is no crime. They put out four great albums in a row, and it's hard to maintain that sort of pace.

But, again, Mike -- prove me wrong here.

-- William S. Repsher Responds
Nov 3, 2005 at 8:06PM

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What is the only album I've owned on eight track, record, cassette and CD (twice)?

The answer: "Heaven Tonight" by Cheap Trick. I have a hard time figuring out if it really was that "big" of an album in the first place. In my memory, it's an album that defined a point in my life ("I'm 14!") more than any other. I recently discovered that "Surrender"--the big single from the album and a 70's standard--only reached #62 on the Billboard Hot 100. (As opposed to their awful 1988 power-ballad, "The Flame", which hit #1.) "Heaven Tonight" itself only hit #48 on the album chart.

Their two previous albums sounded either too raw ("Cheap Trick") or too polished ("In Color"). "Heaven Tonight" had just the right balance. New wave was emerging at the time, but it's wise to remember that in most places, the proportion of kids listening to Journey and Styx as opposed to The Clash and The Sex Pistols was about a 90/10 split. Cheap Trick and The Ramones were the only bands I knew who bridged the gap between late 70's AOR giants and punk; I wouldn't be surprised to find the Ramones did even worse in the charts.

"Live at Budokan" followed "Heaven Tonight", and even if that album made them superstars (with the top-ten hit "I Want You to Want Me"), it was an average live album. It was unusual, though, in that the album was put out after being wildly successful in Japan, and import copies of it were flying off record-store shelves in America. With only three albums out and their highest ranking in any Billboard format #48, "Live at Budokan" was an educated guess that succeeded beyond anyone's expectations.

Thanks to "Frampton Comes Alive", live albums were a late-70's staple that, thankfully, died by the mid-80's. Live albums still get made, but back then, nearly every band, in lieu of a greatest hits collection or new material, would hastily throw together a "live" album. I put "live" in quotations because many of those albums were studio-enhanced with cleaner-sounding guitars and vocals. Even without that, it's the rare live album that stands on any artistic merit rather than as product for fans. A grave sign of danger upon scanning a "live" album back cover was noticing a song normally four minutes long clocking in around ten. That meant endless, unimaginative guitar and drum solos, and some "Hello, Cleveland" style stoner intro from the shag-haired lead singer in which he would say "fuck" a few times and compliment the audience on its ability to "get stoned" and "rock."

Following the success of "Live at Budokan", Cheap Trick's next album of new material, "Dream Police", felt like what it was--the band, disjointed by their massive worldwide success, trying to remember how they did it in the first place and not quite getting there. I remember listening to that album and feeling like some part of my life was being left behind.

But with "Heaven Tonight", I wore the eight track out (which wasn't hard, as eight tracks sucked). I wore the record out. The cassette and CD's came later in life, when the music no longer was a lifestyle complement, but I wanted a copy nearby. (I bought it twice on CD because the band issued a remastered version with bonus tracks: I got burned, save for another 30 seconds in the alternate version of "Surrender".) Today, I can listen to it and still sense its greatness, although the meaning has changed, unless I want to start driving around in circles all night with my friends in a souped-up '76 Nova and call out "hey, little pussy" to teenage girls on the street. Somehow, I picture that working even less well in my 30's.

Cheap Trick: not your average 70's rockers.
Cheap Trick was a visual in-joke. They had two chiseled rock gods (lead singer Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson) and two homely freaks (drummer Bun E. Carlos and mastermind/lead guitarist Rick Nielsen). Although it's not fair to call Carlos a freak--he simply looked like an accountant, which was freakish in the context of a 70's rock band, where image meant everything. Nielsen, always sporting a cardigan sweater and baseball hat with the bill upturned, was a dead ringer for Huntz Hall from The Bowery Boys movie series. His ulterior motive for wearing the hat, like Daryl Dragon from the Captain and Tenille, was that he was losing his hair. Baseball hats are much cooler than captain hats; beware of any man wearing a captain hat who is not sailing a ship.

The band always sounded as it looked: fun, approachable, vaguely elegant and understanding of the complete confusion most kids felt towards the adult world. But rather than preaching and pandering to their audience, they had fun. (It helped that they were older than most bands; Nielsen was 29 in 1978.) The teenage protagonist in "Surrender" wakes from a nap to the shocking sight of his parents rolling joints and jamming to KISS records on the living-room couch. The song ends with Zander and Nielsen chanting, "We're all all right/We're all all right." Such cross-generational generosity was, and still is, a rare sign of pop-rock maturity. The song's biting humor is lessened today, as a kid's parents may very well routine get stoned on the couch and unironically jam to their old KISS records.

They also got into the darker side of teen angst. "Auf Wiedersehen" is a suicide note of a song that ends with Zander repeatedly howling the word "suicide." All these years later, I'm amazed that the band has never been singled out in a courtroom because some misguided kid offed himself while listening to it. I can still recall my junior-high poetry teacher playing this and Queen's "The Prophet Song" as examples of why she was "deeply concerned with that state of youth today." Thank God she never saw Over the Edge (starring Matt Dillon), a hammy, amoral 70's teen rebellion flick that was playing about four times a day on HBO and had a soundtrack by Cheap Trick.

"Heaven Tonight" had just the right balance.
"Heaven Tonight" also puts out an eerie, destructive vibe, although the lyrics are less direct. This is the kind of music a guy would play after being dumped by a girlfriend and firmly believing it was the end of the world. Or party music for a foggy Halloween night in the 7-11 parking lot. It segues nicely with Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" in terms of melodramatic 70's teen bombast.

The rest of the album is far more upbeat. "California Man" is a cover of song by the Move, one of Nielsen's favorite bands, lead by Roy Wood. Lesser know in America, the Move had a string of late-60's hits in England and mutated into Electric Light Orchestra in the early 70's, at which time Wood left the band to Jeff Lynne, while Wood formed Wizard and had a succession of English glam-rock hits. Too experimental to be a consistent commercial success, and, frankly, too poorly produced, Roy Wood has undeservedly become a footnote in rock history. He was a direct influence on Cheap Trick (and all 70's power pop bands).

"On Top of the World" could have been a hit but wasn't even released as a single. On this song in particular, one can hear the hard rock and pop influences, with Nielsen knocking out raunchy guitar solos between tight verses and melodic choruses. It's interesting to note that John Lennon invited the band (minus Zander) to play on his "Double Fantasy" album. On the recent Lennon box set, Lennon Anthology, the one song salvaged from those sessions, "I'm Losing You," sounds markedly tougher than the released version and very similar to the production on this song.

The album has no misfires but comes close on "High Roller" with such profound lyrics as, "Jump in my love car" and "I want to have a thing with you." Luckily, the music covers some inane, macho 70's blathering that Zander was mostly responsible for. (He claims the song was about a Wisconsin drug dealer; that's no excuse.) Yet I am certain many a lad admired his peach-fuzz mustache in the rear-view mirror with this song blasting from the eight track, no doubt while fondling the hanging fuzzy dice designating that he was, indeed, a high roller. I'm just glad the band never called a song "Free Mustache Rides."

"Takin' Me Back", "On the Radio", "Stiff Competition" and "How Are You?" round out the album with the kind of solid power pop that seemed like second nature to Cheap Trick, but wouldn't be so easy for them to replicate a few years later. I listen to this album now and simply hear a well-made pop record. The songs are good to great, the production is perfect and, with "Surrender," the band had a teen anthem that still makes sense.

But I remember how I felt about it back then. Some nights, I'd literally play the damn thing three or four times in a row. "Heaven Tonight" and "Auf Wiedersehen" served as emotional cushions for my various teenage defeats and embarrassments, whatever they might have been. "Surrender" and "On Top of the World" could drive my mood from blasé to euphoric, for no other reason than the songs themselves.

There was simply something about the way that album aligned with my mindset at the time, the relatively uncomplicated world of a 14-year-old teenage male in the late 70's, in ways that are no longer possible. Even if someone made the perfect album for me today, I would love it, listen to it constantly, but not have that same intense affinity I felt for "Heaven Tonight". (Such an album came out last year: "This Is Hardcore" by Pulp. Man, does it rocks, Jarvis Cocker knows me, man, etc.)

Cheap Trick was cool for so many reasons. They were lead by a dick; Rick Nielsen could out-nerd even the most bug-eyed of high-school losers. Their music, far more than their lyrics (which could be pedestrian), touched a nerve with their fans, in ways I don't see bands today that pander to kids' baser instincts getting anywhere near. They never spoke down to their audience, or pretended their world was nonstop doom, gloom and lame posturing. I'm a happier person in general these days, but I had moments as a teenager that were so intensely ecstatic or dismal that it would be easy to look back and get all sappy. "Heaven Tonight" is a constant reminder for me that being a teenager was great, and it sucked, and there's no need to praise or damn it. Not many bands are willing to be that honest.


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Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Dream Police
-- Nov 3, 2005 at 8:06PM
Uh, Mike, no. You're wrong. I just read through the liner notes from the Cheap Trick box set. You'll have to point out to me where it states that the Dream Police album was finished before the Budokan album hit it big in America. This just isn't true. I won't dispute that they were working on and nearly finished the album when Budokanwas released domestically in the US. (I bought it at least three months before this on Japanese import ...)

If you could find any documentation stating that Cheap Trick had finished Dream Polic before releasing Live at Budokan, I'd love to see it. Please, prove me wrong.

And I'll stick to my guns - the album is disjointed and extremely half-assed, especially compared to Heaven Tonight, which is a great album of 70s. The truth is Nielsen was working from a huge stockpile of songs that he had written in the early 70s (stuff like Need Your Love, Gonna Raise Hell and Dream Police were floating around in one form or another for a good few years before being released on this album). You'd have to talk to Nielsen directly about each song to find out when each was written and then actually recorded. Dream Police was the start of Cheap Trick losing its way ... which is no crime. They put out four great albums in a row, and it's hard to maintain that sort of pace.

But, again, Mike -- prove me wrong here.

Name: Mike Janowski
Subject: Dream Police
-- Nov 3, 2005 at 6:13PM
Loved your article, but have to correct a typical mis-statement (typical because it's been made by many a person).

"Dream Police" was recorded, mixed and in the can BEFORE the American chart success of "I Want You to Want Me"; and in fact, its release was delayed by several months as Epic rushed a domestic "Buddohkan" ; release to market and milked it for all they could. Thus, "Dream Police" is not:

"...the band, disjointed by their massive worldwide success, trying to remember how they did it in the first place and not quite getting there."

It is the fourth Cheap Trick record, and unfortunately, is misunderstood because of the massive popularity of "I Want You..."

For the real story about "Dream Police" all you have to do is read the liner notes in the box set "Sex in America"...that shouldn't be too difficult to research, now should it!

Name: Mr Egg
Subject: Last Guy
-- Jul 22, 2005 at 12:04PM
What a nut.

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Cheap Trick
-- Feb 1, 2005 at 2:58PM
Not so sure about your facts, asshole. I know the American release of Live at Budokan was delayed for a good year while Surrender did great on the singles charts and Heaven Tonight did all right on the album charts, but not quite sure the entire album was recorded BEFORE LaB.

I think what you're trying to say, if you could put down the crack pipe for one minute, is that Dream Police was recorded BEFORE the American release of Live at Budokan. And I'm not even sure that's true. I suspect they sat on the album for a good year and edited whatever they had -- knocking out some tracks/adding others in the interim.

Not BEFORE the tracks themselves were recorded for Live at Budokahn.

Does that make sense to you? Or would you care to explain to me why there are NO TRACKS FROM DREAM POLICE (save Need Your Love ... which they had been kicking around the previous year or two in concert) on the Budokan album (not even the complete concert released years later)?

"The label shelved the 4th studio album to give Budokan a chance to sell well & long before releasing Dream Police."

Both albums were released in America in 1979.

But let's not miss the main fact here -- the album still sounds a little off compared to the first four. Not crapping on anyone's arts, Einstein -- just giving an honest opinion. And Dream Police was surely not recorded before the band recorded the tracks in Japan for Live at Budokan. Get that shit out of your head right now.

Name: sav_sall@hotmail.com
Subject: Cheap Trick
-- Feb 1, 2005 at 2:25PM
Way to diss AND miss. ["Dream Police", felt like what it was--the band, disjointed by their massive worldwide success, trying to remember how they did it in the first place and not quite getting there.]
Dream Police was recorded BEFORE Live At Budokan was. The record label (Epic) was planning Dream Police's release when import copies of the Japan-only intended Budokan became an underground hit stateside. The label shelved the 4th studio album to give Budokan a chance to sell well & long before releasing Dream Police. This was good for sales of both albums. Next time, do your research before you crap on someone's art.
-Sav-

Name: Patrick CAEN
Subject: mail by Dan on Cheap Trick
-- Jan 26, 2005 at 10:12AM
Dear Dan, if you keep looking for Brahm Trakowsky, you'll never find anything. The man your in search of is BRAM TCHAIKOVSKY (a former member of Brititsh band The Motors). You'll find "Sara smiles" on the lp Strange man, changed man" issued on RADAR Records in 1979.
Just to please,
PC

Name: Dan
Subject: Cheap Trick
-- Dec 28, 2004 at 11:56PM
You got them right on. Thanks for the site. Ever hear of a band call Brahm trakowski that made an EP with "Sara Smiles" That is a great late 70's song I could never find again.
Ever hear Spooner from Madison, Wi. They went on to be Garbage but they were really cool.

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Cheap Trick AND Pulp!
-- Dec 31, 2003 at 7:02AM
Sucking at music criticism is actually an attribute, so don't feel so bad.

That was a good time for music, if you knew where to look. Sure didn't seem it at the time.

Song you should tack down on the web to get another nice late 70s jolt: "Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again" by Angel City.

Name: ravenessa
Subject: Cheap Trick AND Pulp!
-- Dec 31, 2003 at 12:07AM
Yeah! I love em both, too, and Cheap Trick definitely seduced me across the musical pop culture bridge from cheesy mall rat rock like KISS, to everything else like New Wave, Punk, Glam, etc. I keep having to look back at CT's influence on me because it keeps expanding, and being redifined and I keep hearing more bands from around that time who may have shared the sound in some ways but didn't have the impact (like Sweet,Prix, Queen and a bunch of other power pop and/or glam rock bands such as those on that Shake It Up power pop compilation) that CT did, on me. I suck at music criticism because I missed huge portions of "important stuff" that has come out over the years, so forgive me.
Still, I relate to your time and place regarding this memorable band.

Name: ramon
Subject: donbear
-- Oct 15, 2002 at 10:39AM
send me please the letter of the ghost town song

Name: Steve C
Subject: Heaven Tonight
-- Nov 10, 2001 at 6:29PM
I recently rediscovered my love for this album. I had forgotten what this album was so important to me. Like the author of the article stated, this album was a coming together or all of their talents at once, and since then the band has failed to match the intensity and uniqueness of this album. My two favorites (besides Surrender, which drew my attention to the album in the first place) are California Man (which says ROCK AND ROLL) and Stiff Competition (a hard-hitting song, with a main riff I cannot get out of my head!) After recently finding this CD again after 20 years without the music, I feel 16 again. Yes, Heaven Tonight is still Heaven Today!

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Albums
-- Feb 7, 2001 at 4:44PM
I won't argue with the statement that the first four Cheap Trick albums are great. But after that ... wooh, connect the dots. Dream Police was spotty, All Shook Up the same and One on One was where I officially stopped buying them on name alone. THere are good songs on all these albums, and even their later 80s and 90s stuff, but those first four are like the four horsemen of the metal-pop apocalypse, man. Have you heard Doulbe Live Gonzo, man? Intensities in 10 Cities?

Just asking rhetorically, of course.

Name: Steve
Subject: Albums
-- Feb 7, 2001 at 3:38PM
C'mon! Heaven Tonight is Cheap Tricks best album. Pretty much without a doubt. But is it really necessary to bash their other albums while praising the best. The truth is Cheap Trick, In Color, and Live at Budakon are great albums. I agree that live albums are totally stupid. But when a band gives themself a name for a live album. That's pretty cool!

Name: zoe
Subject: Re: High Roller
-- Jan 25, 2001 at 9:57PM
mmmkay. i didn't mean you were stupid! i don't know much so it was just my opinion.

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: High Roller
-- Jan 25, 2001 at 7:14AM
I'm not stupid. Where' the irony? Would you like me to run off a direct quote from Robin Zander about the writing of the song, which strongly suggests there was nothing ironic in his intentions?

Name: zoe
Subject: High Roller
-- Jan 25, 2001 at 12:51AM
in my opinion, that song isn't what it appears. some people might be stupid enough to think it is and to take it seriously in turn, but it always seemed to meant as a dark parody of some sort.
that's the beauty of CT. they have a great grasp of irony.

Name: tony b.
Subject: Excellent Review
-- Oct 28, 2000 at 7:14AM
You have written the best review for this album I've ever read. You blew me away when you wondered why CT never got hauled into court! I've always wondered about that. I think a lot of it is that CT never posed as heros/poets/cultural icons/pop culture authorities. They just wrote cool songs that covered a whole spectrum of emotions and never got stuck at the bottom or top. To some extent that's probably hindered them --- they've never been easy to pin down in any genre. I remember people being so damn baffled by them...Metal?Maybe. Bubblegum? A little. New Wave? Sorta... Rock 'n'Roll? DEFINITELY!!!!!!

Name: Shelley
Subject: "Heaven Tonight" LP
-- Oct 12, 2000 at 9:10AM
Does anyone have Cheaptrick's "Heaven Tonight" LP they'd be willing to give up? I'd love to have it and would like it before Oct. 28th. Thanks!

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: My theory which is mine
-- Jan 12, 2000 at 8:36PM
Yes, Cheap Trick should have gotten dolled up in make-up designating them as various characters. The Weasel (Nielsen), The Bulldog (Carlos), The Eagle (Zander) and the Poodle (Petersson). They were too old to be bona fide members of the Army. The only kid I knew in the KISS Army was Billy Heiser, famous for pissing on hit radiators and going, "Man, dig that smell."

Name: Jordan@LeisureSuit.net
Subject: My theory which is mine
-- Jan 12, 2000 at 6:12PM
Look at the picture you've got up here with the subtitle Not Your Average 70s Rockers. . . . Look at Tom Peterson. . . .is he ape-ing Gene Simmons? Tying his hair back into that little top-o-the-head ponytail, but letting it flow freely at his shoulders. . . .and the tongue? We all know the Trick were members of The Army (at least the parents were, when doing drugs on the couch!)

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Guy Record From The Vault: Cheap Trick's 'Heaven Tonight'
-- Oct 16, 1999 at 7:29PM
Nothing against Cheap Trick's first album -- a good, raw workout that stands on its own merits. But I don't think the songs are as good. The weird thing about Cheap Trick is that many of the songs that appeared on their first three albums had been written in bits and pieces years before by Nielsen in bands like Fuse and Sick Man of Europe. All he did was stockpile them, take riffs from some and use some songs in their entirety on those first few albums. I think he wrote "Surrender" in the early 70s! The highlight of that first album for me is their cover of Terry Reid's "Speak Now (or Forever Hold Your Peace)." Choosing between their first and Heaven Tonight is like choosing between Cindy Crawford and Wynona Rider for a blind date. Pulp daft? No wonder you didn't sign your name!

Name: An LS.n Reader
Subject: Guy Record From The Vault: Cheap Trick's 'Heaven Tonight'
-- Oct 16, 1999 at 1:54PM
C'mon! You would been a lot better off with Trick's first album.(And "pulp" are just plain daft)

Name: Smokey
Subject: Trick
-- Sep 14, 1999 at 3:34PM
On top of the world and you CAN'T GET ANY HIGHER!!!

Great article; I love Cheap Trick.

Name: William S. Repsher Responds
Subject: Re: Trick
-- Sep 14, 1999 at 10:54AM
Let me tell you, Smokey, it wasn't easy -- it was hard as hell. I didn't get luck in a wishing well. I never worked so hard or had so much pain. But I wouldn't change for anything.


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