Review: 'This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick'

When future "Jason Bourne" novelist Eric Van Lustbader began his fanciful liner notes for the first Cheap Trick album with "This band has no past," he was practically issuing a challenge to rock writers. At least that's how it now seems since Brian J. Kramp went to great lengths to prove Van Lustbader wrong in his new book This Band Has No Past: How Cheap Trick Became Cheap Trick. Not only does Cheap Trick--those saviors of old-fashioned rock and ribaldry--have a past, but it's a really involved one. All four original members were already in working bands ten years before Cheap Trick released that debut. Rick Nielsen was playing piano on sessions for The Yardbirds and opening for that group and The Who with his own band The Grim Reapers. With all due tasteless Cheap Trick-style irony, The Grim Reapers were scheduled to open for Otis Redding at a show the headliner could not perform due to his tragic death (The Reapers went on, though). Nielsen and Tom Petersson played in a prog group called Fuse fronted by former Nazz vocalist Thom Mooney. A pre-Robin Zander Cheap Trick opened for and backed Del Shannon, Freddy Boom Boom Cannon, Bo Diddley, and Chuck Berry at a Rock & Roll Revival show. For a band with no past, those guys really worked their asses off before becoming the Cheap Trick we know and love.

Track by Track: ‘Cheap Trick’ by Cheap Trick

In this ongoing feature on Psychobabble, I’ll be taking a close look at albums of the classic, underrated, and flawed variety, and assessing them Track by Track.

1977: the year that Punk provided Rock & Roll with a much-needed high colonic. The new guard led by The Clash and The Sex Pistols chided the old guard of classic rockers (“No Beatles, Elvis, or the Rolling Stones in 1977”) no matter how much that new guard owed to the old one. Still, punk did its damnedest to flush out the pretentious concepts, endless guitar and drum solos, and godlier than thou stance that had been dominating popular music since the end of the ‘60s. The punks initially scoffed at the artiness that had seeped into Rock & Roll since psychedelic ’67, though, many of them—including The Clash, The Damned, Radio Birdman, Pere Ubu, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Adverts, and The Buzzcocks— would soon incorporate many psych trappings in their most interesting work. If it wasn’t raw, raunchy, shouted, and shredded, it was nowhere. And though the best punks welcomed elements of old-fashioned, Who-inspired power pop into their music, they were careful not to stray too far from the two-chords-and-a-pissy-attitude formula (another posture that would soon fade). This is why the purists cast a skeptical eye toward folks like The Jam, Joe Jackson, and Elvis Costello, with their skinny ties and pesky melodies.




Cheap Trick never received flack for being posers the way Weller, Jackson, or Costello did because they operated on their own power-pop planet. Too polished for the punks, too snide for the classic rockers, Cheap Trick was a band bred for culthood. Robin Zander may have looked the golden god, with his pretty puss and blonde mane, but his demented yowl may have even been too much for the Zep Heads. Rick Nielsen’s lead guitar work (“and when we say lead, we’re not kidding: he’s got thirty-five guitars” future novelist Eric von Lustbader boasted in the original liner notes) could go head-to-head with that of Jimmy Page, but his Huntz Hall get up wasn’t going to get him on any centerfolds. Bun E. Carlos looked more like he should be wiping dipsticks than waving drumsticks. Only bassist Tom Petersson really looked and played the part of classic rocker, but who paid any attention to him?