Those who have followed the legendary power pop band Cheap Trick over the last five decades know that they have consistently toured every year, cranking out such rock hits as “I Want You to Want Me,” “Dream Police,” “Surrender,” “I Can’t Take It” and “The Flame.” But despite their busy live schedule, the lineup of singer Robin Zander, guitarist Rick Nielsen, bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Daxx Nielsen managed to squeeze in time to record their new studio album, All Washed Up.
“It’s always on our mind that we’re going to do another record,” Petersson says. “So that whole time, we’re coming up with ideas, and then we’ll all sit together and say, ‘Okay. We’re ready to do a record. What have you got?’ ‘Oh, okay. Let’s work on that.’ ‘Let’s do this.’ That’s how it goes.”
Another classic-sounding effort from Cheap Trick that harkens back to the sound of their late 1970s and early 1980s output, All Washed Up was recorded in various studios, mostly in Nashville. It was co-produced by the band and their longtime collaborator Julian Raymond.
“I think because he’s such a fan,” Petersson says about working with Raymond consistently over the years. “He sees us better than we can really see ourselves and brings out the best. He just really knows everything about our music. It’s like, ‘Hey, why don’t you do this?’ It’s hard to explain. He’s really like a fifth member, honestly.”
Ahead of All Washed Up’s release, Cheap Trick unveiled the album’s first single, the excellent “Twelve Gates,” which has been part of the current setlist. “It was just a track that I had done at home,” Petersson says. “I have a little Pro Tools set up. I just thought it was one of those things that sounded like us. And Robin heard it, and he went, ‘Oh, let’s work on that.’ And so we went for it.”
The pile-driving “The Riff That Won’t Quit” is another standout showcasing Nielsen’s dazzling guitar solo and his son Daxx’s incredible drum work. “Daxx has never been better,” lauds Petersson. “He’s great. That’s a cool track. It’s riffs. That’s our big thing, too.”
“The Best Thing” might be Cheap Trick’s most handsome ballad in a long time, a track that Peterssson says he personally loves and calls it “one of those things that just sounded really good. Like, ‘Okay. Let’s work on that. Let’s finish that song.’ So that’s what we did. That’s one of the 11 that we decided to do, and we concentrated on each one of those, and we didn’t change anything. We just went in and finished those 11 songs, and that was the end of it.”
Zander delivers some fine performances of his own on All Washed Up, including the AC/DC-sounding rocker “All Wrong Long Gone” and the album’s closing number, the jazzy “Wham Boom Bang,” which sounds like a 1930s Tin Pan Alley-era song. “It’s just something about it struck us,” Petersson says of the latter. “Robin brought it in, and it’s like, ‘Yeah, I really like this.’ It’s just got a cool thing about it. We just do things that we just happen to like. I don’t know that anybody wants to hear it, or I have no idea what they want to hear. It sort of is acoustic.
“It’s like Beatles records,” he continues. “I always thought they had everything on it, like the White Album, for example. I mean, that thing is all over the place. And because of it, it’s this great body of work. It’s not just all hard rock or all metal or all dance songs or all slow songs. It’s really a whole piece of music. A lot of the things are very different on there. I think every one of our records is like that. There’s always something that’s like, ‘Wow, that’s you guys?’”
Amid the release of the new record, Cheap Trick played some recent dates in Japan, the country where they first broke through commercially with the success of 1979’s At Budokan live album and its single “I Want You to Want Me.” Their last show at the Budokan was billed as the band’s goodbye to the famed venue in Tokyo.
“The promoter said it was a farewell to Budokan,” Petersson explains. “It was their idea to promote it that way…That’s what they wanted, and that’s what we gave them. I think that they were surprised that we did so well. We sold out Budokan and Osaka. It was great. It was really, really something. And I was like, ‘Oh, maybe this shouldn’t be their last.’”
Petersson acknowledges the legacy of the band’s performance at Budokan in 1978 every time they visit Japan. “You can’t help it,” he says. “It’s so different. I can’t even really explain it. It was really an emotional time because there were all these older fans who had little or big kids . They’re like, “I was just a kid when I came to see you, and now I have a 19-year-old son.” We were really surprised. We didn’t know how it was going to come out, and it was fantastic. It was a great – it was a great last time at Budokan.”
Right after the Japan tour, the band played in Los Angeles for a benefit concert mounted by the Who, a group that certainly influenced Cheap Trick’s sound. “That was the best live act I’d ever seen,” Petersson says of the Who. “And I’m still waiting to see a better live act…I saw them open for Herman’s Hermits the first time, so you know I’m old. Then I saw them right after that, and they did their own show. It’s like there’s no going back. These guys were so great. I can’t even explain it.
“They asked us to do this teen cancer benefit. And it’s like the day after we came back from Japan, no problem…It was a nice thing to have happen right after Budokan.”
All Washed Up is the 21st studio offering from a band whose rich catalog includes their 1977 self-titled debut, In Color, Dream Police, Lap of Luxury, Next Position Please and Rockford. Of those records, Petersson is partial to the group’s third album, Heaven Tonight, from 1978, produced by Tom Werman, who, until Raymond, had worked with Cheap Trick the most often.
“The first album [Cheap Trick] was great with Jack Douglas. We’re in the studio for the first time, and it was fantastic. And it sounded like us. The second album [In Color] we did with Tom Werman didn’t sound like us. He was an A&R guy at Epic Records, our label. We didn’t know him. But he was the radio guy: ‘I know what people want to hear. You guys are great, but only if you didn’t sound like yourselves.’”
In Color toned down the band’s usually hard-edged sound in a bid for radio airplay, but it didn’t gain traction on the chart. “The second album got the lead review in Rolling Stone. Nothing helped [commercially in the U.S.]. We’re like, ‘Hey, we did this record, and it doesn’t even sound like us. You didn’t know what you’re talking about.’ So all of a sudden, we got our control back of it. That’s why Heaven Tonight sounds like us as opposed to that second album.”
“But that second album was a hit in Japan, so who knows? So I would say that [Heaven Tonight] would be my favorite. It’s usually my favorite songs are the ones you hear the least because you’re not sick of them. It’s hard to say.”
Tracks from Heaven Tonight were performed during Cheap Trick’s visit to Japan in 1978, which was recorded and released as At Budokan the following year. “Looking back on it in ’78, when we first went there, we were only successful in Japan at that point. That’s why we went over there. We had all these hit songs off of our second album, but nowhere else. We were not doing any business at all. So we do Budokan, and it’s complete mania, and it’s just great.
“And we come back, and I don’t know, we’re in Bettendorf, Iowa, at Shakey’s Pizza Parlor for eight people — “Freebird!” ‘Okay, we’re back to reality.’ That’s what happened until that record [At Budokan] came out, and it became a hit worldwide. That was pure luck. I always thought if we’d known it was going to be successful, we’d have put a lot more thought into it.”
As they continue to play shows for the rest of this year, including some dates with Heart. Cheap Trick has now been together for over 50 years since the original lineup of Nielsen, Petersson. Zander and drummer Bun E. Carlos formed in Rockford, Ill.
“We just got lucky,” Petersson says about the group’s longevity. “And we were lucky that we did well enough that we could continue. Most groups don’t do well enough to make a living. But we did well enough that we could continue, but never well enough that we could stop. We had to keep going. We’re a working band. We’re not the Rolling Stones or the Eagles. We’re not selling out stadiums, headlining. It isn’t like that.”
On the band members’ current relationship with each other, Petersson says it has been good as it ever was. “We started as working partners,” he recalls. “We weren’t like best buddies, like, ‘Hey, let’s get a band together.’ We were in different groups and in the same little town where we grew up. We all kind of knew about each other. You’re always trying to get the best people to work with, which is almost impossible because there’s never any money involved — ‘Would you care to ruin your life?’ But it just fell together like that as a working relationship. So it’s always been like that.”