Celebrating Robin Zander on his 71st birthday. —Ed.
‘twas just the middle of last month that Real Gone Music released Cheap Trick’s Live at The Whisky 1977 in a 4CD 2,000 copy edition which has already sold out at the source. However, its rapid-fire scarcity doesn’t mean the release is no longer worthy of appraisal. To the contrary, this generous documentation of four nights in the early days of a canonical band explicates their sustained popularity across a spectrum of fandom that includes classic rock aficionados, power-pop diehards, and even punks with a passion for hooks. Parties interested in obtaining a copy of Live at The Whisky 1977 need to peruse store inventories while perhaps lobbying for a repress, hopefully this time on vinyl.
By the time I’d been fully exposed to Rockford, IL’s Cheap Trick in the early 1980s, they were fully established arena rock stars. Indeed, they had a bona fide frontman with charisma and sex appeal in Robin Zander, as bassist Tom Petersson was no slouch in the good looks department. Adding depth to the lineup, guitarist and primary songwriter Rick Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos were a pair of colorful characters.
Carlos (real name Brad Carlson), with his business suits (complete with loosened neck ties and unbuttoned vests) and smoldering cigarettes dangling from below his moustache, teetered on eccentricity, looking more like a public accountant under duress in the waning moments of a hotel bar’s happy hour than the on-the-money sticksman for one of ’70s power-pop’s defining and most successful bands.
This stature was earned through catchy, smart songwriting and sharp execution. By the early ’80s, Cheap Trick had settled comfortably into rock’s mainstream, getting there through the somewhat unexpected smash sales figures of the live in Japan LP Cheap Trick at Budokan (initially a US import) and the steadily rising chart placements of studio albums two (In Color, ’77), three (Heaven Tonight, ’78) and four (Dream Police, ’79), plus their associated hit singles.
At my personal point of discovery, Cheap Trick had landed two cuts on the soundtrack to the animated adult fantasy (and soon to be cult) flick Heavy Metal, and a few years later, contributed the title song to the college comedy Up the Creek. That film’s modest success is emblematic of a cooling off in Cheap Trick’s commercial fortunes as the ’80s progressed, a temporary circumstance eradicated by 1988’s Lap of Luxury, which featured a returning Tom Petersson and their only #1 hit “The Flame,” a lighters aloft arena anthem if ever one was.
By 1988 and the momentary ubiquity of “The Flame,” my personal listening habits had shifted pretty far away from Cheap Trick in favor of the decade’s underground rock racket, though interestingly, one of the noisier bands in this scene, Big Black of Chicago, had released a cover of “He’s a Whore” as a single in ’87, and with a picture sleeve lampooning-paying homage to the now iconic B&W cover photo for Cheap Trick’s essential eponymous early ’77 debut.
Some might find it surprising today, but Cheap Trick was a slow seller upon release, though as the sound of the crowds on Live at the Whisky 1977 make clear, the band had tapped into a rather passionate fanbase, with Rodney Bingenheimer (who introduced this five-night Whisky run) comparing the aura and enthusiasm to Beatlemania.
That’s an overstatement, natch, but it does illustrate that Cheap Trick were not only bursting with energy for these Whisky performances, but were also young enough that the late shows on 6/3 and 6/4 (discs two and four) capture the band’s fully warmed-up swagger: discs one and three are the early shows from 6/3 and 6/4 (and please note that a 2LP of tracks from Cheap Trick’s Whisky stand was issued for Record Store Day in 2020 as Out To Get You! (Live 1977).
Live at The Whisky 1977 is a bountiful immersion in Cheap Trick’s distinctive essence at this fledgling vantage point, as they throttle the shit out of songs from an underselling debut alongside fresh compositions, as the recording of In Color was the reason for this trip to Los Angeles. By extension, Live at the Whisky foreshadows Budokan, as every song from that breakthrough disc is heard here, a few in multiples; the exceptions are “Need Your Love,” “I Want You to Want Me,” and “Surrender.”
“He’s a Whore” (a lyrically acerbic tune about a gigolo) is the only song to make all four set lists on Live at the Whisky, emphasizing the song’s popularity in the band’s early days (requests from the audience are audible more than once), with the tune’s frequency reinforcing Cheap Trick’s edge and energy and illuminating something of a punkish scenario.
At the same time, there’s a level of showmanship in these performances that’s most explicitly highlighted by the rev ‘em up opener “Hello There” and the send them home happy set capper “Goodnight” (essentially the same tune with different lyrics). It’s a crowd-pleasing impulse that’s at odds with how punk purported to disdain the standards of professionalism. And this very pro comportment jibes well with the band’s knowledge of and respect for R&R history (e.g. “Ain’t That a Shame”), a facet they share with their power-pop contemporaries.
After Budokan exploded, Cheap Trick refined their attack to maximize success without sacrificing uniqueness. That’s a cool maneuver, but the sound of those early days is really something special, and Live at the Whisky 1977 has it in spades.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
