WASHINGTON — Might as well surrender. Cheap Trick hits The Fillmore Sunday in Silver Spring.
After rattling off a string of rock hits in the ’70s and ’80s — “I Want You to Want Me” (1977), “Surrender” (1978), “Dream Police” (1979) and “The Flame” (1988) — the band has consistently toured the world while recording 16 studio albums, most recently with “The Latest” (2009).
Longtime bass guitarist Tom Petersson tells WTOP the music crosses generations.
“It seems strange, but there really are a lot of young people who know quite a bit about us,” Petersson tells WTOP. “You see people out there who this was obviously before their time and they’ll be singing along to all these deep cuts and first album cuts. It’s fantastic.”
All youth, regardless of generation, can relate to the notion that “mommy’s alright” and “daddy’s alright,” even if they’re “a little weird.”
“It’s the type of music we liked when we were that age,” Petersson says.
Petersson has been with Cheap Trick since its Illinois formation in 1973, alongside frontman Robin Zander and lead guitarist Rick Nielsen. It was around this time that Tom sparked the band name.
“Rick and I were living in Philadelphia in 1972, and we went to see the band Slade, one of the first glam-rock English groups. They were doing everything. They had glitter shoes and glitter in their teeth, they had bombs going off. … I turned to Rick and said, ‘Wow, I love these guys, but god, they’re using every cheap trick in the book.’ And he goes, ‘Aww, that’d be a good band name!'”
The first three albums, “Cheap Trick” (1977), “In Color” (1977) and “Heaven Tonight” (1978), were underground efforts with cult followings but certainly not commercially successful.
Petersson will never forget the first time he heard one of the group’s songs in public.
“It was not quite that romantic of a story,” Petersson laughs. “We were somewhere in Canada and we were walking down the street, walking past a strip club, and we heard one of our songs! We only had one album out and nobody even knew who we were, and we heard one of our songs being played! And we were like, what the heck? We went in and one of the girls was dancing. She liked our group and she was dancing to one of our songs. We were so impressed. We hit the big time!”
Ironically, their popularity soared after visiting Tokyo to record a live album “Cheap Trick at Budokan” (1978), which has since been voted one of Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 Albums of All Time.
Petersson says he takes such accolades with a grain of salt, yet is occasionally surprised to hear bands like Nirvana or Green Day claim inspiration from Cheap Trick.
“You don’t really necessarily hear the straight-out influence, or even if people do say it, it’s like, that can’t be!” Petersson says.
Now is your chance to witness one of rock’s most influential bands at The Fillmore.
“We change our show up a lot. There’s all sorts of different deep tracks. We do all the stuff people know, too,” he says. “You don’t really know what’s going to happen. It’s spontaneous. We don’t know the setlist ahead of time. … A lot of times, we’ll be there an hour ahead of time working on songs and relearning tracks and say, ‘Aw, this will really get ’em, this will get the diehards.’ It’s fun.”
Click here for ticket information. Hear the full interview below:
