CHEAP TRICK: AT BUDOKAN (1979; 1998)
1) Hello There; 2) Come On
Come On; 3) ELO Kiddies; 4) Speak Now Or Forever Hold Your Peace; 5) Big Eyes;
6) Lookout; 7) Downed; 8) Can't Hold On; 9) Oh Caroline; 10) Surrender; 11) Auf
Wiedersehen; 12) Need Your Love; 13) High Roller; 14) Southern Girls; 15) I
Want You To Want Me; 16) California Man; 17) Goodnight; 18) Ain't That A Shame;
19) Clock Strikes Ten.
US audiences really love their pop rock LIVE!
and kicking, don't they? Two years after the toils and troubles of KISS were
rewarded with their commercial breakthrough as a live band, the same thing
happened to Cheap Trick who, ironically, opened for KISS in the early days:
what could not have been achieved with the three classic studio albums
(although, truth be told, each of those charted higher than its predecessor, so
that the groundwork was laid well), was achieved with a live album — which,
even more ironically, was never even intended for domestic release in the first
place, so that the first US buyers got it as a Japanese import.
Nostalgic reasons aside, At Budokan remains great fun after all these years, but neither in
its original form as released in 1979, nor in its expanded form (the complete
concert, first released on CD in 1998 and since then having become the default
version) does it really «destroy» the studio versions of the songs, as is so
often claimed. The thing is, Cheap Trick are most certainly a «pop rock» band
in the truest sense of the word, combining catchy pop hooks with dirty rock
energy in brotherly proportions, but when it comes to the sacred question of
«Beatles or Stones?», there's no getting out of it, and the Trick do love the Beatles more than the Stones
— and this sets the predicament: unlike the Stones or the Who, Cheap Trick are
studio creators first and live entertainers second. And even when they are live entertainers, the emphasis is
very much on «entertainment» rather than «live rocking» — Rick Nielsen's
baseball caps, checkered jackets, wild faces, and poly-necked guitars matter as
much for the Cheap Trick show as does his ability to produce grumpy distorted
tones.
This is why I normally prefer to listen to the
studio versions of all these songs — yes, even the famous live performance of
ʽI Want You To Want Meʼ, with the music hall piano replaced by Nielsen's
rock'n'roll guitar, does not make nearly as much sense as the studio version,
where the climactic bit of "didn't I, didn't I, didn't I see you
crying?" is properly followed by the echo of another "crying",
rather than the echoing yell of several thousand Japanese fans. And every time
that Nielsen or Zander make a playing or singing mistake — and it does happen
occasionally, although, to give them their due, much less frequently than after their fame had finally gone to
their heads — it makes me cringe much more than any time the Stones or the Who
make mistakes during their shows. The
curse of the pop hook, yes indeed, sir.
Nevertheless, all of this criticism should be
taken lightly — all I'm saying here is that it might be wise to begin your
enjoyment of Cheap Trick with the holy trilogy of 1977-78 before assessing them as a live band, and only then proceeding to see how, at the expense of muddying up their
sound and occasionally sacrificing the sharpness and subtleties of the pop hooks,
they compensate for this with extra wildness. Needless to say, everybody is
working their ass off, not the least of all «bookkeeper drummer» Bun E. Carlos,
cracking at the snare with an amount of brutality worthy of the (not yet late)
John Bonham; even if he cannot get quite the same «depth» of the sound, the
power and melodicity of his drumming is enough to make him feel like a
perfectly equal member of the band, and, perhaps, more vital to its overall
live sound than both the bass of Tom Petersson and Zander's rhythm guitar.
Meanwhile, Nielsen lays on the distortion real
thick — not in a nasty metallic way, no, rather in the naughty glammy «gonna
raise hell» kind of way. For this release, he does not get any particular
spotlight (in the 1970s, at least, he used to have a very lengthy
«masturbatory» section as the introduction to ʽBig Eyesʼ, Angus Young-style,
but you won't find it here), the closest probably being the extended solo in
ʽNeed Your Loveʼ, a preview of the track that would eventually be recorded for Dream Police; however, that solo is
clearly experimental rather than self-aggrandizing, and the whole thing, with
Zander's dreamy falsetto and its odd contrast with the almost «slowed down
proto-thrash metal» riffage of the song, is arguably the most complex and
psychedelic performance of the show, a definite highlight largely due to Mr.
Nielsen's making his guitar screech, squirm, and grumble in half a dozen
different ways.
And then, of course, there's the whole «show»
thing which, these days, can be fully enjoyed with pictures (if you do plan on
getting Budokan, by all means get
the edition that contains the DVD of the concert — it's trimmed, but still
worth every minute of it), but is still very well felt even through just the
sound. The show begins with ʽHello Thereʼ (of course) and ends with the reprise
("it's the end of the show / now it's time to go"), which naturally
brings on to mind the concept of Sgt.
Pepper, and even though nobody in the band is wearing uniforms, all of the
members represent certain artistic and actor-like stereotypes, with Zander as
the prototypical «rock idol», swaying the audience with excitement ("I...
want... you... to want... ME!"), Petersson as the black-haired evil twin /
mirror image of the white-haired Aryan god, Nielsen as the mischievous
trickster ("the first thing I did when I got to Japan... WAS BUY A
JAPANESE GUITAR!"), and Bun E. Carlos as the «working guy turned rocker»
(well, you probably can't really hear that last one, but still, there's something
about Bun E.'s drumming that suggests an «office guy gone all eccentric on us»
style).
In any case, there is absolutely no denying
that not a single «classic rock-style» band around 1979 could seriously compete
with these guys in terms of generating arena-rock excitement — not only did
they retain and amplify all the power of early glam rock, but they were able to
throw in the tongue-in-cheek element, with plenty of humor, which would make At Budokan much better suitable for the
modern listener, I think, than, uh, Peter Frampton, for instance. They do all
the stuff that cheesy rock entertainers are supposed to do — like, for
instance, trading brief solo passages between each other in the coda section of
ʽAin't That A Shameʼ — but all the clichés are executed with an ironic angle to
them. There's so much humor and irony here, in fact, that it really makes you
wonder how on earth they managed to lose it all so quickly in the accursed
Eighties — here, at Budokan, it seems as if they simply could do no wrong.
Just for the record, some songs here cannot be
found on regular studio LPs: the oh-so-Beatlesque merry pop rocker ʽLookoutʼ
was a B-side, and the slow shuffle of ʽCan't Hold Onʼ is a parody on the broken
hearted blues genre that does not work too well, I think. ʽNeed Your Loveʼ, as
I already said, would soon be recorded in a definitive version for Dream Police, and the encore features a
rousing version of Fats Domino's ʽAin't That A Shameʼ that's right up their
alley: just as old man Fats never fooled anybody with that whole "my tears
fell like rain" stuff, neither do Cheap Trick, concentrating on the
humorous side of rock and roll rather than its sentimental overtones. In fact,
there's not a single shred of genuine sentimentality on Budokan, Zander's beautiful blonde hair notwithstanding. And they
end the show with a mammoth version of ʽClock Strikes Tenʼ which, for a change,
I do prefer to the original studio
track — if only because it does not choose to end on the silly kiddie
"imagine what we're doing tonight..." repetition, but rather on the
manly-rambunctious "gonna get on down, gonna get on down" part.
A major thumbs up, of course, even if I probably wouldn't
place this into the Top 10 of my favorite live albums (I think that the only
«pop» band with a guaranteed spot on that Top 10 could be Fleetwood Mac — and,
for all of Nielsen's wonderful qualities, he was never even half the guitarist
that Lindsey Buckingham could be). But really, the worst thing that could be
said about the record is that it made Cheap Trick into superstars — and, as
superstars, they would very quickly begin to transform into an ordinary
superstardom machine, behaving in accordance with the laws of the music market.
Who knows? Without Budokan, there
may have been no The Doctor, or no
collaborations with Diane Warren, or none of those other unspeakable evils of
the Dark Age of the Cheap Trick era. But then again, in the 21st century we're
free to ignore the evils and focus on the good stuff, so enjoy this bit of
Japanese magic and forgive them their later transgressions, or, rather, just
forget about them.
"US audiences really love their pop rock LIVE! and kicking."
ReplyDeleteNot only US audiences. Cheap Trick had exactly two big hits in The Netherlands, both from this album. Just like Peter Frampton had exactly one big hit - from Frampton comes alive.
"In fact, there's not a single shred of genuine sentimentality on Budokan, Zander's beautiful blonde hair notwithstanding."
ReplyDeleteThe best of Cheap Trick, efficiently and hilariously encapsulated.
In the late 70’s CT’s sense of goofy devil-may-care arrogance & goofiness combined with great chops stood-out as a shining beacon in the already saturated classic/cock-rock landscape and emerging post-punk/new-wave scene. In terms of potential Australian appeal, we should’ve embraced them to our collective hearts …… Unfortunately, despite befriending (and touring with) pub-rock warhorses The Angels (Angel City in the US), they never quite fit into the local zeitgeist of the day. A shame really. I continue to follow this band today ...... despite the 80's/early 90's missteps
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