MAY 1979… Cheap Trick At Budokan triumphs
A live album recorded at Tokyo’s 14,500-capacity Nippon Budokan Hall had just entered the American Top 100, and would enter the UK Top 10 a week later. This was a special promotional weekend, and British buyers were able to pick up the double set for £5.99 rather than £7.49. But enough about the re-arranged hits collection In the US album charts, Cheap Trick’s had just breached the Top 10, where it would peak at Number 4 and go on to sell more than three million copies.
It had a circuitous route to release. From Rockford, Illinois and not without eccentricity, Cheap Trick were hard-touring pop-rockers who debuted on vinyl in 1977. The highest placing they’d achieved in America was Number 48 for 1978’s but in Japan, greater sales and adoration – they’d even joined Queen and Kiss as stars of Japanese cartoon strips – were theirs.
Accordingly, in April 1978, the group flew to Japan for a sold-out six-date tour and as much promo as they could handle. To Trouser Press, drummer Bun E Carlos later likened
MAY
their response to, “a déjà vu of A Hard Day’s Night”, while local commentators dubbed their reception ‘Trickmania’. Sensing hysteria, Newsday reported that “during one confrontation between 400 Cheap Trick fans, the band and three bodyguards, lead singer Robin Zander was stabbed in the back of the head by a scissor-wielding girl who wanted a lock of his blond hair.” Furthermore, guitarist Rick Nielsen was presented with a haul of locally built guitars, one inlaid with the words ‘YOU KNOW YOU LIKE IT’.
The gigs went down a storm. The second Budokan show aired on Japanese TV in July, allowing the jubilance to translate even more. With Zander all in white, and baseballcapped, dickie-bowed Rick Nielsen a riffing goofball, songs such as Big Eyes and I Want You To Want Me (later a Top 10 US hit single in its Budokan form) were fat-free and urgent, rocking hard with an eye forever on the power of pop. Unreleased songs Lookout and Need Your Love, and a version of Fats Domino’s Ain’t That A Shame, further sweetened the pot for Japanese fans. “Playing long songs is mostly a waste of time,” bassist Tom Petersson reflected to NME. “Who wants to hear tedious instrumental passages?”
Plans were then drawn for a Japan-only live album to be released that October. Parts of Budokan shows from April 28 and 30 turned out rough – “when we heard the tapes of the concert we thought it sounded hideous,” Nielsen told the LA Weekly – and mixing supervisor Jack Douglas later said that recordings from an Osaka gig on April 27 were interpolated. As well as mixing audience screams as low as possible, discreet audio polishing and restoration took place at New York’s Record Plant. Like a Japan-only advert by a western celebrity – think Sylvester Stallone endorsing Itoham processed meat, or Roger Moore’s wacky TV spots for Lark
“Playing long songs is mostly a waste of time.” TOM PETERSSON