Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen

Transcript

Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. Before we get started, let's talk about Pushnick. Pushnick
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  Speaker 1: Broken Record. You can try it for free for seven days.
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Sign up for Pushnick and Apple podcast subscriptions. Rick Nielsen
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: is best known as Cheap Tricks, lead guitarist and mains songwriter,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the band that helped popularize power pop in the late
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: seventies with songs like Surrender and I Want You To
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Want Me, precursors to the pop punk explosion in the
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: nineties with bands like Green Day in Blink one eighty two.
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: In June, Cheap Trick released their twentieth studio album, In
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Another World. It's chock full of Rick Nielsen's monster riffs
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: that recall their glory days in the nineteen seventies. On
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: today's episode, Bruce held Them talks to Rick Nielsen about
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Cheap Trick's origin story while Nielsen fiddles around on electric
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: guitar and samples riffs from the new album. Nielsen also
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: talks about how he was hired to bring a hard
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: rock sound to John Lennon's final album with Yoko, Double Fantasy,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: and what it was like working with the Beatles legendary
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: producer George Martin. This is broken record liner notes for
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: the digital age. I'm justin Richmond. Here's Bruce had them
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: with cheap tricks. Rick Nielsen, we're gonna talk about In
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: Another World, which is your new album. It sounds like
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: you guys were having fun making this album. Well, I
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: think we were. I think we do. Just sounds really
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: kind of joyful and fun. That's kind of the idea.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: I mean, we make records for ourselves. I mean, we
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: don't have a manager that hangs over us or a producer.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: That's here's what we're gonna do. We got this going
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: in the record label of BMG's but not Fabulous. I
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: mean they're so fabulous that that they don't bother us.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: And it's like it's the perfect record label, the first
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: one we've ever had like that. It's like, it's pretty cool.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: So what's writing like? Are you on a bus? Are
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: you in a hotel and you just pick up your guitar.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It's kind of how we all did it. I mean
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: I used to write one hundred percent of the stuff.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: We just got. Somebody's got an idea and that sounds
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: If it sounds interesting, then we'll go for it. Now,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: you just picked up a guitar, which is not a
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: surprise because you own how many guitars? Now, do you
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: own about five hundred? Well, I've owned about two thousand instruments.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: But I've been around for a long time and I've traded.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: I've traded stuff, I had stuff, I broke stuff, I
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: gave stuff away. I mean, I've got a guitar, a
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: real guitar, in almost every hard rocket around the world. Yeah.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: So while you've got the guitar in your hand, tell
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: me about writing the first single, which is Summer looks
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: good on you. I think we had a title first
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: seemed like a good idea. Listen, it could be a
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: summer song, you know. So yeah, it comes to summer. Yeah,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: that's that's that one. That's it. Yeah, because we had
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: two of that came out about the same time that
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: we were doing Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Uh. You know,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: it's like how we wrote the Parson, we did the
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: deeper the B flat sounds kind of weird in there,
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: but yeah, that was some stuff that we like. When
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: we did a tax Men and Stiff competition, the same thing.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just kind of like that. That sounds
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: yeah thing, and it sounds different every time. And we
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: use chords that a lot of people don't use. You know,
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: it's like over and over again. Yeah, well and this
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the song is in E, right, isn't it. Uh well,
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: the chorus is in D and the versus A. Yeah.
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: There you go listening to that and I hadn't really
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: thought of it before. It sounds a lot like Peter
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: Townsend to me. We hit the chords equally hard. Was
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: he an influence on you? Oh yeah? I mean it
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Loves Who was the best live band ever. You know,
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: I played with them, opened for them when when Keith
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: Moon was still wrong and what was that like? It
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was great? You know, It's like because we'd read a
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: bomb and actually we knew their songs. We opened for
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: him at Majestic Hills in Late Geneva, Wisconsin in nineteen
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: sixty eight, two weeks after we'd opened for Frank Zapp
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: and the mothers and Wow, yeah, you know you were
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the band when you came out that everybody liked. The
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: heavy metal guys liked you, the new wave guys liked you.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: What's not to like? Well, what's not? But you just
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: appealed to such a wide group of like everybody could
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: agree on Cheap Trick, even though if they disagreed about
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: everything else. It seems like that. I mean I heard
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: that from a lot of people. I mean, you know,
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: like the Ramons like cheap Trick, you know, And Joey
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: did a number of our songs. He the Southern Girls.
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: He came to see us, and he's like, you know,
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: he's from New York. We're from the Chicago area. We never,
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: you know, really saw them unless we went to see him,
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: and we didn't know him personally. So it's like when
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: we started meeting these guys, it was kind of fun.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: And the New York Dolls they came to see us
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: play I want to go way back, Okay. Because you
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: grew up in a musical family, yes, I did tell
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: me about that. My father was an opera sayeron and
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: he was also a religious kind of saying. He's saying
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: with Billy Graham He had a radio show in Chicago
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: on w MBI, which is the Moody Bible Institute, where
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: where both my grandfathers graduated from. They were both ministers.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: So I was around music. And my dad it was
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: a choir director in World War Two. He's a captain
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and he was served at the Aleutian Islands and in Rosville,
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: New Mexico. But he was always around music. And my
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: dad was choir director at a church in Rockford, but
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: we went to Chicago to the Baptist churches at those times.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: I here's a white guy with a black woman. It's
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: like and they're singing his great music and everybody's having fun.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: This is it. Then I go back to the other
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: stuff and was like, put you to sleep. Music for me,
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: It's like, what did I do wrong? God? You know?
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: It's like And when my father also did opera, he
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: did Barbara Saville, which I walked on stage when I
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: was three years old, supposedly, and I walked out on
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: stage when they're doing Barbara Saville and people started to
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: laugh and clap, and I's like, this is what I
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: like this. So I like it when people laugh and clap.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't a direct route to all this stuff.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: But so I was around these kind of wacky artists.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: So I worked in my dad's music store, where I
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: goofed off, mostly so i'd see everybody. You know. Sam
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: Kennison actually rented a PA when he was an evangelist.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: He and his brother amazing. Was there a moment when
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: sort of pop music came on the scene or rock music.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I started out playing drums. Let the b drums, I
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: think it was one of them was Sandy Nelson, and
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: I like Jean Croupa. I liked that stuff in Plus,
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: music on drums is sort of like mathematics, and I
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: was always good at math, you know, like instead of one,
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: two or three four drums one and two E and
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: the three. I could write out music like that. Although
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: I couldn't really read it, I knew how to write
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: it out for me. That really helped me later in songwriting,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: and then as it progressed, I started playing at bands
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: as a drummer, and the guitar players were always even
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: if we're doing a Rolling Stone song or something. I
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: didn't know how to play guitar, but I knew they
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: were playing the wrong note, so I'd get off the
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: drums and I figure out what the part was, and
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: after too much of that, I just decided to give
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: up the drums and find some other kid that could
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: count to four drums, and I just taught myself how
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: to play guitar. Did you just get a guitar from
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: your dad's shop? I actually got a guitar from my
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: mother was It was a Goya, Swedish brand nylon string guitar.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: That was my first one. I still have it. It
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: doesn't sound any good, and it's kind of smashed up
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: and broke them, but that's that's how I kind of learned.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: It was the neck was wider and stuff, so I
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: actually learned how to play a more difficult instrument instead
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: of this easy stuff I got in here. You're the
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: sort of guitar hero to people, but you're not the
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: kind of guy that stays up on stage and plays
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: like ten minutes solos. Oh, I hate that. That's why
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: years ago I used to it's a stack my guitars,
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: one on top of him. I'm a songwriter and an entertainer.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: I'm not really a virtuoso at all. If my solos
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: are shortened to the point the song is more important
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: than me right, and you have all your solo parts
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: and all your licks worked out before you go on stage. Well,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: if I know the songs, you know sort of yeah,
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Like you're not like Angus Young or someone who just
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: gets up there and plays and plays. Well. He plays
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: a lot of the stuff that you know that these
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: worked out, and a lot of stuff that's on the
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: record so that you know, I'll change it if if
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: it's that bad. But it's like usually what I do
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: is like I'll play something that's realistic according to me,
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: and it's like I don't know how to explain. It's
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: like on this new records, like I don't sound like
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: I'm in this old guy. I sound like sometimes I
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: would do a solo that's more like the MC five
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: or Neil Young. He plays one note that's good enough. Yeah,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: he plays it well. Yeah. When you started playing electric
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: guitar and you were in bands, who are the guitarists
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: who influenced you to get that very particular sound? Well,
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: my favorite and I went to see him. I was,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: I think the first show of I'm Not Sure what
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: You're sixty four The Yardbirds Jeff Beck right from the start,
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: and I thought he was great. Then I think he's great.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: Now he's still my kind of my hero. And I
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: sold him a guitar in nineteen sixty eight, the second
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: less Paul you ever owned. Really Yeah, I went and
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: saw him in Chicago at the Connecticut Playground. What was
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: it about his playing you like so much? You know,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: back then it was like the guitar players that you
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: kind of knew about was Scotty Moore, Jenny Atkins, but
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: they had he played with round wound strings, and he
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: was like, it just didn't sound right, Jeff Beck, sound like,
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: how is you get that sound? It's like I was
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: back then. It were like there was no guitar magazine
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: kind of things. I read in a Hit Parader and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: it was like, how did Jeff Beck get that? He says, well,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I just you know, punched out the speaker, you know,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: made it kind of raspy and whatever. Of course, so
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: the first thing I did was go punch holes in
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: my speakers and that and that wasn't it. It's it's him.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You need Jeff Beck to punch a hole in your speaker,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: not anybody can do. Yeah, you gotta have the right punch. Yeah.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: We'll be right back with more from Rick Nielsen. After
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a quick break, we're back with more of Bruce Headlam's
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: conversation with Rick Nielsen. You were playing in bands. The
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: other guys in Cheap Trick, we're playing in bands. How
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: did you finally all get together? So? I met Tom
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: in high school and a new bunny. Bunny was in
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: an imposing band. He was in the Pagans and I
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: was in the Grim Reapers, and I was like, okay,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: So I thought they were whimpy, and he thought I
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: was a Ballahoonian? What does that mean? They carry knives
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: like a hood. I was a troublemaker. He had a
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: single out, Good Day Sunshine of the Beatles, Good Day
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: of Sunshine. You imagine that's like, that's even whimpier than
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: the than when I'm sixty four. So then when did
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: you meet Robin? Robin? Uh? Bunny knew him and because
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: Robin hit you know, he's like five years younger, so
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: I never to him. But we had heard that there's
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: a singer. Was it's called bb Kems or something. He
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: was in a duo. He was doing BG's songs and
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Neil Young and Beatles. We heard that this guy was
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: really good. So we're up there with with my manager
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: at the time. It's like, because we're looking for a serm. No,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: he picked the other guy. But Robin I, you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: I could tell you he had he'd been in quirer
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: and stuff growing up, and so he was a real
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: singer legit. Later he actually took some singing lessons from
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: my father. Who's that right? Yeah? Now, you guys when
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: you were playing just because where you were near Chicago,
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: you go to Wisconsin, you went, you went. You must
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: have spent a lot of time in vans. Oh yeah,
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: who did it? Like crazy? Yeah? I read somewhere that
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: you preferred playing suburban places because the crowds were bigger,
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: Like if you went into Chicago. Some of the clubs
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: just weren't They weren't big, and they weren't big enough.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: And it's like, uh, for the most part, they liked
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: their horn bands and it's like they go ahead and
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: play original stuff. Was not easy, you know, because you
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: get the jobs. You know, what what rolling Stone Strong,
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: what do you do from the top forty We'd always say, well,
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: you know, we got a whole bunch of stuff, and
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: we never did. So we did get fired a couple
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: of places because we didn't do what they wanted did
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: playing like bigger holes out in the suburbs. That that
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: affect your sound. That helped shape how you came out.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: You know, being a three piece, you gotta do what
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: you do. I mean when like that chord, I played
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: to that a chord if you let it ring out,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: there's certain ways to play. It's like I didn't go
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: chick chick chick like some some guitar parts and stuff
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and played like that. It's like I've played to fill
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: the sound out. And so we'd go to those places.
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: And we always had our built our own PA. So
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: we go to these places like so we we knew
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: we wanted. We used to use a TC thirty three
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: forty as the slap echo on the voice to sound
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: like John Lennon. Oh that's interesting. Yeah, it's a real
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to real. We had to you know, it was running
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: all the time. But it was like if I go
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: back and listen to some of the tapes we did.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: We were playing in clubs and we sounded good. Yeah,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: and we had good amps. In nineteen sixty eight, when
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: I bought my melotron at Orange Music, I bought it used.
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: I also bought the very first Orange amp, which I
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: still had today. I just liked it. You know. It's like,
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: you know, we happened to be smart enough or lucky
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: enough to surround myself with good equipment. Yeah, so when
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: did you get signed to do the first Cheap Trick album?
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: Seventy six? Jack Douglas came to see us, and we
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: got turned down by a bunch of people saying tapes
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: out or whatever. And Jack Douglas had heard our stuff
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: and liked it but wanted to see us. So he
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: came to Walkershaw, Wisconsin because it's his in laws lived
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: there the Sunset Bowling Alley that had bands on the
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: weekend or where and we'd played there a number of
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: times and Jack came that night and it plays a
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: packed and everybody's drunk and it's like and then we
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: came up and played and he immediately liked us. I
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: don't know who. You talked to, Tom Worman or somebody
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: at the record company and says, you gotta sign these guys.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: I said, I'll do him, you know, And here's Jack
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: done Aerosmith record. So I mean it's like his name
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: meant a bunch. So we actually went in not long
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: after that and I went to New York and went
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: to the record plant and I did twenty some songs
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: in eight days or something like that. By that point,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: had you guys kind of figured out your look? I
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: think it was Jeff Tweedy. You had a great line
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: about like how you guys perfected the two good looking
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: guys two weird looking guys thing for a band. I
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: never wanted to be anybody else. I don't know. I
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: wanted to be me. But I was always a class
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: clown and I was always the the wise guy, and
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: so I didn't look like a rock star. You know,
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: like there's a lot of bands back then they you know,
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: they were their mother's makeup and used their mother's hair spray,
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: and it's like that wasn't me. It was like, so
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: I kind of perfect it because like, yeah, I had
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: fun being the goof off, you know guy I played
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: the guitar solos or whatever it's like, and you people
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: look at me, He's like, that's that guy. You know,
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: he doesn't look like he has a nickel in his pocket.
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: And your first album, I don't think sold, but your
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: second album had did. Have I Want You to Want Me?
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: I think it did. Yeah, that was in color, and
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: we did that. That came out on seventy and seventy seven,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: also between the first album coming out and that and Uh,
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: that came out and that was the Rolling Stone issue
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: that where Elvis had died. He's on the cover and
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: our reviews on the inside, and we got I think
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: we got pretty good reviews, and that one sold a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: little bit more but that. But in Japan we had
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a number one song, Clock Strikes ten, which never got
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: any airplane in the airplace. And so it must have
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: been strange though, because you were a struggling band here.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: You put out some albums, you hadn't had a lot
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: of success, but then you went to Japan. You did
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the live album, but you were like the Beatles in Japan.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: That sort of seemed like, didn't it. It was frightening,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: but it was like they were the coolest people I'd
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: ever met, you know, or never met. You know, It's
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: like these guys like us. There was so much screaming
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: at the concerts. I know, it was fantastic. And then
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: was it strange to come back to the States where you're, oh, yeah,
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: we're big in Japan. You weren't so big here yet. Yeah,
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: I was like, man, you got a taste of that.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Now that's cool. You know. It's like we can play
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: these arenas and do do okay, you know, because we're
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: slaying them over there. And I was like, yeah, you know,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: but they liked us. I remember we were a good
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: we're a good band. I remember we're not great or whatever.
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: But but you want you're a very distinctive band because
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: you've written most of the songs. Can you tell me
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: what is is there some secret sauce to a cheap
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: trick song? What is it that makes your songs distinctive
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: that people like about them. I think we're diverse, which
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I think is probably you know, it's like somebody might
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: like this one and then it's like, oh but there's
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: other stuff. You can listen. It's not like one song
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: and then they're they're ninety five ninety percent more, but
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: they're just not as good as that one. And you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: different people like different stuff. I mean, clocks are extend.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It's like that's a hit. It's like here if you'd
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: play and nobody knew it. And one of those things
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: that we had done on our early records, it's like
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: I wrote hello there as a for a sound check. Hello,
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: they're late. You know. It starts out drums boom boom, boom. Okay,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: now that's in. Okay, now the basoom boom, here's the guitar. Day.
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: It was a sound check for doing these big shows
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: we're doing, because if you think about what intros, what's
• 22:15
  Speaker 1: the first song we should play in our set with
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: Queen or or who ended, whoever, you gotta get their attention.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Let's let's play this one. That's real moody and in
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: the middle part, you know, it's like, don't overthink it.
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: So that's how those songs came above. We'll be right
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: back with more from Rick Nielsen. After a quick break.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Bruce Helen's conversation with
• 22:39
  Speaker 1: Rick Nielsen. You've had a long relationship with the Beatles.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not quite sure. I know. George Martin produced
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: your album in nineteen eighty and that's also when you
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: were working with John Lennon, which came first. We worked
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: with George in aer Studios, Monsterrot and that was as
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: the beginning of nineteen eighty and then we went to
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: England to finish it and then it was in August
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: of eighty August twelfth. That went and worked with John Lennon.
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: So tell me what was it like to work with
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: George Martin or George of great He was like the
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: smartest musician, producer overall arrangement whatever. I mean, he was
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: the he liked us stute. I mean that was that
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: was We were kind of shocked at that. You know,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: we got it. We got them to come to Madison.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: He and Jeff Emeric come to Madison the middle of
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: winter for pre production. You can imagine, George Martin, you
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: want to go to magazine Wisconsin three foot of snow
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: and where your goloshes now? And he came to see us.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: He liked the band enough and the songs enough and
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: us enough that he said yes, and so hey, we're
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: gonna go to Montserrat in the British West Indies, my
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: new studio Air Studios. Okay, you know it's like you know.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: So he packed up and went down there and did
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: the tracks there and finished it. Then we flew to
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: New York and took the concord over to London and
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: we took the go to over and then we took
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: it back. When we were done, we went to stay
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: in London and finished the record there. But I'm fascinated
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: just because there's so many stories about George Martin with
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: the Beatles. What was he like in the studio. It
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: was great. It was like very professional and to experiment
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: on stuff. We did. Stop this game was one of them,
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: and he uh, the intro, so I did that, but
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: we did it with the orchestra dot dot that that that,
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: but the very beginning of the songs like well, I
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: can't stop the music. I seven we did recorded an
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: e notte and then he went to the second track
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: on a piano and recorded that, and we left the
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: attack off on each one, so we didn't he didn't
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: hit the die. You hit that and then the next one,
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: and we did like I don't know how many twelve
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: or twelve tracks of that, you know, delaying the next
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: one by a beat and then the next one and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: so it's just a continuous loop. And it was like
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: and I think he said, well, that's what they use
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: at the end of one of the Beatle tracks. So
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: so we were privy to that, you know, working with
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: the best guy on Earth and some of those tricks.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: And later when we did all the Sergeant Pepper shows,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: which I went to Georgia's house out in the country
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: and he cooked lunch for for us, and uh I
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: got his blessing and the and the charts for Sergeant
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: Pepper to do that. Oh, he gave you the original charts. Yeah,
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: you guys did a big performance of Sergeant Pepper. Yeah
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: we didn't ninety shows and uh so I got his
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: blessing for that, and you know, we just got along. Well,
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: it's like and here I am. You know, I always
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: think of myself. I'm Rick from Rockford. You know. It's like,
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like, if you can make it in
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: New York, you can make it anyways. I said, if
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: you can make it Rockford, you can make it any ways.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: So then when he then when he passed away, I
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: got an email from from him and his family or whatever.
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: It's like, we'd like invite to his memorial service. So
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: I went flew to England and went to this thing,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: and uh I go, I said, family sider in the
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: back of my invitation. And so I sat there. I'm like,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: right up front behind me, it's Elvis Costello, here's Genes Inspector,
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: there's Pink Floyd, all these you knows all these famous
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: people and they're way way behind me in this place.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: And uh. And as we file out to leave and
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: go and talk to Yoko, Sean and Julian because they
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: were right ahead of me, and we talked for about
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: a second, and then all of a sudden, somebody comes
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: up to me. Hello, Rick, I said, hello, Paulo. You
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: know paul the guitar he plays I got for him too,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: not not that far, but yeah, yeah, that's the left
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: handed lest Polity plays. So I had one. I was like,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: what am I doing with this thing? It's like it's
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: a piece of art, but I have no I can't
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: play it. So I said McCartney should have it, you know.
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: And then I said that in a guitar magazine and
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: a few months later and he ended up getting it. Wow. Yeah.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: But later that year, after you recorded the album with
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: George Martin, you worked on Double Fantasy with John What
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: was that like? Oh, it's terrific. You know, It's like
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: I treated it like a guy to guy. I did
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: you know? Musician a musician? You know, he's one of
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: my favorites. You know, what can you say? Well, I
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: see I was asked by Jack to do it to
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: rock up this stuff that John was doing. If you
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: listen to the original Double Fantasy, it's like it sounds
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: like a lounge man. I mean, it's too produced. So
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Earl Slick learned my my riffs and did them. But
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: you know, it's like it's not you know, I like
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: to do this. You know, it's like the way it
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: is on the record is you know, it's like my
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: version was heavier. And then I came up with this.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: I came up with the riff. So when I was
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: doing it, here's Buddy and Jack in the in the booth.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: When I was playing the guitar. After we had done
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: the initial track, John says, God, I wish I would
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: have had Rick on Cold Turkey, Clapton choked up or
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: Clapton froze. You could only play the one riff. Wow,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: that's a high compliment. So how how were they to
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: work with? How were John? And they were great? They
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: were great. You know, it's like they were they were
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: terrific in the musician it's like it's just cool. And
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: he was a great rhythm player too, and I'm a
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: good rhythm player. And it's like together it just kind
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: of worked out and it's like we enjoyed each other's company,
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and I'd hope to take him out guitar shopping after
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: after the sessions, not that day, but you know, I
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: gave him one of my guitars because I said, we're
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: going to Japan the next day and after the session,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: and I'll get it back later. I got it back
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: three years after he was murdered. Yeah, that's very sad. Yeah,
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: So into the eighties with with Cheap Trick, and I
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: still can't quite believe this, but you guys had this
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: run of great hits and great albums, but then your
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: record label decided that you had to like bring in
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: professional writers. Yeah, that beat up my ego pretty emotion.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: It was like, you know, we weren't gonna we weren't
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: somebody else, and we don't try to make us into
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: somebody else. And we didn't have a label or a
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: producer or a management that stuck up for us, you know,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: you know, we we we've always done other people's material,
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: like we did the first album, did Terry Reid song,
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: and we did Roy Woods songs. You know, Beatles, you
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: did Beatles stuff too, you know, but that was our
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: own picking. You know. It's like and here we got.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: Now we're doing something that's not written by us as like,
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: it just didn't make sense to me. It still doesn't,
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: but there you go. Did you have to co write
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: with them or these were I told wrote some songs.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not opposed to that, but this was
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: already sign seal delivered. Yeah, before we had the Flame.
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: When that came out, we did they We did a
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: record with Todd Rundgren next position, pleasing on that. They
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: had us doing a Motors song dance No no I,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: no way, Bob, Bob jesus. So are you the kind
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: of guy that just walks around with here iPhone and
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: if you've get an idea, you just record it. So
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you've got these little snatches of ideas, got tons of
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: tons of bad ideas. But I've always kind of done that.
• 31:19
  Speaker 1: I mean I've written stuff down. It's like my one
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: is like in the middle of the night, wake up,
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: you write something. Oh man, this is something here. Then
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: you wake up is chocolate milk? You know, what are
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: the uh? You know, it's like how did that turn in?
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: Why was that important enough to write it down? So
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: there's there's usually something there. So I mean I've got
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: tons of that kind of stuff from my wife says
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: the F word finish, you know, finish it. We're writing songs,
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: it's like, uh, like a producer would come say something
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: to me like, well, what's the third verse? Like I said,
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: what do you like the first one? Before I spend
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: the time to write the third one? You know it?
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: You know, that goes into the arranging all stuff like
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: in Surrender starts off at B flat and then the
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: first verse and second verse there would be third verses
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: and c modulates up. That's an arrangement, you know. It's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: not really so much to the song. You love doing
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: those kind of modulations and songs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's cool. Yeah,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: it's better than us going na na na hey hey
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: yeah a lot of those songs are a good song
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: turn into junk and you have too much nana hey.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: All right, what's been great talking to you? Well? Cool, great,
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: great album. I hope everybody listens. It's just a lot
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: of fun. Well, thank you very much. Thanks to Rick
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Nielsen for running through some of the highlights of his
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: career with us to Hear in Another World and our
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: favorite cheap Trick tracks Head to Broken Record Podcast got
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: where we also have a playlist of some of our
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: favorite power pop songs. You should have subscribe to our
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: YouTube channel at YouTube dot com slash broken Record Podcasts.
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: We can find all of our new episodes. You can
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: follow us on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: produced helpfully Rose Jason Gambrel, Martinozzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: Sanchez with engineering help from Nick Chafee. Our executive producer
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: is Miola bet. If you love this show and others
• 33:20
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• 33:24
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• 33:28
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• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Are the music by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Mitchell