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Writer's pictureRichard Challen

Cheap Trick – “Voices”

TOP 40 DEBUT: January 19, 1980

PEAK POSITION: #32 (February 2, 1980)


The first Cheap Trick single of 1979 was supposed to be “Voices.” On February 23rd of that year, radio stations in both the U.S. and the U.K. received a two-song promotional 7”, an initial glimpse into the quartet’s as-yet-untitled fourth album. “Voices” occupied the A-side; it was a smooth piece of streamlined pop, seemingly calibrated to generate the mainstream airplay that had eluded Cheap Trick for so long. As for the B-side? That was just a throwaway track from some Japanese-only live album called At The Budokan.

Cheap Trick weren’t on anyone’s radar in February ’79. Heaven Tonight, released the previous May, had followed the path of the band’s previous records: stalling at #48 on the Billboard 200, struggling to obtain gold certification, and failing to connect with the American public. Its lone charting single, the now-beyond-iconic “Surrender,” never got higher than #62. After a few months of touring, Epic Records decided to send the quartet back to the studio. As a stopgap between albums, they released a live disc in the only territory where Cheap Trick had an actual fanbase: Japan.

Japan absolutely loved Cheap Trick. Japanese audiences regarded them as conquering heroes; Japanese schoolgirls squealed at the unassuming foursome like they were witnessing the second coming of the Beatles. Cheap Trick sold out all three Japanese dates at the Nippon Budokan arena before they'd ever set foot in the country. In 1978, there was no better place on Earth for the group to record a live album.

Captured over two Tokyo nights in April, Cheap Trick At Budokan uncorked a kinetic, sugar-rush energy absent from most of the group’s studio work; in this context, Cheap Trick’s sturdy power pop singalongs finally sounded like the arena anthems they were always intended to be. Epic released Budokan as a Japanese exclusive in October ’78, along with a shortened promo version, From Tokyo To You, sent solely to rock radio. American deejays began playing cuts from Tokyo, and overnight, American customers started asking record stores for the album.

Two months into 1979, Epic had sold over 30,000 copies of Budokan in the U.S. as an import. Domestic demand for Cheap Trick had never been higher. At the same time, the group’s next album was done and ready to be released; the first single, “Voices,” had already shipped to radio. Epic studied the numbers, weighed its options, and then made the unprecedented move that would change the career trajectory of Cheap Trick forever. By the end of February, “Voices” would be cancelled, Dream Police put on hold, and Cheap Trick At Budokan released as the quartet’s official fourth album.

Any good fan of Seventies rock knows the rest. Budokan went on to peak at #3 and sell three million copies, making it easily the most successful album in Cheap Trick history. Bolstered by a backing choir of Japanese teenagers losing their ever-loving minds, “I Want You To Want Me” finally assumed its rightful place within the power-pop pantheon. (Almost two years after the studio version failed to chart, the live rendition peaked at #7 on July 21, 1979. It’s a 10.) By the time “Voices” finally got a belated release in November ’79, Cheap Trick were arguably as big as they’d ever get in America, all thanks to an accidental album far more aggressive—and far less produced—than the safe, slick ballad that would become their last Top 40 single for eight years.

T

Cheap Trick’s origin story begins with Fuse, a five-piece formed in Rockford, Illinois by guitarist Rick Nielsen and bassist Tom Peterson in 1967. Over the next three years, Fuse recorded a local single, signed to Epic Records, and released one unsuccessful, since-disowned studio album. (To quote Rick: “That Fuse stuff stinks... The guys we were with were all rinky dinks. They’re probably pumping gas now.”) After being dropped, Nielsen and Peterson kept playing shows under the Fuse billing—sometimes with former members of Nazz, Todd Rundgren’s first band—before relocating to Philadelphia in ’71 and picking up a new drummer, Brad Carlson (better known by his later stage name, Bun E. Carlos). Now using the moniker Sick Man Of Europe, the group briefly toured Europe before disbanding for good. In 1973, Nielsen, Peterson, and Carlson moved back to Rockford, found another singer (Randy “Xeno” Hogan), and Cheap Trick was born.

Depending who you ask, the name “Cheap Trick” either came from a Ouija board (Nielsen), a particularly crafty guitar riff (Hogan), or a goof on the stage antics of glam rockers Slade (Peterson). What began as another oddball project turned serious when Hogan left the lineup early on, replaced by former folk singer Robin Zander. (As an early fan explained in a great Chicago Reader oral history, “Both had long blond hair and an androgynous look, but Robin was much prettier and had a better voice.”) The band’s first paid gig, in 1974, was a junior high school prom in Wisconsin. Things wouldn’t improve all that much in the years to follow.

Cheap Trick toured the Midwest in a convertible with an attached U-Haul trailer, playing multiple sets a night and slowly building a following in the suburbs of Chicago and Milwaukee. Epic signed the quartet in 1976; over the next two years, the group opened for everyone from the Kinks to Queen while releasing a trio of fantastic power-pop records—Cheap Trick, In Color, and Heaven Tonight—that barely sold. Decades later, artists as varied as Steve Albini (who produced the band in 1997) and Smashing Pumpkins (who brought them on tour in '95) would cite Cheap Trick as a major influence, but in the latter half of the Seventies, the band fell between the cracks at radio: too “poppy” for rock stations, too heavy for Top 40. It would take a live performance, recorded in a foreign country, before Cheap Trick were finally appreciated in their own backyard.

Dream Police benefited mightily from the goodwill curated by Cheap Trick At Budokan, moving a million copies by the end of ’79 and peaking at #6 on the Billboard 200, the highest placement for any of the band’s studio albums. But in hindsight, the decision to release the group’s glossiest production to date—right on the heels of a hugely successful, and hugely stripped-down, live record—feels like an early example of Cheap Trick shooting itself in the foot. I get that Dream Police was already finished and ready to go; I understand the logic of striking when the iron’s hot, rather than spending time and money to redo an entire album top to bottom. But a tougher, sparser Dream Police (think Damn The Torpedoes, only power pop) could’ve taken Cheap Trick to the next level. Instead, this became the record that ushered in a decade-long pattern of second guessing, trend chasing, and diminishing critical—not to mention commercial—returns.

Nowhere does Dream Police’s “more is more” approach work better than the title track, a kick-the-doors-down opener where the extra keyboards and orchestrations serve to amplify the drama, rather than flattening it. “Dream Police” is “Surrender” on steroids, wedding windmilling power chords to stabbing Psycho strings in a paranoid fever dream that’s also funny as hell. It’s both a surging singalong and a magnificent statement of intent, and quite possibly one of Cheap Trick’s greatest singles. (It's another 10.)

“Dream Police” is also notable for capturing the odd dichotomy of a quartet split between two pinups and two goofballs: the rock stars on the front cover (Zander and Peterson), plus the mad scientist writing all the songs (Nielsen) and the guy doing your taxes (Carlos). Even as Robin’s vocal veers expertly between soaring and sinister, the track still finds room for a great weird interlude from Rick (“I try to sleep/ They’re wide awake/ They won’t let me alone”) and some gloriously goofy backup singing (“Po-lice! Po-LEECE!”). “Dream Police” should’ve been the hit “Surrender” wasn’t. And yes, thanks to the band’s heightened profile, the single did chart significantly higher than #62. (Again: “Surrender.” #62. The mind boggles.) But airplay at rock radio didn’t always translate to Top 40, and even backed with new album hype, “Dream Police” still wound up peaking at a mere #26 on November 24, 1979.

The follow-up, “Voices,” represented one of the group’s earliest forays into ballad territory, a style that was honestly never Cheap Trick’s forte. Nielsen could write them, and Zander could sing the shit out of them, but too often the combination of slow tempo plus serious subject only served to squeeze out most of the quartet’s loveable idiosyncrasies. Thanks to choices made by the band’s longtime producer, Tom Werman, “Voices” takes that problem and compounds it.

To start, he coats the entire track in a high-gloss sheen. Strings and synths soften the edges; the rhythm section slides into the background. Zander and Peterson then add layer upon layer of vocal overdubs, so many that Cheap Trick could never quite replicate the song live. The ensuing process turns “Voices” from the Beatles homage that the band probably intended into something closer to an ELO knockoff. (Could Robin sing circles around Jeff Lynne? Absolutely. But did Cheap Trick ever have a shot at out-studioing a band created explicitly for studios? Not a chance.)

Worst of all, Werman erased Rick Nielsen from his own song. In the mid-2000s, session legend/Toto guitarist Steve Lukather revealed that he was brought in, after the fact, to augment—or flat out replace—Nielsen’s original guitar tracks. And that included the solo. Rick, apparently unaware of Werman’s machinations at the time, still disputes the specifics. (In a 2009 interview, he claimed “we both played the solo,” which cannot be a correct statement.) Lukather, for his part, remains officially uncredited. Regardless of who played what, the damage was done: Cheap Trick transformed into ELO-lite, and an essential part of the band’s personality disappeared in the process.

There’s still plenty to admire about “Voices,” especially from a songwriting standpoint. Nielsen does some fascinating things with the chord progressions, using chromatic bass movements and seventh chords to conjure a Fab Four flavor rather than any specific Lennon/McCartney composition; meanwhile, his lyrics cleverly frame mental illness through the guise of a love sonnet. The band sneaks a bit of patented humor into the whispered opening—listen closely for the “KISS sucks” joke—while the menacing “warm voices, cool voices” bridge conjures genuine thrills. And Zander, to be clear, really does sing the absolute shit out of the song. It’s one of his greatest vocals, in service of a production that barely resembles Cheap Trick at all. “Voices” winds up being pretty but vacant, an oddly faceless turn portending further facelessness to come.

The next few years would be a rough ride for Cheap Trick. They hired the legendary George Martin to produce their next album, only to watch All Shook Up sell worse than any record since their debut. Tom Peterson quit the band, replaced by two bass players no one remembers. MTV put their videos in regular rotation, but the singles—from the pure pop of “If You Want My Love,” to the Cars soundalike “She’s Tight,” to the extremely Eighties “Tonight It’s You”—couldn’t quite crack the Top 40. (Respectively: #45, #65, and #44.)

By late ’83, Cheap Trick could release a song as great as “I Can’t Take It” and somehow fail to chart. By June '86, theirs was the only single taken from the mighty Top Gun soundtrack to miss the Hot 100 altogether. Five months later, when The Doctor staggered to a peak of #115, it felt like Rockford’s favorite sons had finally hit rock bottom. But Cheap Trick’s decade wasn’t over. They’d soon find their way back to the spotlight (and this site), more successful than ever, and with only the last of their identity abandoned in the process.

GRADE: 6/10

I WANT MY MTV: Dream Police came accompanied with a loosely cohesive “video trilogy” of promotional clips, all shot by Arnold Levine over (I’m guessing) about a day and a half. If you’re a fan of this era, “Dream Police” is easily the standout of the three; “Way Of The World” works as a fun performance piece, while “Voices” mostly exists to position Zander—not entirely unsuccessfully—as teen idol fodder. Too bad the rest of the band gets so sidelined in the process (especially poor Carlos). By the end of the clip, you might need that final title card to remind yourself that yes, there are still four people in Cheap Trick.


BONUS BITS: One of the greatest sitcoms of the early 2000s (at least for its first few seasons) was How I Met Your Mother. One of its greatest episodes was “The Pineapple Incident,” a first season standout that introduced one of the series’ longest running in-jokes, not to mention the concept of “Drunk Ted” and the phrase “Vomit free since ’93.” And one of the greatest moments in that episode is Drunk Ted singing along to Cheap Trick. For HIMYM fans, “Voices” became more than just a solid music cue; it also got woven into the show’s entire mythology, as you’ll see below.


BONUS BONUS BITS: Here’s a 2001 ambient cover of “Voices” from multi-instrumentalist (and future Fiona Apple/Kanye West producer) Jon Brion that appeared on his lone solo album, Meaningless. If the track sounds familiar, that’s because it also shows up in “The Pineapple Incident”—and then again, years later, on a different How I Met Your Mother episode: Season 8’s “Band Or DJ?” (How I Met Your Mother really loved its callbacks.)


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4 comentários


Scott Rice
06 de mai. de 2020

I LOVED "Voices". I was 12 when "Budokan" was released,13 for"Dream Police", and it hit all the right spots for me .Bought the cassette with paper route money. I'll bet I listened to this song a thousand times. I even got a little excited seeing it pop up today. Top 10 single of my youth.

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RL Myers
RL Myers
06 de mai. de 2020

Voices is minor Cheap Trick, but still listenable. I actually liked their 80s singles that followed but failed prior to their late 80s comeback. She's Tight is especially fun. Or maybe I just remember it fondly because of the giggle all of us boys in junior high got out of it. But the guitar in that one is reminiscent of their best work. Unfathomable that Surrender never hit the top 40. It would probably be on my list of the 10 best songs of the 70s.

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scanner3
06 de mai. de 2020

While not Cheap Trick’s finest moment, I really do enjoy Voices. The arrangement may mimic ELO, but there is no question that Zander’s vocals sell the song. And thanks for mentioning the HIMYM connection. That was one of my favorite moments from the series. I’d rate Voices a 7/10, although after the insane giddiness of Dream Police (an utter 10), it seemed like a little letdown.

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Ian King
06 de mai. de 2020

Here's another one that I had totally forgot - and easy to say why. The ELO comparisons are a really good observation, though not as good. Such a shame. I Want You To Want Me is such a classic. Missed opportunity, indeed. Interesting to note those artists and bands who have never managed to capture in the studio what they carry live and have suffered as a result. Peter Frampton was another one, who needed the live album to really launch him, but then was never able to top it.

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