The Japanese Surrender to Cheap Trick at Budokan
Through the history of Rock and Roll there is a very rich history of specular rock concerts and performances. The first performances of Elvis Presley and The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show are so legendary that they are defining moments in American pop culture. In addition, Bob Dylan’s very bold electric performance at the Newport Folk Festival and Jimi Hendrix’s famous set at The Monterey Pop Festival are amongst the first of many concerts that come to my mind as some of the most phenomenal in Rock and Roll history. However, if I was granted a wish that I could travel back in time to attend one and only one rock and roll concert of my choice it would be to travel back to April 28, 1978; the place: Nippon Budokan in Tokyo; the band: Cheap Trick. Why would I pick this specific show out of an enormously long list? Let us transition to the supporting documentation in the paragraphs to come.
When I grew up in Sandy, UT, during my childhood years I attended Midvalley Elementary School (from 1982 to 1989) in Midvale, UT, forgiving the fact that there were literally six elementary schools closer to my house (all part of my school district I might add) than the one I attended, however, in the bizarre world of Jordan School District school boundary politics where the facts are negotiable, Midvalley is the one I end up at. Although I have some very fond and hilarious memories of when I was elementary school with the exception of my 6th grade year, my memories of attending Midvalley are not fond ones. My parents are two of hugest lovers of all things music I have ever known. My Dad is rocker and my mother is classically disciplined and really loved soft rock and musicals. As much as their musical tastes are diverse they do have a great deal in common musically speaking. Like many kids I knew and sang some of the nursery rhymes, but I was listening to full blown rock my entire life. When I started in kindergarten in 1982 during singing time in my class as my teacher would lead us in the all too familiar kids’ nursery rhymes. At this point in my life I am already big time into Styx, Kansas, Van Halen, Journey, REO Speedwagon, and Supertramp and while my classmates are singing the nursery rhymes I am literally sitting there thinking “these songs suck!” and I dreaded music time. I just couldn’t wait for the end of the day to come home and listen to records with my Dad. At the time it just made no sense to me why my classmates were not listing to all of the rock I was. To say the least my early love of rock and roll made me a little different at age 5.
My experience at Midvalley growing up was there were the kids that played sports and the non-sports cool kids. Unfortunately, during this period of my life being odd or different was frowned upon in the school yard and the weird kids got picked on. I was the music freak and most of my friends were kids like me in the respect that we were the odd ones out. With the exception of my friend Gabe D. I was really the only rocker in my grade. However, in 1986 when I was in 4th grade Top Gun was the huge movie that everyone loved and the classic album Slippery When Wet by Bon Jovi. One of things I noticed for the first time is that the kids I grew up with were starting to listen to mainstream pop, and although my classmates were not into what I was into (beside the bands listed above I am into Ozzy, AC/DC, Rush, and the 80’s metal scene at this point), everyone loved Bon Jovi’s “Living on a Prayer” and Kenny Loggin’s “Danger Zone” and for what it’s worth I have some really fond memories of singing along with these songs on the radio with the kids in my neighborhood on the school bus. Frankly, I was just glad that classmates had evolved past “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah” musically speaking. For my 9th birthday my parents gave me the original motion picture soundtrack for Top Gun because I really liked Kenny Loggin’s “Danger Zone” and Berlin’s “Take My Breath Away”. For what it’s worth I enjoyed the soundtrack to Top Gun although I didn’t really love all the songs on it. However, the song “Mighty Wings” I really loved and this became my first exposure to Cheap Trick. At this point in time I really had no idea who they were, what they were about, and no desire to buy any of their albums, but “Mighty Wings” always sounded way good when I would speed through my neighborhood on my bicycle.
About two years later in the spring of 1988 I was watching MTV and I saw the music video for “The Flame” by Cheap Trick for the first time. The first thing that got my attention was that they kind of looked odd. The guitarist (Rick Nielsen) and drummer (Bun E. Carlos) both had short hair and frankly looked kind of geeky. The singer/guitarist (Robin Zander) and bassist (Tom Petersson) had long hair and very much fit the rocker mold. I thought to myself how in the world are these four guys even in the same band, it just doesn’t make sense. However, in the coming weeks when I saw the music video a few more times I just fell in love with “The Flame”. My father bought me a 45 LP of “The Flame” and I played the hell out of it. About a month later I wanted to buy the album Lap of Luxury but my father actually discouraged it. He told me that I should listen to the B-side of “The Flame”, see if I liked it, and learn a little bit more of what Cheap Trick was about. My father than told me that Cheap Trick was a much heavier and harder band that what I knew at that point. He had seen Cheap Trick Open for Kansas in 1978 and said they were the loudest opener he had ever seen, but he did enjoy their show. I took his advice and flipped the 45 over and listened to the song “Through the Night” which I thought was freaking awesome as well (I am so glad “Through the Night” made their box set). However, at the time I did not have a job and my allowance from my parents was very small so I spent a couple of months saving up to buy a cassette of Lap of Luxury. During the summer of 1988 my family took a vacation to San Jose, California, to see my Uncle Laurie and my cousins. I was way looking forward to this trip. My Uncle worked for Raging Waters in San Jose and could get us in for free and he made arrangements for admission to the Great America amusement park in Palo Alto. Plus our family saw the Will Clark era of the San Francisco Giants play the Barry Bonds era of the Pittsburgh Pirates. When our family took trips together we packed up a bunch of cassettes and all five us took turns on playing cassettes in the car. I made up a few mix cassettes for the trip and one of my mix tapes I put “The Flame” on it three different spots. I still think of this vacation every time I hear “The Flame”. Later that summer Cheap Trick released the single of “Don’t Be Cruel” which I loved, I had finally saved up enough money to buy Lap of Luxury which did not disappoint. The album is more on the pop side rather than the hard rock side, but I loved it nonetheless. However, just as my Dad had told me earlier, I still really had no idea what this band was really about.
By the end of the summer of 1988 one day my Dad was at Randy’s Records in downtown Salt Lake City and decided to buy a used LP of Cheap Trick’s At Budokan. I think my dad had decided that I was ready to find out what Cheap Trick was really about. One day when I came home from bicycling through my neighborhood and hanging out with my best friend Jeremy W. my dad put on side 2 of At Budokan. I heard a loud crowd screaming, a simple drum solo, but then came in the guitar, and thus started “Ain’t That a Shame” followed by my very first listens of “I Want You to Want Me” and “Surrender”. It completely blew me away and I was in total shock. To a degree I almost couldn’t believe it was Cheap Trick, but it most certainly was. I was literally speechless. Fortunately, for me shortly after my father played me At Budokan for the first time Salt Lake’s Rock 103 and Z93 started to play some of the songs from At Budokan as well. I would save my allowance for the next weeks to buy my own cassette of it. Once I started 6th grade as much I still enjoyed listening to Lap of Luxury (even today I still have lots of fond memories of that album), however, At Budokan made me a massive fan of Cheap Trick. It was hard and heavy and held its own with all of the metal I was way into at that point. But once again as it was for the most part when I was in elementary school no one really liked Cheap Trick other than me (which surprises me because “The Flame “is a #1 hit for crying out loud).
In September 1989 I started 7th grade at Union Middle School and I was so excited that I couldn’t sleep the night before. When I walked into Union for the first time I noticed rockers other than me. There were a few rocker chicks which literally did not exist at Midvalley Elementary. On my first day I was in Ms. Burton’s English/Reading class and across the room I noticed a really cute rock chick named Tori. I was still very shy around girls at this point and I was too scared to approach her. A couple of weeks later I wore an AC/DC shirt to school and when I sat down in my English/Reading class Tori actually walked up to me and said “that is an awesome shirt!” and it was enough to break the ice. Because I had a fairly huge music collection even at age eleven I usually had two different tapes with me at school almost every day. As Tori and I were getting to know each other she would always come over to my desk and check out what tapes I had with me. I will never forget the day I had Cheap Trick At Budokan with me. Tori yelled out with excitement “No Way! You like Cheap Trick!” and I was ecstatic, finally someone other than me who’s a Cheap Trick fan. We became pretty good friends from that point on. Tori was the first girl to ever hit on me (she told me I was cute! A huge deal at age 11) and we were good friends. She was one of the first girls I was actually just friends with (I thought she was way cute, but I did not have a crush on her). But as fate would have it I was going through my first huge crush on a girl named Jennifer L. who really did not like me at all, but I learned a lot from my friendship with Tori and it was way cool to just talk music with her. Tori moved during the summer of 1990 and I never saw her again after my 7th grade year ended. I still think of her a little bit when I listen to At Budokan.
There are so many memories I have associated with At Budokan I hardly have the space to write them here, so let’s transition over to some of the things I think make this album truly special. As much as I thought Cheap Trick kind of looked odd the first time I saw the video for “The Flame” I have since thought that they must have really looked odd in the late 70’s, especially compared to most of the hard rock/heavy metal bands prevalent at that point. But musically what might look odd was phenomenal music. Like many bands early on Cheap Trick struggled. There albums were not selling well as the toured the US as an opening band. However, their manager did some research and discovered that “I Want You to Want Me” and “Clock Strikes Ten” had been huge hits in Japan. A tour of Japan was arranged for late April/early May of 1978. The band was excited to tour Japan, but initially felt like it might not be much different than their experience touring the US. They had no idea what lied in wait for them. Upon arriving in Japan there were thousands of screaming fans at the airport and Rick Nielsen described it as it was literally like the second coming of the Beatles. This frenzy continued as the band traveled to their hotel and there were so many fans that Cheap Trick pretty much had to just lock themselves in their hotel room. Then they were interviewed by reporters and broadcast all over Japan, and then finally comes the big moment where they take the stage at Nippon Budokan to 12,000 screaming fans (to this day the only screaming I have heard of this intensity is literally every live clip I have ever seen of the Beatles back when they still performed live). Not only is this their first show in Japan, it’s to a sold out arena and is being broadcast on Japanese television. They put on one of the best rock concerts ever recorded. Part of what makes this moment so special is Cheap Trick literally had no idea that this was going to happen to them previous to arriving in Japan and they literally caught lightning! There will never be a moment quite like this one in the history of rock and roll.
About six months after this amazing concert Cheap Trick releases the live album At Budokan in Japan only and it was the intention that this album would only be released in Japan. However, Epic Records sent a promotional EP of a few of the songs of this concert to many American radio stations and about 30,000 copies of At Budokan were being imported into the United States from Japan and then finally in February 1979 Epic releases At Budokan in the United States. The album takes off like wildfire and eventually peaks at #4 during a time when disco was still very dominant on the Billboard charts. The little band from Rockford, IL, finally hits the big time and makes rock and roll history in the process.
I have seen Cheap Trick in concert twice. The first time was in 1998 at the Utah State Fairgrounds to an audience of about 200 people and the second time was in 2008 opening for Journey and Heart at the USANA Amphitheater to an audience of about 16,000 people. Both times it did not matter to Cheap Trick how many people were in the audience. They took the stage and just rock it out like pros. They are so much fun live and in many respects I still feel like as much as I love many of Cheap Trick’s studio albums, this is truly a band that must be experienced live! How I wish I could have been one of the lucky 12,000 fans in the audience when Cheap Trick took the stage on April 28, 1978, at Budokan. Every time I listen to At Budokan even today I still get the chills a little bit. The album successfully captures one of the greatest rock concerts to ever take place.
Today Cheap Trick has earned a very special place in rock and roll history. It is because of them that bands aspire for the moment when they are able to play Tokyo’s Nippon Budokan. In addition, band like Kiss, the Ramones, AC/DC, and Aerosmith are huge fans and bands ranging from metal bands such as Ratt, Motley Crue, Guns n’ Roses, and Anthrax as well as grunge and alternative bands such as Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Gin Blossoms, Green Day, and Pearl Jam, and finally even bands such as Fountain of Wayne, Weezer, Foo Fighters, Kings of Leon, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers have all named Cheap Trick as one on the bands that influenced them. There is just something magical about this band. Although Lap of Luxury got me interested in Cheap Trick, At Budokan is what makes them so near and dear to me.
