The crowning touch came at the end of the first set Wednesday at Metro, a 15-song blitz so fabulous it made an encore obligatory and words unnecessary. But singer Robin Zander waved to the crowd anyway and said, “We’re called Cheap Trick,” as if it were the group’s first gig back at the American Legion Hall in Rockford.
It was humble and hilarious, a touch of self-promotion mixed with a shot of self-deprecation. Cheap Trick is a reminder of how titanic a four-piece rock band can sound, and of how appreciative four middle-age Midwesterners can be for a career that has had more comebacks than Sugar Ray Leonard, Michael Jordan and Elvis combined.
Long before post-punkers made it fashionable, the members of Cheap Trick were treating the concept of the “rock star” with the humor and derision it deserved–and were all the bigger stars because of it.
That was the ’70s: three perfect studio albums and a live album that made them a household name in Japan and then the rest of the world. Then came the ’80s, and a mostly forgettable and regrettable string of releases, even though the band never lost its zest for the concert tussle.
But in three weeks, Cheap Trick releases an album that makes the last 17 years melt away. With the core band once again writing, arranging and producing its own material, the forthcoming “Cheap Trick” is a mighty return to form.
If there were ever a marriage between the sounds of the Beatles and AC/DC, Cheap Trick would be playing the wedding, delivering the toast and selling souvenirs afterward.
At Metro, the quartet alternated the new stuff–“Anytime,” the devastating “Shelter,” “Say Goodbye”–with the buzzsaw-bubblegum classics of the ’70s–“I Want You to Want Me,” “Southern Girls” and “Surrender.”
“I hear voices inside my head/All of them just want to talk to you,” sang Zander–whose only equal as a hard-rock vocalist in the last 20 years has been Kurt Cobain–and Cheap Trick was back in the saddle, twisted lyrics riding the 18-wheeler of rock drummers, Bun E. Carlos, and the 12-string bass of Tom Petersson.
And then there was Rick Nielsen, erstwhile cardigan-sweatered nerd turned into a rock ‘n’ roll Rasputin with his braided goatee and shades.
He brandished his usual array of guitars in the shape of flying V’s and thunderbolts, one in a transparent green and another a checkerboard job with five necks, even one shaped into a cartoon of–who else?–Rick Nielsen.
Most of all, there were guitar picks; by night’s end, hundreds of them had fluttered into the audience, tossed, flipped and flung by the fistful. He tugged on his braid, twirled his mustache, waved to his wife in the balcony and cupped a hand to his ear like an applause-starved emcee. He heard what he wanted, and then some.
