Published on Nov 13, 1997
In 1983, Cheap Trick needed a miracle. Since the “overnight”
success of their
Cheap Trick At Budokan album, Rick Nielsen and crew had
failed to live up to the expectations that people had for them.
Their attempt to work with legendary Beatles producer George Martin
was a flop (though I admit it’s been a while since I dug that one
out of the Pierce Archives). They had lost their original bassist
Tom Peterssen, and had replaced him with Jon Brant. They needed
something to rekindle the band’s spark.
Enter Todd Rundgren. His work with Grand Funk, Meat Loaf and
Rick Derringer was legendary, and his cult of fans continued to
grow. Who better to give Cheap Trick’s sound a kick-start?
As the resulting album,
Next Position Please, proves, if the songwriting ain’t worth
shit, it doesn’t matter who is turning the knobs in the control
room. This album does feature some of the band’s best work in some
time, but it also has many weak moments.
The opening track, “I Can’t Take It,” is evidence that their
label dropped the ball big-time when it came to promoting this
record. Rundgren did work his magic here – a perfect blend of the
instruments and vocals should have resulted in this song being a
major hit. Alas, it wasn’t – too bad, ’cause I think this even
blows “Surrender” and “I Want You To Want Me” out of the water.
Nielsen’s guitar work is surprisingly controlled, while Brant’s
bass lines are simply incredible. Robin Zander has rarely been in
such fine voice, and drummer Bun E. Carlos may have turned in the
performance of his career – not only on this song, but on the whole
album.
For the first half off the album, Cheap Trick makes very few
mistakes. “Borderline” is another song that had “potential radio
hit” written all over it, but it never got the chance to prove
itself. The title track is somewhat entertaining – but did Zander
need to declare, “I wanna see the tits of every girl?” Who do you
think you are, Kiss?
In fact, the occasional slip into cock-rock (or, in this case,
cock-pop) is mistake number one. “Younger Girls” destroys the
killer groove laid down by Carlos, abandoned for pleasures of the
(younger) flesh. Mistake number two is not allowing all the
songwriting to be as fresh as “I Can’t Take It” – this could have
been why the band had fallen on hard times commercially.
“Y.O.Y.O.Y.”, despite the smart-ass name, is half-baked, as is
“Won’t Take No For An Answer.” Don’t even get me started on “I
Don’t Love Here Anymore”…
Their choices of cover songs is a mixed bag. While “Dancing The
Night Away” is too god-damn annoying, their cover of Rundgren’s
“Heaven’s Falling” is quite exciting. (This could be the reason why
Epic wanted Cheap Trick to use the works of outside songwriters
near the end of their stay with the label.)
The biggest surprise here is “Invaders Of The Heart,” a song
which abandons all the restraint the band had shown to this point
of their career and just let the moment carry them in the studio. A
simply incredible song, the reason there are several false endings
to the song could be that the band was just having so much fun with
this one.
Don’t get me wrong,
Next Position Please was an improvement over what Cheap
Trick had been putting out to this point, and Rundgren does the
best he can with the material he’s been handed. But the overall
success of an album doesn’t lie in the hands of a producer; there
must be solid songwriting and performing to result in a great mix.
In this case, one – okay, one-and-a-half – out of two ain’t bad,
but it ain’t enough.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a terrible album – I know hundreds
that could fit that description – but
Next Position Please fails to renew any interest in Cheap
Trick. And for that, I blame the band and their label at the
time.