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