Riff Raiders Talk Cheap Trick

 

This is the title track from Cheap Trick’s third album, recorded at Sound City Studios in LA in 1978 (and one of the reasons Nirvana wanted to record there). It’s an amazing power riff crossing The Beatles’ Abbey Road and the power of Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir, plus haunting vocals about the stupidity of drugs. This track also features the first ever recording of a 12 string bass.

 

 

 

Also from the Heaven Tonight LP. No cheap tricks here, just a balls to the wall rock’n’roll riff and performance that was out on its own at the time of recording. Angus Young was a big fan of this band as Rick Neilsen was of AC/DC, and this track clearly demonstrates their bromance. 

 

 

 

This song is buried on the second side of the All Shook Up album (1980) produced by George Martin, and engineered by Geoff Emerick. The result is a manic display of riffing. Sir George obviously dug Trick’s hard rock and experimental approach, which comes through on this stunning recording.

 

 

 

This is the title track for the 1982 album produced by Queen’s Roy Thomas Baker. It’s the album that gave us Aussie #1 If You Want My Love and this song, which smashes along with the band’s self-depreciating lyric, ‘reputation is a fragile thing, and don’t I know it.’

 

 

This is the first track on their debut LP recorded in 1976. Hot Love was a prototype of the new wave of rock that came later in that decade and basically ever since. But at the time the public simply thought, ‘What the fuck?’