#426 Cheap Trick - Cheap Trick at Budokan (1978)

MUSIC HISTORY WRITTEN BY HEAD WRITER DJ MORTY COYLE:

This live, self-produced, album on Epic Records by Rockford, Illinois hard rock, power-pop, band Cheap Trick was recorded over two late April nights of 1978 in Tokyo, Japan’s famous, indoor, sports, arena.

Originally it was intended to be an exclusive Japanese release.

But why Japan?

Well, in 1977, a few years after forming Cheap Trick, which is Robin Zander on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Rick Nielsen who is the band’s primary songwriter on lead guitar, Tom Petersson on bass, and Bun E. Carlos on drums, the band signed to Epic Records and released their self-titled debut.

It rocked hard but didn’t find much success. Seven months later they released the more polished Power-Pop classic “In Color”, (which The 500 reviewed with Annie Lederman) and that finally got them cracking the charts.

Their follow up album, 1978’s “Heaven Tonight” did even better.

But despite a grueling touring schedule opening for huge bands like Kiss, Queen, and The Kinks, and a few critically-acclaimed, charting records the band still wasn’t breaking through in America.

They were actually about a million bucks in debt and fame and fortune seemed like a fleeting dream.

But a strange phenomenon was happening all the way over in Japan.

Somehow all three of their albums went gold and they had number ones and Top Ten singles.

So in late April of 1978 with little to lose in America the band went for their first tour of Japan to see what was up.

When they landed they were greeted by 5,000 screaming Japanese fans at the airport.

And just like their heroes, The Beatles, Cheap Trick-mania didn’t stop there.

They couldn’t walk down the street or even step out of their hotel rooms without screaming, crazed fans chasing them to take pictures and rip their clothes off.

In fact hotels were kicking them out because of the thousands of fans that were flooding the lobbies and waiting outside for them to even look out the window.

And when they played those two nights at Budokan they were almost drowned out by the screams of their frenzied and mostly female audiences of 12,000 each night.

Now recording the shows was the idea of their record company who decided that every act they had coming through Japan would put out a “Live at Budokan” album. Cheap Trick’s would follow the first by Bob Dylan.

The label demanded the band perform their most commercial material and some new songs.

Cheap Trick were already monsters onstage after years of solid touring but that energy rarely made it onto their records.

But all that changed when they released this in Japan on October 8th of 1978.

As Rick Nielsen recalled, “We rode coach on the way there and first class on the way back.”

While obviously huge in Japan, hip record stores in America soon caught wind and the import record sold 30,000 of its eventual 75,000 copies domestically.

So the label released six songs from it in America on a promo record called “From Tokyo to You” which blew up and guaranteed the full album a domestic release in February of 1979.

It became Cheap Trick’s biggest album going triple platinum and its lead single “I Want You to Want Me” went to number 7 on Billboard’s Hot 100, their highest ranking single.

Over 45 years the band has sold more than 20 million albums, played over 5,000 shows, have had many resurgences in popularity during their career including being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2016, and are still going strong as an amazing live act today.