By JOHN DALY
Cheap Trick band members Tom Petersson, Robin Zander and Rick Nielsen talk about their rise to fame with Dan Rather on a new episode of The Big Interview, set to air Wednesday, October. 9 at 8 p.m. ET 5 p.m. PT on AXS TV.
Cheap Trick, which was inducted into the 2016 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has had a long history. The band members talk to Rather about their success, the hits and how they’ve lasted 45 years together, making music and touring.
In this exclusive first look, Zander, Nielsen and Petersson discuss their surprising early popularity in Japan, before breaking out in the United States. By Alex Young Consequence of Sound
“We started getting fan mail from Japan,” said Nielsen, “because of the Japanese press talking about us at a Queen show…. Normally they wouldn’t mention the opening act.”
“In Japan, they have these comic books,” Zander said, “and they’re thick ones and Queen and KISS were always in there. And all of a sudden, we were in there as like their young brothers. So that helped promote us in Japan before ‘[Cheap Trick at] Budokan’ even came out.”
“They kind of like that quirky cartoon character thing going on,” said Petersson, “which Queen has, which KISS certainly has. We were like cartoon characters. None of the other audiences, our record company in the states and stuff, they thought ‘boy this is too weird.’ But the Japanese, they got a kick out of it. That’s how they learned English. They listened to records over and over and learned how to pronounce English words. It’s kind of demented nursery rhymes.”
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