Trivia / Cheap Trick

• Black Sheep Hit: "The Flame", a ballad which was their only #1 hit in the US.
• Breakthrough Hit: The live version of "I Want You to Want Me", taken from their At Budokan album, finally broke the band in their native U.S.
• Creator Backlash: Some of the members didn't care much for The Doctor; Bun E. Carlos in particular has said it was rushed and rife with Executive Meddling (the label kept demanding more keyboards and digital drums), and "Kiss Me Red" in particular was so hated by the band that they only played it live once. That being said, Rick Nielsen has said he still really likes the album, and both "Take Me to the Top" and "It's Only Love" are still regularly played live.
• Colbert Bump: Thanks to a drunken Ted Mosby singing the song on How I Met Your Mother, "Voices" got a great surge of recognition after that.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The band's rerecording of In Color with Steve Albini, which was intended to be rawer and akin to their original intentions for the album's sound, was never officially released, but leaked onto the internet and has been circulated by fans as a bootleg.
• Magnum Opus Dissonance: Next Position Please isn't one of their more regarded releases, but the members consider it one of their personal best albums.
• Real-Life Relative: Daxx Nielsen, the band's drummer since 2010, is the son of guitarist Rick Nielsen.
• Real Song Theme Tune: That '70s Show. The theme song, "That 70's Song", is a loose cover of "In the Street" by Big Star.
• Sleeper Hit: At Budokan was intended for release only in Japan. When the record company saw how many copies of the album were being imported to the U.S., it got an official U.S. release, where it became so popular that the planned release of Dream Police — which was already in the can when At Budokan was released — was delayed several months.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Some time in the early '00s, they were supposed to release a split single with Guided by Voices, in which the two bands covered each other's songs. GBV would release their version of Cheap Trick's "Downed" as a BSide in 2003, but Cheap Trick never recorded their half of the single — According to Bun E. Carlos, this was because they couldn't agree on what song to perform.
  • When making the 1988 album Lap of Luxury, the record company brought in two power ballad demos for the band to choose to put on the album. They hated both songs, but they were forced to pick one or the other and reluctantly chose the one that became their sole #1 hit, "The Flame". The other song was the Diane Warren-penned "Look Away", which was eventually recorded by Chicago and became a #1 hit for them six months after Cheap Trick topped the chart. The band rejected "Look Away" because "it sounded like a girl singing the demo" and they really weren't into the song to begin with.
• Working Title: Heaven Tonight was originally being worked on under the title American Standard; The band decided to change it once they found out that American Standard was also the name of a plumbing brand.

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