THE WORLD OF CHEAP TRICK
Cheap Trick are one of the hardest working bands in rock and roll. Almost 50 years since they formed in Rockford, Illinois, Cheap Trick achieved everything the hard way. No easy breaks: They spent years struggling playing their heart out inside the confines of every crummy club dotted throughout the Midwest before being signed by Epic Records and releasing their self-titled eponymous debut in 1977.
Fronted by Robin Zander, one of rock’s greatest singers, and Rick Nielsen, rock and roll’s ultimate bowtie-wearing oddball (think the Bowery Boys’ Huntz Hall wielding an electric guitar), Cheap Trick’s power-pop-flavored songwriting smarts have remained consistent and impeccable for decades. The Rock and Roll Hall of Famers earned every shred of success, and their impressive new studio album, In Another World, is testament to their continued artistic excellence. Join us for a candid conversation with founding member and bassist Tom Petersson.
GOLDMINE: This is one of the strongest Cheap Trick albums in a long time. Listening to the songs like “Another World” and “Final Days,” it touches on the disconnect and isolation we’ve all felt from the pandemic. Was that a conscious theme for the band to draw from that?
TOM PETERSSON: Well, it wasn’t conscious because the record was finished in 2019. So we had the album done and it was going to be released sometime in early 2020. We had stopped touring then. We toured the first two months of 2020, January and February, and we were gonna take a little time off. So when the pandemic started, we had just stopped. It was like, “OK, (laughs) now what?” Nobody knew what the hell was going on. But this record was finished before the pandemic even started. I can hear what you’re talking about in reference to those two songs as it hadn’t exactly been smooth sailing up until that point anyway. But we just write about things that we’re thinking about at the time or take things that we’ve done in the past. You know how it is. Songs relate differently to different people or different situations. They’re not specifically about a certain event like (the) New York mining disaster or something. You know what I mean? It’s just in general terms. So our songs can relate to all sorts of things. And it just so happens that a lot of it sounded like it was written about what was going on, but it definitely was not.
GM: There’s also a sense of mortality that I’m hearing on the album with the song “I’ll See You Again,” a theme you’ve not shied from similarly with “Sleep Forever” from The Latest album (2009).
Yeah, that’s a cool song, isn’t it? It shares a similar sentiment to “I’ll See You Again.” The songs “Final Days” and “So It Goes” really came in right at the end. In fact, “Final Days” came in after we
