“They decided that every time a band on Epic or Columbia came over they’d record their show and put out a series of Live At Budokan albums. “In Japan, CBS/Sony was splitting into two companies,” explains Bun E Carlos. The idea to record a live album didn’t come from the band, though, it was a decision made by the suits. The band were slated to perform shows on April 27 in Osaka and on April 28 and 29 at Tokyo’s Budokan, a 14,000-seat arena which had previously hosted performances by the likes of The Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple. You couldn’t look out the window or else people would just go wild and the hotels would throw us out.” “There were thousands of people in the hotels and the lobbies. “It was really dangerous for us to even do anything because the people would just get crushed and dive in front of trains and out of taxis,” Nielsen told Guitar Player. I remember girls hanging out of the side of high speed taxis taking photos, risking life and limb. Gangs of Japanese fans were chasing them everywhere trying to rip their clothes off.

Official band photographer Bob Alford remembers the ensuing madness, “It was just like Beatlemania.

Throughout their stay, the band would experience the same uncontrollable mania that their spiritual musical forefathers, The Beatles, had witnessed 12 years earlier on their last world tour. Their 1979 live album, Cheap Trick At Budokan was an international sensation and its follow-up studio release, Dream Police, was tearing up the US charts on the heels of the Beatlesque ballad Voices and the epic title track.īig in Japan, no, really big in Japan, Cheap Trick in 1979 (Image credit: Getty Images) They’d achieved what only a few years prior had seemed to be a near impossibility – superstardom. After years of slogging it out on the road playing every ratty dive in the States or opening for the likes of Kansas, Santana, Kiss and Be-Bop Deluxe, Cheap Trick had finally arrived.

But there have been hundreds of other worthy bands who’ve also possessed all the right ingredients for success, but who the fickle hand of fate has tossed on to the ever growing rock’n’roll scrapheap.ĭateline 1979. Sure, they had great commercial songs with giant hooks, and a distinctive image which played off the visual duality of the movie star good looks of lead vocalist Robin Zander and bassist Tom Petersson, and resident “weirdos” – lead guitarist Rick Nielsen and drummer, Bun E Carlos.

Cheap Trick Live At Budokan Rar