Interview Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick

Long before Cheap Trick became one of the biggest arena-rock bands to come out of the Midwest, it was playing long-lost Milwaukee bars like Humpin’ Hanna’s in the early ’70s for a diverse crowd of stoners, weirdoes, burnouts, and rejects. Among Cheap Trick’s biggest Milwaukee fans were local transvestites, who were drawn as much to the band’s outrageous stage show as the occasional T. Rex or David Bowie cover in its sets. Later on, Cheap Trick was discovered by famed Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas at, of all places, Waukesha’s Sunset Bowl, one of countless dives on the band’s Midwest circuit of venues back then.

When The A.V. Club recently chatted with Cheap Trick bassist Tom Petersson about the band’s 12-day run of Dream Police shows, starting Jan. 20 at Potawatomi Casino, he admitted that he hasn’t been back to Sunset since that fateful night more than 30 years ago. But he did express great affection for Milwaukee, the first city outside of Cheap Trick’s home base of Rockford, Illinois where the band found an audience. Now Cheap Trick is back in town to stage one of its most ambitious live shows ever, a multimedia spectacular centered on its classic 1979 album, with backing from a full orchestra that promises to pack about 30 musicians into the casino’s 500-seat Northern Lights Theater. When we asked for more details about the show, Petersson stayed mum, though he had plenty to say about the struggles Cheap Trick endured to make the original Dream Police album and the artistic compromises he hopes this show can finally reconcile.

The A.V. Club: The Dream Police show sounds really ambitious. Why did you choose Northern Lights Theater as the venue?

Tom Petersson: Well, they asked us to do it. We don’t pick where we go to do gigs. We get hired to do shows, so that is where they asked us to do it, you know what I mean? We don’t go, “Oh yeah, let’s just go to the Bahamas for the winter.” It was their idea to do a big production, but what it is was all our idea. We said, “How about we do this?” And they said, “Great.” So that’s what’s happening, playing with the Milwaukee Symphony and doing the Dream Police record, and then doing a whole bunch of other stuff, and having it all charted out. We did something like that in Las Vegas, with Sgt. Pepper, where we had a symphony and background singers and all sorts of stuff. It was crazy.

AVC: Robin Zander has said that it will basically be a three-part show, with the Dream Police part being just one component. Can you tell us about the rest of the show?

TP: No. [Laughs.] Well, it’s all of the Dream Police record from start to finish, you know, straight through like it was recorded, but every song is charted with different stuff that we wanted to add in there. If there are songs without any orchestration—which is, you know, a lot of the stuff—we put it in anyway. Like, “it would be cool if there were cellos came in here,” or whatever. And then we’re just doing a bunch of different stuff. We are going to change it up a lot. It’s just not the same every night. We are just going to keep fine-tuning it.

AVC: [Drummer] Bun E. Carlos didn’t tour with Cheap Trick in 2010. Will he be performing at these shows?

TP: No.

AVC: Do you expect that he’ll ever be back with Cheap Trick as a touring member?

TP: He’s just doing his own thing. I think he likes to do that. He’s on his own, just does whatever he wants, and it’s working out for him. And we’re forging ahead, so, you know, there you are.

AVC: Is it strange to be playing with a different drummer in Cheap Trick?

TP: It would be if the drummer didn’t have the same feel, and our drummer Daxx Nielsen is great. He’s got that that style of drumming that fits, that kind of British Invasion style, which he has in his blood. It’s like a combination of Ringo, Charlie Watts, and Keith Moon.

AVC: Daxx being Rick Nielsen’s son also helps, I’m sure.

TP: Well, he’s definitely a part of the family. He had replaced Bun E. when [Carlos] had back surgery. That was about 10 years ago. He was only 20 years old at the time. He was just really like a kid then. It was great. We did three months straight with him. And now he’s 30 years old, so he’s not a kid anymore. He’s a real grown-up. 

AVC: Dream Police has an interesting place in Cheap Trick’s history, since it was the most ambitious record you made at that point in your career. Were you happy with how the original album turned out?

TP: We always wanted to make it as big and wild as possible. And we just were always battling to get more strangeness and just more of our real ideas in there that weren’t the norm. It was always a big battle to get anything done. And now, we can just do whatever the hell we want. Nobody’s telling us, “That all sounds well and good, but you guys don’t know anything about hits, so here’s what you do to get a hit.” Well, you do that a few times, and it’s not successful. It’s like, “Well, what the hell? We might as well just do what we want to do.” It seems like that’s the way it should be, but it’s not. You’re just battling the record label and your producer or whatever, just to get your ideas across. It’s difficult. It’s not like they’re adding to it, it’s just always taking away from it. This gives us the opportunity to add in things we would have done. It’s really making it more like we really wanted it to be, rather than how it turned out.

AVC: Was Dream Police more difficult to make than the other records you put out around the same time?

TP: No, I don’t think so. It was like, “Look, In Color was not a hit.” Doing all the stuff we really didn’t want to do, and it didn’t sound like us, we didn't think. We were’t happy with the way it came out. It’s got great songs and it seems a shame, but it was like, “Well, that, that didn’t work.” If that didn’t work, then why don’t we use more of our ideas? Make it heavier; we didn’t want this lightweight sound. It was just a battle to get our real sound. It just seemed kind of crazy. Like, “Yeah, I love you band, but, you know, if you just sound like somebody else you would be great.” It didn’t make any sense to us.

They just kind of gave up and let us do more of what we wanted to do. You know, we know what’s right. I know it sounds like crap here, but, yeah, it’ll be great. Trust me, it’ll be great, this is what the kids want to hear.

AVC: Dream Police was recorded before the At Budokan live album, but it wasn’t released until afterward. Sales-wise, Dream Police was somewhat overshadowed by the live record. Do you wish it had come out when it was intended?

TP: Well, no, because the first three records did not sell, so, logically the fourth one probably wouldn’t either. We were selling nothing. With Budokan, we just got lucky. It was the right place and the right time, you know? That came out, and without that and Dream Police, who knows? But it definitely helped out Dream Police. They probably should have delayed Dream Police even longer, because Budokan was still selling, and then Dream Police didn’t reach the status that Budokan did. 

AVC: Where would you rank Dream Police in the pantheon of Cheap Trick records?

TP: I don’t know. I always think that we get a little better per record. We are always trying improve. We never are satisfied. We are still trying to get the perfect tone. You got to get that sound. We haven’t made the perfect record, but honestly I think each one just gets better.