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I
t has been said that Billy Idol invented
the 80s. It’s true, he did. The 80s didn’t
really kick in until about 1984 but, let’s
face it, he had the plastic-fantastic
aesthetic – and the cheekbones – to carry an
entire decade. That’s not to say the 1970s
didn’t have their own look, but it was
essentially just more of the same. Long hair
and tight leather pants had been pioneered by
Jim Morrison in the mid-60s, and everyone
just stuck with that for the next 10 years. It
was clearly time for a change.
The 70s were violent and tumultuous times,
pockmarked by a pointless war that was
followed by one crisis after another. First a gas
crisis, then a hostage crisis, then a rock’n’roll
crisis, with disco, punk and new wave rattling
the established order to its core. And then in
1981 the rapidly developing world of cable
television spawned it’s biggest monster yet
with MTV. Here’s the concept: you don’t just
hear the bands any more, you also see them.
The jig was most definitely up for drab dad-
rockers; nobody wanted to pay good money
just to look at Bob Seger.
Local shops gave way to vast shopping
emporiums with national chains. Suddenly
you could buy the same clothes as everyone
else, including your fave rock stars in the glossy
magazines. Escapism was in, and fashion
reflected that. Teenagers, always searching for
a new kick, adopted the less intense bits from
punk – spiked wristbands, hair gel and hair
bigger than ever before and highlighted to
within an inch of its life – and merged it with
stone-washed jeans and Day-Glo everything.
It was party time, and they just needed the
anthem. Idol had already been working his
look since the Gen X days, and it was all
together by the time the Rebel Yell video arrived
in ’84. There was no looking back from there.
Everyone wore torn fishnets on their arms like
it was a perfectly natural thing to do, and no
one looked back until Seattle invented flannel.Words: Ken McIntyreTHE
NEW LOOK
OF THE80 S
F
ollowing up their career-changing
Cheap Trick At Budokan was never
going to be much of a problem for
Cheap Trick – given that they’d
actually recorded the material for Dream Police
before their live album was released.
“Dream Police was ready to go when
Budokan came out,” guitarist Rick Nielsen
said. “We held it back because Budokan was
so successful.”
Nice problems to have. Dream Police was the
band’s fourth studio album in three years. They
might have fallen into the 80s as awkwardly as
a drunk going through a shop window, but in
1979, buoyed by their massive-selling live
album and with Nielsen’s songwriting still as
sharp as a tack – it seemed
almost inevitable that Dream
Police would make bona fide
rock stars of Cheap Trick.
Commercially it’s still their
most successful studio record
(No.6 in the US Billboard
chart). It’s also arguably the
last great album they made,
and it was certainly the last
time they’d work with producer
Tom Werman.
On first glance at the album cover, you’d be
forgiven for thinking that the band dressed up
as ice-cream sellers. But that’s quickly forgotten
when the title track bursts into life and
encapsulates everything that is brilliant about
Cheap Trick: inventive, orchestrated, brimming
with melody and ever so slightly nuts. Whimsy
and immediacy are hard to get right, but Dream
Police’s startling opener drags you right in,
buoyed along happily by the stab of orchestral
strings – a first for the band.
“When I wrote it, it needed more
instrumentation,” said Nielsen, “more than just
guitar, bass, and drums. So it had that keyboard
like we had in Surrender, but if you can use an
orchestra to do it... It’s an orchestral part thatI wrote, so it was like, let’s book an orchestra.
We’d never worked with one before, but we
thought it was a good idea. And I still think it is.”
Rolling Stone magazine was less impressed.
Dave Marsh’s review from the time singled out
Dream Police as “sour, jaundiced and self-
important”, then really put the boot in
describing the chiming Voices as, remarkably,
“a ballad from a band that has absolutely no
facility for ballads, [it] is disastrous”.
Marsh’s palpitations aside, Voices was the
work of a band moving their signature sound
forward. “We started off with the chorus, as
opposed to building up to the chorus,” said
Nielsen. “It’s the same thing with Dream Police,
you hear voices in your head or somebody’s
messing with your brain. It’s
like you didn’t know what you
were listening for until you
heard the voices. Somebody,
your mind’s eye, has some
talking to do to you.”
Elsewhere, Nielsen flexed his
Beatles muscles beautifully
with songs like I’ll Be With You
Tonight, which borrowed
liberally from Day Tripper, and
the raucous The House Is Rockin’
(With Domestic Problems), although, in
retrospect, at nine minutes long Gonna Raise
Hell might have overstayed its welcome.
As the 80s dawned, bassist Tom Petersson
quit the band, their own label sued them, and
Cheap Trick would stumble from one
undercooked AOR-light album (not least the
risible The Doctor) to the next, with Epic
Records insisting they work with outside
writers. Petersson returned in time for the
platinum-selling Lap Of Luxury just as the
decade was coming to an end.
That was all to come, however. In 1979 it was
hard to quibble with the rousing, celebratory
pop smash that was Dream Police. And, all
these years later, it’s still ringing.Words:Philip WildingCHEAP TRICK
DREAM POLICE
Whitesnake:^ the^
MTV^ years.CLASSICROCKMAGAZINE.COM 47