Welcome to another edition of From My Collection. These days, it seems that nearly every veteran rockstar has a side business venture. Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons of KISS have their Rock & Brews restaurants. Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden has his own aviation firm that repairs Airbus and Boeing aircrafts. There’s too many rockstar coffees to name! Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick is no exception to this phenomenon, proudly touting his Rock’n Vodka since 2019. If you’re lucky enough to live in the Chicagoland area, you can even meet this living legend during one of his many in-store appearances for the brand, like I’m planning to this upcoming Friday. It isn’t the first time I’ve met Cheap Trick Rick, nor will it be the last. However, leading up to this specific occasion, I decided to do a deep dive into one of my favorite Trick albums, Next Position Please. Care to join? “You’ll never get bored with mirrors on the ceiling!”
Like many of their ’70s peers, the ’80s were a peculiar decade for Cheap Trick: A decade that started strong with the release of the George Martin produced All Shook Up (1980). While it didn’t match the commercial success of Dream Police (1979) and At Budokan (1978) before it, All Shook Up was enough to keep Cheap Trick’s newfound arena headliner status going strong for another year. The departure of founding bassist Tom Petersson led to the arrival of Pete Comita, who himself was then replaced by Jon Brant. Perhaps Cheap Trick was to bassists what Spinal Tap was to drummers?
1981 saw the band contribute two songs to the greatest movie soundtrack of all time (Not opinion, but rather fact), Heavy Metal. Both “Reach Out” and “I Must Be Dreamin'” remain beloved by diehard Trick fans to this day. 1982’s One on One quickly followed, boasting two hit singles in the form of “If You Want My Love” and “She’s Tight”. While neither cracked the Billboard Top 40, they did achieve hit status thanks to a brand new format that would become crucial to musical success in the ’80s: MTV. Yes, it seemed like everything was looking up for Rockford’s finest.
Eager to build upon the success of One on One, Cheap Trick teamed up with fellow US power pop guru Todd Rundgren. On paper, this was a match made in heaven. Both acts were staples of the ’70s, only to come back in the early ’80s with mega hits (Rundgren would soon be riding high on the success of “Bang the Drum All Day”). A collaboration of this nature should’ve resulted in a commercial blockbuster, one that would spawn an album side worth of hits and dominate the charts à la Pyromania, right? Wrong.
Despite Next Position Please‘s lackluster sales (It didn’t even achieve gold status), it is widely regarded by both the band and fans alike as one of the finest entries in the Cheap Trick canon. From a songwriting perspective, Rick Nielsen was absolutely on fire, crafting infectious melodies and witty lyrics characteristic of Trick’s heyday, albeit coupling them with the bright, new wave flavored production of the ever-forward looking Rundgren. In many ways, Next Position Please draws similarities to the early ’80s output of Rundgren’s band, Utopia, but I digress.
The album opens with one of Cheap Trick’s finest exercises in short and sweet power pop, “I Can’t Take It”. The normally aggressive bite of Nielsen’s guitar has been replaced by a jangly acoustic-electric sound reminiscent of The Beatles, the Fab Four-isms only becoming more apparent when the harmonious chorus kicks in. Why this song didn’t top the charts is absolutely beyond me. It’s as memorable as “Surrender”, “I Want You to Want Me”, or any other classic Trick anthem, perhaps even more so with its modernized, ’80s spin on the dreamy Spectorian choruses.
“Borderline” is another straightforward ’80s pop rock tune that follows almost the same formula as “I Can’t Take It” in terms of being a no frills tune. Robin Zander sings about leaving “all our troubles behind”. Where? You guessed it: “At the borderline”. In recent years, Cheap Trick has dusted this off for their live sets, resulting in a group singalong among the true diehards. The quirkily titled “I Don’t Love Here Anymore” boasts a swagger and lead riff reminiscent of Thin Lizzy’s “Chinatown”. I’m sure this is nothing short of coincidence, but I can’t help but think the two ’70s hard rock titans must’ve crossed paths at some point.
We then get to my favorite cut on the album, and one of my favorite Trick songs of all time for that matter, “Next Position Please”. This song had roots going back to the Dream Police era and it shows. It’s certainly one of the more harder edged songs on this album, with that sharp guitar melody during the chorus and some absolutely absurd lyrics (“I wanna be the biggest gun in the world. I want to see the tits on every girl.”) And to think Epic threw a fit over the proposed use of the word “dykes” and “whore” in “Surrender” just 5 years earlier!
The early Cheap Trick vibes continue with the rather unsettling “Younger Girls”. I don’t have to do much analyzing of this one for you to figure out what it’s about. Mind you, this isn’t a condemnation of Cheap Trick, but rather in praise of their demented genius. The same way songs on their debut like “Daddy Should’ve Stayed in High School” and “The Ballad of TV Violence (I’m Not the Only Boy)” make us squirm, “Younger Girls” does the same, all to the tune of driving guitars and a layered chorus no less.
Side A closes with the song Epic chose as a single over “I Can’t Take It”, “Dancing the Night Away”, to which I can only ask, what the hell were they thinking? Originally performed by English pub rock pioneers The Motors, this Trickified spin on the tune feels less like “hit single” material and more like one of the new wave driven freak-outs on All Shook Up, chalk full of bizarre noises and crashing rhythms. By no means is it “bad”, but I understand why it didn’t catch on with the masses the same way “I Can’t Take It” could’ve.
As we flip over to side B, the new wave-isms continue on with pseudo-hard rocker “3-D”. Everything about this song, from the guitar tone and those vocal effects to the overall production, screams early ’80s. It’s definitely a product of the era, although Zander’s scorching vocals are not to be ignored. “You Say Jump” is another early Trick throwback, this time to the band’s knack for throwing in ’50s styled rockers akin to “I Want You to Want Me” and “Ain’t That a Shame” (the latter being a ’50s rock n’ roll cover). Pairing this formula with a new wave production makes for a listening experience that lies somewhere between infectiously enjoyable and creepily unnerving, which I’m sure was the intention.
Speaking of the ’50s, can we talk for a second about one of the most underrated ballads of all time, “Y.O.Y.O.Y.”? In an age where power ballads quickly became a contractual obligation, with every major label signed band doing their best Journey and/or Foreigner impersonation to appease their corporate masters, Cheap Trick said, “Nah.”, opting to put an absolutely beautiful late ’50s/early ’60s style tearjerker smack dab in the middle of Next Position Please‘s B side. “Y.O.Y.O.Y.” tugs at the listener’s heartstrings with its ethereal soundscape and Zander’s otherworldly vocals. They call him the Man of 1,000 Voices for a reason (although I’m patiently still waiting for him to tackle death metal).
“Won’t Take No for An Answer” can be filed alongside the title track as one of the rare hard rocking moments of this album. On here, Trick utilizes the now used to death “loud quiet loud” formula that would become the norm of alt rock in the late ’80s and ’90s. Pummeling choruses contrast with new wave tinged verses, making for a unique and powerful listen. This is then followed by the best Rundgren single that never was, “Heaven’s Falling”. If you ever wondered what Cheap Trick would sound like with Rudngren in the fold, well, here you go. No pun intended, this absolute power pop heaven, so damn sugary that it could put one in a diabetic coma. Again, why this wasn’t released as a single is beyond me.
Next Position Please closes with the punchy and upbeat “Invaders of the Heart”. After a brief homage to The Who’s “My Generation”, Cheap Trick kicks into this riveting hard rocker. I can’t help but feel “Invaders of the Heart” was a bone thrown to the fans of their heavier material who might not have dug the power pop/new wave slant of this affair, but who really knows? For how many people rave about this album in later years, you’d think it was a blockbuster of an album, and it wasn’t. I guess it sits alongside Black Sabbath’s Tony Martin era now in the “forgotten classic” department.
23 years after its initial release, Next Position Please received an “authorized” reissue in 2006, featuring a handful of songs that didn’t make the final cut in ’83. One such song includes the dark “Twisted Heart”, which I implore you to check out if only for Zander’s fiery vocal performance. Perhaps Rundgren thought it was too menacing for this happy go lucky affair? Headbanger or not, there’s no reason one shouldn’t explore Next Position Please. It holds a unique spot in Trick history and I’d go as far to call it their strongest of the ’80s. What else can I say? I want you to want Next Position Please!