Yes, it's 45 years since Disco Demolition Night. I know I could crop these articles to make them smaller, but the surrounding ads are too good leave out. They really give some context for the era as well. Cheap Trick are very tangentially involved in Disco Demolition Night, as you probably know. This Daily Illini review is from the first night at the International Amphitheater.
The LOOP had an entire "Disco Sucks" concert series, of which these shows were a part of. The review of the show itself is interesting. Of course, there is a geisha reference in it. Sadly that type of stuff is pretty commonplace for the time. While describing how the band was "Big In Japan," (a term that both Don McLeese and I agree really came from the band's explosion, Epic, the rock mags. and pretty much everyone else used kimonos, Godzilla, WWII, and every other Japanese stereotype to describe this phenomenon. In the actual video of the April 28 Budokan show, Rick gives a squinty-eyed look at about fifty-seconds into "Hello There" that might make people blush today.
Incidentally, I truly think that it was as harmless as his bug eyed look he often gave. No one thinks he was somehow insulting the disabled, so I wouldn't think twice about it. Rick's humor definitely synced up to Steve Dahl's, however. Bob Odenkirk, born in Naperville, was also a LOOP fan. He wrote the introduction to Dahl's book, which he read here:
While writing American Standard, I wondered if I should get into Disco Demolition Night. I was told by someone who lived in the area at the time that I shouldn't bother mentioning it. Dahl was a lout and I shouldn't give him the attention was the reasoning. But this was one of countless pop culture touchstones that Cheap Trick intersected with. Bob Odenkirk got drunk for the first time in 30 years to narrate the story. The entire episode is no longer streaming, though I did download it when it was. Needless to say, Slippin' Jimmy McGill acknowledges the perception that Disco Demolition exacerbated some homophobic and racist sentiment. However, he doesn't blame Dahl one bit.
I read Dahl's book. Since mine went to press there has been an excellent Netflix documentary on Mike Veeck, a PBS one on the Death of Disco, and one recently on the genre as a whole. The final episode deals with the events of 45 years ago today. I was eight when this happened, but I really don't believe the motivation behind it was hateful. Steve Dahl, who admits to drinking a ton during this period, didn't invent "Disco Sucks" and neither did Veeck. It definitely unleashed a lot of shit they didn't account for. The event reminded me of a scene from the Twisted Sister documentary where Dee Snider recounts all the "Death to Disco" shows they played and how one of the bar owners hung Barry White in effigy. At that moment, he claimed, he realized this wasn't what he signed up for.
So how does Cheap Trick fit into all this, besides playing the International Amp shows? Incidentally, the second night is widely available from the radio broadcast. It has the same setlist as the one reviewed. The Illilni was right that "Elo Kiddies" was a rarity, but the band was playing that and "Lookout" mainly because they were both on Budokan. The geisha reference that started this whole tangent was right that the tour was basically in support of the live album.
Rick Nielsen also appears in Dahl's book.
“It was hard to get a record deal because of all the disco stuff,” Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Nielsen said in a February 2015 interview in the heated patio of his home in Rockford, Illinois. “Donna Summer. Gloria Gaynor. We had no chance of doing anything, but we just did [music] we liked. It became a backlash to everything going on."
Robin Zander also mentioned being anti-disco on In The Studio With Redbeard
"We were part of that sort of surge that was sort of sick of listening to disco music on the radio and we were just part of that sort of movement or whatever you want to call it."
Robin was talking about the band being pigeonholed by classification and image.
When they did this song, obviously they were more joking about the pomp and artifice of disco than anything else. Bun E. Carlos has often said that the band was also railing against the superficiality of prog rock even though Cheap Trick was definitely a progressive rock band itself in the early days. I've never talked to Steve Dahl, but I think his view of disco was more about the fact it was a club (literally and figuratively) that he couldn't get into.
Also, you can tell from the interview that there is a big "Second City" chip on his shoulder. I've lived in New York all my life, but know having spoken to a lot of Midwesterners that being shat on (or the perception that they were) played a big part in their identity. Cheap Trick was from Rockford so they felt second class to Chicago, even. In fact, as Rick Nielsen told Jeb Wright, they had to go to Tokyo just to be known in the Windy City.
Rick was basically a shock jock on stage to begin with. As Brad Elvis said in Mike Vanderbilt's excellent Chicago Reader piece right before the April 2016 Hall of Fame induction:
"Rick especially was one to not hold back when it came to running his mouth onstage. He would whale on local bands while they were in the audience. But bands almost felt honored, like, “Don Rickles picked on me!”
It's also worth mentioning that when Rick and Robin were on with Redbeard to talk about The Essential Cheap Trick, Zander says Nielsen and Petersson heckled Queen during their headling set in 1977 by saying "Freddie, you f****t! Get off the stage!" Brian Kramp alludes to this in his book, though don't know if people picked up on the quote. I don't think for one second the band was homophobic, quite to the contrary. The Reader piece documents how they ended up at Humpin' Hannas because bar owners were scared off by so many gay Cheap Trick fans. Even though it is jarring to hear Robin use the "other f word," it's also notable he says they were kicked out of the Queen set. I've never gotten any confirmation this was true. The band definitely mocked Queen's shtick, but I don't believe for a second they were booted from either of those January shows. As Brian also points out in his book, This Band Has No Past, Queen was originally the band name-checked in "Surrender." I imagine Rick was just once again making fun of what was popular at the time while his own band struggled to break through.
On December 9, 1999 Cheap Trick appeared on Steve Dahl's show on WKCG. It was 20 years after Disco Demolition. You can stream it here. It's a lot of the same humor that Dahl was doing on the LOOP. He makes fun of Pete Townshend and Eddie Vedder, two guys he has huge respect for. The band rips on Tom for his failed marriage to Dagmar and there some barbs towards Ken Adamany, who the band had finally settled with. There are some uncomfortable moments for sure. When Dahl tries to coerce the band into playing certain songs, he calls it "jam raping," for instance.
In Dahl's book, Rick discusses being at Comiskey for a bit before realizing it wasn't his type of scene. The band was in Detroit the following day as KISS' "Special Guest" at the Silverdome, so it's certainly possible. KISS originally booked two nights at the "mini-dome," which was the Silverdome with a sheet cutting it in half. The Who, the act that played the Silvedome's first rock show in 1975, also performed under this arrangement:
The Who played the International Ampitheater the night before, also as part of the LOOP concert series. But after tragedy in Cincinnati on the 3rd, all these shows had a dark cloud over them. Yes, I still remember the "very special" WKRP episode dealing with the event.
Bun E. Carlos recalls Cheap Trick, who owed so much to their 1977 opening sets for KISS, being called in to help with ticket sales. During "Big Eyes," a whiskey bottle was thrown on stage, hitting Tom. He returned to admonish the crowd, holding Gene Simmons' bass. Rick posted the photo a few years back on the annivesary of the show. I've added the audio here.
You can stream Cheap Trick's set here. Bob Alford, who often took photos of Cheap Trick, snapped this one of Gene Simmons from that night. I don't know who took the shot of Robin, but I had it dated July 14, 1979. Since there was no show that night, I assume it was from Pontiac.
I actually just finished reading Larry Harris' book, And Party Every Day, which briefly mentions Disco Demolition. He says the double header was against Cleveland, and not Detroit, but it's a small error.
The thing about Cheap Trick, is that like Forrest Gump, they always seem to be around many pop culture touchstone moments. One of the cooler interviews I found was with Rick, Robin, and Howie Klein in 1977. Klein was covering the band's first appearance in San Francisco and asking Robin about his appeal to the gay community. Rick, who sounds uncommonly out of character, tells Robin it's best not to talk about that stuff to keep illusions alive. However, Rick also says that while their album, and the promotional blitz that was accompanying it, might not pay off that they might leave a mark another way. By the third album, people might recognize them and then go back to the earlier stuff. He was only one album off, since it was Budokan that was the game changer.
Anyway, thanks for reading.
RLW
Comments