While Jon Brant got his face on the cover of Cheap Trick's 1982 hard rock opus One On One, the band's third bass player didn't actually play on a Cheap Trick record until 1983's Next Position Please, which broke the band's string of four consecutive Top 40 albums.
Of course, the writing was on the wall from the moment the band turned the Todd Rundgren-produced tapes into Epic Records, where the suits informed the band that they didn't hear a single.
This, of course, was total bullshit because anyone with ears can recognize the album's first two tracks "I Can't Take it" and "Borderline" as obvious single candidates. What made such gems hard to recognize as chart contenders was Rundgren's horrible production and final mix, which made the entire album sound like a bunch of hastily recorded 8-track demos.
Whether a simple remix could have salvaged the sessions, one can only surmise, but the suits at Epic chose to insult one of America's best songwriters (Rick Nielsen) by suggesting his band record outside material. The song the Epic brain trust suggested was an obscure nugget by UK pub rockers The Motors called "Dancing The Night Away"
How or why such a song would rate so high in the minds of Epic's A&R staff might have had just a little to do with the strange snorting sounds emanating from the executive washroom. After all, the song itself hadn't even dented the Top 40 in the Motors' own country, the UK. If one was going to pick a Motors tune, why not "Airport", which had been a Top 5 UK smash?
One has to hand it to Cheap Trick for even considering such a suggestion when most other acts would have responded by extending a sharp middle finger in the general direction of 51 W. 52nd Street (Epic's headquarters), but Cheap Trick was admittedly still trying to mend fences after the legal fight that ensued in 1981 when the band attempted to leverage interest from Elektra Records into a restructured deal with Epic.
The maneuver backfired and led to the band being sued by Epic for millions. Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed and the lawsuit was eventually settled out-of-court.
Once released as a single, "Dancing The Night Away" stiffed. Of course, Epic's faith in the song must have waned by then because they didn't even finance a music video for the track. The label did, however, bankroll a strange video for the second single, "I Can't Take It", that saw singer Robin Zander tarred, feathered, and hunted for sport by members of his own band.
Needless to say, MTV failed to play the video with any regularity and the single failed to chart, leaving the band to tour for months in support of an album that had already fallen off the charts.
Eager to right the ship before they took on anymore water, the band reunited with famed producer Jack Douglas, who had produced their debut album. Those anticipating a return to the band's slyly subversive rock sound of "Daddy Should Have Stayed In High School" or "Elo Kiddies" were in for a big surprise as the resulting album sounded nothing at all like their debut, much less Cheap Trick.
Instead, Standing On The Edge treated fans to gimmicky production tricks and loads of synthesizers that made it nigh impossible to determine whether there were any truly decent songs beneath the '80s bells and whistles. If not for Zander's stellar vocals throughout, such mindless musical detours as "She's Got Motion" and "Wild Wild Women" would have ruined the band's reputation for good.
The album's sole highlight, "Tonight It's You", found steady airplay on MTV and AOR radio, yet failed to break the Top 40, leading many to wonder what the band had to do to score a hit. After all, they'd bent over backwards trying to appease their label, radio programmers, and the gatekeepers at MTV to no avail.
Then things got truly weird.
To this day, when this writer revisits the band's 1986 album, The Doctor, it's impossible to decipher whether the band was honestly trying to play ball with Epic or get kicked off the label. From the nonsensical cover art to the t-shirt slogan song titles ("Good Girls Go To Heaven (Bad Girls Go Everywhere), anybody?), this one's a stinker from start to finish.
While the band had recruited songwriter/keyboardist Mark Radice to help Rick Nielsen through a debilitating songwriting slump on their previous album, no such assistance was offered this time around and the result is disastrous. Not even a hokey lifeline from Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly ("Kiss Me Red") could save this ship from sinking.
To drive the final nail into the coffin of the Jon Brant years was the indignity of seeing the band reduced to opening for the likes of Ratt.
Luckily, near the end of 1987, as the band was criss-crossing the midwest club and theatre circuit to half-packed houses, a familiar face returned from the abyss to resume bass duties for the band. Of course, I had been tipped to Petersson's rekindled friendship with Nielsen earlier in the year by a member of the Elvis Brothers, who mentioned to me that Petersson had been hanging out with the band at their Rockford rehearsal space.
"What's he doing there? I asked.
"Making Jon Brant nervous," replied Graham Elvis, only half-jokingly.
At the time, Petersson's reappearance came under the guise of "writing some songs together", but quickly morphed into something else entirely, leaving Jon Brant with a whole lot of time on his hands. Would the return of Petersson signal a commercial resurgence for the band?
Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion!