Cheap Trick In The 90's, Part 2: Woke Up With A Monster & A Goatee!

While Cheap Trick quietly big adieu to Epic Records after twelve studio albums, the band's newfound freedom was not lost on singer Robin Zander, who was personally courted by Jimmy Iovine to sign with the legendary record producer's new label, Interscope Records.

Iovine called in a few favors and coaxed some truly inspired guest appearances by Heartbreakers guitarist Mike Campbell, Fleetwood Mac's Stevie Nicks, Christina Amphlett from Divinyls, and former Lone Justice singer Maria McKee.

Before the sessions, however, Zander collaborated on material with the likes of Campbell, J.D. Souther, and Eurythmics guitarist Dave Stewart, while also hand picking Neil Young's "I Believe In You" and Harry Nilsson's "Jump Into The Fire". The latter was ultimately an ambitious musical re-imagining of the Nilsson classic comprised of samples from the Buzzcocks, PiL, Deep Purple, and Yes, among others.

The resulting album was radio friendly on a number of levels: pop, adult contemporary, AAA (adult album alternative), AOR, Mainstream Rock, Modern AC, Rock CHR, and so, but did Interscope make any concerted effort to promote Zander's material to any of these formats?

Yes and no. While "I've Always Got You" went Top 20 on the Mainstream Rock Billboard airplay chart, it gained no other traction on other formats and no other singles were issued from the album.

One would presume that an album produced by the label's co-founder (Iovine) would merit an "all hands on deck" response from Interscope's marketing department, but, incredulously, it appears that the team in charge of promoting this release took it as a personal challenge to see just how deep they could bury this album.

As a result, Zander's solo debut remains the worst-selling release in Interscope history, which should have sent a livid Iovine through Interscope's marketing department with pink slips flying, but, to our knowledge, no such bloodletting ever took place.

Just another day in the rock & roll trenches, we guess.

With Zander's solo ambitions unceremoniously thwarted, his attention soon turned back to Cheap Trick, who had just signed a new record deal with Warner Brothers Records.

This writer still recalls spying the new album in the bins, seeing "Cheap Trick" scrawled in an unfamiliar Ralph Steadman-like style instead of the iconic logo we've all come to know and love, and initially suspecting that we were staring at another cheesy CBS Special Products compilation, but as we flipped the CD over and noticed the Warner Brothers logo, our pulse quickened.

Also, seeing the words "Produced by Ted Templeman" didn't hurt either.

The album starts off encouragingly enough with "My Gang", the title cut, and "You're All I Wanna Do", each sounding like they could have come from the band's early prime era. Unfortunately, this being Trick's first album since Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins had changed the rock music landscape, Mainstream Rock and AOR formats were the album's only real hope of airplay short of getting their video aired on MTV.

Thankfully, things started out encouragingly enough with the album's title cut making inroads at Mainstream Rock, but this initial burst of airplay was short-lived and the lack of a commercially-available single meant there would be no appearance on the sales charts. This was also the case for every other single released from the album.

Keep in mind that major retail chain Tower Records' decision to stop carrying singles led other retailers to scale back their singles inventory, leading labels to forego the well-worn practice of releasing single commercially, a shortsighted and stupid move that was an attributing factor to Napster's success a few years later.

While five different tracks were released as radio promo singles, sadly, the album's most radio-friendly track, "Tell Me Everything", was not one of them.

Meanwhile, the band found themselves being forced into nostalgia mode by an industry that had moved on to grunge and alternative. Hence, in between club gigs, the band was also sandwiched into bills with the likes of Eddie Money and others on classic rock radio promotion events like the one that brought the band to the Rosemont Horizon soon after WUWAM's release, where Smashing Pumpkins' Billy Corgan, Chip from Enuff Z'nuff and Material Issue's Jim Ellison performed with the band.

While it was nice to see some of rock's current big shots championing the band, it only exaggerated the band's elder statesman status and forever tagged them as a "dad rock" act. Of course, opening for REO Speedwagon for much of the year didn't help matters.

Back at Warner Brothers, things could not have been worse for the band after the executives who'd brought the band to the label - Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker - were forced out of the company, leaving the band without any support system.

Seeing two of rock's most legendary executives ushered out of the very label they had established as one of the leading labels in all of music wasn't just bad for the band, but for the industry as a whole.

The bean counters now outnumbered those in the A&R ranks who had ears and took chances and it wasn't long before Cheap Trick's shiny new ten album deal was no longer worth the paper it was printed on.

Where will Cheap Trick go from here?

Find out in our next installment of Cheap Trick in the '90s!