Waxing Nostalgic: Cheap Trick, “Dream Police”

By Jeffery X Martin

It’s difficult to gauge just how popular Cheap Trick really got. Even though their live version of “I Want You to Want Me” hit the top ten and the album At Budokan sold millions, most people seem to think of them as “those guys that did that one song.”

The Seventies and early Eighties were full of groups like Cheap Trick, raggedy bands that fought their way out of the bar scene, into small venues, and finally into a record contract. Think of the Michael Stanley Band (“This Town”) or the Greg Kihn Band (“Jeopardy”) as examples. They were all distinctive in their own right, yet at their core, they remained bar bands, guys you could find rocking “Louie, Louie” at a wedding reception, long after the groomsmen had gone home.

To paraphrase Carl Brutananadilewski, Cheap Trick didn’t need no instructions to know how to rock. Rick Nielsen, with his New Wave beanie, brandished his multi-necked guitars as if they were monstrous Iron Age weapons. One of the few drummers able to make Charlie Watts seem animated and engaged, Bun E. Carlos looked like a member of the Bunco Squad, sunglasses on at night, cigarette dangling from his mouth, and tie askew. Tom Petersson walked around the stage, effortlessly throwing down concrete bass lines. Lead singer Robin Zander, with his long blonde hair and affinity for interesting hats, certainly had the “pretty boy” thing down, but he had the pipes to back it up. Growl it, scream it, opera diva it, Zander could do it.

Besides being one of those solid rock and roll bands that the Midwest United States seems to have a patent on churning out, one of the best things about Cheap Trick was they weren’t afraid to get weird. “Dream Police” is one of the best examples of that bent.

The song straps the listener into a rickety carnival ride at a county fair with lax safety standards. The insistent three-note keyboard part sounds like a hypnotic spiral, like an old Thirties movie about the dangers of being mesmerized. It’s still a rock song, though, and Nielsen’s three-chord foundation is accentuated by flourishes that at times recall music from a Steve McQueen chase scene. Just when you think you’re safe, everything devolves into a Lennonesque psychedelic diatribe, complete with violins; it sounds like what would have happened if the Magical Mystery Tour bus had crashed into an amusement park ride.

The lyrics seem like the secret fears of an eight-year-old who has done something terribly wrong, holding in that guilt, afraid of his parents finding out, afraid of God smiting him. It’s a terror that leads into adulthood. Someone will find you out. Worse, someone already knows the truth about you. And they’re just waiting to take you down.

I try to sleep, they’re wide awake, they won’t let me alone
They don’t get paid to take vacations or let me alone
They spy on me, I try to hide, they won’t let me alone
They persecute me, they’re the judge and jury all in one

It’s heady stuff for a three-minute long pop song. Alice Cooper dredged two concept albums out of similar themes. But Cheap Trick explores the themes of fear, guilt, and conformity—with no real intent to resolve them—effectively and frighteningly. “Dream Police” is simply the shimmering recognition of the ghosts that haunt us all, the things that go bump in the mind.

Listen to “Dream Police” and other music mentioned in this column with the Waxing Nostalgic playlist on Spotify! Updated every Thursday!