They Just Seem a Little Weird by Doug Brod

Author:Doug Brod [Brod, Doug]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hachette Books
Published: 2020-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

UP THE CREEK

LIKE AEROSMITH AND KISS—and the Beatles before them—Cheap Trick seemed a natural fit for the movies. Filmmakers thought so too, and the band believed they’d get their first major exposure with four songs on the soundtrack of 1979’s Over the Edge, a compelling teen-angst melodrama that became one of the favorite movies of Kurt Cobain, who more than a decade later would help turn compelling teen-angst melodrama into a mega-successful rock genre. The movie’s limited theatrical run didn’t do much to get the word out, but over time the band expanded their discography by contributing several songs to motion pictures of varying quality, including Roadie, Heavy Metal, Rock & Rule, Spring Break, Up the Creek, and Top Gun.

It wasn’t a lack of enthusiasm that kept the photogenic band from actually appearing on-screen. In 1978, director Allan Arkush was developing a teensploitation comedy called Disco High for B-movie producer Roger Corman, who wanted to cash in on the back-to-back John Travolta successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease. Arkush originally envisioned Todd Rundgren as the featured artist, perky Riff Randell’s object of adoration. Rundgren read the script, liked that the high school got blown up, but preferred more serious fare such as Lindsay Anderson’s if…..

When Arkush heard Rodney Bingenheimer spin the not-yet-released Budokan on the radio, he thought he had found his band. Wowed by Cheap Trick’s intensity, strong but never saccharine melodic sense, and humorous lyrics, he met the band at a taping of the TV concert show Midnight Special and pitched the concept. “They liked the idea and were very interested,” says Arkush, who found Nielsen’s signature look and the band’s comical self-awareness perfectly aligned with his vision for the film. As the director petitioned Corman to change the title to Rock ’n’ Roll High School, Corman’s lawyer was encouraging Arkush to meet with Warner Bros. to explore the label’s roster. Two new artists were considered, then dismissed: Van Halen (too early and, Arkush was warned, too nuts) and Devo (too, well, sui generis). Warner Bros. then suggested a band on its Sire label that were already a few albums into their career but desperate for some traction: the leather-jacketed New York City crew known as the Ramones.

The filmmakers initially offered Cheap Trick $15,000 for three weeks’ work, a pittance for a self-sustaining band with a substantial overhead. “We said, ‘We can’t do that. We’ll go out of business,’” Carlos says. “Fifteen grand doesn’t pay for anybody for three weeks, much less the crew, the buses, and everything else we would have had to stop but still pay for.”

The band countered with $50,000, nearly one-third of the film’s initial budget, which included the rights to use songs from Budokan—a boon for the soundtrack—but Cheap Trick still would have needed to record a theme song. The Ramones required half that amount. Equipped with images of each band, including pages of singer Joey Ramone from a Punk magazine fumetti called “Mutant Monster Beach Party” (which, incidentally, included a cameo

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