True story: When I was a little kid, my father was purchasing manager for a lift truck company in Lincolnwood, Illinois. One of his suppliers happened to be the father of, I believe, Tom Petersson of Cheap Trick. One day, Dad brought home a copy of their new album Dream Police that he had been given, along with a copy of the tour program from Japan. Of course, being young and dumb, I didn’t take proper care of either; the program ended up shredded in the back of Dad’s Chevy Citation.
Dream Police marked a turning point for Rick Nielsen and crew. After several years of slugging it out with minimal attention in the States, their previous album Cheap Trick At Budokan proved to be the key to knocking down those doors, and they finally tasted success. However, they were left with the ineviable task of following that up—and, honestly, most bands would have had a problem doing so.
Dream Police, thus, was the Stone of Sisyphus for Cheap Trick—and, at times, it feels like they’re going to be able to get that boulder to the top of the hill. Unfortunately, they were not able to maintain that energy for the entire album.
The bulk of the first half of the album features a band that can do little to no wrong. The title track alone has rightfully become an anthem on classic rock radio, and remains quite possibly one of the best songs in the Cheap Trick arsenal. “Weight Of The World” and “The House Is Rockin’ (With Domestic Problems)” both prove that, at least in 1979, Cheap Trick had made a rightful claim for the arena rock throne.
And then, there is “Gonna Raise Hell.” An ambitious song, to be sure, but one that just seems to drone on well past what would be an expected ending point, and it dares to undo the successes of the preceding songs.
The problem is that Dream Police was knocked off its equilibrium with “Gonna Raise Hell,” and it’s not until the Petersson-led track “I Know What I Want” that things finally start going Cheap Trick’s way again. It’s not that songs like “Voices” or “I’ll Be With You Tonight” are bad; they simply don’t live up to the same level of excellence that the opening tracks do.
If Dream Police proved anything, it’s that the band’s magic sauce might not have existed with Nielsen’s guitar work and songwriting, or the steady backbeat from Bun E. Carlos. The 12-string bass work from Petersson proves to add a significant amount of texture to these songs, providing an almost synthesizer-effect to his bass lines. Thus, he could quite possibly have been Cheap Trick’s secret weapon.
Dream Police is not a bad album by any stretch of the definition, but it does commit the misdemeanor of not living up to the expectations for following up a smash release. It’s still worth checking out, but tread carefully.
