Why Cheap Trick's "Surrender" is absolutely brilliant

there are rock anthems that make you feel good to sing along to and there are rock songs that hit you on a deep level because of how the lyrics strike a chord within you something is being sung about that resonates with you and your own personal experience and then there's a rock anthem that checks off on both of these boxes a song that is so perfectly crafted so satisfying to hear and sing along to and somehow takes a snapshot of the moment when you figure out that your parents are just regular people too only one song like that in all of rock and roll surrender by cheap trick did rick nielsen know that he was writing such a monumental song when he wrote it well before their days of being signed to a record label and becoming bona fide rock stars it would have been hard to imagine back in those days with the band rehearsing in the basement of his dad's music shop on 7th street in rockford illinois a town that at the time was so relatively unknown that it was just easier for the press to say they were from chicago about an hour and a half away but rockford is indeed the hometown of one of the greatest and most inventive rock bands ever guitarist rick nielsen creator of the five-necked guitar bassist tom peterson who came up with the design for his 12-string custom bass the first of its kind and drummer bunny carlos all hail from rockford and front man robin xander grew up just stone's throw away in love's park that classic lineup solidified when xander joined the rest of the band by invitation in 1974 and the name cheap trick came from tom peterson who commented after seeing a slade concert in the early 70s that they would use every cheap trick in the book as part of their act the influence of the beatles is so evident in the powerful pop sensibility that fuels all of their songs but they were also a hell of a garage band especially early on they had an appreciation for the spectacle of the sex pistols who shook up the music scene worldwide with their controversial debut in 1977 and cheap trick had a kind of midwestern affability that drew fans to them locally if you're of a certain age you might have seen them as the world's best bar band playing in clubs around the midwest one thing that all cheap trick fans know and appreciate is that they have a distinct sense of humor it's in their songs and in their style look at the band themselves for instance on the album artwork for heaven tonight their third album released in 1978 for which surrender serves as the album opener on the cover you have two of the prettiest boys ever to be in a band robin xander blonde dressed in all white and tom peterson also savagely handsome and at least on this album cover both with a head full of ridiculously good hair flip the album over and you see rick nielsen wide-eyed with his signature ball cap and the brim flipped up brushing his teeth in a mirror while wearing a cheap trick jacket joined by the slightly professorish looking slightly rotund fu manchu mustachioed glass is wearing pin striped jacket wearing bun e carlos working on straightening his tie in the mirror the beauty boys on the front and the oddball characters on the back formed a most unique union and an alchemy occurred when you got a load of them you were in the presence of a band you kind of loved them at first sight that's before you even dropped the needle on the record cheap trick had a style that was completely their own and still is to this day and it wasn't all flash every person in this band was serious about the music and took the craft of making the songs very seriously even when they were unknowingly laying the groundwork for the punk rock bands that worshipped them afterward like green day with their incomparable sense of humor cheap trick were very good and they were very fun the story of how they came to be worldwide rock stars is as unusual as the individuals that make up the classic lineup after gigging around the midwest playing everything from bars to bowling alleys they were signed to epic records in 1976 and released their self-titled debut early the next year it was loved by the critics but it didn't chart they released their second album in color later that year in 1977 and while excellent and also beloved by critics it too failed to chart they toured with kiss the kinks and queen as openers but were not finding footing on the strength of their own album sales but then a strange thing happened when they toured japan for the first time in 1978 after in color was released they found themselves with a downright rabid fan base there almost like beatlemania the japanese fans simply could not get enough of these four musicians from rockford and the well-defined almost cartoon-like characters that each one played in the band that and the songs again the songs were freaking great and the band absolutely tore it up live so they recorded two concerts on that tour from the budakan in tokyo a venue originally built for judo competitions in the 1964 olympics a selection of those performances was compiled for what was intended to be a japan only release as a gift for their fans there cheap trick live at boudicon shortly after that the band released heaven tonight in may of 1978 and surrender was their first single to finally go into the charts it peaked at number 62 in the u.s now after that little bit of success the demand for cheap tricks budakan album grew from fans who wanted it in the state so much that epic records put it out in the us in 1979 and it absolutely blew up going triple platinum here and making them international superstars what a trip so this band from rockford cut a path to rockstardom that they simply could not have seen coming just imagine if they'd never recorded those shows in tokyo but rock and roll is a winding road and sometimes you never know what's coming around the bend until you've arrived there and it's also fair to note you know a band can really play when the album that sells three million copies out of the gate is a live album and back to what i was getting at before rick nielsen likewise couldn't have known that he would write a song that rolling stone magazine would call the ultimate 70's teen anthem and list it in their 500 greatest songs of all time when he was working it out in his dad's basement he has said that when he wrote surrender he had to try to get back into the headspace of a 14 year old somehow he and the band were able to cobble together a song that was reminiscent of the who's my generation with the jangle of the yardbirds and a foreshadowing of the new wave sound musically so satisfying and lyrically brilliant surrender starts like this mother told me yes she told me i'd meet girls like you she also told me stay away you never know what you'll catch i think it's interesting that the song starts off with a word of caution from the narrator's mother against girls who could presumably be spreaders of some unspeakable disease but that the narrator is saying it to the girl he's being cautioned about it's almost like in those lines you get the idea that this narrator isn't going to really be influenced by his mother's advice right from the start of the song now put these lines in the capable hands of robin xander singing them the impossibly pretty front man who got the nickname the man of a thousand voices because he sings so well and is so freakishly good at it and you're already swooning from the first verse and then come the lyrics that begin to draw the line in the sand between cheap tricks generation the boomers who were disillusioned by the vietnam war and their parents part of the greatest generation or gi generation who were lauded as heroes when they came back from fighting world war ii xander sings just the other day i heard of the soldiers falling off some indonesian junk that's going round so many vietnam vets returned home mentally broken and addicted to drugs heroin or junk that it became a national shame now while a good sensible gi generation midwestern mother probably wouldn't know the slang term for heroin she would feasibly be afraid for her son part of a generation caught up in this cultural shift and how that shift in world view would make the younger generation ultimately question their elders look at them all together a bit differently as the lines in the chorus come on mommy's all right daddy's all right they just seem a little weird surrender surrender but don't give yourself away the boomer generation were indeed not about to go ahead long into anything without questioning it first and while not being hateful about it to their elders they would formulate their own lives as they saw fit and on to the next verse father says your mother's right she's really up on things before we married mommy served in the wax in the philippines now i had heard the wax recruited old maids for the war but mommy isn't one of those i've known her all these years wax stands for women's army corps and it was created during world war ii to make way for women to serve in the army in non-combat positions to help the war effort it was the first time that a female could serve other than as a nurse and they held positions in every theater of war as switchboard operators mechanics and other such duties the wax ceased as its own branch in 1978 when female units were merged with male units often wax were derided as old maids who couldn't or wouldn't find a husband thus joining the armed services instead of being heralded as the skilled patriots that they actually were that's a fact it's touched on in these lines the narrator in the song is surprised to hear that his mother was a member of the wax which opens the door to what else he may not know about his parents and the chorus repeats here mommy's all right daddy's all right it just seem a little weird surrender surrender but don't give yourself away and then comes one of the most effective key changes in rock history when the song modulates up a notch and xander has to sing the next verse even higher whatever happened to all this season's losers of the year every time i got to thinking where'd they disappear all this season's losers of the year brilliant writing in america we build people up and take them down just as quickly a phenomenon that really started after the vietnam war when americans became just a little less convinced about accepting the shiny brightness of our quote-unquote heroes here and then just as quickly gone from memory and in the last verse cheap trick bring the fun then i woke up mom and dad are rolling on the couch rolling numbers rock and rolling got my kiss records out so in the end the greatest generation is succumbing to the joys of kiss records owned by their boomer son surrendering if you will to a loss of pretense and an embrace of the now or at least to the power of rock and roll and the chorus repeats mommy's all right daddy's all right it just seemed a little weird surrender surrender but don't give yourself away and then you'll hear the band name checked as the song concludes bunny's all right tom's all right robin's all right rick's all right and then we're all all right rick nielsen has said that that extends to the band's audience and that he realized it was inclusive of his entire generation that they had survived the 60s in vietnam and nixon and were still here playing music and having fun he also said that when you get 50 or 60 000 people screaming we're all all right in unison it's a pretty positive affirmation indeed it is and for generations after the boomers a gen x are like me for example it has power as i'm sure it does to millennials and will to gen zers and all who come after who are so enthralled by the power of rock and roll every generation goes through its own cultural or societal madness and every generation will need songs like this to power through them when the song was referred to in the film fast times at ridgemont high itself an unparalleled romp through the ups and downs of kingdom the character mike dimon says to the girl he's trying to convince to buy a ticket to a cheap trick concert did you forget the magnetism of robin xander or the charisma of rick nielsen i'll add to that the true invention of tom peterson and the flavor-rich style of bun e carlos the classic lineup of cheap trick that was finally inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame after much petitioning by fans in 2016. bunny carlos left the band as a touring member in 2010 and a bizarre lawsuit over the matter of carlos's membership in the band has since been settled with carlos remaining a member of cheap trick though not a performing or recording member nielsen's son dax is the tour drummer carlos has since been the drummer for tinted windows a super group fronted by another pretty boy taylor hansen of the band hanson which also included the wildly talented adam schlesinger formerly of fountains of wayne who died in 2020 from covet 19 complications tom peterson left cheap trick in 1980 to record an album with his then wife and to do some other projects but he came back in 1987 and has been with the band ever since both he and nielsen continued to work with evolving guitars and bases with companies ranging from hamer who constructed their inventions in the beginning to gretch and fender and more robin xander has been with cheap trick all through the years like nielsen and his singing style has influenced everyone from def leppard the aforementioned green day the replacements pearl jam and nirvana kurt cobain referenced his band as a 90s version of cheap trick and cheap trick released their 20th album in another world in 2021 complete with the checkerboard artwork on the cover that has been part of their aesthetic since the early days it made history for the band when it entered the billboard raw chart at number one the highest first week placement in cheap tricks long career and it's absolutely perfect that in 2007 the state of illinois named april 1st april fool's day cheap trick day in the state it could be none more fitting that a band that rose to stardom and raised our spirits with their incredible songs live shows be anointed on a day that speaks to their wonderful sense of humor as well cheap trick have contributed so much to rock and roll and to us fans over the years i encourage you to go and listen to surrender crank it up and when it gets to the we're all all right part throw your fist up in the air and feel it just like cheap trick minute to be all those years ago and know that by doing so you're a part of the power of rock and roll and sometimes that's just exactly what you need i'm janda and this has been behind the song special thanks to christian lane for the music you hear on this podcast subscribe on spotify apple podcasts google podcast or podcast one or stream for free at wdrv.com behind the song or on the drive app subscribe to the behind the song podcast on youtube and watch the video episodes follow me on facebook and instagram chandelainradio and on twitter and tick tock chandelaine on the way episodes about lyrics from blind faith and more classic rock and roll if you have a song that you'd like to hear more about in an upcoming episode just drop me a note in the comments and let me know and thanks for being a part of behind the song you

Channel: Behind The Song

Views: 56,685

Keywords: Cheap Trick, Surrender lyrics, Janda Lane, Behind The Song, Behind The Song podcast, Behind The Music, Rick Nielsen, Robin Zander, Bun E Carlos, Tom Petersson, Heaven Tonight, Live At Budokan, classic rock, music history, lyrics podcast, Cheap Trick lyrics, WDRV, Chicago

Id: mHU6FbLFOoI

Length: 18min 1sec (1081 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021