Musicians Only

Musicians Only

In his interview, Cheap Trick’s drummer Bun E. Carlos relates: “We got fed up with recording in LA because all the bands show up like The Babies and Angel, and you get visitors and people bringing drugs and bottles of wine, and we just can’t get any work done in that atmosphere. And we couldn’t get the sounds we wanted there. Like we didn’t like the sound on our Dream Police album, and live we weren’t getting a good sound either with the American guys who were working with us on the PA. So we started using English sound men on tour and called up George Martin when we wanted to record. He came out and saw us and decided to work with us.”

“Like I wanted my drums to sound like drums which I’ve never had, except on the first album In Color produced by Jack Douglas - and on Budokan of course, because it was live. We couldn’t get the sound we wanted in the US. It was like banging our heads against a wall. We also used 12-string basses and no-one understood those. They insisted on us using Fender basses which was not very inspirational.”

“Tom Petersson designed the 12-string bass and Hamer Guitars in Chicago made it for us with four bass strings and two guitar strings alongside each bass string. Pete Comita, our new bass player, is also a guitarist so he can play one of these too, and play both bass lines and guitar licks. Hamer made him one of the 12-strings too, and John Entwistle has got one.”