DREAM POLICE: YOU NEED TO HEAR THIS
My Brother Ric, Cheap Trick, and the Song That Woke Up Little Rock ’n’ Roll Angel
There are people who introduce you to music.
And then there are people who somehow become part of the music itself.
For me, one of those people was my brother Ric.
Ric was my big brother, but he was also my best friend. During a period of my childhood when I was being bullied pretty relentlessly, he was one of the people who could make me feel like none of it mattered quite as much.
There is one memory of him that I absolutely treasure.
I was making that awkward transition from junior high to high school, and there was a special dance coming up. The kind of dance where everybody was supposed to have a date.
This presented something of a problem.
Little Angel was the weird nerdy kid.
The weird nerdy kid who got teased.
The weird nerdy kid who most definitely did not have a date.
I was miserable.
My mother, however, apparently had other plans.
Without telling me, she contacted Ric, who was away in the Army. Somehow, my brother rearranged his schedule, got some leave, piled into a car with some friends and drove home.
I came home from school one day.
And there was Ric.
I was ecstatic.
Then he told me why he was there.
He was taking me to the dance.
Now, Little Angel understood this as her wonderful big brother doing something incredibly sweet for her.
Big Angel understands considerably more.
Because Ric did not merely take his little sister to a school dance.
That man staged an entrance.
Ric was young, tall and absolutely beautiful.
He walked into that dance holding my hand.
He sat me down.
He went and got us something to drink.
He came back and sat close to me while we laughed and talked.
Then he took me onto the dance floor.
And we danced.
Looking back, I know exactly what my brother was doing.
Every kid who had teased his little sister was going to see something very clearly that night.
She was not unwanted.
She was not invisible.
She was not the weird little girl sitting by herself.
She had walked into that room with someone who absolutely adored her.
I didn't understand the performance then.
I do now.
And I love him for it.
Then Ric Tried to Destroy Me With Cheap Trick
Later during that visit, Ric and I were downstairs near the record player.
He had been out with his friends and had picked up an album.
He pulled it out.
Cheap Trick.
Dream Police.
I wasn't really a rock 'n' roll girl yet. Not completely.
That was about to become important.
Ric looked at me and said:
"You need to hear this song."
Those are dangerous words when spoken by an older brother.
He put the record on.
And turned it up.
The guitar came in.
I believe my sophisticated musical critique was something along the lines of:
"NO! NO! NO!"
And I ran.
Up the stairs I went.
Behind me came Ric.
Playing air guitar.
Naturally.
So there I was, fleeing upstairs while my Army big brother chased me through the house playing an instrument that did not exist while Cheap Trick blasted behind us.
This was apparently music appreciation in my family.
I survived.
Barely.
And then something funny happened.
Nothing.
I didn't become a Cheap Trick fan that day.
There was no lightning bolt.
I didn't immediately start hunting down their albums.
I didn't run back downstairs and beg Ric to play it again.
I gave the song very little thought afterward.
At least, not yet.
And Then He Was Gone
Not too many years later, in what now feels like the blink of an eye, Ric was gone.
My family said our goodbyes.
We started doing that strange thing people do after someone dies, trying to figure out how the world is supposed to continue when one of the people who belonged in it isn't there anymore.
Eventually, Ric's belongings came home.
Among them were two things that mattered enormously to me.
His record collection.
And his stereo system.
Although calling this thing a stereo system feels wildly inadequate.
It was a monster.
This was the era when a serious stereo wasn't one little box sitting politely on a shelf. Ric had components. A receiver. A turntable. An equalizer. Big speakers. Knobs. Meters. Wires. The whole glorious setup.
It looked less like something you used to listen to music and more like something that required clearance from air traffic control before you turned it on.
And when you did turn it on, there was no such thing as quietly listening to a record in one room.
Ric's stereo made an announcement:
THE HOUSE WILL NOW BE LISTENING TO MUSIC.
All of it was suddenly ours.
The monster stereo.
The records.
And all the memories attached to them.
I started going through his collection.
And there it was.
Dream Police.
Image: Cheap Trick album cover Dream Police. Source: Spotify.
Suddenly I was back downstairs.
Ric was there.
The music was loud.
I was screaming.
He was chasing me up the stairs playing air guitar.
Only this time, there was no Ric standing beside the record player.
So I put the album on.
And this time I didn't run.
I listened.
Dream Police
Dream Police was released in 1979, after Cheap Trick had already built momentum through albums including Cheap Trick, In Color, Heaven Tonight, and the live phenomenon Cheap Trick at Budokan. The band's own discography places “Dream Police” at the beginning of the 1979 album that shares its name.
Image: Cheap Trick. Source: The Guardian
But I wasn't listening to a piece of rock history.
I was listening through the filter of a girl grieving for her big brother.
And somewhere in that experience, the song changed.
Or maybe I did.
Before "Dream Police" became one of my songs, it had been one of ours.
The first time I heard it, Ric was there and I ran away from the music.
The second time I heard it, Ric was gone.
And I think, without really understanding what I was doing, I was trying to find him inside it.
That brought me back to Cheap Trick.
But grief alone didn't make me a Cheap Trick fan.
Cheap Trick did that.
Because I started digging.
And the next big discovery was the song they're perhaps most associated with:
"Surrender."
The song originally appeared on 1978's Heaven Tonight and also became part of the famous At Budokan set.
And man, they had songs.
Big hooks.
Crunchy guitars.
Melody everywhere.
Humor.
Attitude.
A little weirdness.
Actually, sometimes quite a lot of weirdness.
Cheap Trick was this wonderful contradiction.
Robin Zander looked every inch the beautiful rock frontman.
Tom Petersson brought the bass-player cool.
And then there was Rick Nielsen.
Rick Nielsen looked like somebody's substitute teacher had gotten into the guitar closet and things had gone terribly, terribly wrong.
😂
Bun E. Carlos completed the visual insanity by looking remarkably like the accountant who had been asked to sit in until the drummer arrived.
Image: Bun E. Carlos. Source: Wikipedia
That contrast wasn't accidental. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame's history of Cheap Trick describes the deliberately different visual identities the band developed, pairing Zander and Petersson's pin-up appeal against Nielsen and Carlos's comic personas. It also notes Nielsen's procession of unusual guitars and Zander's ability to cut through the band's considerable noise with his voice.
These guys were weird.
I understood weird.
Wait. Bands Have a Sound.
But Cheap Trick gave Little Angel another piece of her musical education.
I began to understand something.
A group of people can get together to play music and, somehow, create something that belongs to none of them individually.
They create a sound.
A vibe.
A musical fingerprint.
Cheap Trick was one of the first times I remember really understanding that.
I could hear another song and recognize something.
Wait.
I know these people.
It wasn't because every Cheap Trick song sounded the same.
They didn't.
It was because they sounded like Cheap Trick.
Image: Cheap Trick. Source: RollingStone.com
The band's own description has called its music an “instantly identifiable” form of pop rock 'n' roll, while the Rock Hall describes a group that combined musical virtuosity, loud guitars, showmanship and humor.
Little Angel didn't have those words.
She didn't know about power pop.
She wasn't sitting around analyzing production techniques.
She simply knew:
They have a sound.
Robin Zander wasn't the sound.
Rick Nielsen wasn't the sound.
Tom Petersson wasn't the sound.
Bun E. Carlos wasn't the sound.
Put them together and something happened.
Cheap Trick happened.
That realization changed the way I listened to music.
Eventually I would recognize it everywhere.
Queen had a sound.
ELO had a sound.
Boston had a sound.
Earth, Wind & Fire had a sound.
AC/DC?
Please.
You could probably identify AC/DC from three notes and somebody walking suspiciously close to a school uniform.
But I had to learn how to hear that.
Cheap Trick was one of the bands that taught me.
I was no longer only listening to songs.
I was beginning to listen to bands.
The Chick Band
Cheap Trick also occupied a funny place in the rock culture I encountered as I got older.
Over the years, I heard more than one guy call Cheap Trick a "chick band."
Now, before we summon the Department of Modern Terminology, let me translate some Ancient Dude.
Because I eventually learned that this did not necessarily mean:
"Cheap Trick makes music for girls."
Oh no.
The explanation I got from the men in my life was considerably more sophisticated.
A "chick band" was a band a guy wanted to see live because...
there would be a lot of hot girls at the concert.
Ah.
Thank you, gentlemen.
An important distinction.
You were there for the music.
Obviously.
Rick Nielsen's guitar work was extremely compelling.
Uh-huh.
Why are you wearing cologne?
Shut up.
Cheap Trick certainly did inspire intense fandom, and their breakthrough became inseparable from their live reputation. Cheap Trick at Budokan became a multi-platinum live album, and the Rock Hall's history describes the band's shows as central to the phenomenon they became.
But whatever anybody else called them, by then Cheap Trick belonged to me too.
Ric Was Building My Record Collection
I've been writing these stories long enough now that I'm beginning to see something I couldn't see when I was living them.
My brothers were building my record collection inside me.
David handed me ELO.
Mike opened another door with AC/DC.
And Ric?
Ric came downstairs with a Cheap Trick album.
"You need to hear this song."
At the time, I thought he was just being my ridiculous big brother.
Decades later, I can see another little piece of Rock 'n' Roll Angel being assembled.
He couldn't have known what that record would eventually mean.
Neither could I.
Maybe that's why I love this memory so much.
It isn't really a sad memory.
Quite the opposite.
When I hear "Dream Police," I don't first see loss.
I see Ric alive.
Young.
Beautiful.
Laughing.
Annoying the hell out of his little sister.
Playing an invisible guitar.
And chasing me up the stairs while Cheap Trick shook the house.
That's what music can do.
It can hold people.
It can hold rooms that don't exist anymore.
It can preserve laughter.
It can take something that lasted only a few minutes and somehow keep it waiting for us for the rest of our lives.
The first time Ric played "Dream Police," I ran from Cheap Trick.
Years later, I came back.
I found the record.
I put it on his monster stereo.
And somewhere between Ric, "Dream Police," "Surrender," those guitars, those hooks and that unmistakable sound...
Cheap Trick caught me.
All because my brother once looked at his weird little sister and said:
"You need to hear this."
I did, Ric.
I did. ❤️🎸
Sources
Cheap Trick official discography — album chronology and track listings.
Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: Cheap Trick — band history, performance style, and 2016 induction.
Rock Hall Cheap Trick induction essay — history of the band's sound, image, live performances, and breakthrough.
Thanks for taking this trip back with me.
What do you remember? Were you there too, or did this story bring back a memory of your own? I’d love to hear it. Share your stories in the comments, and if this made you smile, laugh, cringe, or turn up an old favorite song, share it with someone who remembers too.
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Until next time...
Keep the memories alive.Keep the stories coming.And whatever you do... turn it up.
— Dr. AY Heath (Angel)
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