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Certain Songs #187: Cheap Trick – “He’s a Whore”

May 9, 2015 by Jim Connelly

image

Album: Cheap Trick.

Year: 1976

I’m not a particularly big fan of Steve Albini. While he’s produced several records that I’ve loved, and came across as thoughtful – and walking it like he’s always talked it – in Sonic Highways, purists of any stripe have always been anathema to me. The world is compromise (and carnage.) 

That said, there is one thing on which I would for sure agree with Mr. Albini: the awesomeness of Cheap Trick’s “He’s a Whore,” which Big Black covered relatively straight (and relatively awesomely) in the mid-1980s.

And why not? The absolute and utter highlight of Cheap Trick’s otherwise uneven (to me) first album, “He’s a Whore” features the most bone-crushing riff that Rick Nielsen will ever write, an impassioned performance from Robin Zander, and of course Bun E. Carlos driving through the whole thing like a trucker on the way to meet his truckstop whore.

Cheap Trick were decidedly not punk rock. They were too pop. The were too polished and stardom-oriented (the great album cover jokes with the pretty Robin Zander & Tom Peterssen on the front and Rick Nielsen & Bun E. Carlos relegated to the back doubled as marketing) to even remotely be considered as anything but as an adjunct to punk, but they weren’t a typical hard rock band, either. 

Maybe that was because – like the punks – Cheap Trick were influenced by The Who. Neilsen’s solo in “He’s a Whore” was a microcosm of that approach: short, nasty, focused and more like a Pete Townshend series of almost-random chords than a Jimmy Page (or Mick Jones, heh) curlicue of notes. But – unlike the punks (OK, not The Clash) –  they shared producers (and a major label) with Aerosmith & Ted Nugent.

But while you could slot Aerosmith & Ted Nugent in with the other big American hard rock acts of the eras, like Kiss and Blue Oyster Cult, Cheap Trick existed in a nether world that really was theirs alone.

Video for “He’s a Whore”

Video for Big Black’s “He’s A Whore”

Filed Under: Certain Songs, Music Tagged With: Cheap Trick, He's a Whore

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Previously on Medialoper

  • Certain Songs #2696: that dog. – “hawthorne”
  • Certain Songs #2695: that dog. – “long island”
  • Certain Songs #2694: that dog. – “minneapolis”
  • Certain Songs #2693: that dog. – “never say never”
  • Certain Songs #2692: Terry Allen – “The Beautiful Waitress”

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