“He thought: ‘I’m just going to do an over-the-top pop song’ – a heavy metal pop song”: The flop single that became a power-pop classic thanks to one of the greatest live albums of the 70s

Cheap Trick posing for a photograph in 1977.

With the break-up of bands such as Big Star and The Raspberries, by the mid-70s power pop looked to be heading for extinction, as prog rock and disco filled the airwaves and record racks worldwide. But with punk rock bringing ‘short but sweet’ song structures back in vogue, a new crop of power pop bands emerged.

One such band was Rockford, Illinois’s Cheap Trick. And it would be a song they’d been working up since their bar days, I Want You To Want Me, that put them on the map. However, the song had to wait until it was recorded live, on album number four, to make its impact.