Rockford's finest Cheap Trick have never made any secret of their adoration for The Beatles. Right from their debut album, which fused Beatlesesque melodies with spiky rock and power pop, guitarist Rick Nielsen – who, like many disciples, first saw The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show in 1964 – has never pretended to be anything other than a fan.
Indeed, despite the debut album's subject matter (mass murder, suicide, paedophilia, etc.), John Lennon was initially mooted as a possible producer. “We asked him,” Nielsen told Classic Rock, “and our then-manager told us that he wasn’t interested."
