Interview with Tom Peterson of Cheap Trick
Interview By: Michael Rabinowitz

REAX:   You performed with Pearl Jam and Kurt Cobain famously professed his fondness of Cheap Trick.   Do you feel, as we get further away from the 1990s, it is revealing that guys really had a relevant influence on these bands?

Tom Peterson:  I don't know that we did, no.  They were young, they didn't know what they were doing.  Kids -- you know, there is no accounting for taste when you are a kid.  You know, they still love the Rollers, and whatever -- whatever it was when they grew up or had sex for the first time, no matter how bad the act is, they love them.  It's like, Oh my God, there's Leaf Garrett.  I love him."  You know it is like, "Well, why is that?"  It's like, "Well, when I was 12" – you know, it is like, okay, fine.

REAX:  Well, what was your guilty pleasure as a kid?

Tom Peterson:  Well, my first concert was Johnny Cash.  That is pretty cool.  I loved Johnny Cash when I was a little kid.  That was before the Beatles came around and that whole crowd.

REAX:  You kill me.  You were the coolest kid I would have known, if that was your first concert.
                 
Tom Peterson:  That totally was, at the Coronado Theatre in Rockford, Illinois.  My friend, Larry Schubert, and I went to see Johnny Cash.  Larry's older brother was a big fan of Johnny Cash, so he convinced -- we just thought he was a coolest, you know, that "Ring of Fire," "Walk the Line," all of that stuff.  And I saw him.  And the opening act was Sonny James, who I really still don't know much about, but apparently he had a bunch of hits. So that must've been '63, right around then that I saw them -- or saw Johnny.  So that was at his high point, I'm sure, literally.  He was all hopped on goofballs; so was I, and I was only 12 years old. For me, that was a while ago, but anyway.  And then that whole British invasion happened, and it was just so great.  That happened when I saw the Ed Sullivan Show.  It was with the Beatles, and I was 13 years old.  And there you go, that did it.  It was a no-brainer, that is what everybody says.  No matter if it happened to them or not, they still say it.

REAX:  One of the things I saw on your website was the National Review listed "Taxman, Mr. Thieve" as one of its top 50 conservative rock songs of all-time.

Tom Peterson: Yeah, I saw that, too. That was kind of weird. But it had all sorts of people in there, so it wasn't really -- I mean, it wasn't like us and Nugent or something only.

REAX:  On the other side of the spectrum, Mike Damone in the movie "Fast Times at Ridgemont High," was scalping Cheap Trick tickets to pay for his girlfriend's abortion. So do you think you guys could bring the red and the blue states together?

Tom Peterson: Oh, definitely we could do that; we are uniters not dividers, you know that.