CHEAP TRICK Guitarist Discusses Working With John Lennon In New Interview
September 18, 2009, 15 years ago
Las Vegas Sun correspondent John Katsilometes recently caught up with CHEAP TRICK guitarist Rick Nielsen. An excerpt from the story is available below:
Cheap Trick-Infused ‘I’m Losing You’ With Lennon Too Hot To Handle
When Rick Nielsen walked into The Hit Factory studios in New York City in the summer of 1980, there was one purpose for his appearance: to play music with John Lennon.
But when Lennon looked over the then-31-year-old rock guitarist, looking somewhat decrepit with his flipped-up ball cap and old-man pants in a look some have compared to Huntz Hall of the Bowery Boys, he seemed surprised.
“Oh, it’s you,” Lennon said, as if expecting someone else to join him for recording the song “I’m Losing You” and a song by Yoko Ono, 'I’m Moving On'.”“The way he said it, I felt like he might be expecting someone else, like Ricky Nelson,” Nielsen said during a phone interview yesterday as he and his fellow Cheap Trick band mates prepped for their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band orchestra-backed revival at the Las Vegas Hilton Theater. The show begins this evening and runs in three sets through the end of the month: Tonight through Tuesday, Sept. 17-19 and Sept. 21-23.
“I’m still not sure if he was kidding or not,” Nielsen recalled of his initial meeting with Lennon. It might well have been a coy reference to Nelson’s hit 'Garden Party', in which the one-time ’50s heartthrob obliquely sings that “Yoko brought her walrus.” Or maybe not.
Go to this location for the complete story.
(Photo by Denise Truscello)
