Cheap Trick – In The Street ….Under the Covers Tuesday

Wish we hadA joint so bad

I’m a huge Cheap Trick fan but when I heard this song as the theme to That 70s Show… I just asked myself why? Why not use the original version of the song? That’s not a dig at Cheap Trick…they did fine with it but it was unnecessary.  The show later covered a Big Star song in an episode…the haunting song Thirteen. The band had lost out on stardom in the early seventies and now many people really like the theme song but have no clue who wrote it. In a way though…unfortunately, that fits Big Star perfectly.

In the first season, the theme song was done by Todd Griffin. It’s a close copy of the original soundwise but with different lyrics by Ben Vaughn. The rest of the show’s seasons was replaced by the Cheap Trick version. The only reason I can think of not using Big Star is they needed an edited version of the song and felt they had to change the song’s lyrics although the lyrics would have fit the show. Cheap Trick’s version is very good of course because it’s Cheap Trick…but it would have been nice to hear the original. Many people think that Cheap Trick wrote the song.

Big Star: #1 Record LP - Listen Records

Chris Bell and Alex Chilton are credited with writing the song. In 2000, Chilton confirmed that he was paid $70 in royalties each time the show aired, an amount he thought ironic, given the show’s title. The song was originally on their debut album #1 Record.

Recently I watched some performances they did on the Leno show later on when Alex Chilton and Jody Stephens reformed the band with two members of the Posies. The introduction made me do a double take…“Big Star…the missing link between the Beatles and The Replacements.”  How could I not like that? Three of my favorite bands right there.

The #1 album was hailed by critics and got radio play when released. The feedback from people who heard it was very positive. There was one problem though. They signed with Stax Records which normally didn’t deal with pop and rock bands. They weren’t prepared to promote them and the biggest problem was there was no distribution. People started to go to record shops to buy it but there were no Big Star albums there. Stax was in financial trouble as well. They carried on for three albums but with no commercial breakthrough…although bands like Cheap Trick, The Replacements, R.E.M., KISS, and others all say they were heavily influenced by them.

Jody Stephens drummer of Big Star: “I don’t know if the general population even knows that Big Star had anything to do with it.”

Mike Mills of REM: “I heard the first two records first, Radio City and #1 Record, I just thought they were perfect. If I could make records, that would be the sort of records I would make. The third one took me a bit longer to get into, but it does reward repeated listening. What Big Star was doing made sense to me.”

The Todd Griffin version

The Cheap Trick version

The Orginal

In The Street

Hanging out, down the streetThe same old thing we did last weekNot a thing to doBut talk to you

Steal your car, and bring it downPick me up, we’ll drive aroundWish we hadA joint so bad

Pass the street lightOut past midnight

Ahh

Hanging out, down the streetThe same old thing we did last weekNot a thing to doBut talk to you

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Author: Badfinger (Max)

Power Pop fan, Baseball, Beatles, Alternative music, old movies, and tv show fan. Also anything to do with pop culture in the 60s and 70s... I'm also a songwriter, bass and guitar player. Not the slightest bit interested in politics at all.

36 thoughts on “Cheap Trick – In The Street ….Under the Covers Tuesday”

  1. I had no idea the theme from That 70s Show was a Big Star song. Very interesting, and more than a little ironic that fame eluded them but their song was literally the theme for the consummate portrayal of that era.

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  2. Being a CT fan I had no idea this was a cover tune. $70 bucks seems a little low doesn’t it? Then again if its in circulation maybe not a bad pay day….

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    1. Thats what I mean…most people thinks it’s a Cheap Trick song. The pay probably went up I would think as the years pass in syndication.

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      1. I know when the show originally aired say 4 times a month thats only $280 which is not much..so hopefully yeah hopefully there is more cash for him now

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  4. Before Cheap Trick, there was Fuse, and before that The Grim Reapers (with Rick Nielsen and Tom Peterson). The Grim Reapers were to open for Otis Redding in Madison WI on December 10, 1967 – Otis’ plane went down that afternoon. If Chilton were still around and still getting $70 per broadcast, he’d be rich. Episodes of “That ’70s Show” air pretty much constantly around here.

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  5. I think you’d mentioned once before that it was originally a Big Star song but I had assumed it was a CT original, probably written for the show specifically. I never noticed the show pre-recorded it but there’s not a lot of difference between the Todd one & the CT one. The Big Star one is good but sounds a bit more ’60s-ish to me, perhaps that went into the producers thinking, but who knows?

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    1. I don’t know…but to me it fit the show. I’m happy they used the song but using a pretty much sound alike at first…really confused me…thats why I said…use the original. Later they got Cheap Trick…
      I don’t think it would have affected the show. They did use “Thirteen” actually BY Big Star in one of the shows.

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  6. To quote Mr. Westerberg, “I never travel far without a little Big Star!” Didn’t know that the show started with a different cover and loved the $70 bit! So blessed that I get to see The Posies version of the band once. Also have met Jody a few times and he’s a great guy. Time to wear out the first two records. I never cared much for the third one.

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    1. Yea I would have loved to see that version of them live…
      Jody in interviews seems really down to earth and humble. I really like him.
      The 3rd album took a few times through for me to appreciate it.

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  8. Very cool bit of music history today! I gotnto Big Star the “long way around”…The Replacements led me to Alex Chilton, which led me back to Big Star. Great band, terrible that they aren’t a household name. Thanks for the lesson today!

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    1. Thank you for reading! I learned about Big Star from a friends older brother in the early to mid eighties.

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    1. Thanks Lisa…it just sucks that they couldn’t even be known now…but yea as much as it’s shown…that would add up quickly.

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  10. The simple lyrics sum up life for restless and bored teens in any sleepy shitkicking one streetlight town in Anywhere, Anyplace. Nothing to do but waste time. And I believe ‘That 70’s Show’ was going to be titled ‘Teenage Wasteland.’ That would have been the perfect title but I suspect the Moral Majority righteous mob might have stuck their prissy stuck-up noses into that and nixed it.
    ‘Thirteen’ is the perfect aching song for that first crush.

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    1. Thirteen is a beautiful song… but yea….I don’t get why they couldn’t just let them have this one thing. I read somewhere about the Teenage Wasteland title.
      One commentor said it….it’s funny how they were never known but yet their song is the title track for a commercial show about the seventies.

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    1. Yep! Big Star was cursed man. Here they have a song that a lot of people like and they still get poked 40 years later…no one knows it’s them.

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  12. Goodness, and I know we’ve discussed this before, Big Star really just didn’t catch a break – there’s some bitter irony here, considering the band’s name!

    While I only know that sitcom by name, I like Big Star’s original version of the song and agree with you they should have used the original rather than a cover. But perhaps it was all about saving a few bucks – a cheap trick! 🙂

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  13. Good song. I watched the show a few times. The father was the best character, a grumpy old guy with no hair. I liked Big Star and Cheap Trick and had no idea where the song came from. I’m digging that guitar with all the switches and knobs. I had a Japanese guitar when I first started playing. It had three pickups and twenty knobs that did nothing, but it was cool looking. Teenage angst, is always good for a song, ask Taylor Swift.

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    1. Those Japanese guitars from the 60s are worth a small fortune now…I do like the switches and knobs. I would imagine they were cheap back then…I’ve seen some worth $1500 or more now.

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      1. Their electronics were good, and the pickups are said to be great. A friend found one and put the pickups on his Fender Strat, made it way better he said. Mine had no adjustable rod in the neck and when it warped, it was unplayable. I wish I still had it.

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  14. Interesting on the royalties. I have often wondered how much the Barenaked Ladies got for the ‘Big Bang Theory’ theme. In this case for Big Star, it’s also intriguing – $70 each time it was aired. Well, at first that looks very simple to calculate – it apparently ran 8 years and an even 200 episodes on Fox. So 200 X$70 = $14 000. But since networks usually re-ran their hits quite a bit during summer, maybe it would air an extra dozen re-runs a summer, so about 96 more showings = just under $7000 more. But where it gets interesting is A) it was shown in Canada on a different network and probably many other countries. Did they get extra for those showings. Then how about the countless re-runs in syndication for years and years? And then the biggie, what about it being on DVDs and on the streaming services? Do they get a lump sum per year from Netflix (or whichever service), or a couple of cents each time it’s streamed, or nothing? So in short, I guess they pulled in over $20 000 for it, not chump change but not a royal payday. BUT if the lawyers did their jobs well, they may have made a king’s ransom off it by now.

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    1. Yea and I believe the reason they didn’t use their version is because you are essentially buying the master and that would cost more… even for a Big Star song…. If you get someone to copy… it is cheaper. They probably paid Griffin and Cheap Trick one fee

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