Cheap Trick – Dream Police

Cheap Trick…unlike some of their power-pop brethren had staying power. They toured like crazy and released some great music. They are still out there today playing. I became a fan of them when I heard Surrender. This song is a perfect example of them. Power chords, power pop, power vocals, with a fun subject.

Rick Nielsen has talked over the years about the “dream police” concept as that feeling of being watched or chased, even when you’re trying to shut your brain off. That’s why the song moves the way it does; it’s got a steady drive but it also feels a little tense. Robin Zander sells that perfectly; he keeps the vocal clean and direct, but there’s a nervous edge to it.

This song dates back to 1976. It was one of 22 songs the band had written for their first album, and it didn’t make the cut. The song evolved as they played it live and refined it in the studio, and it was released as the title track of their fourth studio album. By this time, their live album At Budokan had been released, making them big with the single “I Want You To Want Me.” They were wise to release it after they had hit with the live Budokan album.

They went into the studio with producer Tom Werman to make the Dream Police album, and the goal was pretty clear: keep the hooks, keep the punch, and prove they could deliver a big studio record, not just a great live one. The title track was built to be a centerpiece, something that sounded like a single but also carried the album’s theme of paranoia and late-night unease.

The next single was “Dream Police,” which became one of their most popular songs, peaking at #26 on the Billboard 100, #9 in Canada, and #7 in New Zealand in 1979. If you want one track that shows how this band could balance power-pop hooks with a harder bite, Dream Police is the one to listen to.

Dream Police

The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police
They come to me in my bed
The dream police
They’re coming to arrest me
Oh no

You know that talk is cheap
And rumors ain’t nice
And when I fall asleep
I don’t think I’ll survive

The night the night

‘Cause they’re waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
(They’re) driving me insane
Those men inside my brain

The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police
They come to me in my bed

The dream police
They’re coming to arrest me
Oh no

Well I can’t tell lies
‘Cause they’re listening to me
And when I fall asleep
Bet they’re spying on me tonight,
Tonight

‘Cause they’re waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
(They’re) driving me insane
Those men inside my brain

I try to sleep
They’re wide awake
They won’t let me alone
They don’t get paid to take vacations
Or let me alone
They spy on me
I try to hide
They won’t let me alone
They persecute me
They’re the judge and jury all in one

‘Cause they’re waiting for me
Looking for me
Every single night
(They’re) driving me insane
Those men inside my brain

The dream police
They live inside of my head
The dream police they come
To me in my bed

The dream police
They’re coming to arrest me

The dream police (police, police)
The dream police (police, police)

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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.

56 thoughts on “Cheap Trick – Dream Police”

  1. Pingback: Cheap Trick – Dream Police – MobsterTiger

  2. Brilliant album and song. Love the gatefold sleeve to this record, lyrics, them dressed up as the Dream Police. This album and package are a 10/10. If I’m being honest the run of the first 6 studio Trick albums are all classics. Seven, if your counting the live Budokan.
    Wicked post dude!

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  3. Before the international sensation of Cheap Trick, there was the Rockford bar band Cheap Trick, which grew out of Fuse, which came from the merger of RIck Nielsen’s band The Grim Reapers and Tom Petersson’s band Toast and Jam; and later added part of Todd Rundgren’s band Nazz, performing as Nazz or Fuse, depending on where they played. The Nazz players were gone before Cheap Trick made it big.

    The Grim Reapers were scheduled as the opening act of Otis Redding on December 10, 1967 – the concert that Redding didn’t make it to because of a plane crash that afternoon. As Cheap Trick they opened for Lou Reed here in 1975. So their overnight success didn’t exactly come overnight.

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    1. They are probably still one of the hardest working rock bands…they worked for what they got for sure.
      Nielsen played with a lot of people…I didn’t know about them opening up for Lou Reed…or about Peterson’s ties with others.
      Hope you are doing well today. We are without electricity….hoping it will come on soon.

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      1. I hope you get your power back soon. Cold is one thing. Cold without power is another. Even with a gas furnace we wouldn’t have heat without power – our modern furnace has electronic ignition so it requires power to start (as well as for the fan). Without power, I’d have left the water running and headed for a hotel by now.

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      2. We have a fireplace that we never have used…yesterday I tried it out and it worked great with a test…so our neighbor has a fireplace and he told me to take all the wood we need…we have some good neighbors.

        I hope your power stays on! We couldn’t get to a hotel if we tried because of the roads.

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  4. Well this takes me back in a very vivid fashion. You’re like a little Time Machine Max! My buddies and I were obviously not alone in loving Cheap Trick. And this song was attractive for the creative concept among other things. I probably mentioned this to you before but my oldest brother plays bass in a band. He pretty much thought Petersson was a god. No, sorry, theeee guitar god!

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    1. LOL…Petersson is a great bass player I will admit…I like seeing his different bass guitars.
      Cheap Trick was probably the hardest working band in rock…. they are such a fun band…I’m glad I got to see them in 1985.

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      4. Oh it was Randy! It’s a damn sore spot for Nashvillians. We are the largest city in America without an amusement park…we loved it. They replaced it with a huge mall…people are still pissed off about it. It was such a fun place to go…it really was.

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  5. Love it! I wore that LP out from listening to it so much for a couple of years. They were one of the best examples of ‘power pop’ at that time. Impressive they’re still rolling, 50 years in

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  6. I remember when I first saw Cheap Trick, they opened here for Kiss on the Destroyer tour and hated them!….then I heard Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace….it’s that voice!….that first album, wow!..yeah I liked them when they were rocking all over the world, but eventually got tired of the ‘I want you to want me era’…..my current favorite Trick album has to be 1997s self titled which I think I have on vinyl somewhere…when they popped up on Daryl Hall’s show was special, Zander seemed challenged by some of the vocals, but still I think someone called him the man with a thousand voices…..hard to believe they started as a bar cover band

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      2. Our electricity is out…it came back on for a little while and then went off and has been off ever since. I live around 25 miles outside of Nashville…a lot of people are without electricity right now.

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  9. To me, this could have been a lost mid-60s Who single. I didn’t get into them right off the bat, but I appreciated them as time went on. Rick Nielsen is one of the greatest for me. Hope you’re doing all right. The snow is hitting us now. I’m preparing to do my first round of shoveling.

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    1. That is a good ear….I never thought about that but you are right.
      Yea right now wer are without electricity…we did build a fire in the fireplace we have never used…we did a test and smoke is coming out of the top…so we are alright.
      We have ever possible battery pack charged up

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      1. I have a mental image of your family, meaning the animals, fighting to get in front of the fire.

        But, uhm, being just as serious, how do you know the smoke is going out the top? Did you go outside and look? Brrrr

        And no, I’m not including a weather report from here in Sunny Southern California. Nor a post of the one Riverias hit song.

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      2. Yes we did go out and look… and yes it was cold! I wouldn’t have continued to use it if none was coming out…20 years is how long it’s been since it’s been used.
        Martha, the Saint is a wimp…she is a Saint Bernard but only stays outside for a few minutes! She would not be good with a Brandy flask around her.
        I’m glad you are sunny! No jealous here! lol

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      3. Martha should not be looked to as a source of brandy. Right now, I would think she is a much needed source of heat.

        Your priorities need to change with the weather, Max. Tell me I’m wrong. Silly? Yes. Wrong, absolutely not.

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      5. My comment about Martha and the brandy got me thinking about women and necklaces. I have raised two daughters and two grand daughters and I do not begin to understand the relationship between the necklace a woman will choose and the woman herself. It is, I can assure you from personal experience, an individual thing that is as far beyond the ability of at least this old man to understand.

        But I don’t think a bottle of brandy is an appropriate necklace for Martha. 🙂

        (Oh, and don’t ask me what I’m talking about. I haven’t the faintest idea.)

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      6. You probably know this but everytime I see an old picture or drawings of Saint Bernards…they have a Brandy Flask in a small wooden barrel around their neck. They would rescue hikers in the alps and carry the Brandy for the hiker. They would dig the hiker out of snow.

        We have had 3 Saints…but no we never got one.

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      7. Old pictures? OLD MOVIES!!!

        Gotta love those old stereotypes. And while I can’t make the exact connection, I am thinking of W C Fields in the snow. Not a fit night out for …

        You know the bit.

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  13. Well, yeah. Cheap Trick, and so many other bands we love around here, owe a whole lot to the mid-sixties Who singles. I have no problem drawing a line from Substitute to Surrender. And that’s high praise in both directions.

    Another example of how great those mid-sixties Who singles were is how good they sound in the Who Medley Richard Thompson does on just an acoustic guitar. With a smile to the fact that all he includes of Pinball Wizard is the iconic guitar strum, that’s all that’s required.

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    1. They were to me… on certain songs…the 80s Beatles in some songs like “If You Want My Love” and songs like that.
      I love The Who and their sixties singles as you know. They are overlooked because of what they did in the 70s. Substitute, The Kids Are Alright…love those.
      Our electric is back on…whew…

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      1. I don’t think I’ve told this story here. In 1982 I took a job as a word processor for a CPA firm. In 1983, Lotus released 1*2*3 and changed the world. Shortly thereafter, they released Symphony, which used RAM (a major limitation in pre-Windows personal computers). The CPAs built their working papers and trial balances in Symphony, I figured out how to take the pre-Windows numbers out of Symphony, into WordPerfect 5.2 for DOS and clean them up. I was a hot shot, and this is one of the reasons why I got away with as much silliness as I did.

        The firm was owned and named for a guy named Ray who, like me, had a life long weight problem and the habits to go with it. He also owned the building we worked in. One time he was walking from the kitchen area back to his office and I was going the other way. Ray managed with a heavy hand and most people were if not afraid of him, certainly respectful. Like I said, he was walking back from the kitchen area and I was going the other way. He was cradling a large bag of potato chips in one hand. As I walked by him I grabbed the chips and returned them to the kitchen area. He stood there, in front of his secretary sitting at her desk in his outer office, amazed.

        The relevant story, however, is from another day. Like I said, he owned the building. It was a three story building. First floor parking, third floor was management and workers (read, flunkies like me) on the second story. The power went out. I had to go up the stairs to get to the third floor. He was coming down from third floor. We were both large men, so I stopped at the mid-floor flat area. I looked up to him and said, “Ray. I’m disappointed in you.” He asked why. I waved my hands around to indicate the power outtage. I said, “I expected you to say “Let there be light and…” I swear to God the lights came on right then.,

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      2. That is funny! Perfect timing!
        I remember Lotus…I just remember it because we were replacing it when I came into a corporate job I worked at. Lotus was a big deal at the time…we replaced it with Excel…so I never really worked with Lotus just uninstalling it back then.

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      3. Well, the bastardized history lesson is something like in the beginning there was CPM and Tandys. There were Apple IIs and they were pretty good but limited. IBM had their PC but you couldn’t play games on it very well. Then Lotus released 1*2*3. It only worked on the PC but it set the world on fire. It was amazing.

        Apple released the Lisa, which then became the Mac and nobody paid attention to how much was owed to the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Microsoft released Windows, which took over the world thanks to a huge media push. Excel was put into something called Office, which was sold in the same huge media push.

        I remember teaching at UCLA Extension and explaining that Word and Excel were not the best word processing or spreadsheet programs out there, but they were the one’s my adult students all already had so that’s the one we are teaching.

        That was a long time ago. Ancient history.

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  14. Pretty much said it all in the review. The selling point is the angsty vocals.

    Jeez Max, it sounds like you are chilling out way too much. My sympathies.

    My bro has a St Bernard/poodle cross. The size of a St Bernard with no hair shedding. That dog barely gets off the porch to do his business before bounding back inside, lie down on the hearth rug and gaze long and lovingly at the crackling fire.

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    1. Even I groaned at your chilling out way too much joke.

      But a St. Bernard/poodle mix? Got any pictures?

      What else are crackline fires for other than gazing long and lovingly at? Your dog is a classic romantic.

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      1. Yeah, I know, terrible! I can own up to it.

        No photos now that I think about it. I must get my bro to send one or two.

        Yeah dogs love to hog the fire. Our last one, a schnauzer crossed with some other unknown mutt would snuggle and sneak so close to the fire she’d almost smoulder.

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    2. lol…yes I am! I’m glad to have my electric back although the internet didn’t follow…so that sucks but I’m going off of my phone’s hot spot.
      Yes…that is about what Martha does. A few of our other Saints would love the snow and we would have to make them come back in…

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  16. I still know way too little about Cheap Trick but I pretty much like all their songs I’ve heard thus far, which I guess are mostly the bigger hits. Their “formula” of combining rock with catchy pop melodies certainly worked well for them. And, as you said, impressively, they’re still around – including two original members, and a new album they released last November.

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