Cheap Trick is very efficient in the studio, with Robin Zander able to nail vocals to exacting standards without many takes. Tom Werman, who produced their In Color, Heaven Tonight, and Dream Police albums, told Songfacts, "They were a producer's gift in the studio. Robin could do two full songs in one afternoon. The perfect lead I'd put together with him and then he could double it maybe on the chorus, and then do harmony parts and then do it again on a second song. We were very quick. We did Dream Police in 30 days, start to finish. These days it doesn't sound like anything big, but in those days you would typically take two months to do an album, and we did one from set-up to mastering."
Cheap Trick evolved out a group Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson were in called Fuse, whose lead singer was Robert "Stewkey" Antoni, formerly of Nazz (Todd Rundgren's early group). Fuse released an album in 1970, then morphed into Sick Man Of Europe, with Bun E. Carlos taking the drums. In 1973, they started using the name Cheap Trick and, a year later, Robin Zander joined.
Among the big rock bands that emerged in the '70s, Cheap Trick stood out for their sense of humor and for their place of origin: Rockford, Illinois, home of the Rockford Peaches, an original team in the the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, depicted in the movie A League of Their Own. They seemed to have a lot of fun, with songs like "Daddy Should Have Stayed in High School" and "He's A Whore" on their 1977 debut album, which included a (mostly) fake bio of the band in the liner notes. A sample: "Bun E., short for Bunezuela, hails from Venezuela." (Bun E. Carlos was born in Rockford and "Bun" is a childhood nickname.)
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