Cheap Trick talking about “Live at Budokan” album

Cheap Trick has been successful right from the start in the mid 1970s; at first particularly in Japan. Because of this the record company, epic, decided to release the live album “at Budokan” in Japan only, not expecting it to have success as an import from Japan to countries all over the world. Of course, they then released it worldwide. In this video they reminisce with world famous singer Daryl Hall during their visit to his home studio as part of a series of YouTube videos called “Live from Daryl’s House”.

Starting at 42:20
Rick Nielsen: Cheap Trick’s guitarist
Robin Zander: Cheap Trick’s vocalist
Daryl Hall: The host, owner of “Daryl’s House”, famous singer, formerly of “Hall & Oates”.

Rick: When you think about how stupid it was in this business, we had “Live At Budokan”, which was a huge album, huge album around the world, blah, blah, blah… “Part 2” was twenty-some years after…
Daryl: I remember that.
Robin: Which is the real…I don’t even know… real trouble…
Rick: It was only for our Japanese fans, but then the thing did so well…
Robin: Our manager’s going, “Don’t worry, nobody’s ever going to see this…
Daryl: Ohhhhh…….
Robin: …it’s just for Japan. The cover sucks, I know, but don’t worry you guys, I’ll never get it out everywhere…
Rick: The worst friggin’ cover anywhere.
Somebody: It’s one of the biggest live albums anywhere in the world!
Robin: I know! Suddenly it’s like Peter Frampton. Sorry, amn.
Daryl: Well you guys tipped that off, you paved the way for us, because that Budokan album paved the way for the whole thing with the… the whole western invasion of Japan, and we (Hall & Oates) were right there, it was you guys and we jumped right in…
Rick: and still to this day.
Daryl: Yes, we’re there.
Robin: I was telling these guys: we go (he means “went”, back in 1978) to the airport (Tokyo), we’re sitting on the airplane, we look out and there’s like 5,000 kids! We’re all looking at each other and going, “Well who the hell’s here?”
Rick: The president must be in First Class; we’re all in Coach.
Robin: What’s going on here? And when we got off the plane we realised what it was all about, you know.