Cheap Trick, ‘The Flame’ – Butch’s Way Back Wednesday

As a music fan there is always something new and great, but there really is something special about the songs you grew up listening to. For me, that was 70′s and 80′s classic rock. If I am in a shi**y mood, I throw in a little Zeppelin or Rush and take a trip back to rolling in my mom’s T-Bird. Now every Wednesday you get to take that trip with me. It’s Way Back Wednesday with Butch, and today’s feature is a song we first heard 25 years ago this month... Cheap Trick's "The Flame."

Hard to believe, but it was 25 years ago this month that Cheap Trick released their tenth studio album, Lap of Luxury, which many consider to be the band's comeback album following the commercial failure of the 1986 album The Doctor, Lap of Luxury spawned three top 40 hit singles and one minor hit single.

The biggest hot off of the album, and the bands only #1 hit ever came in the form of "The Flame." It was written by songwriters Bob Mitchell and Nick Graham. The song is a soft ballad where the singer tells a girl he will always be there for her. It was not typical of Cheap Trick's sound, and was also their only hit not written by their guitarist Rick Nielsen. The song succeeded in exposing the band to a much larger audience. Another example of a '70s Rock band that brought in outside writers and had a successful ballad was Heart, who had a similar breakthrough with "These Dreams."

According to lead vocalist Robin Zander:

The band was very skeptical about performing this song live, because we only liked to perform songs written by us. However, a young man from, oh, I don't know, somewhere, confirmed to us after a show in Florida about a week after the song was released that the song was great and, get this, would be a #1 single. As we joked about the guy's prediction, we later realized whoa! This guy was right. I thank him for that.

 

Now take a trip back 25 years to 1988 with us here...