While driving home listening to the Beatles’ Channel on Sirius XM the question was asked “Who came the closest to replacing or following up the Beatles success.” A lot of suggestions were thrown out. Michael Jackson? Bruce Springsteen? I am going to suggest that the one and only answer is Cheap Trick.
To begin with Cheap Trick built their success in another country. Like the Beatles who polished their act in Hamburg, Germany * Cheap Trick created one of the best live albums of all time with “Live at Budokan” The excitement and screaming of their teenage audience is clearly reminiscent of the Beatles playing live.
Second and most importantly there were FOUR musicians playing Rock n Roll, two points that wipe out almost everyone else. If you count boy bands from the 80’s or 90’s there were usually five singers, but not five musicians and/or songwriters.
The third point is that there are few other artists that have more direct and indirect connections to the Beatles. George Martin actually produced one of their records and two bands members played on John Lennon’s Double Fantasy. At George Martin’s funeral Rick Nielsen was asked to sit near Paul McCartney, Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono.
Of course one departure point is that unlike the Beatles, all four members do not sing. But if you want to make the normal Beatle comparisons between Tom Petersson and Paul McCartney those type of connections are easy to make.
Finally Cheap Trick played Sgt Pepper live in Las Vegas, covered Day Tripper years before that, an even sneaked in “She Loves You” into one of their songs.
Sure there are other artists that may have been more popular, but as far as emulating the Beatles in many obvious ways, no other band comes close.
