“Hello There” by Cheap Trick

"Hello There" tears through In Color, Cheap Trick's 1977 album, and it's gone almost before it starts: a minute and 41 seconds of Rick Nielsen's fuzzed-up, frantic guitar, Bun E. Carlos crashing in behind him, then Tom Petersson's bass and Robin Zander's voice piling on. Tom Werman produced and Antonio Reale engineered.

Nielsen wrote it as a tool of the trade. The band didn't always get a soundcheck, so he wanted a greeting they could test the PA with instead of burning one of their more tuneful songs, an idea he took from an earlier band, Elmer Gantry's Velvet Opera. It bumped "ELO Kiddies" as their opener, started their shows from 1977 into the mid-'80s and leads off Cheap Trick at Budokan. Dave Marsh of Rolling Stone caught a whiff of the Beatles' "Birthday" in it.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.