Frankly, I'm so glad you wouldn't with ours, because that would put a stain on MY stellar career.

If Budokan hadn't happened, Dream Police wouldn't have been half the moderate success that it was. More than likely, it would have joined Werman's previous two efforts with the band in the middle regions of the charts and the band may have very well been dropped.

The blame should not lie solely upon Werman's shoulders, though. Cheap Trick had been unhappy with In Color,. yet they worked with him again and were unhappy with Heaven Tonight, then they worked with him yet again on Dream Police. Not to be a Monday morning quarterback, but why didn't Cheap Trick work with someone else if they weren't happy with the results? Werman, after all, was a staff producer. To me, the tag “staff producer” has always been associated with sub-par results from bands who were misunderstood and/or wrongly pigeonholed by their label. Cheap Trick, from the moment they signed to Epic, were both, yet their decision to have a mere staff producer thrust upon them when each album could have been their last seems a bit careless.

While I've nothing against the man, the pile of albums with his name on them that failed to accurately capture the respective band in their true element is a large one. Despite some great material, The Producers, Hawks, and Off Broadway (to name but a few) came off sounding neutered and, unlike Cheap Trick, each of these bands ultimately fell victim to what I like to call “two-and-out syndrome”; two albums, no hits, and the boot.

Then, of course, Werman became the go-to-guy for Sunset Strip metal bands and the rest is history. All things considered, as a producer I think he makes a great bed-and-breakfast proprietor.

Still, I've got nothing against the guy, personally, and would still have killed to have been a fly on the wall during some of the sessions of which he was a vital part.

As I have grown and struggled to become the “musical brain and pair of ears” that I currently am, I've been looking and exploring, trying to so be what some of those before me were, but to “seek what they sought”, so to speak. Finding someone to relate to that can really sit down and give me some real vitamins has been tough sometimes.

All that to say, when I saw this criticism of Tom Werman and whatnot, I think it made me mad that a man that already did what I would like to do (and probably never will do on any grand scale) was taking a verbal beating by some of my teenage heroes . . . from Matt, as well as Nikki Sixx and whatnot.

I have alot to learn, and there seems to be no limit to how small I can truly feel when staring up at The Mountain that is the music business.