from Spinner.com: Cheap Trick’s new single, ‘Sick Man of Europe,’ which is taken from the band’s just-released album, ‘The Latest,’ is a lean slice of hard-hitting power pop, bristling with the kind of edgy vitality usually credited to a young band with a reputation to make. But, then, that’s exactly what the song is about. Sick Man of Europe was actually the name for a nascent Cheap Trick, formed around 1971, and numbering guitarist Rick Nielsen, drummer Bun E. Carlos, bassist Tom Petersson and singer Stewkey from the Nazz. “It’s a bit of our history,” Nielsen tells Spinner. “Tom and I were living in Europe, after leaving the American pop scene, of which there was none.”

“It was such an intriguing set of words,” he says of the band name. “To me, ‘Sick Man of Europe’ conjures up stuff, but no one else thought so much of it. Every time people asked ‘What’s the name of your band?’ it’d be ‘What?’ How can you take the world’s worst band name and turn it into something?”

Somehow, 37 years later, that’s what they did. While the song tells of a young band struggling against the odds to find its place in rock ‘n’ roll, the video splices retro clips of go-go dancers and swinging London — including the iconic original Biba clothing store — with career-spanning Cheap Trick shots.

But how did they come up with that odd sounding name? “We were traveling around Europe and saw the Herald Tribune one day and they were referring to Turkey or Italy, I forget which, as the sick man of Europe, dragging the rest of Europe down,” Nielsen says. According to some critics, this young band wasn’t so hot either. “We did one show with the Mahavishnu Orchestra,” Nielsen recalls, “and someone wrote, ‘Wherever they’re from, they should go back.’”

Watch the exclusive video premiere of ‘Sick Man of Europe’ here.