Credit: Far Out / YouTube Still / Marcel Antonisse / Original Poster
November 4th, 2026 · 4:00am GMT
The late 1970s rock scene was dominated by ostentatious outfits that let you know someone was a rock star through one glance alone.
At the time, the rage was open vests, feathers and anything that might catch the light from the back of an arena. Think the likes of Marc Bolan, Queen and Bowie. To go against the grain back then, you quite literally had to wear regular clothes, and that was exactly what Cheap Trick’s drummer, Bun E Carlos, decided to do.
Born Brad Carlson in Rockford, Illinois, in 1951, he grew up in a musical household. His mother played the piano, while his older siblings introduced him to the music of Elvis Presley and other early rock and roll stars. It was the arrival of The Beatles, however, that convinced him he wanted to become a drummer. In 1964, his mother bought him his first drum kit from a local music shop owned by the family of Rick Nielsen.
Rather remarkably, Nielsen would eventually become his bandmate in Cheap Trick, although their relationship went back considerably further. Carlos later recalled that he first heard the former’s name because he had been throwing rocks at his sister, a rather fitting introduction, all things considered. By his teenage years, Carlos was playing in a local band called The Paegans.
He was also something of an obsessive music fan, travelling into Chicago to see the likes of The Beatles, The Who and Jimi Hendrix. He even managed to sneak backstage at concerts, once interviewing members of The Yardbirds when he was just 14. He subsequently spent several years playing in different groups and backing established musicians, including Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. Eventually, in 1973, he joined forces with Nielsen to form what would become Cheap Trick, with bassist Tom Petersson and vocalist Robin Zander completing the band’s classic line-up.
Credit: Album Cover
It was around this time that Carlos began developing his rather unusual stage appearance. While other musicians were doing their best to resemble glamorous rock stars, he adopted a blue-collar aesthetic, wearing the sort of clothes you might expect to see on the people standing in the audience rather than on the stage.
His typical uniform consisted of rumpled short-sleeved shirts, dark ties, horn-rimmed glasses and a cigarette permanently dangling from the corner of his mouth, most of which came from second-hand shops, where he could purchase shirts for as little as 50 cents.
The result was a look that sat somewhere between a chain-smoking mid-century accountant and a disgruntled banker, but interestingly, Carlos hadn’t always intended to dress this way. Like countless aspiring rock musicians, he initially wanted to resemble Keith Richards. There was, however, one rather considerable obstacle: he looked absolutely nothing like Keith Richards.
“I always wanted to look like Keith Richards, but I didn’t, so that was fine with me,” he simply admitted.
Rather than forcing the issue, Carlos embraced a look that suited him. Alongside Nielsen’s equally eccentric appearance, it helped give Cheap Trick a visual identity that stood apart from their contemporaries. While Zander and Petersson looked every inch the conventional rock stars, the other half of the band looked as though they had wandered onto the stage from entirely different professions.
Carlos’ cigarette also became something of a mythical object among fans and road crews. He could seemingly play without removing it from his mouth, rarely allowing the ash to fall onto his drums or into his eyes. It was a rather remarkable achievement when you think about it, particularly given that drumming generally requires a considerable amount of physical movement.
By the time Cheap Trick achieved international success with Cheap Trick at Budokan in 1979, Carlos had become one of the most recognisable drummers in rock music while wearing clothes everyone else wore. Perhaps that was the most amusing thing about all of this. He had spent his youth idolising flamboyant musicians, yet when his own opportunity arrived, he became famous for looking like somebody who might do your taxes.
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