Pioneering the power pop style long before it was fashionable, few bands were as commercially successful or as critically battered as Cleveland, Ohio's the Raspberries. Eric Carmen and Wally Bryson, the band's primary songwriters and frontmen, both worshipped at the alter of The Beatles, Brian Wilson, British Invasion bands, and Phil Spector's "wall of sound" production techniques, and had a romanticized concept of pop music that harkened back to an earlier era.
The creative tension between Carmen's melodic teen heartthrob sensibilities and Bryson's harder rock instincts fueled the bands music, creating an irresistible blend. The band's self-titled 1972 debut album, complete with a scratch and sniff cover, contained the AM radio smash "Go All the Way," which simultaneously blessed and doomed the band. While it unquestionably brought them immediate recognition and a gold record, it also pigeonholed them as a vocal harmony oriented teeny bopper band, which in reality only scratched the surface of the group's abilities.
Although the Raspberries lasted merely three years during the early 1970s, in retrospect, they would have a distinctive lasting influence on other bands to follow, including Cheap Trick, The Knack, The Romantics, and countless others. Although the group was ridiculed relentlessly at the time, it is doubtful that the power pop movement of the late 1970s would have developed as it did without them.