Cheap Trick [ tickets ] has spent a quarter of a century carving their unique signature into the world of rock. "I Want You To Want Me," "Dream Police," and "Surrender" are some of their best-known songs, but the band's collective body of recorded work reaches into much more challenging sonic territory than their few hit singles would suggest.

Their contribution to popular music is an indelible mark, worn overtly and subliminally by the legions of artists who recorded their first albums sometime after the first Cheap Trick album was released in 1977.

Since that time, group has survived good times and hard times, personnel changes and record label shuffles. They've played huge arenas and they've played state fairs. Twenty -five years down the road, Cheap Trick still believes in pushing hard with an aggressive tour schedule and a no-shortcuts show that sets an impressively high mark in virtuosity and energy for their musical progeny to target.

In 1998, Cheap Trick shared the stage at various points with Pearl Jam, Aerosmith and the Smashing Pumpkins and began a unique tour which found them showcasing their first four albums in their entirety on successive nights, adding favorite tracks and covers as encores.

With less than two years before eligibility for induction into the Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame, the band is out on the road supporting a new album and trying out some new ideas on loyal fans. Long-distance pick-flipping guitarist Rick Nielsen [ tickets ] recently spent some time on the phone with liveDaily correspondent Lisa Traxler to talk about the view from here.

The new Cheap Trick album, ''Music for Hangovers,'' went on sale at Amazon.com sixty days before it was available in traditional 'brick and mortar' record stores. It seems like you guys are always doing something innovative.
We've always been a year or six months or two years or three years ahead of everything except being rich and famous. We are...famous.

(Bass player) Tom Petersson said that the band was never really satisfied that Cheap Trick's landmark 'Live at Budokan' album was a definitive concert recording--he said the group is much more satisfied with this new set.
When we went to mix ('Live at Budokan'), half the sounds had to be completedly eq'd, changed. It was a lot of work. This time was different. We like to use both analog and digital, so we did both of those (for this recording). Plus, we were just playing good.

So it's partly performance and partly technology?
Yes. The intimacy of the place (is also a factor). When you play at Budokan, that's, like, ten-thousand seats. The place in Chicago is more like fifteen-hundred.

Billy Corgan (from Smashing Pumpkins) made a guest appearance onstage, which is included on the album. I understand he surprised you by showing up onstage dressed up like you.
We're pals, but we see each other rarely. So I really didn't know the humor, ha-ha, funny side of Billy. I've known people in bands through the years, like I know Joe Perry from Aerosmith-he's usually kind of somber, but I can always get Joe to laugh. I can get Billy to laugh, and not just at me.

He also did a great job writing the liner notes for the CD.
Yeah. Nice of him. Somebody said to him, hey Billy, you're really good. You could quit music and be a writer. He said, what do you think I do? I'm a writer!

Has rock radio been supportive of the new album? Between alternative radio, which generally doesn't embrace longtime survivors, and classic radio, which doesn't play new tracks, it seems like it might be hard for a band like Cheap Trick to get extensive airplay, despite an established audience.
You know, I don't even follow it. I gave up on that so many years ago. You get your hopes up, you get your hopes dashed. You get duped. I don't even look at it. I suppose if we were number one, boy, I bet I'd really look at the charts. But we just try to make good stuff. We're three and a half minutes away from being the next big thing.

Do you have a lot of archived material that hasn't seen the light of day yet?
We have a ton. Plus if you think of every song we've ever done, the different versions of every song we've ever done, from the first rough draft of a song, to the finished product, to somebody else doing a version of it. A song has more than one life.

Trickfest is another unique idea: an annual gathering of CT fans for a bunch of band-related fun, from all-request concerts to acoustic performances to sets by Cheap Trick cover bands and photo sessions with the band members. A special edition of the festival to celebrate your 25th anniversary is just around the corner. Tell us about plans for this year's edition.
Trickfest is three nights in Maryville, Indiana, at a place called Star Plaza. It's a hotel complex with a theater--it's like a convention center. It's the only place you can have it where you don't have to drive here and drive there. People are coming from all over the world-Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South America, all over Europe-so you need someplace (like Star Plaza) because obviously they're not all gonna have cars. We're doing three nights there, then we're doing a fourth night, all four in a row. The last one's in Rockford, Illinois, where we actually started. We're doing it on the river, big stage. We're having a phantom regiment of one of the top drum and bugle corps that was ever in existence who is actually from Rockford. Rockford Symphony Orchestra---some of the players are working with us. Some of the high schoolers where Robin really worked on his singing, they've got the choir coming out... I mean, not every song, obviously, but special things here and there. It's gonna be a three-hour show, the 25th anniversary. It's pretty amazing.

VH-1 has plans to be there...
My parents used to have a music store, and they both passed away, and I ended up with all the stuff. I'm donating all the music to VH-1's Save The Music. (It includes) some band and orchestra music, and religious church music, and records, and some instruments...just a ton of stuff.

Way back when the Who released their 'Quadraphenia' album, they did play it live, sequentially, on at least one occasion...other than that, I don't think another band played an album's material from beginning to end in a live environment until Cheap Trick began doing it several years ago. A couple of bands have tried it since you debuted the idea.
Yeah, but who's ever done one album, then another album, then another album on consecutive nights? I think it's cool. I mean, nobody does that. We've been around long enough where we actually have enough material to do it.

Plus Cheap Trick's albums are more like collections, not just a couple of hit tunes surrounded by filler.
I've always thought we were an album group, not a singles band anyhow.

Your official website, www.cheaptrick.com, has lots of stuff to see and do: take a tour of your extensive guitar collection, visit Robin's guest disc jockey section, see Tom's collection of press clippings, listen to Bun E's Jukebox with rare audio clips. How much are you all actually involved in the site?
Quite a bit. We all have input, but one person's in charge-his name's Sean Fields. Smashing Pumpkins saw it, and they jumped over there too, so now it takes us longer to get stuff done. (Sean's) ideas were terrific, so we worked with him. This is the third cheaptrick.com we've had...it's evolved in many ways. It's going to keep changing, and there's some things that we're going to have-some cool downloads that are going to be available.

Sounds like you spend lots of time working on the band's online presence, as well as writing, playing, and recording the music.
If I could do three or four different jobs... One, I'd be on tour with Cheap Trick; two, I'd work on the merchandise and the website; three, I'd be involved in writing songs for the band; and four, I'd be doing other projects for different groups, producing soundtracks, scoring... But I'm one guy. One guy with three other guys. And so touring is the only thing that we can count on for sure.

Who are some of the other artists you've worked with in the studio?
Gene Simmons, Alice Cooper, John Lennon, different soundtrack projects...

Do you generally come in to play or to produce?
Mostly playing. I'm usually brought in as a consultant and as a player. They want my bad taste, but only for a little bit.

Are you ever horrified by covers that other bands do of your music?
The fact that anybody does our stuff...I don't think I ever say, ''Oh, no.'' That's how they interpret it, and if they're not very good, at least they're trying. I take it as a complement. Just last night I heard from a group from Czechoslavakia. They want to do ''If You Want My Love (You Got It),'' but they changed the lyrics to fit their band, and wanted to know if I approved of it. If I don't approve of it, they're probably not going to use it, and if I do...they're doing it their own way. They don't have to send me any money or anything like that--it's just that they want to get the okay, and I thought it was cool. They think the song is good enough that they'd like to put it into their native tongue. They don't want to do it in English, and so they feel that ''as long as we're not doing it in English, why don't we change what the story says.'' Well, why not? Cool. I mean if it's kill your mother kill your father kill your dog kill your cat I love you, you know, I don't think so. Well, maybe that'd be cool too, who knows.

Just being supportive of another band developing their thing...
I was a kid buying records and sitting in the basement teaching myself how to play guitar with no teacher, but it was just 'cause I wanted to learn. I didn't know what I wanted to learn, but I made attempts and I kept learning. And I think that's great.

Are your kids musicians?
Three of my four kids play music. One plays golf. Check out www.harmonyriley.com--two of the guys in there are my sons. They have a CD out, and they're touring, they're playing all over the place.

Do people in your neighborhood think it's odd to have a rock star in the community?
Usually, if it's younger kids, they don't know who we are...they'll find their parents' records, or their brother and sisters' records, and see, oh, that's those guys. Because if you see somebody at the grocery store, you know, that's the guy that lives next door to you-it's not some guy that plays in a rock band. You don't think about that. We also found out that we sold fewer records per capita than any other city of equal size...in the town where I live. So, compared to another town that has the same amount of people, we sold more records there than where we live. I don't think people (here) realize that we're really a band. (It's probably like) Athens, Georgia, for REM--I don't know that everybody in town has REM records.

Are you a Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde type...or are you as colorful offstage as you are onstage?
Sorry to say, I wish I were more the other guy (his onstage persona). When I go to school functions for my kids, like I said to my wife recently, it's crazy; we're the most normal people here. I mean, we don't look like it...maybe not the most normal, but somehow the sanest bunch that's around.

You do tend to be pretty wild onstage.
Yeah, I like to have fun. I take what I do seriously, but I also have fun while I'm doing it. I never wanted to be like anybody else, and my wish is fulfilled.

After twenty-five years, does the band seem like family?
I think we all tolerate each other. But I think it's like, deep down, when we play, sometimes...we'll all be mad at each other, or this happened, or the flight was crummy, or this got lost, or the power's out, or something breaks, but sometimes when we're playing it's like--man, this is good stuff. We're playing the same notes that anybody else has access to, but sometimes it's how they're played, the combination of how they're done...it's just fantastic.