A woman I knew in college once told me about her brief encounter with Cheap Trick. After attending a show of theirs that had simply left her cold, she wrote a note to the band to express her disappointment.

A few weeks later, she got a surprise reply from none other than Rick Nielsen. He'd read her letter and subsequently played back a cassette of the show she'd complained about, to listen and see whether he too found it to be a dud. Then he contacted my friend by phone, thanked her for writing, and politely informed her that no, he didn't agree--it sounded to him like he and his bandmates had done fine that night.

This little anecdote offers insight into what matters to someone like chief Trickster Nielsen: (a) he cared how well the band had played for that show, even though it was but one out of hundreds a hard-touring outfit like Cheap Trick typically puts on in promoting the latest album; (b) he appreciated knowing what one fan, out of thousands in attendance, thought of the set. Finally (c) Nielsen didn't dish out something condescending and insincere, like a blanket "customer's always right"-based apology. Instead he stood by his own opinion of the performance, judging from the evidence. It's a refreshing twist on the rock 'n' roll attitude--caring about the job, about the fans, and about the truth.

It was Rick Nelson, not Nielsen, who wrote, "You can't please everyone / So you've got to please yourself." But the lines capture a philosophy that's helped steer Cheap Trick through two decades of ups and downs in the always-changing music business.

"We make records for ourselves," says Nielsen. "Then after that, we're surprised that anybody doesn't love 'em." Or buy 'em. Most of everybody's favorite Cheap Trick songs come from the group's first three albums, Cheap Trick, In Color (both 1977), and Heaven Tonight (1978). Yet ironically, for all the classics they contain, these records failed to establish the band commercially.

By then, though, plenty of record store patrons knew what Cheap Trick looked like. You could hardly fail to notice the striking visual contrast between the quartet's pair of pretty boys, vocalist-rhythm guitarist Robin Zander and 12-string bassist Tom Petersson, with the nerdier half, lead guitarist Nielsen and drummer Bun E. Carlos--surely two of the most unlikely looking players to appear on the cover of a major-label rock album in the '70s.

But unless you'd caught Cheap Trick at a live show, opening for the likes of Santana or Journey, you probably wouldn't have heard the memorably charging pop songs that fill those snazzily jacketed early albums. Only "Surrender" (from Heaven Tonight) garnered enough radio attention to make the charts, though it got no higher than number 62.

This was the era, though, of the breakthrough "alive" album. Kiss and Peter Frampton, two of the top-selling rock acts of the 70s, each had also achieved only mediocre sales with their first few albums. But then their respective record labels put out two-record sets (Kiss Alive, Frampton Comes Alive) featuring live in-concert versions of their stronger material. In both cases, the result was a first-time hit single (Kiss' "Rock and Roll All Nite," Frampton's "Show Me the Way") and spectacular multi-platinum album sales.

Before long, practically every rock band worth its salt, from the Rolling Stones to Rush to REO Speedwagon, tried repeating this formula for success by releasing live albums of their own. For the first time ever now, you could even walk into a record store and buy a non-bootleg live album by the Beatles, even though that legendary band had been defunct for years.

Epic Records had its own fresh fab four, of course, ripe for the same kind of concert album breakthrough that was happening industry-wide. But while the label did unleash Ted Nugent's infamous Double Live Gonzo in 1978, it apparently didn't at first plan on putting out a live Cheap Trick record. That idea originated with its Japanese corporate counterpart, Epic/Sony.

At that point, Cheap Trick may not have been making much noise in the States, but somehow in Japan they'd become huge. In Color had already gone gold. During their first Japanese tour in the spring of 1978, the band was seen and heard altogether by millions in person or on national TV and radio. All the attendant excitement comes across loud and clear (fans scream as if it were the Beatles all over again) on At Budokan, a live album recorded over three shows at a judo arena in Tokyo. Epic/Sony recorded and assembled it for Japanese release only, intending to capitalize on the tour's huge success.

Meanwhile back in the States, Epic was preparing to follow up Heaven Tonight with the release of Dream Police, Cheap Trick's fourth studio album. A promo-only sampler disc containing some of the live-in-Japan tracks was serviced to radio stations. Unexpectedly, Epic's promotional effort backfired somewhat. When radio stations began airing the live tracks, listeners responded by searching out import copies of At Budokan.

This wasn't at all the desired effect, since none of the dollars these new Trick fans were spending on the hot import went into American Epic's coffers. At long last in early 1979, the label realized its oversight and hastily arranged for an official American release of At Budokan. Sales exploded, and radio started playing "I Want You to Want Me" (a song that had first appeared on In Color) with enough frequency to get the live single into the top ten.

Then near the end of the year, coming directly off of the momentum of At Budokan, Epic put out the delayed Dream Police. The album was well-enough received both critically and commercially, but it would prove to be the last truly satisfying Cheap Trick album for many years to come.

In retrospect, it's not so hard to figure out how the band faltered on record almost as soon as it hit the big time. To start with, that impressive success had happened for the most part despite the bumbling efforts of the group's American label. All along the way, Epic had demonstrated it didn't really understand how to handle an individualistic band like Cheap Trick. That the quartet was finally making money for the label only made matters worse. Now Epic felt it had an investment to protect.

"Now that we have you under contract, you're our toy," is how Nielsen sums up the experience of being signed to a major label. "Big labels have big buildings, have big problems, have big pockets...."

To follow up Dream Police, Epic okayed the hiring of dream producers like George Martin, Roy Thomas Baker, and Todd Rundgren to oversee different albums. But when no big hits resulted, the label felt justified to tinker with the song and songwriter lineups on what were ostensibly the group's own records. For instance, "Dancing the Night Away," a song by British pub rockers-gone-popsters the Motors, was reluctantly covered by Cheap Trick and included on their 1983 album Next Position Please.

Following the major success of At Budokan, pressures and demands on band members' time and energy to tour and tour and deliver more hits had increased appreciably. Nielsen, the group's principal songwriter, wasn't exactly coming up with his best material under these tough conditions. He says that at the time he didn't object to Epic giving "some advice or criticism," at least in theory.

But advice and criticism must be well-founded to yield positive results. According to Nielsen, inevitably it came down to someone at the label saying 'The problem with those guys is...' segueing into a harangue over the failure one of the band's weaker efforts. "And then they come up with their own thing that's probably just as bad..."--a case of the blind leading the blind.

Then Epic A&R thought it saw light at the end of the tunnel, foisting on the band a surefire power ballad called "The Flame" for its 1988 album Lap of Luxury. Released as a single, the song returned the band to the top of the charts, but longtime fans undoubtedly felt betrayed by what seemed a most unbecoming stylistic shift.

Nielsen essentially agrees. "It was a good song, and we did a good job on it. But that was the kind of song you'd expect Chicago to do a great version of, or Peter Cetera..." Or heartthrob Robin Zander, solo. "It was more of a *song* song than a *band* song, even though it's us on there. But we're not that slick. When we'd do it live...at first we tried doing it with a sequencer so we'd have all the frilly parts to it. We ended up having a keyboard player for it for years, until it was like, 'What are we doing this for?'"

The band's revival on the charts proved short-lived, and by 1994, Cheap Trick and Epic Records had finally parted ways. The band then embarked on a one-album stint with Warner Brothers. Did the change of labels make things any better? "No," responds Nielsen with zero hesitation.

He recalls, through a disappointing sequence of events concerning one track, how things got bogged down this time around: "You should hear our (demo) version of 'Didn't Know I Had It' from Woke Up With a Monster--it sounds great. We gave it to Jeff Lynne because we wanted to see about using him as a producer. He said (enthusiastically), 'You guys don't need me!' But then after that, we totally screwed the thing up so it wasn't as good as it had been...Can't beat the demo sometimes!"

Cheap Trick has finally regained solid footing in a studio setting--they'd never lost it onstage--after taking matters into their own hands and co-producing (with engineer Ian Taylor) their new self-titled album. Marking a two-decade career on record, it was released this year under the imprint of Cheap Trick Records by Red Ant Entertainment.

"How does it feel to be better? / How does it feel to be on your own?" Zander poses these lines at the start of "Say Goodbye," the album's power-poppin' leadoff single. Nielsen observes, "In anything we've ever done, we try for a double- or triple-entendre." Here, the lyrics work both within the song's overall conceit about a sad relationship breakup, besides wryly celebrating the quartet's new independence and happy return to form.

On "Say Goodbye," Cheap Trick rocks with a gutsty self-assuredness that's been all too rare amidst years of slicked-up studio output. Learning from prior missteps, Nielsen says this time they retained the original song demo, cut quickly at a small Illinois studio called the Noise Chamber, for the final version. Vocals and guitar parts were dressed up later during the overdubbing process, but the first-take spontaneity of the basic track provides the essential groove.

And then there's the remarkable "Baby Talk" single the band cut recently with producer-engineer Steve Albini (Nirvana, P.J. Harvey). It was released earlier this year by Sub Pop Records, and included as a bonus disc with early pressings of the new full-length CD. Rock scribe Ira Robbins had the brainstorm of bringing together the band, producer, and label. "Everybodywent for it, and it worked," recalls Nielsen. Albini's no-frills approach to recording makes perfect sense for the project,exposing rough edges diehard Trick fans might well have bemoaned were sanded down smooth for good back around the time of "The Flame."

And yet it's not the only bold experiment Cheap Trick has attempted lately. "Shelter," a stately ballad reminiscent of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band period, occupies a prominent spot, both on the new album and in the current nightly live set. Its somber lyrics, inspired by the recent deaths of both of Nielsen's parents, has thrown some of the band's rowdier fans at shows for a loop.

Nielsen comments on their response, with a touch of pride: "If you're there to just get your brains rocked out every two seconds, that's good; but that's not what we do. I mean, there's other bands that do that better than us. We've always been diverse as a band, and diverse musically. So I think for us to go for the lowest common denominator...that works part of the time with us.

"But what are we on stage for, just to show we can play fast and loud? Big deal. We know how to do that. See, we do stuff that other bands could never do...("Shelter" is) a real song with vocals only the smallest fraction of singers can do."

Obviously, I'm talking to the same self-assured guy who took the trouble to call my friend all those years back. Rick Nielsen still cares about how his band's doing, how the audience responds, and where the truth about it all lies. Hardly your stereotyped, self-deluding rock star.

He sums up how over the years experience has set him straight: "I tell the truth, I don't need to lie. When I was a young kid, I used to stretch the truth. Now, I don't need to...the truth has already been stretched."