"I think I'm aging ungracefully --Hick Nielsen"

If Cheap Trick are the ultimate American band for the 80’s, they certainly aren’t saying so. And neither am I, because talk like that can get a fellow in big trouble.

Rick Nielsen knows what I mean. He responds to words like “goals” and “challenges” with the sort of talk one might find in the Protestant Work Ethic handbook (a little-known tome for those who have graduated from the Boy Scout and Explorer handbook; subtitle—Quotes from Chairman Luther).

“We have a goal to make good records—to do whatever we do well,” he says with straight-faced honesty. “I think that’s what it is. If you work on new material, you want that to be as good as possible. If you do old material—make that hot, or change it to make it better.

“You might not do everything great. I keep my finger in like 20 different things, I don’t do any of them great. 1 do a lot of things good. I’m good at a lot of different stuff. I’m not great at anything.”

I offer that some might disagree with this modest assessment.

“Yeah, they might argue that I, do anything good...