There were breakdowns, self-mutilations, hotel tearups, hospitalisations and more breakdowns. Then Australian rockers The Vines decided to record an album. “We can’t believe we’re here at all,” they tell Michael Odell.

Half an hour after shaking the foundations of a Manhattan club at their debut New York show, Patrick Matthews, The Vines’ bassist, sits on their tourbus. All around is evidence of their Anglophile pop obsessions — a Clash DVD, a Morrissey video and their most highly prized possession, an advance promo of the new Muse album.

It’s been an evening of riotous energy. The show was a sell-out, attended by whooping, drunken youngsters, Yank music business operatives with dollar-sign eyeballs and a Stroke, the non-Adonis Albert Hammond Jr. But there is no complacency afterwards. In fact, tonight’s post-show mood is one of restrained enthusiasm.

“I heard The Strokes are getting a million dollars for playing the Reading Festival,” says Matthews, as the tour manager flaps the night’s profit— $1000 —in his face before stowing it in a bunk. “We're so far away from that.  I don’t even have the money to get more than one drink from the bar. But I can’t moan cos really... I can’t believe we’re here at all.”

With a debut album, Highly Evolved, set for summer release, it would be easy to seize upon The Vines as a ready-made rock'n'roll antidote, to envy them for their flukily apposite timing and ingredients. Singer Craig Nicholls has been sprinkled with stardust, while Matthews, drummer Hamish Rosser and guitarist Ryan Griffiths play with a fundamentalist commitment to his musical vision, And here they are, poised for success after releasing just one single.

But, of course, the story isn’t as simple as that. A lot of people had to go mad, get sick, walk out, throw punches and even dress up as Ringo Starr first.

The story begins during an allotted recreation break next to a deep fat fryer in McDonald’s, Connells Point, Sydney, Australia. Matthews and Nicholls shared a shift there six years ago. Matthews, older by two years, en route to a university medical degree, and 15-year-old Nicholls were an unlikely pairing.

Even now, beneath Matthews’ dye-assisted punky fronds, you can imagine him as the white-coated medic surging through the hospital swing doors with a patient on a trolley. And the body, you can imagine, might belong to Nicholls. A gawky teen who had left school at 15 suffering from incipient depression, Nicholls found solace in Nirvana. After telling Matthews he could play Nirvana’s All Apologies, the older boy and school friend Dave Olliffe paid a visit to see if it was true. Satisfied, the trio formed a band. Then they decided to buy some instruments and learn to play them.

Olliffe named the group Rishy Kash after the Indian retreat where the Maharishi took The Beatles. Olliffe became the drummer. Matthews bought a bass, Nicholls bought a guitar but wanted to change the name.

“I wanted us to be called The Spastics,” he says. “They said, 'You just can’t do that.' I never understood why. It suited us.”

Initially surviving by playing Kinks and Nirvana covers, The Vines only reached critical mass two years ago. The band had been re-named after Nicholls’ father’s ’60s band The Vynes. And although Nicholls had already committed material such as In The Jungle (featured on the debut album) to demo tape he was also in the throes of mental deterioration.

“He totally withdrew,” remembers Matthews. “He didn’t go to work, he wouldn’t see his friends. He flipped out. Next thing I know he’s in hospital with tinnitus. I thought he'd gone crazy. But when he came out of hospital he was a different person. I can narrow it down to one gig we played at a pub called the Iron Duke. He used to be shy about performing in front of us in rehearsals. Now he had this Cobain singing style — screaming and shouting —and he didn’t give a shit. He was totally absorbed in his own world and super-confident onstage because he wasn’t aware of anyone around him. He’d also written some of the best songs I'd ever heard.”

After the Iron Duke show there was management interest, leading to a deal with the Engine Room production company, who offered to finance the recording of an album.

“They gave us the money to go and make the album in LA with Beck’s producer Rob Schnapf,” says Matthews.

And so to the extraordinary last 12 months. In July 2001, Nicholls, Olliffe and Matthews began recording with Schnapf at Sunset Studio Sound. Within eight weeks they'd run out of money, having recorded just two tracks. While Engine Room touted the band around record companies hoping to secure extra funds (they eventually signed to Capitol), The Vines began to disintegrate.

“They said, 'Go back to Sydney and wait',” remembers Nicholls. “I said, I’m not getting on a fucking plane till this album’s finished. I just locked myself in the hotel and stayed there. This band is my fucking life, my salvation, I wasn't going anywhere...”

But others, it seems, were. Nicholls was sharing a room with Matthews and one day caught him e-mailing his university enquiring about a start date for his medical course.

“He kicked the computer,” laughs Matthews. “We traded a few blows and that was that. I went back to Sydney for three days, but I was summoned back because the management were scared Craig would do something stupid.”

But they were watching the wrong guy. On Matthews’ return he was faced with the total mental collapse of Olliffe. A diagnosed manic depressive, Olliffe had struggled as soon as they began recording the album. Matthews had previously found him vomiting with nerves before recording his drum tracks, and later stubbing cigarettes out on his own arm.

“Dave was just consumed with the idea of not being good enough,” says Matthews. “He was in a terrible state. I had to drive him to the airport pumped full of drugs and put him on a plane home.”

The album was completed with Beck’s drummer Joey Waronker and Pete Thomas (Elvis Costello & The Attractions), but clearly the episode is not over. On the band’s website, Olliffe recently denounced Schnapf as “the biggest cunt there is”, adding that he would be re-joining the band soon. Management warn Q about raising the subject, but Matthews talks freely.

“Dave wasn't really up to it even before all this. He couldn’t drum to Get Free apart from doing his own little thing. But it didn’t matter because for a long time I never thought we would make it. I think Dave's got his life back on track but he’s venting all his anger on us. Loads of bands lose the drummer early on — Oasis, The Beatles —it’s not unusual.”

Ah yes, The Beatles. On Christmas Eve 2001, The Vines ad for a drummer in Drum Media magazine was answered by Hamish Rosser, drummer in Sydney cabaret band ’60s Mania, whose speciality was a Beatles medley in Fab Four costume. Rosser was packing his Ringo suit and wig for a corporate gig in Hong Kong when the call came.

"Our lead singer was an impressionist," sighs Rosser, talking as though it's a relief to confess. "We dressed up as The Beatles — wigs, suits, the lot. I did it for two years. Good money, but not something to boast about. And then I saw the ad and I knew it was time to leave."

Rosser joined at the start of 2002. By this time Nicholls and Matthews had also recruited Ryan Griffiths as a second guitarist. An old friend who had been in a band with Nicholls at school, Griffiths had originally tried out as a drummer five years ago while Olliffe had been receiving treatment in hospital.

"Just last Christmas I was at home knowing they were doing great things and suddenly I get an invite to be a part of it," says the amiable Griffiths. "I think they just wanted someone with a good vibe."

He's right. The edgy, mysterious Nicholls is now balanced by Matthews and the gleefully rocking, give-a-shit new boys. Which is just as well since The Vines are now being buffeted by new forces. Q arrives just after a show in Philadelphia — selling 200 tickets for a 250-capacity venue. Within 24 hours they sell out the larger Mercury Lounge on New York’s Lower East Side, get booked for The David Letterman Show, have their video added to MTV and their single, Highly Evolved, goes to Number 1 on the US alternative chart.

It’s not hard to see why. At the Mercury Lounge they play an incendiary gig. Whether it’s the chopping chords of Get Free or Outta Tha Way — featuring Nicholls’s unnerving scream and eyeball-swivelling seizures — or the lambent beauty of Autumn Shade and Mary Jane, they play as though they've been together for years. Apart from when Nicholls decides he’s had enough, holds his guitar over Hamish Rosser’s head as if to behead him and then throws it to the floor and walks off.

“He doesn't usually end the show like that, says Matthews after. “I think he was upset.”

Next day, Q meets Nicholls for lunch in a central Manhattan diner. Skinny and pale, he balks at the pan-global delicacies on offer and asks his manager to buy him a hot dog from a street vendor outside. None can be found, so he orders chicken and fries, eats a mouthful and pushes the rest away.

“I don't feel good,” he says rearranging a scarf tied round his arm which, he says, “hides a cut”. While his bandmates are indubitably Aussie, Nicholls has cultivated an odd accent. As well as the familiar native brogue he sometimes speaks like he has crucial tongue ligaments missing.

As songwriter and frontman, Nicholls is central to The Vines and a mythology casting him as an anguished, gifted young misanthrope with a history of suicide attempts has gathered apace. Earlier in the day Q meets an American music journalist who has been primed thus by the American record company: “They're pushing him as a gifted fruitcake, a fuck-up who could go off at any moment.”

It’s clear that Nicholls’ teen frustrations (he’s 24 now) underscore The Vines’ music, but he’s wary of explaining his shaky start.

“I was angry and l am angry still sometimes,” he says, big blue eyes seeking the ceiling, the menu, the walls. “I was a very shy kid. I hated school. I hated McDonald's. Like a lot of young people I felt suicidal at times but I didn’t act on it. I came from a good family. They helped me. I got kicked out a coupla times cos I was frustrated but... I found something I believe in.

“Patrick won't mind me saying this is my band... it’s his band too. But it means most to me. I wasn’t interested in the outside world. But if you're 16 and you've got your shit together there’s something wrong. I didn’t need hospital care. I spoke to a psychologist because I was being told, 'Get a job', and, 'Go to the bar on Saturday night, get drunk, pick up a girl', and I hated it, I wanted to make my own world. I was serious about being an artist.”

And his strategy for the maelstrom of fame is simple: “I’m going to let you discover how great the music is and how dull I am. I don’t drink, I don't go out, I love life and think hard drugs are bad. I think we should ban cars and planes. I respect Supergrass and The Verve. I don’t respect planes. That's it. I'm going to limit what I say. Even the shows we do. This time next year we won't even be playing this music.”

The Vines album, Highly Evolved, is out on 8 July.