In fact, it's a gas for The Vines, who went through their too-much-too-soon and have come out the other side, arriving at their new Winning Days.

"Shoes must be worn in the lobby at all times,” The sign was prominently posted, smack-dab in the middle of the L.A. hotel's reception area for all to see. It appeared to be working: Respectfully, kids splashing out of an adjacent pool would stop, slip on their flip-flops and tiptoe across the lodge’s plush pile carpet, past an alert concierge who eyed every interloper with grave suspicion. But the warning meant nix, nada, nothing to Craig Nicholls, a devil-may-care rapscallion who—Doc Martens in hand—blatantly ka-thwapped barefoot through the room, tracking dirt behind him as he went. The hotel official looked horrified. But as he raised a reprimanding hand, he caught himself.

Several world-renowned rockers were staying on the premises that particular autumn afternoon a year and a half ago. And something about this kid's surly swagger and heavy-lidded stare spoke of stardom, made that concierge think twice about a wrist-slap. Besides, Nicholls looked too ferocious— or too fucked up—to give that sign a second thought. Did he deserve such special treatment? It didn’t matter—at the time, as the volatile, vitriolic leader of Australian up-and-comers the Vines, Nicholls and his renegade behavior were fast becoming the stuff of legend. Or perhaps some future VH1 Behind The Music postmortem, once he'd careened into crash ‘n’ burn obscurity.

But no instruments or furniture were broken that day, no food or punches were thrown, and no bystanders shivered in fear of physical harm. All in all, the inn and its employees got off pretty damned easy.

How easy? The previous week, for example, Nicholls had reportedly clambered over a Bay Area radio DJ's desk, mid-interview, and unplugged several crucial cables—live. Later that same day, the truant sat glaze-eyed backstage at a San Francisco venue, staring like Abercrombie the Zombie at a miniature haystack of pot, piled high on his dressing-room table. Handed a CD from a fellow alterna-punk artist, he promptly hurled it straight up into the ceiling, where it shattered into shiny shards. As visitors nervously edged out of the chamber, Nicholls suddenly became aware of his surroundings and demanded to know, “Where are you going? I thought we were just getting started, just starting to hang out!” A moray eel would've made a more chummy bud.

Around the same time period, the vituperative Vine was making headlines around the world for such odd acts as: Throwing sandwiches from his favorite restaurant, McDonald's, at freeway motorists from the window of his speeding tour van; self-destructing during a Tonight Show rehearsal, where his spastic instrument-trashing display earned the Vines a hasty veto from Jay Leno; and a similar incident on Letterman's Late Show, where Nicholls, bassist Patrick Matthews wistfully recalls, “ran over and did a backflip onto Dave's couch, right past his nose, threw his guitar at Hamish [Rosser, Vines drummer] and then just ended up on the floor, screaming. Letterman did a funny look at the camera, like ‘These kids! Hope they don’t give up their day jobs.'" Still later, an onstage donnybrook would erupt between Nicholls and Matthews, setting still more tongues a-wagging.

The rumble was growing louder. Were the Vines, who rocketed out of Sydney with their hit debut, Highly Evolved, a simple case of too much, too soon? Was Nicholls, a pale-skinned recluse who'd spent so much time indoors he had no discernible Australian accent, just too fragile for the rigors of the road? Would the Vines, who landed their contract via homespun demos, sans traditional club-circuit dues-paying, ever acquire enough discipline to record a second album? And—more importantly—was Nicholls just plumb nuts?

Ultimately, it all came down to a basic equation of sink or swim. And the Vines, fans will be happy to hear, have been dogpaddling like crazy for the past year. Almost despite themselves, they've produced a rock-solid sophomore set, Winning Days (Capitol), that finds the group eschewing its earlier Nirvana bent for a more British-Invasion-y sort of vibe. It's the sound of Nicholls discovering his own singing/songwriting voice, waiving his unpredictable past for a more mature outlook, the sound of a feral child finally coming to grips with civilization.

Jump cut to a month ago. As they walk toward a waiting Nicholls, seated (and shod) poolside at the swank Hollywood Roosevelt, a Vines management rep elbows the Capitol publicist and whispers, “Craig's in a very good place at the moment, he's a whole new man. You'll really be surprised.” Sure enough. there's an immediately detectable new aura. The 27-year-old’s usually stoner-slitted eyelids are wide open, like a midnight bush baby spying an unusually juicy insect. His straw-stiff brown hair still frames his moon-oval face in a dishevelled, drunken-hangover halo—the trademark wallaby-cute look that's made him prime pinup material in teenage girls’ bedrooms. But it's different this time around, Nicholls declares, beaming broadly—there’s no drink involved in the look. Nor any other suspect substance. In fact, he's so sober, it's scary.

“I'm not doing anything really bad,” he swears. “And that's definitely alright by me. Now that I've given up drinking and smoking, I'm not as sedated. And I mean any kind of smoking, whether it's tobacco or anything else.” He sighs, crosses his fingers. “I don't know how long it will last. but it's lasted for several months now.”

One by one, he’s reminded of his historic gaffes; one by one, he struggles to recollect them. The lobby/shoe snafu: “Barefoot?! Was I really? I don’t remember that, man! It doesn’t seem that daredevilish, but maybe it was.” The backstage/CD snag: “I formally apologize to everyone involved—I was probably just out of my mind. But I really can't remember that, either." The Leno incident: “Again, we were just out of our minds. There's no other rational explanation for it, because it was so surreal. The taping was early, we're not really morning people, so it, uhhh, just didn’t work out."

How did Nicholls gain his clear head? Through serendipity, he believes. “Because I can't remember quitting—it wasn’t really a conscious thing, I just did it less and less until I realized that I wasn't doing it at all. And it's made me think about different kinds of things, and maybe I've become less aggressive. Because now I'm wanting to write more mellow songs—it's made me calm down a bit, given me a bit more perspective. I've sensed that I'm getting much more country rock or something, but it doesn't scare me. And now that I've gotten more perspective, I'm trying to be more thoughtful and considerate. I guess this is our next phase.”

Neither “mellow” nor “country rock” completely summarizes Winning Days. But they're close. Whereas Highly Evolved had a schizophrenic feel—bouncing between the squealing, Nirvana-inspired excess of single “Get Free” and other chiming compositions that echoed Nicholls’ and Matthews’ formative influence, the Beatles—its follow-up has a more fluid continuity, a streamlined sonic vision. Produced by the pop-savvy Rob Schnapf, several tracks rely on a gentle jangle: “Rainfall,” “Autumn Shade“ and Matthews’ sole contribution, “She’s Got Something To Say.” But the remainder, from the staccato opening anthem “Ride” to the punk-chimey title cut, to a spacey slice of Floydian psychedelia dubbed “Amnesia” and the riotous, clanging closer, “Fuck The World,” ratchet up the adrenaline with riffs reminiscent of... the Kinks? Yes indeed, smiles Nicholls. “I'm quite obsessed with the Kinks—it's really pretty sick. I just went to Amoeba, this big record store here in L.A., and got some really cool Kinks CDs, like this one called Lost And Found from '86 to ‘90. I just think Ray Davies is a brilliant songwriter—just the way he communicates his songs, his ideas. It seems like he can write a song about pretty much anything.” And he’s applied that eclecticism to the Vines, Nicholls adds. “I really like the whole idea that a song can be about anything—it's not like it has to be a love song, or about my personal pain.”

He hopes listeners will hear the innate irony in “Fuck The World.” which, although he screams the chorus at the top of his angry lungs, doesn’t necessarily mean what it says. "I was being sarcastic when I said ‘Fuck the world’—it's an environmental song,” he allows. “I'm saying it like I feel helpless with everything that's going on. You end up thinking, ‘What can I do?’ Especially someone who plays in a band—no one’s gonna listen to me. Then there's the other side of it that says, ‘It's hopeless, do what you want, we're all going down anyway.’ It's that kind of teenage emotion that everyone goes through, like ‘Fuck that! Fuck you! I won't do what you tell me!”

An emotion Nicholls probably knows all too well. At the height (or nadir) of his escapades, a couple of kids, he says, approached him after a show. They were concerned about him, worried that he was heading the way of Kurt Cobain. He tried to assure them that he was okay, but deep inside some doubts had finally taken root. Today, he cedes, “It's only natural to worry about yourself, otherwise you'll end up dead a lot sooner than you should be. But I'm always worrying that I'm gonna die, though, just because I think life’s so great. I mean, I have my off days, and I think I probably had a few mental breakdowns. But for some reason, I feel okay now. And no matter how bad things are, you've gotta focus on the positive things, otherwise life can be really hard.”

As if on cue, the Vines manager arrives with a sackful of hamburgers and fries from a nearby Wendy's. "This is what I have to look forward to now,” says Nicholls, licking his chops. He insists he’s over his former McDonald's fixation. “Wendy's is a bit more sophisticated,” he explains between bites.

Nevertheless, McDonald's looms large in the Vines saga. It's where Nicholls first met Matthews, two years his senior, back when they were Sydney high schoolers working the same shifts. In between hawking strange Down Under delicacies like the McOz (a quarter-pounder topped with a huge beet slab), the duo developed an unexpected, kooky rapport. Matthews—chatting separately on the other side of the pool, while Rosser repeatedly jackknifes into the water in front of a sign warning “Absolutely no diving—no lifeguard on duty”—has much to say on the subject.

“Watch—now Hamish will swim the length of the pool underwater, just to show us he can,” Matthews grumbles, before getting down to fast-food business. “Craig says Wendy's burgers are more high class—are they? Me, I like In-N-Out Burger— I think I might walk down and get one later. Here in America, though, McDonald's is like the job of last resort. But in Australia, heaps of people work at McDonald's because it's high-paying. Craig and I were there for four or five years, probably longer than most. But we were still pretty young when they kicked us out.” He pauses, grinning. "Well, they kicked Craig out. I left on my own accord. I think Craig just missed a few too many shifts.”

Beneath his craggy features and intimidating glare, Matthews possesses a dry, droll wit that's almost the polar opposite of his partner's. How did these two unlikely bandmates become friends? “I thought Craig was funny when we first met," Matthews says, “then I realized he was also into music. And you know Craig is... is... he’s different. But he could really make me laugh. Most people's jokes are like, you've heard it all before. But Craig's humor is just off the wall.” Funny ha-ha? As in starting a fight with your pal in concert for the world to witness? Matthews shrugs, rolls his eyes. “Aw, that was just a scuffle. But I was never worried about Craig because, frankly, he never really lost it. But before we went overseas to record the first album, there was about a year when he was a little weird, and was maybe gonna disappear, disappear from public view. But thankfully, his songwriting gave him something to do in this world. You know how people need to be told that what they do is good, worthwhile? All Craig needed was a little affirmation.”

Matthews figures—quite correctly—that he and Nicholls’ differences actually complement, balance each other out. “Craig's highly emotional, prone to outbursts, while I'm calm, cool, collected. And we got all these great opportunities as the Vines, and everything worked out for us, but at the same time we had all these problems with not being particularly... umm... ‘controlled?’ But in the end, so much had happened we were as well known for that as our music. People only knew Craig for doing crazy shit on Leno and Letterman.”

In retrospect, the Vines cite lack of sleep as an integral factor in those meltdowns. Truth be told, there's something a tad larger at work. When Nicholls convulses onstage, winds up shrieking in shuddering paroxysms or hurling himself and/or instruments across the proscenium, he is—skeptics be damned—tapping into some kind of rock ‘n’ roll spirit. It might not be the same one that swiveled Presley's hips or dropped James Brown to his knees, but it's a higher power, alright. No matter what Nicholls might've felt under the influence of tonic or chronic, under the spotlights he’s channeling pure rock rush.

“There's definitely a buzz onstage, and it can get pretty mad up there sometimes,” Nicholls agrees. “It has people singing along to the songs, and that's quite amazing. When I think back to our early days, when we hoped we could make it, hoped we could be a band, get to record, be lucky enough to get a deal... I mean, you can’t choose this. I really couldn't do anything else, I really couldn't. I was completely obsessed, ever since we started writing songs. But I think I'm changing. The older I get, the more I'm thinking it's really just a self-absorbed thing. But I believe that we're still in it for the right reasons—we wanna make good music, we just wanna be involved with it.”

In Winning Days’ title track, Nicholls warbles that "The winning days are gone.” He says he intended the song as a sentimental reflection on his Sydney childhood, “back when everything was right—I'm not saying everything seems wrong now, but then there was this simplicity and naiveté. And a winning day for me now just means being happy—a losing day is when you're trying to explain yourself, get yourself across. Or getting up, falling over, then having it rain on you.”

The Vines have had a few winning days around Australia recently. Playing secret shows as Foregone Conclusion (The Office boss David Brent's defunct band in the hilarious BBC sitcom), the quartet finally wowed its initially standoffish homeland. Still, fame is a mixed blessing, Nicholls concludes. “Looking back on it, I can't believe we went to all those places on tour. And I can't believe I talked all that shit. A lot of people just thought I was this little monster who'd always be throwing things around.”

But Nicholls has most assuredly learned his lesson. What will he do the next time he encounters a “Shoes must be worn” placard? “I'm gonna put my shoes on, because I'm growing up now,” he replies in a heartbeat. “I mean, it seems like it'd be better for the floor if you didn't have shoes on. But as long as I've got some shoes, it'll be alright. I don't wanna disrupt anything. I don’t wanna get in trouble with police over something like that..."