The Goo Goo Dolls first played Pershing Center in 1996 along with Bush and No Doubt. Wednesday they’ll be back on the Pershing stage to play the final show at Lincoln’s old city auditorium.

“That was a long tour, man,” said bassist Robby Takac. “I don’t remember that venue, that was such a long tour. But it’s cool that we’re coming back, and it’s cool we’re playing the last show. We actually played one of the last shows at the auditorium in Buffalo (N.Y.), where I grew up and saw Cheap Trick, Kiss, ELP, Alice Cooper … I could go on and on.”

The tour that played Pershing was a breakthrough for Takac and guitarist and primary vocalist John Rzeznik, the two longstanding members of The Goo Goo Dolls.

“It’s crazy,” Takac said. “That tour came through in '96, and we’d already been touring the country for 10 years, albeit in a van and not necessarily doing it full time. Reality would hit, and we’d have to pay some bills. So we’d go back home and find a job or a girlfriend, then after a few months head back out again. Then ‘Name’ hit and all of a sudden, we’re in a bus and playing a year and a half at a time, which we’re still doing at this time, oddly enough.”

After “Name,” the band’s first big hit, The Goo Goo Dolls exploded, riding the chart-topping single “Iris” to pop stardom. The platinum-selling “Iris” was one of a handful of Top 10 hits from 1998’s “Dizzy Up the Girl,” which sold 3 million copies in the U.S. alone.

The Goo Goo Dolls haven’t matched that chart and sales success since. But they’ve sold more than 20 million albums in their career. Each of their last four discs, including last year’s “Magnetic," opened in the Top 10 of album sales.

“Peaks and valleys, man, peaks and valley,” Takac said of the band’s commercial success. “We’ve been lucky to have a great group of people that appreciate what we do that will come out time and time again to support us. If that stops, everything stops. We’ve been super lucky with that. And we figure out how to make it happen still. Sometimes you have to make changes, and sometimes you just keep going.”

Changes like what?

“John and I have been playing since 1996 together. In those years, we’ve gone through five drummers,” Takac said. “Sometimes, it requires something like that. Sometimes it requires some musical changes. The first two records, I sang most of the songs. Sometimes it’s a shift like that.”

The most notable shifts came with "Name" and “Iris,” which had a more mainstream sound than the scrappier songs on Goo Goo’s first four albums. But even as it moved to more radio-friendly pop, the band continued to write strong, catchy songs.

“It’s all about the hooks,” Takac said. “We grew up AM radio kids, then we listened to Kiss. Regardless of what you think of them, they had tons of hooks. Cheap Trick, tons of hooks. Even The Ramones, tons of hooks. We definitely learned that and tried to replicate it.”

Now with 10 albums and a bunch of hits, putting together a set list has become a good trick, even though the band plays some different songs each night.

“That gets harder every year, for sure,” he said. “We like to do the new record, maybe a little less but a good chunk of it. That’s what we’re out here for. We like to turn people on to new music. That’s about six songs. Then there are some songs that they won’t let you leave the venue without playing, that some guy will bust out your bus windows if you disappoint his girlfriend. So those go in. I sing a few songs, and there are a few others we want to play. By the time you’re done, you’re nearing 20 songs.”

The Goo Goo Dolls will be joined Wednesday, as they have been all summer, by Daughtry and Plain White T’s, who will open the night with an acoustic set.

“It’s been a great summer package,” Takac said. “Plain White T’s are an amazing band and great dudes. Daughtry has taken this thing he had with American Idol and turned it into something very real, very rock. It’s really been good.”

Takac and Rzeznik have been Goo Goo Dolls for 28 years now, something they could never have imagined when they started banging out songs in a Buffalo garage. As he nears the end of his 40s, Takac said he hopes the band can be a lifelong job.

“You don’t think past the next show when you’re 20 and making sure you get a free case of beer when you play,” Takac said. “The world is a weird place. Personally, I’d like to do this until it feels wrong, and it feels like we’re beating a dead horse. But who knows how we’ll be doing it.

“Right now, we’re still doing it like we’re 20. We go out for at least a year, do press during the day, do a meet and greet with about 60 people before the show, play the show, get on the bus and go to the next town. Rinse and repeat. That could change; it will change. But I want to keep going as long as we can.”

The conversation then turned back to Pershing with Takac asking if it was going to be torn down, then talking about Buffalo’s Memorial Auditorium, which, like Pershing, became obsolete.

“It wasn’t set up for modern touring,” Takac said. “There were long pushes from the trucks to get stuff in. The structure and points (for hanging lights and sound) were all wrong and outdated. It was just kind of old and worn out.”

Welcome to Pershing, where the street will be blocked off to provide truck parking, there will be plenty of long pushes, and the tiny dressing rooms will be packed.

“So it really is old school,” Takac said. “This is going to be fun. It’s really cool we get to close the place.”