As they prepare for shows in St. John’s and Grand Falls – Windsor Feb. 7-9, John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls speaks with The Herald about songwriting, their new album, Something For The Rest Of Us, and what keeps the band rocking even after 25 years.

It might be hard to believe but rock band The Goo Goo Dolls have been around making music for a quarter century.

For the past 25 years, first as a hard rock band that then grew into one of the biggest bands of the 1990s with mega-hit singles such as Name, Iris, Slide, and Let Love In, the partnership of John Rzeznik and bassist Robby Takac has prospered.  For the past 15 of those years, they’ve been joined by drummer Mike Malinin.

TEN MILLION SOLD

Iris, from the City of Angels soundtrack, was one of the biggest songs of 1998, topping the charts for an impressive 17 weeks.  But besides that massive single (and two more chart-toppers), The Goo Goo Dolls have racked up an impressive list of achievements over the years.  They’ve nabbed four Grammy nominations, 13 consecutive Top 10 multi-format hit songs, and have sold over 10 million albums.

They’ve played on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno 15 times, more than any other musical artist, and another six times on The Late Show With David Letterman.  They’ve played at two Olympic celebrations and New Year’s Eve in Times Square in 2000, the dawn of the new millennium.  Rzeznik has also been the recipient of the Hal David Starlight Songwriter Award.

So, what’s made the collaboration work between the two original members of the band?

“We both respect each other and we respect each other’s boundaries,” Rzeznik says of Takac.  “We still get along relatively well, and it’s a unique thing.  We get to go out and do something that we still love doing.”

But what’s been the biggest change of the two original Goo Goo Dolls over the past 25 years?

“We don’t drink bottles of vodka together anymore,” says Rzeznik with a chuckle.  “That has probably helped our relationship more than anything.  You get older, and you mellow out a bit.  You’re not as intense and on fire at everybody and everything.”

The group has come a long way from those early days of 1986 in the city of Buffalo,  New York.

At that time, the group was probably started for no better reason than to kill time, make some music, and hopefully get a few free beers from the clubs where they were lucky enough to get a gig.

“Our first couple of records, we wrote those when we were kids, just having fun and not giving a s*it about anything, but it doesn’t seem good right now for a 45-year-old playing a song called Living In A Hut.” He jokes.

Now the band is coming to Newfoundland for three intimate shows Feb. 7 & 8th at the Delta Hotel Convention Centre, and Feb. 9 at the Joe Byrne Memorial Stadium in Grand Falls-Windsor as a band with huge success and nine albums of work.

“It’s going to be fun,” he says of the upcoming shows in Newfoundland.  “I was talking to someone there earlier and they told me I was going to be Screeched in.”

But besides the infamous local ceremony that awaits him, fans of the band here will see three intimate shows, as tickets have been limited to 1,000 a night at the St. John’s shows, and 1,400 at Grand Falls-Windsor.  

But don’t expect that the shows will be laid back.

“I love doing shows in the smaller places,” he tells The Herald from Los Angeles.  “You can actually have a conversation with the audience, and that’s always kind of interesting.  You get to connect with the audience a lot more, which is great, because sometimes in larger venues you have security gates, and it’s almost like you’re playing to no one sometimes.  It’s not as easy to have eye contact with the people in the crowd.”

A MORE SERIOUS TONE

The band is back with their latest album, Something For The Rest Of Us, a much more introspective work than previous efforts, and despite the more serious subject matter of the new songs, Rzeznik says the new material has really translated well with live audiences.

“It’s actually done really, really well,” the Goo Goo Dolls frontman says.  “I was really surprised, you know.  It’s really great when you put a record out, and people are actually singing along with it in the audience.  That’s a good feeling that, at that point, you have connected where you are supposed to connect.”

The record did have some hurdles, however.  Originally working with producer Tim Palmer, when the sessions were over, the band thought more could be done to the songs, so they recruited four more producers (including Butch Vig, best known as the producer of Nirvana’s 1991 classic Nevermind) and went back to the studio to do more work on the project.

“We were really caught up with the minutiae of doing the album and at the end of it, we started to rush, because the producer had other commitments,” Rzeznik says.  “I walked away from it for a couple of weeks, came back to it and said ‘this is not right.’ Luckily, the record company was cool with that and were nice enough to give us some extra time to go back in, strip it down and rebuild the things that we felt we needed to rebuild.”

It was the first time something like that happened to the band during all their years of recording, but to Rzeznik, it worked out well for the finished product.  “All in all, I’m really proud of what we finally accomplished.”

There’s a Canadian connection to the new album, as a couple of the songs (including the first single, Home, and Still Your Song) were Rzeznik co-writing with Andy Stochansky.  Rzeznik helped produce the highly-acclaimed album 100 by Stochansky in 2005 and wanted to work with him again.  “I was blown away by his songwriting,” Rzeznik says of the Canuck songwriter.  “We’ve been friends for a while, and he’s a full-time songwriter now.  It was just really nice and organic, playing guitars, and bam, we had these two new songs.”

The Goo Goo Dolls frontman says he’s learning to “dig” songwriting with others.  

“I can learn something from them,” he says.  “I know a few songwriters and it’s almost like factory work to them.  But I believe there should be some intimacy with it.”

The new album was inspired by what he calls “looking around at the world, especially here in America.”

“We’re fighting in two wars, the economy is in the tank, and people are losing their homes like crazy,” he says of his homeland.  “I have friends who have relatives in Afghanistan, and I have friends who have lost their homes and just can’t keep up, and it’s a really stressful time for a lot of people.  I kind of wanted to explore the emotional underpinnings…like how would that make me feel if I worked super hard and all of a sudden, my house isn’t worth anything or I lost my job or life savings because of someone else’s greed.  That was weighing on my mind.  I wanted to say something for these other people.”

THE SOUND OF SUCCESS

Looking back at their 1998 mega-hit Iris, Rzeznik says that at the time, he was very happy about the song connecting with so many people.

But he admits the song's mega-success was a double-edged sword.  “I felt a lot of apprehension and pressure to one up that, and you always try, but I’m really grateful for that song to enable me to have a career even 12 years after that, and that song has helped us stay in the game for a very long time.  The downside is that it’s cast a very, very long shadow, but I still love playing it every night, and I never get tired of it.”

The good news for fans is that the concerts will include many of the band’s big hits.  “We definitely play all of the hits,” he says.  “I think that’s what people want.  That’s why they come see you.”

So expect the Goo Goos to not only kick it up a notch in Newfoundland, but expect a night of great songs and solid rock and roll.