The Goo Goo Dolls are one of the most successful rock bands of the last three decades, and for the first time, they’ll perform inside the Jefferson Theatre in downtown Beaumont. Tickets for the Sunday, Dec. 4, show start at $49 and can be purchased online at ticketmaster.com or at the Beaumont Civic Center box office.

From Buffalo, New York, singer John Rzeznik and bassist Robby Takac got together in 1986 and have gone on to sell more than 12 million albums and secure many Grammy nominations.

The Goo Goo Dolls have had 14 Top 10 hits, which include “Name,” “Slide,” “Long Way Down,” “Naked,” “Give a Little Bit,” “Dizzy” and the massive hit single “Iris.”

Written for the 1998 film soundtrack City of Angels, “Iris” held the No. 1 spot on the Billboard chart for 17 consecutive weeks. Billboard also gave the song the No. 1 spot on its Top 100 Pop Songs from 1992-2012 while Rolling Stone named it on of the Top 100 Pop Songs of All Time.

The City of Angels movie in 1998 starred Meg Ryan and Nicolas Cage and earned more than $200 million at the box office.

The Examiner spoke with Takac on the phone about band longevity and hit songs.

 

How have you guys been able to manage 30 years in the music industry?

It has to be the right amount of everything in order for it to work right. We’ve been lucky enough to have a great relationship. When one of us contemplated getting out, the other would pull you back in.

Many of your songs withstood the test of time.

A lot of it is John (Rzeznik) trying to reach out and go places that we haven’t been in the past. That is really something on his mind a lot when we start to write new music. Each song, you try to move yourself ahead. We allowed a lot of process to happen and not get too precious about stuff.

 

You guys had a couple of releases come out before the record ‘A Boy Named Goo,’ which exploded and sold more than 2 million copies. Did you know you had something special?

The album before this one, Superstar Car Wash, we had a song that got some radio airplay, but it introduced people to who we were. By radio standards, A Boy Named Goo only had one radio song, and it was ‘Name’ that became a huge song, but it didn’t bring the band with it. I think the song was a little bit bigger than the band at that time, so we went out and did some big tours with Bush and No Doubt, which was a 70-show tour. It really wasn’t until the City of Angels movie that the band really took off.

 

For the next four or five years, it seemed like you guys were pumping out hit after hit. Can you put that into words?

Well, ‘Iris’ was a supernatural big song. When that type of thing happens relatively early in your career, the albums after that sort of felt like we were trying to live up to the expectations of ‘Iris,’ and I think it was really tough for John in general. Pressure was put on us by that experience. There has been some distance now between now and then, but it was an amazing run. ‘Dizzy Up the Girl’ had four or five radio singles; it was just crazy. We’ve managed to have a song on the radio for 20 years, and that’s insane.