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Goo Goo Dolls get into the thick of it /article
« on: May 20th, 2010, 12:25pm » |
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Goo Goo Dolls get into the thick of it
May 20, 2010 10:54 AM
Goo Goo Dolls frontman John Rzeznik sounds like he’s got the weight of the world resting squarely on his shoulders.
From a relatively carefree punk rock garage band in the ’80s, the band now takes on the heaviest topics it can find.
The Dolls are in the middle of a tour and on the verge of a new album release. “Something For the Rest of Us” is set to debut in July. It’s been four years since their last, “Let Love In” in 2006, but fans still sing along to their old hits including “Slide,” “Better Days,” and “Iris,” from the “City of Angels” soundtrack.
Rzeznik is reluctant to pinpoint the trick to maintaining staying power in an ever-changing, ever-fickle music industry, though he’s had nearly 25 years to ponder it.
“I don’t know,” he says. “I guess I assess the situation and ask if I’m still comfortable with all this. Does this still fit? Am I still relevant in some capacity? If the answer is yes, keep going.”
Clearly, the answer is yes. Their new album is a musical collage of the current economic situation.
“I found myself thinking about certain things, like the emotional impact that things beyond your control can have on you,” he says. “Such things as, well, living in an unstable economy, which I think is going to get more unstable for some reason. I don’t know why, my gut tells me that. And dealing with two wars that have no end in sight. And the sort of disconnect between human beings and technology. The more we integrate, the further we get away from each other.”
Rzeznik gets into difficult issues, but he says he avoids overtly political statements. He isn’t qualified, he says, though his opinions are the fodder for the new Dolls work.
“I think that America’s going through a real paradigm shift right now. Its values are being challenged heavily. I think ultimately it will be OK; it will be a much simpler existence that it is right now,” he says. “People just don’t have money like they used to, and that reminds you of what’s really important.
“I’m more interested in human beings than politics,” he says. “I try to write and say things people can relate to on an emotional level. It’s getting more difficult to be a human.”
Rzeznik’s one key for survival in this world is to maintain relationships. But only the few that are tried and true, and that number is small.
“I make sure I stay extremely close to people I know I can trust. If I can say I have two or three real, true friends, I’m doing all right.”
He also does one other thing: “I try to not watch the news so much.” He does admit to turning it on once a day to catch up, but he’s nowhere near the political junkie he used to be.
It’s been 24 years for the Goo Goo Dolls as a band, 22 since their first tour in America in 1988. The punk rock band, originally modeled after The Replacements, took off around the country in a van. They toured every time a new album dropped, then returned to their day jobs. Rzeznik ticks them off in a memorized manner that says he’s been asked this question one too many times: “I was a bartender, a barback, sold roasted nuts, sold hot dogs on the corner, operated a jackhammer, sold magazine subscriptions over the phone.”
The turning point for the Goo Goo Dolls came in 1995 with the song “Name.” If you ever listen to mainstream radio, you’ve surely heard it: “A tired song keeps playing on a tired radio, and I won’t tell no one your name.”
But don’t expect to hear the really early stuff from them. Their sound and their views have changed since then.
“People ask why we don’t play off our first album, and it’s for the reason we don’t play with G.I. Joe dolls anymore. I was a kid, and I don’t feel comfortable playing that music anymore.”
http://www.gazette.com/entertainment/goo-99102-dolls-sounds.html
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