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America's political Gutterflower / Gateway article
« on: Feb 17th, 2011, 11:45am » |
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Got a couple new articles in my inbox this morning. It's nice to be able to post new stuff.
Americas political Gutterflower
February 17, 2011 - 12:10am
The man behind the sensitive sounds of the Goo Goo Dolls tears into the state of U.S. society
Jonn Kmech, Editor-in-Chief
Goo Goo Dolls
With Steven Page
Friday, February 24 at 7 p.m.
River Cree Resort and Casino (300 East Lapotac Boulevard)
$59.50 at rivercreetickets.com
Johnny Rzeznik is no Sheryl Crow. Unlike most musicians who barge into the political scene strumming an acoustic guitar and advocating for change from behind a microphone, Rzeznik doesn't wear his politics on his sleeve. Nobody would really suspect the lead singer and songwriter of the Goo Goo Dolls a band made famous for its cathartic, touching rock ballads about relationships, broken homes, and broken hearts to have such fiery views about American culture and politics. Or at least, if he did, you'd assume it would somewhat leak into his songwriting. But Rzeznik says that that's not his place in the world of music.
"That's not my job. That's other writers' jobs it's not my job," Rzeznik says over the phone. "I don't want to preach my politics in a really volatile way. I'll leave that for a younger man to do. I'm more concerned about what happens to people on an individual basis, with my music at least."
Rzeznik's songs have always been emotionally resonant at an individual level, a quality that propelled the band to superstardom. The Goo Goo Dolls became one of the biggest names in rock in the late '90s after releasing Dizzy Up The Girl in 1998, which included the smash hit "Iris." The triple-platinum album made Rzeznik one of the most well-known songwriters in the business, and the band continued their success with the subsequent release of 2002's Gutterflower. For their most recent release, last year's Something for the Rest of Us, Rzeznik said the political atmosphere in the U.S. influenced the darker tone of the album a tone that he "got a lot of crap for" even though that inspiration may not be directly apparent.
"We've been living in a country that's been under high alert and allegedly under attack for a decade," Rzeznik continues. "Then the economy just [fell] out from underneath us, and so many people are having a hard time. Those are issues that I wanted to talk about. What does that do to a person? How does that make them feel?
"I go home to Buffalo and I just see how that city's been completely decimated. I'm not kidding," he states somberly. "The neighborhood that I grew up in looks like a squadron of bombers flew over it and decimated it. And people have to live in that. It's not right."
After listening to his songs, nobody would accuse Rzeznik of not being passionate enough. It's just surprising that the emotion that typically comes across in his lyrics about loneliness and heartbreak also reveals itself as he chronicles his disgust with politicians, corporate America, Wall Street bankers, and a culture that he feels distracts people who are being stolen from on a daily basis.
"Now, it's all just bread and circuses: sit on the internet, watch naked chicks all day, watch 500 channels on TV. Here's cheap food that's going to make you fat, here's a shitty school to go to so you don't know anything," Rzeznik says defiantly. "I value my friends and my family more than I ever have in my life. It's just something that's been foisted upon us. There's a lot of fear, a lot of negativity there's a few pigs trying to make as much money as possible who will step on anybody to get that. Those kind of things bother me."
Rzeznik says that a personal experience from a few years ago was really the spark that made him realize how much the culture feeds off of fear.
"A couple years back, there was a JetBlue flight where the landing gear came out wrong. I was sitting in the recording studio working and someone had a television playing with the sound down, and I'm looking at that saying, 'What the fuck? That's fucked up.' My friend came into the studio and said, 'That's Melina's flight.' Melina's my girlfriend. And she was on that flight.
"So I got in a car and hauled ass down to the airport and I was listening to the radio the whole time. And the fear that they just trumped up they were making it sound like this was going to be like a nuclear weapon exploding on the runway. Then the plane landed and she was okay, she was just kind of shook up. But it made me realize how the media, when they just pound it through your head over and over again, how much fear it fills you with."
Despite his lament about the state of American politics and society as a whole, Rzeznik says that several of the new songs he's working on are actually optimistic. He says Goo Goo Dolls have always tried to remain a positive force, holding food drives at many of their shows and creating a scholarship fund to help youths from financially troubled families go to high school. For him, the emotions that his work stirs up will always be more satisfying than any attempt to bring down a government with a guitar.
"I talk to a lot of people and there's always a little story about how our music was there with them at a certain time, whether it was happy or sad. That fulfills me; that really makes me happy to see that. That's what's important to me," Rzeznik says.
"I'm a 45-year-old man," he adds. "I'm not going to stand up there and scream about how we should get out of Iraq and Afghanistan because there's no way to win and we're just pissing money away for the past 10 years and borrowing it from China. It makes no sense to me. But for me to write a song about that that's a young man's game, not mine."
http://thegatewayonline.ca/articles/arts-entertainment/2011/02/17/americ a-s-political-gutterflower
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