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Title: Songs of Love and Hope Post by Adela on Apr 11th, 2006, 7:02pm http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=0fed3d50-b1ed-40e2-bc85-70dd62bb0d40&k=40247 Songs of love and hope The Goo Goo Dolls are confident better days are ahead John Kennedy, canada.com Published: Tuesday, April 11, 2006 Article tools * * * * A freshly-shaved John Rzeznik (there are dots of blood on his newly-shorn face) walks into the New York suite at Toronto�s Metropolitan Hotel showing no signs of fatigue despite an early morning TV appearance. �Have you seen the shower in this room?! You�ve got to see the shower,� says the lead singer of the Goo Goo Dolls, leading the way to a space-age enclosure with numerous jets and misters. After extolling the virtues of the shower, Rzeznik sits down with band mates Robby Takac and Mike Malinin and gushes about how friendly Canadians are. �I was walking down the street yesterday and petted this woman�s dog and then she started talking to me,� he recalls. �This complete stranger just walked up to me and talked to me! That hasn�t happened in years � especially not in Los Angeles.� The city of angels is where Rzeznik lives, but his true home is the city where he grew up, across Lake Ontario from Toronto. It was in Buffalo where the Goo Goo Dolls came together in 1986 and where the band is still idolized (the Dolls played in front of 60,000 people there in 2004). There are no songs about shower nozzles or friendly Canucks on the band�s eighth album, Let Love In (on sale April 25), but it is filled with songs reflecting Rzeznik�s optimism that better things are in store for the world. It was produced with hitmaker Glen Ballard, who also co-wrote several tracks. The first single, �Better Days� was the soundtrack to CNN�s coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the album includes an upbeat cover of Supertramp�s �Give a Little Bit.� After a string of TV appearances � including The Late Show on April 27, Live with Regis & Kelly on April 28 and The Tonight Show on May 16 � the Goo Goo Dolls are hitting the road for a summer tour with Counting Crows. But before chatting with Conan and Jay, the Goo Goo Dolls sat down with canada.com to talk about their songs of hope... and the fans who steal those songs. How have you guys managed to have such longevity and consistency in a fickle business? John Rzeznik: It�s strange because when we were coming up as a young band there was still a thing at record labels called artist development. You know, �let�s figure out ways to develop you into a bigger act.� That�s something that�s sorely lacking in the music business right now. It�s much easier for them to find someone who is already a celebrity then hire a writer, a producer and the band and put it together around this person and pump albums out in two weeks� time. It seems to be all that�s going on. We just do what we do. Our band has sort of remained a viable entity�not the biggest band in the world ever, you know, but we�ve made a decent living doing what we�re doing and we always play in front of a lot of people. Part of it is that we�ve maintained our own course despite what trends were going on. Even among the alternative music types that were our peers we were a little off the beaten path. We just write the way we write and we sing with our own voices � we don�t use any strange foreign accents. Robby Takac: If we sound Canadian occasionally, it�s only because we grew up on the border. JR: But over the years there have been different vocal stylings that have been really popular. With the grunge thing there was the pickle-in-the-mouth and that sort of went out of vogue when Scott Stapp just ruined it. And then there�s the fake English California accent � the Berkeley British accent. That�s a great one. Mike Malinin: I�m sure you can�t imagine who we�re referring to! JR: And now there�s this strange thing with bands out of New York where they�re doing their best to sound like Ian Curtis from Joy Division. Is it old hat for you now or does it still feel like work? RT: It�s always work. It�s work to get us all in the same place and get everybody decided that things are working. That takes a long time. JR: It�s always terrifying because I literally sit down with a guitar and a blank piece of paper and go, �What the hell am I going to do? How did I do this? How did I make all these records? I don�t know. I can�t remember.� I learned that when the page is blank, just start filling it up with anything and don�t judge it and just keep going and going and going and going and trust it. RT: Nothing is more crippling than convincing yourself what you did sucked before you had a couple of seconds to back up and take a look at it. We wrote a whole bunch of this record in Los Angeles but never decided that those were the right things to be on the record until we were out of Los Angeles. MM: You have to stay objective about the stuff you do. So many bands have a hard time doing that but you have to be able to step back and decide whether it sucks or not. JR: You can�t be too precious. |
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Title: Re: Songs of Love and Hope Post by Adela on Apr 11th, 2006, 7:02pm Continued... On the upcoming tour, how will you balance showcasing the new material with giving fans the familiar songs they love? JR: We�re playing the entire new album and every hit or semi-hit song that we�ve had. We�ll play it. I hate when bands do that � they won�t play their big hit after awhile. MM: Obviously there are the givens � "Slide" and "Iris," those are going to be in the set... JR: ...and "Broadway" and "Name" and "Here Is Gone" � all the songs that were hits. Why did you decide to work with Glen Ballard this time? JR: Glen is an incredible musician, first of all. He�s a really great arranger and he�s a great songwriter. He�s written a ton of hits. He�s written more hits than I probably ever will. I don�t like all of them, you know, but he makes you feel incredibly confident about what you�re doing, he makes you feel incredibly safe to experiment. He�s very open. He�s very serious. There�s no messing around in the studio. I mean this in a joking way but he�s very guru-ish. He walks into a room and the temperature changes. How do you feel about fans downloading and sharing your songs in ways that don�t benefit you? JR: I think with iTunes more and more people actually spend a buck. I do it every day. It�s a buck. Please, just give us a buck! I don�t agree with (file sharing). I do think that it�s wrong. I did this work and I deserve to get paid for it. There was a time when I would never have said that. What people have got to remember is it�s really fun to take down The Man but The Man will always be there. It�s the artists that are the last ones to get paid and we get paid the least of anybody in the chain. Our last record sold maybe 800,000 copies � we didn�t make any money. None. None. Not one penny from record sales. Imagine if we weren�t able to go out and tour and make money on tour. What would we have done? We would have had a gold record and go out and get jobs. RT: I think I can look at the situation and say I can�t blame the f--king kids. I have to blame the industry for looking at a wall full of writing for many, many years and just going, �Meh! The government will work it out.� You know what, they don�t do that anymore. There are reputable sources to go and get music on the internet. There are places you can go to find great new music. JR: I definitely think there is a way to embrace it. That whole My Space thing is a really great way to promote your band because it works so exponentially. It�s a huge tool because one person goes to it and then all their friends and so on. It creates a huge awareness of you, which is a good thing. I�ve toyed with the idea of trying some sort of copy-protection on the CD but you know, the way Sony did it � they had no right to plant spyware on there. Come on! I can see protecting your property and being duly compensated for it but then to turn around and predict what people are going to buy and where they�re going is just flat out wrong and unfair. That should never have happened. I heard songs like "Better Days" and "Can�t Let It Go" and thought that they could be about relationships or, given what�s going on in the world these days, about something a lot bigger. Am I reading more into these songs than I should? JR: You know what� this whole record is sort of backhandedly trying to use the same metaphors to express my concerns and my hope for what�s going on in the world. It�s becoming more apparent every day as an American that it feels like the entire world is about to go behind a cloud and we all need some kind of hope to hang on to. There are days � especially over the past five years � where I�ve felt incredibly hopeless. Since 9/11 our country has become more and more confused and afraid and disillusioned and you can feel it. People are scared, you know, and people don�t feel hope. I need something to hang on to. There have been a lot of books written about the problems that are facing the world right now but not a lot of books about what�s the solution. What�s the proper solution? |
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Title: Re: Songs of Love and Hope Post by NateDizZyGoo on Apr 11th, 2006, 7:23pm Thanks Adela... that's one of my favorite Goo reads ever. :D |
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Title: Re: Songs of Love and Hope Post by AnGeLsFaLL on Apr 11th, 2006, 11:32pm Wow..thanks Adela..what a good interview..one of the best I've read in awhile! ;) |
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Title: Re: Songs of Love and Hope Post by ShanGooFan on Apr 12th, 2006, 12:16am That was a great read. Thanks for posting! |
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Title: Re: Songs of Love and Hope Post by earsy on Apr 12th, 2006, 8:30am thanks for posting. i enjoyed that. |
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