|
 |
The multi-platinum band from Buffalo, NY - The Goo Goo Dolls - are riding high on the success of their new CD, “Let Love In.” This release is an 11 track, hit filled, multi-layered, polished and glossy, mature CD that catapults the band to a new and exciting level. After one week of release, “Let Love In” has sold 82,130 copies and debuted at #9 on the Billboard charts. This is the band’s second highest Billboard top 200 ranking (in 2002 their last studio release, “Gutterflower,” debuted at #4). In addition, their new single from the CD, “Stay with You” is in top rotation on radio stations all over the country and the video for the track is climbing the VH1 Top 20 countdown.
The Goo Goo Dolls took many risks musically with “Let Love In.” Even though they already had an established sound that fit in perfectly with Adult Rock radio stations around the country, they weren’t content on making the same CD over and over. Because of this desire to shake things up a bit, they decided to bring in veteran producer Glen Ballard to help create a new fresh sound. With Ballard at the helm, the Goo Goo Dolls were pushed to new heights. Ballard helped take them a step forward and become a better band.
The Goo Goo Dolls are currently winding down a three week promo tour in which they played small theaters, clubs, record stores and boats. They start a short tour of Europe in mid May then return to kick off a major amphitheater tour with the Counting Crows.
When the Goo Goo Dolls were in Buffalo on April 29, their affable bassist Robby Takac graciously invited me to his studio for a tour, some coffee, and to discuss the bands new CD, “Let Love In.” So sit back, read on and if you’re not already a Goo Goo Dolls fan get ready to become one.
 |
First of all, congrats on the new CD, “Let Love In.” I hear that it’s selling extremely well so far.
Well, thank you. When the last record that we released, “Gutterflower,” came out of the box it came out just fucking raging. And we debuted at four on the charts, which was great. But, it’s tough when you enter high, much like the hip-hop syndrome those records enter high and then go away. That’s the excitement of a new release. I think at this point there been enough time behind the whole “Iris,” “Black Balloon,” “Broadway,” “Slide” cacophony of hits and selling ungodly unreasonable amount of records. I think that there’s enough time between that Goo Goo Dolls and now. And that’s a good thing. We entered at 4 last time and after that it was a bit depressing. A lot of that had to do I think with downloading. But, now I think the industry has stabilized a little bit. Yes, we sold a lot of records this week, but I don’t think the excitement of first week sales can tell you the whole story. I’m really interested to see where things go.
“Let Love In” is very interesting in that there seems to be a theme that weaves through the entire CD. Was that done intentionally of did it just develop that way?
Yeah, absolutely. When we started to write the CD in L.A. there were a lot of other options floating around the ‘Gutterflower’ situation. I think those options were based on the mindset of the current industry, how can we sell many records right now and who cares about what happens to this band. They didn’t care about the band so much, it was selling records, and that wasn’t ok with me. So when we were writing the record we found that we were spending a lot of time talking, about nine hours a day, on what do we want to do and where we want to go with the band. We did less playing and a lot of talking about the future of the band. And even though some of that time seems wasted, we did write the majority of the riffs for the CD during that time. But, after twenty years, we were trying to figure out: where do we want to go, where do we want to be, do we feel good about ourselves? The best place to do that was here in Buffalo. Because people here are for the most part over us, our friends are like, yeah, it was weird for long enough, but they are over it now. They can see through the veneer that others can’t, that the media puts on you just because you’re of note. In addition to being over us they also respect us enough so that when we solicited their options, they were coming from people that cared for us as people as opposed to people that cared if we were going to sell more than the new Lindsay Lohan CD.
I know that some people thought that because you came back to Buffalo, you were looking to rediscover the rawness of the earlier records.
Coming back here may have confused some people, because when we made that decision some people did think that we were coming back to remake ‘JED,’ but that wasn’t the intention. The intent was to move forward by tapping into some of the things that moved us originally. That’s why we’re still here.
 |
You had Glen Ballard produce the CD, but you did a lot of pre-production on your own in Buffalo. How much different did the pre-production versions of the songs differ from what Glen did for the CD?
Not that different, man. The structure of the songs was similar. We didn’t really have lyrics, only 30% were done when we went in (to L.A. with Ballard). We had the hooks, but the theme of the record was still developing. We used the actual session templates from Buffalo when we were out there. We then started replacing stuff, a lot of the guitars and bass were cut to the drums that were recorded in Buffalo. Then we started replacing them in the Oceanway and Capitol studios. We made sure that we built on the templates because we wanted to keep the feel of what we did in Buffalo.
When I listen to the CD, it sounds to me like it’s your “Joshua Tree.” It’s a big, bold step forward.
That’s an interesting comparison. Yeah, we are customarily the band that keeps putting out the same records. I have twenty years of reviews of critics saying that. I don’t know if anyone has noticed, but that math didn’t work. (Laughs) That’s fairly undeniable. After all these years, we are making these records for people to listen to. As long as we feel that we made that step, which I don’t think we felt that when we did on the last one. We kind of made a lateral move with “Gutterflower.” But with that being said, we never made a move like that before. And with out that valley, without taking two steps back I don’t think we would have hit that emotion hill. Because we had to get away from that, we had to get involved in some other people’s lives and get out of the bubble that we were living in for so long. Like you can’t see the forest through the trees. That had been the problem. It had become so big and so crazy. But, when we came back to Buffalo we said, man we have good day jobs, that’s where it started. It has felt good from that moment on.
 |
When you write for a record, do you write a lot of tracks or just enough?
We write ideas and those ideas accumulate and fall away. There was one song that we did for this record that didn’t go on. That was because it was the first collaboration that we had done. We had never really done that before, John and Glen worked on that song and when it was all done we all thought, well maybe that was a bad experiment. But, the song is all done, it’s mixed, it nearly went on the record. We actually put “Give a Little Bit” on the CD instead of that song. The record company wanted that song on from the very beginning, and we were a bit hesitant. Now as far as the fans go, the jury is out on that one. But thematically it made sense putting it on. It fit nice once we put it all together.
So there’s little chance that we will ever see a four CD Goo Goo Dolls rarities Box set.
Not unless you come over to my house and I’ll play them for you, but you have to bring your machine (points to my $79.00 Radio Shack micro tape recorder) Laughs
Sure, I’m there with the big machine (laughs). Now you guys are wrapping up a pretty unique promo tour. You’re playing some rather small theaters, clubs, record stores and boats. Who came up with the idea to do something so unorthodox?
Well, we have a big tour coming up this summer with the Counting Crows, so due to contractual obligations we couldn’t play big gigs in the cities that we are playing on tour. We had to agree that we weren’t going to play big shows. On the other hand, we always go out and do a promo tour where we hit the radio stations. We do that for a month usually. Over the years we got pretty good at going into places and playing. We have played Chinese restaurants, boats, board rooms, record stores, little theaters, clubs and so on. We have become a band of the people. Pop music is popular music because it gets to the people. That’s what we have to do. Radio is our outlet, it always has been. Radio is what has driven this band, it always has been. So this tour gives us an opportunity to go out and say thank you to the people who stuck with us even when the industry looked at us and said our 850,000 copy selling CD failed.
What can fans expect production-wise on the big summer tour?
Well, it’s going to look a lot like the “Stay With You” video. We want to stick with that idea and concept. We are filming all of the shows, for what I don’t really know at this point. But, we talked with some companies about making the shows available for fans to purchase, so we’ll see what happens.
Alright, Robby last question. The Goo Goo Dolls have had multi-platinum selling CD's, an incredible string of #1 hits and you've opened for some of the biggest bands in rock. What is it that you still want to accomplish with the Goo Goo Dolls?
To be relevant. ….and happy. . . . . . . .that's all.
Thanks for your time. You got it.
www.googoodolls.com www.myspace.com/googoodolls www.musicisart.org
|
|
