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AFallingStar
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Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for...
« on: Nov 9th, 2006, 9:02pm » |
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Goo Goo Dolls frontman looking for change of scenery Theresa Tayler, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, November 08, 2006
The buff, blond-haired rock star may look like the poster boy for all that is Hollywood, but at his core the frontman of the Goo Goo Dolls is a blue-collar Polish boy from Buffalo.
“I’m thinking of moving to Brooklyn maybe, well see. It’s just time to go back home,” says Rzeznik. “Mind you, depending on the outcome of the election, I might just pack up and move to Toronto.”
Like many Americans, the U.S. election weighs heavily on his mind. Although he says his lyrics don’t always illustrate his politics, social issues are always in his thoughts.
“I mentioned my opinion of George Bush at a show once, and all I can say is America is equally divided. The audience was half screaming in support and half shouting expletives at me,” says Rzeznik, who’s a staunch Democrat.
“I have been writing more about social and political stuff lately. It’s scary, worrying times down here right now,” he says. “People think I just write songs about girls, but they’re not really about girls. It’s just a metaphor that works for me. I can try to address some social issues in a sort of cryptic way, but writing about politics has never really been my thing.”
The week, Rzeznik chats openly over the phone from his L.A. home about everything from how he often thinks about moving to Canada, to why he doesn’t give a hoot about what the critics, who’ve labelled The Goo’s a pop band, think about his music.
“Hey, I’ve written a bunch of hit songs, I didn’t tailor them for the radio. It’s not like I sit there and listen to the radio and say ‘oh, OK that’s what’s on the radio right now, so I’ll just stick a synthesiser in there and pretend that I’m British and it’ll be the next hit,”’ says Rzeznik.
“People sometimes think that I just play in this commercial pop band. Well, it’s still creating something, it’s still wanting to speak your mind and hopefully affect some people in the process.”
He’s well aware that when his band had its break out hit, Iris, which was on the soundtrack for the 1998 movie City of Angels, they became a so-called pop group.
The little band from Buffalo was catapulted to new heights in 1996 after the song Name, the single from their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo, launched the recording to double platinum status. Iris followed, cementing the band as mainstream hit-makers.
But Rzeznik and co-founding songwriter, Robbie Takac, weren’t an overnight sensation. They formed in 1986 when Rzeznik was 19 and Takac 21. Twenty years later, Rzeznik says he’s not going to let a few jaded journalists label his music disposable just because he has created a few pop tunes.
“My band has always had this really huge image problem,” he says laughing. “But hey, we did a double bill with the Counting Crows and we’ve opened for Bon Jovi — so whatever, we can be a lot of things. The problem is, you can’t be everything to everyone, you can try but it’ll screw you.”
The Goo Goo Doll’s 10th album, Let Love In, has gone gold on the charts. It includes a variety of positive-themed songs, including a cover of Supertramp’s love ballad, Give a Little Bit.
“Critics hate that, too. That positive spin, they want us to be sad and miserable. I mean what provokes more emotion, looking at a Picasso or a Norman Rockwell painting?” says Rzeznik. “The thing is I write what I write and do what I do, if I didn’t want to be criticized I wouldn’t even bother.”
It’s not that Rzeznik hasn’t experienced the darker side of life. When he was 14 years old his father died of alcoholism, his mother passed away the next year of heart problems. The working-class boy from Buffalo moved himself into a college neighbourhood and says he started hanging out with older crowds.
“When people hear my parents died, they’re always like ‘oh, awe, poor you,’ but the thing is that’s life,” he says. “Sometimes it was really tough. I was broke and my parents were gone. But Robbie and I met each other and we were determined to stick together and just get a record out.”
The two bandmates recorded their first self-titled album in 1987. They made four albums, including Jed, Hold Me Up, and Superstar Car Wash, before they had a hit.
Perhaps it is the critical fire his own band has come under that makes him sympathetic to other musicians who have had to defend their music after becoming successful on the billboard charts.
He is a big supporter of bands such as Albertan-bred hitmakers Nickleback, and fellow Canadian chart-topper Avril Lavigne.
“You take a band like Nickleback, they’re unbelievably huge. They’re considered commercial pop. But I love Chad Kroeger’s lyrics and I think he means what he says. He’s sincere and that’s the main thing,” says Rzeznik. “Avril has become sort of a product and a brand so quickly, but if she’s able to be smart about it and hold her ground she is going to continue to be great. People completely underestimate her talent as a singer and a lyric writer.”
Rzeznik says he has collaborated with Lavigne in the studio several times, but those songs have yet to make it on to an album.
He says when the Goo Goo Dolls first came under fire as a sell out act it made him want to run away, but eventually he realized the only person he was writing music for was himself.
“It’s not so much about selling a ton of records as it is about the music I put down on the page, and I’m really truly happy with it,” he says. “People write to me all the time and they’re like, ‘why did you do this, why don’t you make a record like Jed again?’ It’s because I’m not 20 years old anymore. And there’s nothing that’s more pathetic than a guy whose about to turn 40 acting like a 20-year-old, the kids see through it. This is what I’m doing and I’m happy.”
[email protected]
Calgary Herald
© CanWest News Service 2006
(http://www.canada.com/saskatoon/news/story.html?id=323dbf23-f229-4de9-ba 2a-0efdef8b04e9&k=8711)
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"It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you."-Frederic Chopin
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carlyn
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for...
« Reply #1 on: Nov 9th, 2006, 10:10pm » |
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Great article! Thanks! 
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collegeunm
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for.
« Reply #2 on: Nov 9th, 2006, 10:17pm » |
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thats a great article, thanks for sharing it with us.
Shannon
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Shannon
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for...
« Reply #3 on: Nov 9th, 2006, 10:35pm » |
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This is great. For some reason it didn't come across any of my alerts today so thanks for posting.
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sympathy_0
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for...
« Reply #4 on: Nov 10th, 2006, 3:53pm » |
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That was the best article. I hope some of those duets make it on one of Avril or Goo's album. That would be such an awsome song. And I hope John moves to Canada 
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Hysteria
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for...
« Reply #5 on: Nov 11th, 2006, 4:12am » |
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I love Johnny's outlook on stuff, so awesome. Really nice article, thanks for sharing.
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Nicole
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Re: Nice Article: GGDs frontman looking for.
« Reply #6 on: Nov 12th, 2006, 8:18am » |
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Thats great! Thank you for sharing!
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