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        Goo Goo Dolls >> Goo Goo Dolls >> Doll Parts
        
(Message started by: TruexBlue on Aug 10^th, 2006, 10:34am)

Title: Doll Parts
Post by TruexBlue on Aug 10^th, 2006, 10:34am

Buffalo, N.Y., hitmakers Goo Goo Dolls still churning out the earnest power ballads

http://images.zwire.com/local/Z/Zwire2228/zwire/images/2006/08/2006/08/story/20060809_160100_2_story.jpg

"Name." "Iris." "Slide." You couldn't escape these genre-crossing, listener-pleasing Goo Goo Dolls tunes way back in the late '90s. But staying on top of the pop heap isn't easy.

The Buffalo, N.Y., trio's 2002 disc, Gutterflower, was a bit of a gutter dweller when it came to its modest sales, and the group flirted with a break-up.

"That was a pretty dark period for us," bassist and co-founder Robby Takac told ec/dc. "I think the band as a whole was feeling a little weird at the time. We had seen huge successes, we had seen medium successes; we had seen rises and falls, and we were starting to ask ourselves as a rock band, and not as a commodity, if we felt like we still had some life in us."

In the end, Takac, partner-in-crime/primary songwriter John Rzeznik, and drummer Mike Malinin decided to soldier on. The trio cast aside longtime producer Rob Cavallo in favor of Glen Ballard (Alanis Morrisette, Dave Matthews Band) and temporarily escaped Los Angeles for the cold comfort of their Western New York hometown.

The resulting CD, Let Love In, aims to recapture that earlier success with another batch of Goo Goo Dolls anthems, including the optimistic "Better Days," the tear-inducing single "Stay With You," and a faithful cover of Supertramp's "Give a Little Bit."

Takac gave us a little bit of early-morning time before a gig in Central Pennsylvania late last month

RECAP

Do you know what town you're in today?
Oddly enough, yes I do, but only because I thought I was going to Hershey and apparently something happened with the hotel, so I'm here in Harrisburg today. And the only thing I know about Harrisburg is that when I was a kid I did radio commercials for Nittany Lion Franks.

Were you a child actor?
I was obsessed with radio when I was a little kid, so I used to bum around a lot at radio stations, so right around the end of high school I got into some voice-over stuff. ... But I've been involved with radio pretty much throughout, and I am still. I just finished voicing a TV show 10 minutes before I called you.

A cartoon?
I just did a cartoon as well, for Pez candy. It's their first animated cartoon - I'm a collector so they asked me to do it. But I do some work back home in Buffalo for the arts community with an organization called Music is Art, and we do a TV show with the University of Buffalo. There are 16 episodes a season, and I was a co-founder of it, and I voice it all from the road. I have my little studio set-up here in my room and off I go.

I went to school near Buffalo, at a place called St. Bonaventure
University, which you guys played my sophomore year?
Absolutely. I remember 'cause I have cousins who went there. They were struttin' around campus like they owned the place.

What I remember about the show is that they let the students sit down on the bottom and the people from town had to sit up top. You guys made a thing about it.
I remember. Super-weird. It takes all kinds. Back then you never knew what you were walking into. We've been out on this Crows thing, and we've been on couple of these summer amphitheater tours in the past, and I was home in Buffalo the other day and it could have been anywhere in the country. They all look the same. You really bring your own vibe to these places. It's not like it's us at the Fillmore. ... These are all pretty generic places that we go into.

How was the Buffalo show?
Great once the place filled up. We start early on this tour, although both bands are doing full sets. But in Buffalo we went on second ... and our light show is incredibly bright. We usually come out during the day and the lights are behind us instead of directly above us, and when they turned on the lights behind us, it lit up the crowd the whole time we were playing. It was so weird, like, "Oh my god, there's my driver's ed teacher." I was picking out pockets of people I knew literally as far as my aged eyeballs could see.

So you guys are making a big deal out of the fact that you went back to Buffalo to record?
Buffalo is a place - it's not the most glamorous place in the world - but most certainly it's a place I understand, and most certainly it's a place where people understand us. I think that when given the desire to go and solicit some sort of opinion, those are the sort of people you want to be talking to. And so we set up shop there for about six months, and we took the ideas that we were haphazardly accumulating in Los Angeles, and really focused on them. We spent six months with some guys from my recording studio (ChameleonWest) and really got to build the record.

Then we took it to someone we had never worked with before, Glen Ballard, which was phase two of how we were going to go about making this record ... We went in and just decided "let's change everything we possibly can about this, but try to keep all those things that we feel make this special." Glen reminded us every day, "Hey, I'm not trying to blow up your heads but you guys are an important band, and this is an important record. So, let's try everything."

So the story goes is that one day you guys were a punk band (called Sex Maggots) and the next day you were writing power ballads. Is that unfair?
I have stacks of reviews from 1988 on saying that we put out the same record, and now we go back and read some of the reviews, probably John a lot of more than me, and when we read a bad review, it freaks us out. We don't want to feel that way, that someone is saying bad shit about you and putting it out in the press. But when it boils right down it, when I look back and read through: Was there that moment? I don't think there was ever that moment.

I think that from the very beginning, aside from the first record, which was just a drunken mess, we were striving for something. I think our limited technical expertise musically, and our limited experience in record-making, probably led to a few car crashes along the way that were supposed to be elegant, beautiful songs. But I think from the beginning we've tried to incorporate things that were unlike the genre we were in at the moment. And I'm still feeling that we're doing that.

What are you playing on this tour?
We're playing 80 percent of the new record ... and then I would say we're doing stuff back to (A) Boy Named Goo. It's a pretty full set - about 20 songs. It's weird, after all this time, we have some big songs we don't play some nights. ... If we don't do "Black Balloon," we're gonna do "Name." If we don't do "Sympathy," we're going to do "Iris." We have a lot of songs in that vein that have gotten on the radio over the past 20 years. That's what happens when you're around this long and you're successful.

Do you and John still tolerate each other?
Yeah. We're brothers, or a long-married couple. We know when to ignore each other. We know when to make sure we're getting what we need, or what we're comfortable with. I think, without the desire, it doesn't happen. The desire is there, and it's probably a lot stronger than it's been in an awful long time.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=17033565&BRD=2228&PAG=461&dept_id=447983&rfi=6

�Electric City 2006

Stay True & Rock!
Triest

:jammin:

Title: Re: Doll Parts
Post by Shannon on Aug 10^th, 2006, 10:56am

Thanks for posting. Many of these articles are starting to sound exactly the same but this interview was good.

Title: Re: Doll Parts
Post by the red o on Aug 12^th, 2006, 2:20pm

on 08/10/06 at 10:34:31, TruexBlue wrote:

What are you playing on this tour?
We're playing 80 percent of the new record ... and then I would say we're doing stuff back to (A) Boy Named Goo. It's a pretty full set - about 20 songs. It's weird, after all this time, we have some big songs we don't play some nights. ... If we don't do "Black Balloon," we're gonna do "Name." If we don't do "Sympathy," we're going to do "Iris."

Man, this answer is a lie. But I wish it was true...