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So far, so goo / article
« on: Mar 11th, 2007, 4:20pm » |
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So far, so goo
Together since ’86, Dolls stronger, ‘more cohesive’
By Steve Penhollow
The Journal Gazette
“Keeping it real” is a phrase used mostly by musicians to let their fans know they haven’t turned their back on their roots, whatever those roots happen to be.
For actor/rapper Ice-T, this might mean that he makes sure to write a song about how much he hates the police after he finishes portraying a policeman on a TV show.
For Billy Joel, this might mean that he makes sure to write a song about his latest girlfriend in which he compares her favorably to a hip part of town.
For the Goo Goo Dolls, keeping it real has a lot to do with the band’s proximity to Buffalo, N.Y.
Buffalo is the birthplace of the band, and it also happens to be the birthplace of the author of this article.
People who aren’t from Buffalo don’t tend to know a lot about it, but they do seem to know that the Goo Goo Dolls are from there.
This phenomenon puzzles bassist Robby Takac: “It blows me away. Every band is from somewhere, but it’s not as if those locales are widely known for the most part. But we’re ‘The band from Buffalo.’ Slipknot isn’t ‘The band from Des Moines.’ ”
Takac, 43, is amused rather than annoyed. Buffalo has been too good to this band in so many respects for Takac to be annoyed.
“I love Buffalo. I love it there. I love the idea of a town like that. I love the atmosphere. I love the diligence of the people. I especially love it, being out here in L.A. right now. Imagine trying to explain the appeal of Buffalo to someone living out here.”
If L.A. is a place where it is hard to keep it real, Buffalo is a place where it’s hard not to.
It’s a proven fact that shoveling snow keeps people from drifting toward frivolous, self-absorbed activities like getting chai enemas.
“Winters in Buffalo do not permit a person to think about a whole lot else,” Takac agrees.
Which is why the Goo Goo Dolls always seems to find their way back to Buffalo whenever they want to do something – in the words of Van Morrison – really, really, really real.
Like write and record an album.
“In L.A., it’s hard to concentrate on writing good songs,” Takac says, “because the business is full of people who think it’s less important that songs are good than that they constitute a sound strategy for career advancement.”
The Goo Goo Dolls started up in 1986 as a punk band with an obvious stylistic jones for the Replacements.
Over the years, the band polished its sound considerably to become, in the words of AllMusic.com , “(one) of the most popular adult alternative rock bands of the latter half of the ’90s.”
Its commercial breakthrough came in 1995 with “A Boy Named Goo.”
Each successive album has sold fewer copies than the one before, however, a trend that has more to do with the health and well-being of the music industry than the health and well-being of the Goo Goo Dolls, Takac says.
Still, when 2002’s “Gutterflower” only achieved platinum status (1 million copies sold), the band almost broke up.
“We found ourselves apologizing for selling a million records,” Takac says. “We realized at that point that there was this huge disparity between what the music industry thought it was going to be in a few years and where it was clearly headed. It almost murdered our band.
“Rats are ship-jumpers, and so that was a good period for figuring out who the rats were,” he says.
When the band reunited to write songs for 2006’s “Let Love In,” it reunited in Buffalo.
The group decided to forgo working with longtime producer Rob Cavallo on the disc and eventually found a replacement in Glen Ballard, the engineering wiz behind the careers of Alanis Morissette and Dave Matthews.
The hiring of Ballard seemed to signal for some fans the sort of desperate embrace of commercialism that used to be referred to by the quaint term “selling out.”
But Takac says the opposite was true. They hired Ballard to shake things up.
“It’s funny that some people might think of that as a safe decision,” he says. “Because it would have been much safer to stick with the tried and true. That was a scary decision for us. It’s a little intimidating going into a room with someone else. It starts you to thinking about who you are, what you do and how that person is going to have an effect on that.”
When Takac got his first gander at Ballard, however, he says he had immediate second thoughts about their collaboration.
“I had never met Glen before, and the first day he walks in wearing a white three-piece suit, long shaggy hair and a full beard. I thought, ‘Oh, my God. If this guy walked up to us in a bar I might be tempted to walk away.’ But, you know, he’s just a very free-spirited sort of dude. I guess it’s easy to be a free spirit when you have $80 billion.”
Takac says Ballard had the habit of noodling away on a piano at all times, even when he was just chatting. And he insisted that all creative arguments were taken outside, away from the studio.
The resulting album, which is considerably more mellow than anything the band has released before, is selling well.
Takac says the next one will be harder-edged.
The band is stronger and more cohesive than ever, Takac says.
Takac gave up alcohol and drugs a year and a half ago and says he feels a decade younger.
But he admits it’s tough to stay strong and cohesive when the music industry is so unstable and confused.
“This music industry is not the music industry we married into in 1986,” he says. “There’s this monumental disconnect between the way the music industry sees itself and the way kids see music.
“Kids don’t buy records, so the music industry is essentially promoting this thing that translates into kids illegally downloading more songs.
“They are spending money to promote piracy.”
Takac says the band can’t do much about the hidebound and stubbornly entrenched nature of the business. All it can do is focus on its fans.
“We don’t sit in on board meetings,” he says. “The only thing we can control is our direct connection with the people we care about.”
If Takac sounds a little unsettled, it is understandable.
The Goo Goo Dolls’ prospects appear to be as bright as any other band’s, but the future of any rock act these days is entirely unknowable.
Takac says the biggest mistake any band could make would be to sell its soul for a berth on a passing fad.
“A lot of the advice you get, the tone of it is ‘Here is a piece of wood to grab on to so you don’t drown,’ ” Takac says. “I can’t lie to you: we don’t want to go back to the days when we were living in an apartment and redeeming bottles and cans to pay our utility bills.
“But you can’t be Linkin Park: ‘Oh, urban’s popular, so let’s go urban, baby,’ ” he says. “You can’t lie. People won’t come. They won’t be fooled. You won’t get their butts in the seats.”
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/journalgazette/entertainment/visual_arts/16 882243.htm?source=rss&channel=journalgazette_visual_arts
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Re: So far, so goo / article
« Reply #1 on: Mar 11th, 2007, 6:19pm » |
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"It’s a proven fact that shoveling snow keeps people from drifting toward frivolous, self-absorbed activities like getting chai enemas."
Hell, yeah.
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