Name it: John Rzeznik -this part isn't the real article it was just a side thing on the page i typed first Worst onstage moment: When we played a show with Jewel and she was standing on the side of the stage watching us, and the three of us each started playing a different song. I Turned around and she was gone. There goes my shot with Jewel. Last Cd bought: Eno's Music For Airports Best/Worst thing about being famous: The best thing is people treat you very nice. The worst thing is that everbody who's treating you nice is usually full of shit. New Year's Resolution: I decided I was going to take up meditaion instead of drinking [laughs]. I'm going to meditate on a six-pack tonight. Something to rant about: A lot of people think this alternative-rock thing is just someting that came up when Kurt Cobain wrote "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But if you go out to your local small record store, you're going to find thousands of records that laid all the groundwork for and even like Nevermind to occur. College music from the '80s was really the foundation for what the alternative-rock format became in the 90s. It's not like one day somebody droppped a Nirvana record on the desk of a radio programmer and he just ripped the REO Speedwagon off the air. Welcome to the Dollhouse Getting Dizzy With The Goo Goo Dolls By Rich Maloof "I was in Mexico over vacation and i caught a 140-pound marlin," says John Rzeznik, guitarist and vocalist for the Goo Goo Dolls. "I did, I caught and 8-foot, 140-pound fish. It was unbelievable. I got blisters all over my hands, fighting this fish for about 40 minutes. It was one of the hardest things I ever did. By the end of it, I was just panting. It was unreal." The metaphor is too apt to resist. After 12 years or throwing lines out, the Goo Goo Dolls have just reeled in the big one. As the world was velebrating the new year, this scrappy trio from Buffalo, NY, was celebrating their first platinum album. Bolstered by the huge crossover hit "Iris" and the single "Slide," the band has forced solid songwriting the the surface in the form of their new long player, Dizzy Up The Girl. It's been a long ride for Rzeznik (the first z is silent), bassist Robby Takac and drummer Mike Malinin. They cute their teeth playing Ramones-tinged hardcore on their first and second albums, performing predominantly for crowds of sweaty frat boys hopped up on Jolt Cola. Though Rbby's razor-edge vocals dominated Goo Goo Dolls (1987) and Jed (1989), John stpeed up the share the mic on 1991's Hold Me Up. Their broadened style was affirmed on Superstar Car Wash in '93, but it was the melancholy ballad "Name," from `995's A Boy Named Goo, that brought them into the limelight. Having weathered a lineup change (the band split with drummer George Tutuska in '96, under controversal circumstances), sticky legal problems with their first labe, metal Blade, and countless nights in a rickety van, they can welcome success. When "Iris," intially a single from the City Of Angels soundtrack, became the most widely hummed tune of 1998, they only had to ensure that Dizzy was good enought o keep the masses spinning. Mission accomplished. The Musicians Planet recently fired a set of quests to John and Robby on seperate occasions, just as each of them was gearing up for their nezt tour. John is up first... John Rzeznik Would you say the band is better now that it's been before? I don't think we're better, I think we've evolved, taken our natural course. The music i write now is way different that when i was 19 or 20. As long as the music is an honest representation of where my head is at, the labeling and everything else doesn't concern me. Is your writing process the same as it's always been? Yeah. Every time I make a record, I always get myself a 4-track or borrow an ADAT from a friend and set up my little work studio. But it always comes back down to me sitting in front of a cassette recorder with a microphone pointed at the guitar. On the couch, with a notebook. I had a hard time getting motivated to write Dizzy Up The Girl. I had to sit down and really get into my own head again and try to re-establish some sort or connection with my own sense of empathy for people. When you go out on tour, it's such a grind, and very reptitious. It's alot of fun, but it kind of disconnects you fom a big piece of yourself. How are you going to avoid those pitfalls on this tour? I'm going to keep writing while I'm on the road, which is something i never did before. I'm going to keep playing my guitar just for the fun of playing it. I bought myself a computer, and I'm teaching myself how to rad and write music out on the road. I don't know how to now, and it makes it more difficult to communicate ideas efficiently and effectively to other people. I'm really not interested in playing [Zappa's] "Black Page" or anything but I'd like to be able to document my own ideas. Does other equipment you use affect your creativity? Every time i get a new piece of gear I immediately get inspired to pull out riggs and things that I'd never done before. I've actualy writtend alot of songs that way. When you fire up a Marshall you just got, for the first time, you're like, "Yes!" and the next thing you know yu've got a song coming out of it. That's an unbelievably cool day, the day you get your first Marshall. I can still remember how it smelled, y'know? [laughs] What common musical ground did you and Robby find when you first got together? always the heavier alternative rcok, a little more hardcore kind of stuff. He was in a metal band, and though i always admired his work ethic I really despised his taste in music. But then, hardcore was always flirting with metal. I would have to say Husker Du and the Replacements were the two biggest things that we had in common. There you've got the raw power from meteal combied with huge pop hooks. Exactly. Those are the types of songs I've been writing my whole life. My favoraite bands were always Kiss and Cheap Trick and wheni was really young I grew up listening to AM radio in the '70s. That's how i learned to write a hook. I'm a sucker for a big hook, and i don't give a shit if it's Def Leppard of Henry Rollins. Those two influences don't come through in your music so much. Oh yeah. Rollins gets right down to the bone, man. He's not screwing around. I just happened to not be that tortured. Can you write when you're happy? Well ... no [laughs]. Not as much. I mean, I've got my problems and my own personal battles to fight ever day, just like everyone else. But i think what comes across in my songs are the things I tell myself every days: everything's cool, everything's going to be alright. And on this record I really wanted to feel for other people, beccause my own life is very good but I know a lot of peopl ewho are having a bad time in their lives. Do you have a difficult time tossing out songs that aren't working? you have to be able to edit yourself. The best baseball player in the world steps up the the plate and misses 60 percent of the time. That's the way it is with music, too. I think the key to being successful, and maintaining some level of sucess, is not to surroudn yourself with spineless yes men. You gotta have a few people around you who will tell you the truth- tell you that you suck when you suck. And tha't part of the relationship that Robby and I have. you have to be able to say, "Dude, that blows." It hurts your feelings, but that's the way it is. you're writing three-chord pop songs-it ain't brain surgery. What comes to mind when you think of the perfect song? Tom Petty wrote a lot of perfect songs, Rick Ocasek wrote a lot of perfect songs. I would say "Stairway To Heaven," but that's way too long to be perfect. But a song like "D'Yer Make'er" is just insane. Or Paul Westerberg's "Lerft Of The Dial" or "I will Dare." You lean toward those shrink-wrapped gems, songs that are- Tightly coiled. A tightly coiled piece of music, where somebody says, "I'm gonna tell you something, I'm telling oyu something, I just told you something. Did you hear me?" Those are teh best songs, when they have that immediacy. And sure, there are records taht take a few listens before I really get into it. Like that band New Radicals. It took me about five listens, but I think that kid [Gregg Alexander] has got the potential to do really well. It's a great record and it's positive. Do you steer away from song themes that are negaritve or self-flagellating? I don't know what flagellating means. is that when you fart [laughs]? I was thinking more along the lines of self-punishing. no, I think I punish myself in my songs. Sometimes I think I'm a dick. I've definitely punished myself for things that I've done or perceived myself to have done. I think I've written about a lot of the things that could be construed as negative, especially on this new record, like "Black Balloon." But it's all about where people are trying to get to; where they're at and where they're trying to get to. does it bother you that some of your old material will never hace the exposure that, say, "Iris" has? But it wasn't the time for it, man. It wasn't that time in music. I've written tons of hit songs, it's just nobody ever heard 'em. What are your musical shortcomings? I know two guitar solos: one from Ace Frehley, and the other from part of a Jimmy Page thing. Wait maybe I know three. The other is from "My Sharona." And those are the three guitar solos I've played in every song we've recorded [laughs]. Which Ace solo? All of them!He only played one Ace solo! My guitar heroes are Jimmy Page, Ace Frehley, Bob Mould and smokin'-and-drinkin' Bob Stinson [of the Replacements]. What clicked so well with producer Rob Cavallo? We wondered what would be best for the songs, and insead of looking at the limitations we looked at the possibilities. That's what Rob brought into it. He was like, "Gorget what we have- what could we have? Forget about how to play it live and just make a great record." Plus, he's fun. Robby and I were determined that we were going to enjoy making a record, for once, and we did. We succeeded at that. Whatever else people have to say about it, we enjoyed doing it. Robby Takac Has something in the band's formula changed to make people respond? I think we changed in our next record. As pretentious as that may sound- or unpretentious, I don't know- I think we just sort of did the next thing. John wrote some songs that are ptentially huge, but I don't think there were necessarily a drive to write those kinds of songs. If anything we've tried to get out of the mindset of seeing every [performance] as some sort of commondity and get more to our human side. Where di you make the first break from hardcore mentalitly? Hold Me Up, our third record. I think when that record was finished and we sat down to listen with some people we knew, it was obcious that there was a cohesiveness that wasn't there prior. It was a wild time for us and for music in genera. Everything was really winding up. I don't know if it was the charos of it or what, but there was this vibe that we'd been thriving on for years, and then it turned into this whole mess [laughs]. You guys are standouts in today's musical landscape, where bands who are expected to succeed are not doing so. I think [the labels] try to force the issue and awful lot. you can't make a kid go out and buy a record. we tried forever- you can't do it. They have to dig what they're hearing. It has to come from the song. Was there a democratic approach to putting the new album together? Well, it was a very fascist democratic approach. There were many feet plaved down along the way, but it was a very open forum for ideas. Rob Ravallo was really good at that. We had always done our records with engineers rather that straight-up producers, just because of budgets. Rob would strap a guitar on and play with us alll day. It was like there another guy in the band, so his opinions seemed that much more valid. Rob taught us something else as well. I guess he's used to prett big budgets, and his thinking was, when you have the money, try it- if it doesn't work press the mute button. Three albums aro we'd never have expected to hear strings on a Goo Goo Dolls Album. Right. But by that point you'd heard horns and piano on stuff, a little bit of viola. That was just part of the learning-to-crawl stage. Once you feel like you can't take some kind of step foward, you've kind of admitted defeat. If you release a record that's the same as everything else you've done, your career is stalled. you can keep it alive for a few more years, but unless you're gointo take that step again, you're going to bore yourself and eventually bore everyone else. Dizzy is not a steamroller guitar album, like earlier releases. We were listening to a lot of Led Zepplin Records and asking ourselves, "why is this a classic record? What makes this record still sound good now?" The answer was always that the ssong itself was powerful enought o overcome the guitar sounds, which weren't really that great! "Trampled Under Foot" sounds so huge, but component-by component, it's really not. It's how those componenets were assembled that make it powerful. are you disciplined about writing? I sit down to write. I don't just write along the way. I might jot a few things todwn here and there, but when it's time to do a record I sit down and write 10, 12 songs. I bring those into rehearsal and maybe a third of them disappear just out of the feeling that they're not happening. Then I weed out the four or five that I'd really like to record. I'm not Mr. Prolific Write who sits around all day to creat a print-size catalog of music. Some people can pour the songs out of them and some poeple have to wring it out. It doesn't make it any better or worse, it's just another method. What inspires a song for you? Anything that makes my fave turn red, be it happiness, complete anger, raging jealousy, whatever. IT doesn't ahve to be something that happened directly to me; I'm always writing in the first person, but it's not always my personal experience. It can be anything that drives me to pick up a pen- something that's on my mind or on my nerves. Everybody =comes in contact with crazy, ridiculous things every day. It's just a matter of taking the time to stop and notice them. Do your songs come out differently if you write them on acoustic versus elctric, or six-string versus bass? I'm not much of a guitar player, so when I do I'm just fumbling away at bass playing anyway. I think from that angle. I have john give m e input as far as guitar parts go, because he thinks as a guitar player. I don't, so listening to what he plays on top of what I've written or laid down is usually really interesting. If you've got a plumber in the house, why try to the fix the toliet yourself!