While some bands head into the recording process with no more than a few vague musical sketches, the Goo Goo Dolls have begun their seventh full-length with twelve realized tracks and an album title, Gutterflowers, to boot.
Buffalo, New Yorker's proudest sons -- singer/guitarist John Rzeznik, singer/bassist Robby Takac and drummer Mike Malinin -- are ensconced in a studio in their adopted Hollywood homeland, crafting the follow-up to 1998's multi-platinum, four-single-charting Dizzy Up the Girl.
"Figuring everything out in the studio is just a big waste of money," says Rzeznik. "The meter starts running . . . fuck that, man. It's ridiculous. People routinely spend a million bucks making a record. How? That's what the garage is for. You hang out in the garage and make noise until it sounds like a song, then you go in to record."
"But we've got a super nice garage now," adds Takac with a laugh.
With Rob Cavallo at the production helm again -- he produced A Boy Named Goo and Green Day's catalogue -- the threesome are neither plotting a return to their late Eighties hardcore roots nor scrambling to ditto their recent power ballad hits ("Name," "Iris") in order to make Gutterflowers a success.
"I didn't want to tread on too much of the ground I've already been on before," says Rzeznik. "What it comes down to is this organic thing where you're just playing and you kind of have to accept what's coming out. If you write a ballad and it's a natural thing that happens, then that's cool, but I don't think there really is a true ballad on this record. Rob [Cavallo] keeps wanting to speed the stuff up, speed it up more, and we're like, 'That's just because you produced Green Day!'"
"There's interesting percussive kinda loopy things," says Takac. "There's some very cool, very subtle electronic things, but I'm not looking for a dance hit, that's for sure. It's not like we need to call in Tricky to figure out why kids don't like us anymore. You know what happens? You get all that technology working and then you go out on tour and inevitably four nights outta five some guy forgets to hit some button, and then you're fucked."
In an age where most of today's popular rockers were comparatively born yesterday, the Goos, with their fifteen-year history, are something of an anomaly. For the benefit of fans who'd assumed their 1995 breakthrough single, "Name," was the first thing they'd tracked, the band released What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art & Commerce two months ago. The album is a collection of album tracks, mostly non-hits spanning from their punk rock beginnings through the more melodic, Dizzy-era stuff.
Something surprising to many who picked up What I Learned . . . may have been that Takac takes the vocal lead on a whole bunch of songs. While longtime band fans knew the Goos as a two-singer affair, all of their big hits have been Rzeznik numbers, making him the official face by default (Gutterflowers features four Takac leads to eight by Rzeznik). "The way things are going right now, most of the world knows the base of this as being John," Takac says. "And before that we never had a face to begin with. Nobody knew who we were. It wasn't like I was this immensely popular lead singer and then I had to step back. So it never felt weird to me. This is a great thing I do. Nothing about it feels odd to me at all."
"It makes me feel weird," says Rzeznik. "Sometimes I get totally neurotic and feel guilty about it and I'll call [Rob] in the middle of the night and be like, 'Dude, I swear to god I didn't mean for this to happen!'"
The Goo Goo Dolls are hoping to release Gutterflowers by mid-November, with a small-venue warm-up tour to launch sometime around then. The band also hopes to pop up around Los Angeles a few times over the next few months at tiny clubs, most likely unannounced or perhaps under an alias (previous Goo names for secret shows: the Suicide Doors, Freedom Rock, the Jack Ruby Tuesdays). However, don't expect the Goos to road test unreleased goodies. "Playing new music, in front of people who've never heard it before?" says Takac. "You might as well just take a crap onstage. People just look at you like, 'What the hell?'"
Rzeznik meanwhile has recorded a tune for Disney's forthcoming animated sci-fi flick, Treasure Planet. The film, an outer-space rethinking of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, starring David Hyde Pierce, Martin Short and Jack Palance, should be ready next year.
"Rob [Cavallo] asked me if I wanted to write a song for a Disney movie," says Rzeznik says "I was like, 'Hell yeah!' So I wrote, like, a ballad thing. It's all done, but I've still got to think of a name for it. They might ask me to do another one, but I don't know if I'm gonna. It's an amazing movie. It's something I always wanted to do. It's something I can show my kids and grandkids."
GREG HELLER
(August 23, 2001)