After nearly ten years in the trenches of low-budget touring and recording, Goo Goo Dolls Guitarist/Frontman Johnny Rzeznik find success with a string of power pop hits.
Stepping into the eye of the storm, Johnny Rzeznik explored both the moment and how they got there in this in-depth interview.
Yeah, I mean what would I say? "Well I`ve got this really cheap guitar..." I never considered myself a guitar player.
There was always one around the house. It was called a Garcia-a big warped thing. My parents bought it at one of those Brand Names or Century Warehouse kind of store. It was always lying around the house. I think one of my older sisters wanted to play, and gave it up after a couple of minutes. I just took to it. There was always music in my house, too. I had older sisters who were hipsters. I listened to all their records and used to jump up and down on the bed and air guitar to the live version of "Midnight Rambler," from Hot Rocks [the Rolling Stones]. Another big one [laughs] when I was a little kid was the Woodstock record. I had to listen to my sisters` albums. I had nothing else to listen to.
So when you first picked up the guitar, was it to write a song, or play a melody?
Music was the only thing that ever really got to me. It was the only thing that totally hooked me in. I hated sports. I hated people who played sports. They were all idiots. I wasn`t into school even though I did really well. I have always been into history and social science and stuff like that. I never got into math.
I wanted to be in a band. I went to an inner-city school. Unfortunately there were no music programs in a lot of inner-city public schools, which is a shame because I know the guitar really helped me and got me through a lot of rough times. I bet there are a lot of kids it could do the same for.
I didn`t sing until 1987.
Would you play along with the radio or records?
I took three lessons. I learned how to tune the guitar and how to put string on it. Then I learned how to read those little chord boxes and how to make a barre chord. That`s it. As soon as I knew how to play a couple barre chords, I suddenly realized that I could play almost anything, so I started trying to play along with records. I didn`t do very well. I would glean stuff off other musicians. There were all these other cats, and I knew that they went to their lessons every week at Edwin`s Music Store on Broadway. I was taking the five bucks my dad gave me for lessons, and we`d get somebody to buy us beer.
The first song I really, really wanted to know how to play was "Just What I Needed" by the Cars. We used to have this little Panasonic tape recorder. It had the handle you pull out of the front with a little condeser mic in it, and the silver cover with the holes in it and the speaker underneath. I would wait for songs that I liked to come on the radio, hit record and tape them off the radio. Then I would listen and try to play along.
Pretty good; I actually got it. I would show my friends. But none of my friends liked the Cars. They were like, "Yo, dude man, that`s not Sabbath. That`s not AC/DC." My friend were all a bunch of knuckleheaded Metal guys. It was kind of interesting to me how things worked. I started to understand that there were patterns on the guitar. There were things that sounded good and things that sounded like s**t. There was always some music that just grabs you. Something just hits some sort of nerve. First there was stuff when I was a little kid. The second stuff was Kiss. I think it was because I was an 11-year-old boy. Kiss was neat at that point. Once I started picking up the guitar I tried to learn them. But I didn`t do very well, even though they are really simple songs. It was weird because I remember all the songs in my head, and a couple of years ago i just played them. It was like "Holy s**t." Then I realized what a deep influence those guys had on me. I`m telling you, until I heard Rick Nielson, man Ace Freeley was the s**t.
Yeah, I played. I never played in a cover band. My dad would go to work or the folks would go out for the night, and we would have little parties. We would invite people over, set up the drums and a little guitar amp, and just play. My friend would play a beat and we would make s**t up. I barely knew the names of the chords. You`d tell your buddy, "You practice your drums, and I`ll play along." That was pretty much it. You drink a quart of beer and whooo!
No. After my parents died when I was 15, I split from my neighborhood. I moved out of my house and started living on my own. I made new friends. While I was in high school I started to write. About a year before my parents died I started to really get into punk and all this underground music like Gang of Four and the English Beat. That was so cool because in Buffalo, Gang Of Four, the English Beat, and Elvis Costello were underground music. It was Sex Pistols and the Damned, Pere Ubu, the Ramones...I wanted to be in the Ramones at that point. I wanted to be in the Sex Pistols. I started writing songs, and I was definately influenced by those bands.
I always thought of music as being sort of a foundation that you could do something melodically over the top. Even now, some of the stuff I do is relatively simple musically, but it`s what goes over the top, it`s what you`re able to convey with your voice.
I would hum stuff to the guy who was singing. I still do that. I sit there and play my guitar and go "la, la, la," and play chords. I was to shy to sing. I wouldn`t sing.
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