(Weekly entertainment guide for Buffalo and Western, NY)
By Jamie Moses
Asked about the convention, Johnny said, "It`s where all the big shots at WEA get together and smack each other on the ass and tell each other how great they are."
"Yeah, but we`re in good company playing for this," said Robby. "Madonna`s done it, Van Halen`s done it."
"What it means," said Johnny, "is that the record label is going to pay more attention to your band."
There were about a dozen of us in the room, smiling goofily over our cocktails. "Hey, let`s throw some plates," said Johnny. He went over to the food table where there was a nice neat Three-foot high stack of Palace Hotel seving plates. Like a frisbee expert, Johnny sent the plate sailing against the far wall where it shattered noisily. "Here try it." Johnny was passing plated around the room and everyone started flinging them. New Goo Goo Dolls guitarist Nathan December had to throw his a couple of times before it finally broke.
There were broken plates all over the carpet. Johnny handed a plate to Goo drummer Mike Malinin, "Just one more," he said to Magnarella.
"No, man stop," said Magnarella.
Malinin hesitated. "C`mon," said Johnny, "You haven`t done one."
"No," said Magnarella.
Malinin sat frozen.
"Throw the f**king plate," said Johnny.
"Great show, guys!"
Even though thr tour won`t officially start until the fall, they`re coming to Artpark on Saturday August 15th.
"We`ve got to do a gig in Buffalo every summer" said Johnny. "I really wanted to wait until the record was out, but it`s not coming out until the end of the September."
Asked if it hurt to see "Iris" propel an album to triple-platinum status when it wasn`t really a Goo Goo Dolls record, Johnny was decidedly positive.
"Actually it`s really because it`s a good set up for Dizzy Up the Girl. "Iris" did really, really well and we`ve got all the momentum built up from the City Of Angels soundtrack, so we can walk right in with the next song and we don`t have to do that big uphill push. Radio`s already calling for another single from us.
It had arguably the three biggest female artists in the world and U2, the biggest band in the world. I mean...Peter Gabriel, Paula Cole, Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, and they pulled our song. I don`t know why, but obviously it worked.
"Iris" will be on the new CD. We figured for the people who didn`t want to go out and spen fifteen bucks just to get this one song, we`d out it on the record. I went back and forth about it, you know, because I felt like it was selling the same cow twice. But I talked to a lot of people and they`re like, 'dude you gotta put it on the record.' "
"It`s really weird how things lately have just felt like there`s a bigger hand invloved. I`m just sitting here looking at everything thinking 'Oh my God. I can`t believe how everything just keepd falling into place. I set this kind of vague goal and it`s weird to see it realized. All we need now is stamina and that`s cool."
"Yeah, it`s been three years since our last release," said Johnny. "That`s a real long time. But the thing is, it took six months for A Boy Named Goo to break, and then we toured for 22 months. Then I had a nervous breakdown."
"We had to come down from the whole thing," said Robby. "Man, It was a pretty serious time, especially from a band that had been together for ten years with no success whatsoever."
"It was kind of weird," Johnny said. "I was really turned off to the whole music business after we got done with the cycle of the last record. I didn`t anticipate any of the weirdness that comes along, and I just kind of hung my guitar up and wasn`t really taking it very seriously anymore. Plus I was really hiding from writing this record because I was nervous about following up A Boy Named Goo.
"The new CD has thirteen songs, all written over the past year. Everything was really rough and incomplete and then I got together with Rob Cavallo and he started coaching me through a lot of stuff. He`s the guy who produced the album. But Dizzy Up the Girl has all different people than our last record, different producers, engineers, everything. We did everything on the west coast this time. And we did the recording differently because we finished each song before we went on to the next. Then we`d change instruments, amplifiers, microphones, so each song had it`s own feel."
Did any of the people who helped make A Boy Named Goo feel slighted that they weren`t invited back for the album?
"Lou Giordano made a great record for us at the time," said Johnny, "but we`re in a different place now and we needed something different from a producer so we had to go with somebody who could give us what we needed. I mean it`s all about making the record the best that it can be."
The Goos are not only in a different place mentally, they`ve also been spending most of their time in California lately.
Fleetwood Mac? That seems an unusual choice for a band the Goos would be impressed with. But then after reading dozens of Goo Goo Dolls interviews you find that they list different influences in each interview.