Goo Goo Dolls Frontman John Rzeznik Talks Judah The Lion

While they may have only gotten their big break in the late 1990’s, the Goo Goo Dolls have actually been in business as a band since the late 80’s, which is difficult to stomach for those who have been following them since the beginning. As of 2017, it has now been 40 years since the group started out with their oft-ignored debut self-titled album, and they are nowhere near done rocking. 

The group, which has seen a number of lineup changes throughout the decades, but which is still fronted by singer-songwriter John Rzeznik, has scored eight top 40 hits, some of which, like “Name,” “Slide,” and of course the inescapable “Iris” remain among the bestselling rock singles of all time. 

We spoke with the band’s frontman recently as the group geared up for a tour with American Idol winner Phillip Phillips and to drop a new EP entitled You Should Be Happy, which even Rzeznik admits is winky name that shouldn’t be taken too seriously. 

CEEK VR: When you guys play live and you look out into the audience, what percentage of the people have come to a Goo Goo Dolls show before and have been with you guys for decades, and for how many of them is it their first time? 
John Rzeznik: You know, it's hard because you only see the first couple of rows and those are your most, most hardcore fans. I don't know. 

CEEK VR: How are you guys reaching out to younger people and encouraging them to come see you guys live? 
John Rzeznik: We keep putting music out and hopefully people still relate to it. We're going out with Phillip Phillips this summer who's a younger artist and it's a different demographic. Mix the two together, I think he'll benefit from our people and we'll benefit from his and make something bigger out of it. 

CEEK VR: It’s been a little while since your last album, hasn’t it? 
John Rzeznik: It was 2016, Boxes came out last year but we have an EP called You Should Be Happy. It's sarcastic. 

CEEK VR: Does that sarcasm carry through on the songs? 
John Rzeznik: No, I don't think it does. I don't think it does carry through on the songs. I don't know why I thought that. I called my manager and I was like you know what? I got a couple of songs, let's put out an EP, I want to call it You Should Be Happy. Maybe I was telling myself I should be happy. 

CEEK VR: Are you speeding up release schedules? 
John Rzeznik: No, I had some songs and that has never happened to me before. I'm not one of these guys where when I drop dead there's going to be an enormous archive of work sitting there because if I don't like it, I throw it away. There's a reason it didn't go on the record. Why? It sucked. Okay, all right. I get rid of it. 

CEEK VR: If it's an EP, are you more interested in the shorter collections? I'm hearing that from a lot of artists. 
John Rzeznik: I'll tell you exactly why I think that's happening, because as a band, say you work as a band which we very much still are a band. You get into the pop world. The pop world moves at a completely different pace because these people are on the road all the time releasing singles but the thing is, they have twenty people writing songs for them. It puts a real band at a disadvantage because you’ve got to get your guys together, you’ve got to rehearse, you’ve got to learn the songs, you’ve got write them, and you’ve got to sit on the sofa writing them. Whereas if you are an enormous pop entity, you have a team working constantly to keep feeding the machine. It's very weird.

CEEK VR: What are you hearing in rock these days that is really interesting to you? 
John Rzeznik: There's a bunch of kids called Small Black that I really love. I still love Japandroids mostly because I listen to them and it reminds me of us when we were their age. I get nostalgic about it. God. I love Judah the Lion, Judah and the Lion, oh my God, so good. There's always good music. 

CEEK VR: Yeah. What do you think about rock these days in terms of how the word has changed? 
John Rzeznik: To what? 

CEEK VR: For example, last year, Twenty One Pilots had the first rock number one with no guitar in it of all time. 
John Rzeznik: Yeah, well, they probably sell more DJ equipment at Guitar Center than they do guitars. 

Twenty One Pilots, I was fucking blown away by those guys. I could not believe how good it was. They're undeniable, they're one of those things where it's like... I think, for lack of a better term, it's still rock music, but they're the real deal. Amazing. I get goosebumps thinking about seeing them. Whoa. 

CEEK VR: Are you concerned about that term anymore? “Rock,” “pop,” any of that? 
John Rzeznik: I don't care what you call it, just show up. Because there was a time we were a punk rock band, then we became an alternative rock band, then we became a mainstream artist, now we're veteran rockers. People are constantly hanging names on names. People need to categorize everything. People need to name things, that's why we have encyclopedias of everything because everything needs a category, it needs a genre, it needs a classification. Rock is a nice umbrella term. It means it's not your Dad's music.