Some of the song titles on the Goo Goo Dolls’ most recent EP, Summer Anthem, which drops on August 22, may scare you if you’re a fan of the band.
Songs like “Nothing Lasts Forever” and “Not Goodbye (Close My Eyes)” make one wonder if one of the most successful alternative rock groups of the past four decades is considering retirement.
What more could they possibly achieve after a lengthy career that has included 14 studio albums, almost 40 singles (with “Iris” being perhaps one of the most legendary rock ballads and love songs in all of music), numerous Grammy nominations, and about a dozen platinum and gold singles combined?
John Rzeznik, the band’s frontman, reassured his fans that “Nothing Lasts Forever” is not his farewell song in a recent interview with Morning Edition.
For Rzeznik, “I wish it was, but it was just more about the transient nature of our relationships and life,” she said to A Martinez of NPR. “It’s like life just seems to be moving so much quicker than it was when I was 30 or 40.”
Growing older, finding focus
Although you wouldn’t see it, Rzeznik, a Buffalo, New York native who founded the Goo Goo Dolls in 1986 with fellow Buffalonian and lifelong friend Robby Takac, turns 60 in December.
Rzeznik is still touring and performing energetic, impactful shows. He exercises frequently to stay in shape, and by taking sessions from famous vocal coach Eric Vetro, he has managed to preserve his unique, breathy, gravely, yet soulful, voice. Additionally, he lets his unclean blonde hair fall over his blue eyes in the same way as it did in the pictures of Rzeznik stuck inside the Trapper Keepers of innumerable teenage girls in the 1990s and early 2000s and pinned to bedroom walls.
Nevertheless, Rzeznik claims he senses the passing of time.
He has already outlived both of his parents at this age. Rzeznik’s mother, Edith, passed away at age 51 from a heart attack, and his father, Joseph, died in the hospital from pneumonia at the age of 53 following a heart attack. Rzeznik, who lost both of his parents when he was a youngster, has talked about his father’s drinking in the past and once called Joseph a “pretty serious drinker.”
“It freaks me out to be older than both of my parents,” Rzeznik remarked. “And until I got myself cleaned up and got sober [in 2014], I was living as though that’s how I’m going to die I’m just going to drink myself to death because that seemed to be a family tradition.”
Rzeznik claimed that becoming older is enabling him to concentrate on his family, especially his daughter Liliana, who is eight years old. He has also come to the realization that he needs to find a topical statement that his audience can identify with.
Time to evolve
Rzeznik claims that he has the creative freedom to perform only for his fans and himself at this point in his career, acting as though he is no longer even involved in the music industry.
“We’re a legacy band in a lot of ways, even though we’re releasing new material,” Rzeznik said. “And it feels like I’m releasing material for myself and for my audience I’m not trying to have big hit songs on the radio or whatever because of streaming and everything else.”
Noting that the band’s first major song, “Name,” didn’t come out until 1995, when the group was nearly ten years old, Rzeznik admits that it’s an honor to feel that way and expresses gratitude for the years he has had to develop as a composer and performer.
According to Rzeznik, younger musicians nowadays aren’t given as much time and resources to forge their own personalities as he did. “They have to hit immediately or they’re just discarded.”
However, if the Goo Goo Dolls’ sold-out 29-date Summer Anthem tour this summer is any indicator, they will probably never be written out. However, Rzeznik claims that after working for the same organization for nearly 40 years, there is still more to be done, such as learning how to play the guitar.
Rzeznik, who is well-known for switching up his guitar for each song during a concert, claimed that he does it out of need.
He said, “I don’t know all the chords,” “Like, you could say to me, can you play a D9 or whatever I cannot, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”
Even if he could learn how to play “the right way,” Rzeznik is content with his sound and claims that he still enjoys experimenting and feeling about in the dark when creating music.
“I still try to find some kind of sound that maybe I haven’t done before I’ll find something,” he stated.
Ashley Westerman edited and Barry Gordemer produced the broadcast version of this story.
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