For the last eight years I’ve been listening to the various recordings of the Goo Goo Dolls, a band which mostly flies under the conventional radar, but I’m sure that’s the way they like it. Last year’s release of their newest CD, Let Love In, marked 19 years since they first released an album, a longevity that is rarely heard of in the music industry these days. Consider artists from the last few years who have released a few songs and then faded into obscurity. Yet somehow this band from Buffalo, New York has managed not only to stay together, but they’ve also managed to stay relevant.
It’s obvious from listening to their music how they’ve managed to do this. Over the course of the last two decades they’ve taken risks to not only grow as people and musicians, but to combine those two paths to have their music reflect their personal growth. Their studio releases thus far can be grouped into three different lengths of time each encompassing different phases in the life of the band and their evolution as musicians.
For reference, the group was formed in 1986, the original members consisting of John Rzeznik (guitar), Robby Takac (bass, vocals), and George Tatuska (drums). They released their first studio album in 1987.
Goo Goo Dolls (1987)
When the boys first came together in abandoned warehouses in blizzard bound Buffalo, their goal was to admittedly play music that was loud and fast. This rough style is clearly demonstrated on their first release, the self-titled Goo Goo Dolls (although it is often referred to as First Release). First Release runs at a little over thirty minutes of music, most of which is screaming guitars and nearly intelligible lyrics that are veritably screamed by Takac who handled the majority of the vocals at the time. The construction of the songs is mostly relegated to simplified instrumental arrangements paired with often repeating lyrics. One song, ‘Torn Apart’, deals with the complications of binge drinking and smoking and how it affects the rest of your life. While most of the album touches on these issues, ‘Torn Apart’ seems to be the only song with which the band takes the stance of creating a lighter musical arrangement through which their lyrics will be heard.
Jed (1989)
Two years after the first album came the release of Jed, another punk inspired album with a few changes from what came before. Most notably on this album is the emergence of John Rzeznik on two of the tracks, ‘Up Yours’ and ‘James Dean’, to sing lead vocals. John’s vocals on this record are rough, sounding timid at times, a reflection of the stage fright and anxiety that he has said that he felt during performing in the early days.
Between the first release and Jed, the band began to clean up and clear their heads, a move which shows in their music. The lyrics are moved beyond dealing with drugs and alcohol into writing about their personal relationships and the writing begins to become more journalistic, lyrics becoming slightly more subtle with their details yet still managing to express emotion.
One of the most notable tracks on Jed is the band’s cover of the song ‘Down on the Corner’ featuring local Buffalo singer, Lance Diamond. This song is a launch point from which the band can show their musical abilities with a powerful vocalist to push ahead. While first release contained a few cover songs they were mostly played with the same brash style as the rest of the music. But the cover of ‘Down on the Corner’ is a move into a new style for the band. Fusing the soulful singing style of Diamond into the song you can hear them begin to relax and the quality of what they are able to do comes through.
Hold Me Up (1991)
Moving from the tumultuous 80’s into the 90’s the Goos were attempting to break into a music industry which at the current time was flooded with heavy metal glam hair bands and other music which was completely different from their own style. Undeterred by the lack of other artists they could identify with, the band released Hold Me Up, an album which can be seen as the first transitional piece of work up until this point. While still maintaining the fast paced playing, the group has begun to experiment with harmony and real structure in songs instead of just trying to play “as loud and as fast as possible”. Rzeznik takes more of a lead in singing, sharing roughly half of the songs with Takac, his singing has become more confident, clearer and more defined. It’s in this album that Rzeznik’s potential as not only a singer but also as a crafter of song that really starts to stand out.
On the track, “Two Days in February”, an acoustic recording that was done in the middle of the day on a street corner, Rzeznik tells the story of a long distance relationship that exists only over phone lines and the tension between two people who are separated only by physical space and their inabilities to come to a logical conclusion despite their attempts to make it work. The grit of the song comes not from the background noise incurred during the outdoor recording, but from the simplicity of the acoustic guitar layered over the bass line and tambourine interlaced with the heartbreakingly honest details of being in a relationship without actually being present for it.
Following the release of Hold Me Up, the band toured the country as they always had, in a beat up van and living as sparsely as they could. However, the next few years would prove to be the point from which there would be no returning to the garage from whence they came.
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