Buffalo, NY’s greatest export (no disrespect, buffalo wings, you’re delicious), The Goo Goo Dolls have been crafting heartfelt alt-rock anthems and arena-ready ballads for nearly four decades. With more than 15 million albums sold and over five billion streams to their name, the band has built a legacy that few acts from the ’90s alternative explosion can match.
Bassist and founding member Robby Takac has been there since day one, helping guide the group from scrappy punk beginnings to mainstream radio dominance. As the Goo Goo Dolls gear up for another national tour—this time alongside Dashboard Confessional, including a stop at Blossom Music Center on August 12—Takac took some time to reflect on the band’s longevity, the ever-changing landscape of the music industry, and why he doesn’t think they’ll ever make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (though their loyal fan base might disagree).
The upcoming show at Blossom is going to be a great night for folks in their late 30s / early-mid 40s. Goo Goo Dolls were kings of the FM airwaves in the late ’90s, with their 5x Platinum record, ‘Dizzy Up the Girl’ (1998), which spawned five hit singles, including “Iris,” which was atop of the Billboard charts for 18 weeks. Dashboard Confessional followed a few years later on the strength of their VH1 Unplugged special.
It’s no surprise that Takac (as per usual) is incredibly excited for the upcoming run of shows.
“The ticket sales are going great! Everything’s really great right now, Man,” Takac said with excitement. “I’m excited to be out there with Dashboard Confessional. I feel like that’s another band that is sort of a songwriter’s band, and there’s a lot of great songs, and I think they came out a little later than we did, but I think they had the same sort of effect on people at the time when their records came out. I think it’s going to be an amazing Summer, Man!”
Goo Goo Dolls have no shortage of material to use when they are crafting their setlist. Their mainstream success started with “Name,” released 30 years ago, and has gone on to chart several Top 10 hits, and most recently released 2022’s critically-acclaimed ‘Chaos in Bloom.’ Takac wouldn’t go as far to agree that this is a “greatest hits” tour, but discuss the art of deciding which songs to deliver fans.
“Being the closing act, obviously, you have a little bit more time and a little bit more freedom to kind of do the things you want to do, which is great for us,” Takac said. “We’re going to go deep. I know that we’ve been playing these songs long enough for people to understand the ones that mean the most to people, in general, and we generally try to play those. We do have some new songs that we’ll be playing as well. We have a new, short record, that’s pretty much in the can; ready to go right now. We’re trying to figure out the best way to get it out there. We will be releasing a single prior to the tour and probably another one during the tour as well. We’re moving forward. We were so unbelievably busy last year. We sort of planned on taking the year off last year and spending some time writing, and being in the studio, and reconnecting with our lives, but we ended up crazy busy last year. So things are running a little bit behind, but we will have some new music out there soon, for sure!”
The Goo Goo Dolls longevity in the music business and success for approximately three decades have set them up for multi-generational success. Takac notes that seeing parents who grew up listening to “Name” and “Iris” who are now bringing their concert-appropriate-aged children to shows with them is one of the most touching things that he experiences as a performer.
“It’s crazy! It’s so great to see. We’ve been really lucky, though. Really, not a lot of actions of our own. A lot of things have happened over the past few years that have gotten us in front of a lot of young people,” Takac said. “A few of the big pop stars have shown some appreciation for the band. We ended up in the Deadpool & Wolverine movie, which was huge for us. We performed at Stage Coach this year. We had a huge viral moment with that whole thing. American Idol happened right at the same time, [frontman] John [Rzeznik] played at Demi Lovato’s wedding, and that got us in a bunch of magazines that we probably never would’ve been in. All those things we’re talking about, these are all those things that kind of drive that stuff. And, of course, the thing that drives it the most is having some songs that people can relate to from generation to generation.”
Hit songs are a fickle thing. With so many deserving songs that fall flat in terms of commercial success, it is tough for a band to predict if they have a hit on their hands after they finish recording.
“That’s something special that happens,” Takac said.” I mean, ‘Iris’ is a great song, but there’s plenty of great songs. There’s something special that happens at a given time, and just the things that happened over the past 25 years or however long it’s been, all those things have to line up. The stars have to line up in order for something like that to happen. It just seems like it has, and it doesn’t seem like it’s slowing down at all, which is exciting, too. We’re pretty sure we can go pretty much anywhere in the world and play that song, and people are going to know what it is. That’s pretty much the only one we have that’s like that, but we’re pretty sure we can do that. And like I said, I don’t think that. There’s just so many things that have to line up, but it all starts with John writing that amazing song. Otherwise, I think without that, you don’t have anything.“
“I dunno if you know when you have a hit, but we knew there was a shift when we finished ‘Name.’ I can remember we were recording the demos for ‘Name’ in this tiny little room in a studio I still own,” Takac continued. “We were in the back room working on it. There was certainly something special about that song. And I don’t think I can predict that anything like that is going to happen, especially at that particular point. There were so few bands that were kind of making it through. It was starting to happen. Obviously, the Nirvana wave had happened, but that wasn’t the same time, so you just kind of didn’t know.”
The music industry has changed since the band’s inception. Back in GGD’s early days, the internet was in its infant stage, broadband internet was years away, and the ability to stream any song ever written on demand was something that could only be seen in a hard-to-believe science-fiction flick. Questioned on if he would have preferred to fight their way to popularity in the grind of the ’90s or if he would have preferred to have all of today’s technology, and to dive into how the band has had to adapt:
“You sure have to play a lot more. Yeah. Bands used to do tours to tour records. You know what I’m saying? You got to be out there. I mean, the record made you all the money, and when you did your tour to go and support the record, now you’re going out, your living is being out there on the road, playing shows, and it’s very carny-like, kind of life in a way,” Takac said. “We’ve always been that way. We’ve always been a band that’s played a lot. Yeah, the internet has changed everything. We were lucky, because first off, in the nineties, when people were just starting to get AOL and all that stuff, we had some friends who knew something was going on, we didn’t quite know what, but we knew something was going on. We made a couple of friends that hooked us up, so we could write on our web page. We wanted to be able to post words and pictures. I don’t even think we kind of knew what a blog was at that point. We just knew that we had a place where we could write and post stuff. But we started that really early. We were really involved, and we’ve built up quite a community, who still, to this day, these people know each other. We still see them. They still come out to the shows. I think that really helped us a lot. As much as it destroyed the way the music industry operated and potentially destroyed our way of life that we had known for 10 years, I think at the same time, we really figured out a way to build a community through the internet. I think it helped both ways. It helped and hurt.”
As a Cleveland-centric media outlet, home to the prized Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, it was only natural to ask Robby if he feels Goo Goo Dolls will ever have an opportunity to be forever-presented to visitors that stroll through the museum’s doors. It’s not that crazy! They meet the eligibility requirements, have achieved the “required” level of commercial success,” have survived the tumultuous changes of the music biz, influenced countless artists, and are adored by fans. So, what do you say?
“I won’t hold my breath, that’s all I’ll say,” Takac said with a chuckle. ” I don’t think I’ll hold my breath. I don’t know. We’ve never been in the Cool Kids Club, but people have always liked our band, and I think that that’s maybe more important. You can be a band for a long time, but when people love your band, the hipsters, they’ll move on to something else. Real people, they embrace what you do and make a part of their lives. It’s great.”
Taking all of the Goo Goo Dolls’ success into consideration: The countless shows and tiring tours, the commercial success of their albums, the incalculable number of FM radio spins and song streams, and, perhaps most importantly, the love of their fans, we asked what he hopes Goo Goo Dolls will be most remember for when all is said and done. What is the band’s legacy?
“We wrote some great songs and put on great rock shows. That’s what we want to do the most,” Takac said. “We want to know that we went out there and put on great rock shows. That’s my goal. Every single time I touch my bare foot to a stage, we want to have an amazing show. If people walk away going, ‘That was one of the greatest shows I ever saw,’ then I think we won.“
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