Goo Goo Dolls’ Robby Takac on the band’s many eras and new EP ahead of Starlight gig

Goo Goo Dolls. // photo credit Allister Ann

Long-running alt-rock band Goo Goo Dolls has had one hell of a career. From early releases on Metal Blade to the smash success of their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo, in 1995, and the still-inescapable City of Angels soundtrack cut, “Iris,” the band has transformed from a scrappy bunch of Replacements-like rockers into the finest purveyors of sing-along ballads to take the stage.

The band’s making a trip to Kansas City as part of a co-headlining tour with emo stalwarts Dashboard Confessional when they hit Starlight Theater on Friday, August 22, so we hopped on Zoom with bassist Robby Takac to talk about the band’s rise, longevity, and so, so many soundtrack appearances.

The Pitch: When I talked to Chris Carrabba a few years back, one of the things he talked about was the fact that being on the soundtrack for Spider-Man 2 was the thing that took that band from being successful to like, “Oh, now a ton of people know who we are,” and I feel like that’s a very similar thing that happened with Goo Goo Dolls and City of Angels. What’s it like to go from doing pretty well to like, “This is doing well because of a movie”?

Robby Takac: Yeah. The world we came from, we always sort of felt we were doing well. Even when there were 8,000 people watching, buying our records, we still thought we were doing well because the world we came from wasn’t bad. I think we watched what we did grow.

When we put out our Superstar Carwash record, there were record labels that were starting to spend some money on bands that traveled in the same circles we did. We did that song with [Paul] Westerberg and did a big video for that and then we did Boy Named Goo and it had “Name” on there and “Name” went to number one. We saw something happenin’ there. Even before “Iris,” we thought we were doing great. We were rolling along. We had a bus, you know, we weren’t in a van anymore.

I think the existential shift came as we were doing “Iris.” I think it was even before it came out, before it was even in the movie. We finished that song, and we turned it into the movie. John [Rzeznik] wrote “Iris” and brought it to Danny Branson at the label. It was at Warner Bros. at the time. They were doing the soundtrack and he brought it in and just sort of played it to him in his office on an acoustic.

He said, yeah, he loved the song, so we went in to record it with Alan Side at the Ocean Way Studios. We recorded the band part and we had done that before. It was a really nice studio with some pretty legendary people, but still, we had done that kind of thing before, and when we saw a full orchestra set up, all of a sudden, there was this thing that started.

I remember John and I like looking at each other, just thinking, “Wow, there’s been a shift here, for sure.” Then it came out on that soundtrack, and dude, the bands on that soundtrack, it was like U2 and Alanis Morissette, and Sarah McLachlan, and I’m forgetting some of the biggest ones–like huge, huge bands.

We were just sort of glad to be on it, you know, really glad to be nominated, but the song by Alanis Morissette [“Uninvited”], that was another one that was on there, and she got the first single so when they chose “Iris” to be the second single, that was pretty mind blowing to us so, like I said–before it even happened, all these things were sort of falling into place.

When “Iris” came out, we were able to put it on Dizzy Up The Girl. The contract allowed us to release it on the record. We released Dizzy Up The Girl with the song that had been number one for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks so it was really a pretty amazing opportunity for us.

That wasn’t your first soundtrack appearance, but I have to imagine that that is a much more different experience than Freddy’s Dead: The Final Nightmare. I mean, I love “I’m Awake Now,” and that video is just absolutely one of my favorite things.

We had that skinny little Freddy Krueger. It’s funny, man, and I think George [Tutuska, former drummer] had a pirate shirt on too, if I’m not mistaken.

“Name” came out when I was in high school, and it’s been so fascinating to watch how your career has changed. Tangential to the Freddy’s Dead thing, what is it like at this point to have people who, like myself, were fans when they were kids, and now their kids are fans, and then they discover that whole pre-history of Goo Goo Dolls and like, “What’s that?” Is there an interesting response as people discover the pre-Boy Named Goo material?

I would say that’s pretty rare earth. I don’t think a lot of people make their way super early, you know, but they most certainly are surprised when they see here we came from, but I do think that’s what sort of makes us a little bit different than everybody else, ’cause we truly did come from CBGBs and Maxwell’s then the Continental Club. That’s where we came from so, when the Triple A world exploded and all these other bands that I won’t name right now popped up, those bands–most of them came from a much different head space than we did, and I think what we were out there trying to prove at the time was probably a little bit different than what they were out there trying to prove.

I think that helped us an awful lot but it’s amazing now, especially with social media and things becoming as viral as they do, people do get a chance to find out about stuff. That Buffalo concert that we did in the rain, that’s made for social media, just before we knew it existed, but I think that really helps us out a lot.

With social media, it’s crazy like when things happen like–somebody posted something, they were depressed about their girlfriend or, or their boyfriend or something, and they said, “I wish I could be someone’s ‘Iris.’” It was just a post that somebody made, and all of a sudden, there were millions of views and all sorts of other people were doing it, and these are all like teenagers who were probably strapped in their car seat the first time they heard the song. I mean, it’s in there, and maybe it holds a special little piece of something inside of ’em and it works.

You’ve had this new wave of ways you’re being presented to folks, too. “Iris” was in Deadpool & Wolverine, and you also played Stagecoach earlier this year, and that is ostensibly a roots country festival. How did you all respond when they were like, “Hey, do you wanna play?”

Well, we were in the redheaded stepchild tent. It was like Sammy Hagar, Creed, us, Nelly, Tommy James and the Shondells, the Bacon Brothers–I mean, it was crazy, you know?–Backstreet Boys. Just a crazy array of music. But, you know, country music, a lot of people are digging it now, a lot of young people. That place was just jam-packed with 20-year-olds. I have an overhead shot of the tent that we played in, which held maybe 15,000 people, and there were probably three times that outside the tent watching it on screens, and that wasn’t even the most impactful thing that happened.

All these kids have a phone, man, and they all recorded it, and they all put it up and it happened at the same time, man, just like wildfire right on the internet. I think we sold like 15,000 tickets like in the next two days or something like that. And that was paired with we were on American Idol, too, in that same timeframe. There were a few things going on, but it’s so just amazing. It was so wild.

You all put up the full set up on your YouTube channel, and watching it, literally at points, the crowd is singing along so loud, it’s overcoming the band on a recording. How do you focus when that’s happening in real time?

Oh, it’s crazy, dude. I mean, the number of times I played that song, I can’t even tell you, man. I mean, there were points in our lives where we were playing that song six, seven times a day at radio stations and at meet and greets and on stage, so how do you keep something fresh that you’ve done 50,000 times? You just have to be in that moment, man. And that was a really good moment.

What’s the song that you look forward to playing every night?

That’s funny. We’re writing set lists right now and it’s undoubtedly the absolute most difficult thing we do together as a band. It’s fucking crazy, man. I don’t even know how else to put it at this point, because we can only physically do so much. We’re doing five to six shows every week, so we can only play 25 songs. We can’t do much more than that, so you really gotta pare it down, and it’s just crazy, as you’re trying to figure out like, “What are you gonna do? What are the songs people are coming to see? Where do we still wanna go? What direction? Do we wanna try to pull this in?”

I think we have 12-15 songs we know people wanna hear, for sure, and some of those songs we’ve been playing for 25 years now, and you just need to find that moment. Some songs go well to the beginning of a set. Some songs go well in the middle. Some songs are great to close the set with, but the one that always, always, always kicks it into high gear is “Slide.” It’s an early song. We’ve been playing it for years, and every time you play it, every face in the room lights up.

You start out with something a little newer, maybe you play something that’s sort of older, but when “Slide” hits, it’s like everybody knows what it is, so that’s like when the party starts, and so I think that’s probably still my favorite song to play.

The Goo Goo Dolls play Starlight Theater with Dashboard Confessional on Friday, August 22. Details on that show here. Their new EP, Summer Anthem, is out the same day.