Quotes

Straight from the mouth of John Rzeznik, Robby Takac, and Mike Malinin

"The fear of rejection really kind of stunts your growth as a person. I mean, it's like a friend of mine says, who cares if you fail? Who cares if you fail? It's like babies try to get up and walk all the time and they keep falling down. If we just gave up, we'd all be crawling around." (John Rzeznik)

"For me, playing guitar and singing is, in a lot of instances, like walking and chewing gum. I've got trouble with it!" (John)

"The moment when it comes, I like to compare it to, like, the catharsis of a good dump after being constipated for a few weeks." (John on how it feels when a song idea arrives)

"You have to stand against the world. You can't really measure what you're doing by the commercial success or the critical success of it, because that's not what it's all about. ...It's enough to know I did my best and there was no more." (John)

"We used to get introduced as the Go Go Girls." (John on one of the many disadvantages of calling your band the Goo Goo Dolls)

"The disparity between being a 10-year-old boy playing air guitar, wishing I was a rock star, and the reality of the whole thing is insane. A girl will throw her bra onstage, and I say to myself, if I was the guy that pumped your gas today, would you throw your bra at me?" (John)

"I like being in America, where I'm ugly." (John after being mobbed by girls in Italy)

"I'm computer illiterate and I intend on staying that way as long as possible -- until I gotta figure out how to work that computer at McDonald's, when I work there." (John)

"He's my brother. I never had a brother. And I'm his brother. He never had one. We always joke about it: 'You're the brother I never wanted.'" (John on his bond with Robby)

"The media sometimes seems to put you on a pedestal just so they can get a clearer shot at you. They build you up to knock you down. And it does hurt when people take shots at you. It hurts because I was always trying to be honest, in whatever I was doing." (John)

"Every day, man, I still gotta get on the phone with some guy named Booger at a local radio station who always asks the same question. 'Hey, Johnny, this is Booger on the morning show...so where'd you get that stupid name?'" (John)

"For us, failing at this was never an option. Whenever somebody told us we couldn't do something, we did it. And that continues to this day. People tell us we can't do lots of things, and we do 'em all the time. That, I have to believe, is a direct result of where we come from and what we've gone through." (John)

"Things just evolve. I sort of have no control over what happens with the songs. Sometimes I'm afraid I might wake up one morning with an entire record of polka songs." (John)

"It’s like when you’re a kid and you want that puppy you saw on the Hallmark card. You get that puppy and you find out it’s not always like the picture on the card. You have to clean up the crap in the backyard. We’re always busy and it’s a lot of hard work. But I’m not complaining. It’s cool that people like our music." (Robby)

"Find what gives you goosebumps and forget the books. Do what you want and that is really all that matters." (John)

"There's a real absence of rituals in this country, which is causing a lot of confusion in people. People who don't have familiar rituals, whether it is going to church on Sunday, or to a gig, or to a football game, don't know their place in society, and because of that they don't feel secure with themselves and the world. I think that's why so many kids are attracted to music. It's a specific role they can identify with, and it gives them something to believe in." (John)

"Does anyone speak English here? Should I speak slowly? ...Because, you know, you could speak Dutch to me as slow as you want, and I'd still go, 'Huh?'" (John at a show in Amsterdam, Holland)

"I hate cheese! You know why I hate cheese? Because it's glue in the colon. A man can't make love when he's got a sticky colon." (John)

"All you can do is do what you do, and do it as well as you can." (Robby)

"I was trying to be pretentious and arty by calling it that. I figured if Billy Corgan can get away with it, so can I. So I figured what the hell, I'll tap into the pretentious market." (John on "Iris")

"He'll actually eat food that strangers throw at him." (John after Mike said he loves the Goo Goo Clusters that are thrown on stage)

"There you go you furry ba... I mean..." (John after giving the Cookie Monster a hug at an appearance on Today, catching his choice of words just in time)

"Angry, and young, and full of shit." (John's description of himself as a teen)

"I thought he was a freak. I thought Robby was a freak the first time I met him. I was like, 'Oh man, who's this heavy metal guy?'" (John)

"We cornered another guy and forced him to take our [demo] tape. He called us back about a week later and just reamed me on the phone. 'You guys suck so bad. You have no direction. Why don't you take a few years off and learn how to play your instruments?' I was inspired by that, because it was just like, 'Man, if this guy hates us so much, somebody's gonna like us that much.'" (John on MTV's Biorhythm)

"Right after that happened, the guy that ran the studio that we recorded at decided that we could do anything we wanted there, he just started givin' us time because he said, 'Holy shit, you mean Elektra Records actually spent the dollar it cost to call you from New York to tell you how bad this was?'" (Robby)

"The minute you stick your head up, somebody's gonna try and shoot it off." (John on the criticism he received after “Name” was released)

"I'm a cockroach -- undestructable." (Robby)

"We may not be the coolest band in the world, but we're the most fucking played band!” (John at a concert at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills celebrating the music of Dizzy Up the Girl getting 1 million spins on radio stations all over the world)

"I think that's why 90% of young, teenage males play guitar. Chicks dig it." (Robby)

"That's the nicest part about [success], being able to pay people back who did right by you." (John)

"You don’t want to go too far ahead with goals. Who knows -- maybe one day we’ll have a ballet company, Rob & Johnny’s Ballet Company. We’ll do interpretive dance." (Robby)

"There's a duality in expectations. If you expect something and it doesn't happen, then you're disappointed. We don't expect anything and look where we are." (John, The Buffalo News, November 20, 1988)

"We played at places where the stage fuckin' collapsed." (John)

"I'm not a rock star. I'm a guy in a band that does really well. Every rock star I meet is an asshole. I'm not part of that." (John)

"All you can do is be strong enough to break the chain." (John)

"Polite reception is really bad because that means you're no good." (John)

"Remember those old vibrating football games? My goal in life is to be vibrated around the stage just like those little men." (Robby on why he plays the bass barefoot)

"We got a snowball's chance in hell of changing our whole world, but if we can secure a little pocket of sanity in our own lives then maybe that would cause a rippling effect to the people around us." (John)

"I don't see this as just a job. I wouldn't have a job that takes up this much time out of my day!" (Robby)

"If I had my ass powdered and pampered, I probably wouldn't be here right now." (John)

"The band I would most want to play at my wedding would be the Happy Flowers. Unfortunately, my wife would probably leave me immediately." (Mike Malinin)

"We had to get over people being surprised when guys showed up to do the show. That was a six-year complex in the making. [People must have thought], ‘Those are some really manly chicks.’" (Robby on the confusion sometimes caused by the band's name)

"We like to 'take the piss' out of classic songs. We thought it was funny to play 'Don't Fear the Reaper' five times as fast, and cut out everything but the three chord structure. To me, that is hilarious. But it also allowed us to work on cover songs that fit what we did. Then we 'put the piss' back in them, if you will. So instead of making fun of them, we made them our own." (Robby)

"It's a lot of work, a lot of traveling, and it's a lot of politics and running for office. But we could have worse problems. I could be on crack and selling my toes!" (Robby)

"The first time I was in Omaha it was 11 degrees outside, it was freezing. The next time I was there, it was 111 degrees and cows were exploding, they were boiling inside and dying. Land of the exploding cows." (Robby)

"I'm most proud of the fact the Goo Goo Dolls wasn't put together by a producer or a record company guy, but by three kids in college wanting to make some noise, hang out, and have some fun. Right now, I think the band's playing stronger than it ever has, and I'm real excited about the future." (John)

"If I was going to lose, I was going to trade in my old car and get myself a [Toyota] 4Runner to console myself. And then I decided if I win, I was gonna buy a 4Runner to celebrate. Instead of waiting, I just decided to do it. So I got myself a 4Runner." (John on his plans if he lost the Grammy for “Black Balloon”)

"The moral of the story is if you've gotta drive more than 20 miles to find someone who loves you, and kiss you and hug you... you're a loser!" (John on “Two Days in February”)

"I remember hearing a Ramones song and thinking, 'I can do that.' And I did." (Robby)

"I can guarantee you this: Nobody is paying 300 bucks to see my ass." (John on opening for the Rolling Stones)

"Record companies sell a dream... they never talk about the struggle." (John)

"The Jamaican clay pots didn't make the cut, fortunately. Neither did the sound of us laughing in the background." (Mike on Dizzy Up the Girl's "bells and whistles")

"It's like, 'OK, I'm picking up my guitar, I'm in the recording studio, the tape machine is rolling, I'd better finish the song.' And that helps, because, you know, it's really expensive making a record, and I'm cheap, man." (John on his writer's block)

"Don't give people a chance to boo and throw things." (Robby)

"Make sure you're louder than the booing." (John)

"We wanna go out and play on our own because when you're an opening band, people throw things at you. I don't mind when somebody who loves my band throws a shoe at me, y'know, because it's with love..." (John)

"I wasn't good at sports and I needed a way to make girls like me." (John on taking up the guitar)

"He hates our band." (John after being asked what Mike's favorite Goo album is)

"I don't write music for critics or hipsters. I write for me." (John)

"There are people who intensely hate what I do. They hate it enough to spend time writing about it. And I'm like, 'Why? Why won't you go find a band to champion and waste the ink on them?' Because that's difficult. It's a hell of a lot easier to break a window than to make one." (John)

"For years we've been playing and writing songs that sound happy. And yet if you listen, the words are all like 'My brains are falling out of my ears; would someone please pull me together?'" (Robby)

"It's the most unintentionally funny city in the world." (John on Los Angeles)

"We all have our own balls. Not like... Never mind." (John on bowling)

"God, I thought he was singing to me." (Mike kidding around about “Two Days in February”)

"All right, who is this, and why are you too cheap to come to my show? They hung up on me!" (John on an audience member's cell phone in Seattle)

"Seeing as we're from Buffalo, New York, we have a decided advantage. And seeing as I'm Polish, I have a genetic advantage." (John on "killing a TV" with a bowling ball. Admittedly it helps if you've seen this.)

"We got no mojo. This band has no mojo... We're a bunch of ditch diggers." (John)

"A guy fixes a toilet and the whole world thinks he's a plumber." (John on the public's perception of the band after the release of “Name”)

"We're still playing the same rooms we've always been playing. It's just that there's people in them now." (Robby, The Hartford Courant, October 14, 1995)

"We clear the room with the first few songs. People start filing out like you wouldn't believe." (Robby on the reaction of some A Boy Named Goo era concert goers expecting to hear a full set of Names)

"We actually lost 163 people after we played the single." (Robby on the number of people counted leaving after “Name” at a '95 show in Rochester, NY)

"He had all our records and knew our songs. We got together and played 20 songs the first day and did a gig nine days later." (Robby on Mike)

"Dude, I'll take Days Inn any day over a stuffy hotel. A bed, a TV, a bathroom. What more do you need?" (Robby)

"I don't sound like Barry White when I talk for nothing. I've played in every smoky nightclub on Earth." (Robby)

"The way he writes, the way he feels about this band... He kills himself, man. I've never seen anyone put so much emotion into anything. When he's writing a song, veins are popping out of his head. It's really painful." (Robby on John)

"He's the stable unit among all of us. Day in and day out, he's the most consistent musically. He just doesn't have a bad day on the drums. It's bizarre, because it's so rare that he does clam that when it happens, I almost crap my pants! It's like, 'Jesus, what in the hell just happened?' I'll look at him and go, 'What was that? You never scew up!'" (John on Mike)

"When I first joined the band, we were playing all of their old punk rock stuff. By the end of the show, I was in pain, and that was every night. But once we added Name to the set, it was like, here's a break." (Mike)

"I'm a crusty old musician now." (John)

"I slept on everyone's floor. I probably slept on your floor. And if I did something bad, I'm sorry." (John)

"You can always be a songwriter but I am not going to always be a rockstar and that's fine with me, man. I am not attached to that concept because it's empty. An empty promise." (John)

"I go through phases. I'm like a girl with my hair." (John)

"I really don't give a shit about being famous. I just feel really lucky that a lot of people want to listen to my music, and something that is a part of me, something I have been doing my whole life is getting recognized. That feels good." (John)

"I'm kind of vigilant about getting high on my own fumes. I think with a lot of artists, that seems to happen. They have a hit and all of a sudden they think they can do no wrong. I'm a firm believer in the theory that if you give a monkey a guitar, a paper and a pen, he'll eventually write a hit song." (John)

"What a stupid name for a band. I'm convinced we would have sold millions of records if we'd have had a different name." (John)

"I wrote Only One about a friend of mine who was a big rock star in Buffalo. He had a chance to really make it, and he pissed it away. I write a lot of songs for my friends..." (John, The Iowa State Daily, March 4, 1996)

"I came up with the idea when we were on tour in Japan. I figured I could try it out there and if they hated it I wouldn't know because they'd be criticizing me in another language." (The Goos on “A Thousand Words” in a chat on April 22, 2004)

"Cash would be good. No change, just soft, soft bills." (The Goos in the same chat after being asked what other than Pez they'd like thrown onstage)

"I'd love to run for public office just so they could uncover the smutty details of my life!" (John)