With a new CD coming out August 31, the Goo Goo Dolls have not just been sitting around waiting for it to be released. They have actually been out there on the road, playing those new songs for their fans on the first leg of a tour that will have them hopping on and off the tour bus for many months to come. Titled Something For The Rest Of Us, this is The Dolls first CD of original music since 2006. Recently, barefooted bass player Robby Takac took some time out of his busy schedule to talk (and laugh) with GLIDE about the new album, the Dolls longevity, and finally figuring out where the notes are on his bass.
Hi Robby, how is the tour going? I bet it feels good to be back on the road.
Yea, the tour is going great. As you probably know, we’ve done an awful lot of tours and released an awful lot of records but this one tends to differ a little bit because before we release the record we will have done almost ninety shows at that point. Which is really different, because in the past we would release a record and then we’d go do a hundred shows (laughs). So we’re going to be about a hundred shows ahead of ourselves on this one. It’s largely because the business has changed in general. And you know the way people tend to consume and enjoy music has changed a little bit. So we’re out there sort of promoting our new record early, sort of like a politician taking it to the people first, if you will.
You’re playing some of your new songs. How are the fans reacting to them?
It’s great. You know people are taking camera phone footage of the songs and putting them up on YouTube and putting them up on their blogs and stuff. Like I said, the way people consume music seems to be a little bit different and the way people enjoy music seems to be a little bit different so a lot of people are showing up to the shows actually knowing the whole words to the songs.
But that’s cool, right?
Yea, singing along. It is the first ray of hope, you know, in a pretty dark atmosphere that the music industry has been in for the past few years. Because people weren’t buying records or CDs, you know. And there was a panic and no one could really figure out what’s going on and I think that now people are starting to see that you can sell some tickets if you do it reasonably and not gouge people for those tickets and not charge too much. I think people are starting to see that you can promote things, you can make a headway in your progress as a band using this new set of tools that you’ve been given to promote your band. Now, its just I think the business has defined level and we have to figure out how, you know, everyone’s going to make a living at it. But I do think there’s a ray of hope that has sort of shown through all of this and it’s a good feeling.
There’s nothing like a live show.
Yea, that’s the one thing we can’t download is your flesh and blood at this point and whatever comes with that.
Tell us about your Meet & Greets before a show. You have something special going on, don’t you?
We meet up to a hundred people pretty much. It’s pretty crazy. We have a thing called the Inner Machine which is like a fan club and we do lotteries for meet & greets and we work with this organization called USA Harvest that does canned good collections at our shows. Whoever brings the most canned goods ends up winning a meet & greet with the band. Actually all those canned goods go directly into food pantries and such through arrangements in every city actually. And so it’s really a great hand’s on thing too; there’s no money exchanging hands at all. It’s just our street team, who are amazing. You can look them up online and see how to help out with that. But all we do is ask fans and of course ask writers like yourself to mention the fact that we do it at all the shows. All we really do is take the time to talk about it and like I said we have some great people around us so they’re the ones who actually put it all in motion. We’ve been with them for over ten years now. We’ve raised, I believe, over nine million meals they told us since we started. It’s pretty crazy. After you’ve been around for awhile, when your band’s been around for awhile, when you start to add numbers up of things that kind of happened, like over the years, it’s pretty sick. Really it is. You know from numbers of food we’ve collected to right down to numbers of singles the band’s had, numbers of videos we’ve done, numbers of songs we had in top 10 or whatever, it’s staggering to hear sometimes.
Did you think when you were a kid starting in a band that you would be where you are today?
I don’t know, when I was a kid I thought KISS were superheroes, you know. I didn’t think they were real people so I didn’t really think about it. Their life didn’t exist but that hour and a half that they were on the stage. I just figured that twenty-two and a half that surrounded that were just exactly the same, just without a guitar in their hand. But as I got older and I started to enjoy different kinds of music, the kind of music that I liked was – you know, when I say older like 16, 17, 19 years old – I started to listen to more punk rock and stuff and started to feel like my heroes were only selling fourteen or fifteen thousand records … but the bands that I loved weren’t selling a lot of records. When my band got big, I think we were so busy, and when I say got big, sold a lot of records you know what I mean, you know in 95 or whenever, it’s like we were so busy that I don’t think we really had time to think about it. Is it a lot different than I thought it was going to be? Absolutely. No question about it. I mean this is a much different scene than I had imagined. But I don’t think I’m really disappointed cause like I said, we were happy just to be out playing and having people enjoy what we did. I was amazed there were people at the shows every night at all.
When The Dolls had those three big hits, did you ever feel like you were getting smothered by the fame and publicity? Were you glad when it finally started to calm down and normal life kind of started to happen again?
I think it was a lot harder for John (Rzeknik) probably than it was for me. I mean, he was kind of the face of the whole thing. For me, I’ve had a pretty luxurious anonymity in a lot of ways (laughs). True fans of the band know who we are but for folks who saw the “City Of Angels” video and that’s the only thing they know of us, are probably more likely to recognize him. So I never really had that big of a problem with it. But you know, things do change dramatically just within the band, the pressures of having a big song. We still feel the pressure of that song to this day. It always comes up in an interview, it came up just now (laughs). It’s just due to what it is. I thank – insert your god here – God that we’ve had that situation because it’s really allowed us to have fourteen more big songs since then. And that’s what you build a career on. I guess, always in the back of your mind, you hope it was going to happen with your band. And the growth for our band, you know as we grow and move forward, I think its growth at our comfort level. And that’s why after twenty-five years you definitely can tell the difference between our records; you can tell we’ve advanced as a band. But we advanced at a pace that was comfortable for us. Once again, most bands don’t get the luxury of being able to live their career out like that because real life creeps in and then its over.
Tell us about the new album? And what took so long to get some new music out there?
Tim Palmer produced the record. We got off tour and we went to Buffalo. We had rebuilt the old studio we used to work in when we were kids back in Buffalo, which is actually still open right now. We went there and went in with our live soundman and started working on some demos and stuff and brought a guy named Tim Palmer. He’s worked with a lot of great bands, UK bands, over the years. [We] brought him in and he came to Buffalo with us and worked on the basic tracks of the record. Went to LA and spent a few more weeks out there, in fact many many more weeks out there, and finished the record up with him. Mixed the record and turned it in. And then the label said we’re going to wait till like the spring or something. There was a delay in the record. We have a studio so we started opening the files again and by that time Tim Palmer had moved back to Austin where he lived. So we started working on the record by ourselves and before you knew it the lid was off and everything fell out on the floor and we were working on all the songs again. We got the opportunity to work with a few of our friends that we’ve been wanting to work with for awhile, back in LA: Butch Vig, from Garbage, and Rob Cavallo, who had produced a couple of our old records, went in and spent a couple of days with him listening to some stuff. 
How did that feel kind of going back to the old days?
We’ve known Rob for decades so its always interesting being around him. We’ve done a lot of stuff with him over the years. He’s a character, man, he’s a trip (laughs). And John Fields, who’s a guy we met through our sound man Paul Hager, who ultimately ended up mixing the record. So we worked with a lot of people and it really felt like because we got a chance to sort of revisit these songs as a band without the actual producer in the room that had been working on this stuff with us, it really just started to feel like we’re taking the record back a little bit. I think in the past, and I don’t want to speak for everybody in the band obviously, I felt like we sort of let go of a record a little bit because you have to when you have a producer. But sometimes it gets a little too far out of your hands and it becomes a little bit more their record than it needed to be. And I think that we got a chance to pull this one back a little bit and make it a little bit more ours again, after the outside influence of the producer coming in and pulling these songs together. I think it was all about being able to revisit it one more time. Listen to it objectively and say, is this the best it can be? We definitely knew there were some things we could have fixed and I think when you listen to this record from start to finish you can tell that we really paid attention to every bit of it and I think that’s something we really wanted to get across this time.
How many of your songs are on the new album?
I have two songs: “Now I Hear” and the other one is “Say You’re Free”.
Is it easy writing songs? Does it come natural to you?
We pretty much write for a record. So when it comes time to write a record we write songs. Does it come naturally? Probably more so to me as far as getting something done (laughs). As far as making it good, I think that that comes to John much more naturally. Like I can spit stuff out all day … I don’t but I could (laughs) … but John’s more of a writer where he sits there and he pines over something for weeks and weeks and weeks and somewhere between those two, sometimes months and months, sometimes years and years actually, but somewhere between those my-knee-jerk-reaction of wanting to make things happen and his over analysis of everything we eventually get stuff done (laughs). And most of the time it turns out pretty well.
Is that kind of what happened when John had his so-called writer’s block? Did you feel like you needed to kind of step forward while he was going through his thing?
Well it just is what it is every record. And it’s been that way since we were kids. You finish a record and what’s writer’s block? It’s just being too scared to make that next step. That’s all it is. It’s just being nervous. Writer’s block means you’re already a writer. That means you know how to do it. So making the next step is about having enough confidence to hike your trousers up and make the next step … Like why did it take this long to do this? Once again this band’s been around for awhile and the mass of what makes things operate is mystifying sometimes. But obviously whatever it is we’ve been able to make that process work for this long so I’m not going to question it but I’m also not going to stop trying to improve upon it. And I think that’s the key of being around a little while.
You’re a bass player. I have a friend who plays bass that says that bass players never get the recognition they deserve. What turned you on to the bass and who were your influences?
I play the bass because when I was a kid no one in my neighborhood played the bass. And so I found it was real easy to get into a band and I just like playing it. As far as not getting recognition, I’m not really in this business, not really in this thing, for recognition. I’m in it cause I love doing it. So that never really bothered me so much. As far as influences I would just say I think I have influences but I just don’t think they were bass players (laughs).
Well who was it then that just knocked you over that made you want to be in a rock & roll band?
I like Bugs Bunny. I like Woody Woodpecker (laughs) And how old are you now? Yea, I’m going to be 46, isn’t that crazy … I really don’t have any bass playing influences or anything. Playing the bass is kind of something I do, like I’ve never been out to be a bad ass bass player or anything. I never really thought about it that way. Bass is just something that I play and its fun and I like doing it. But I’ve never been that guy who goes out and buys the magazines or learns the names of the notes or anything like that (laughs). Its true man, you know, we probably had five records out before I could tell you where the b was on my bass. I just know how to play it that’s all (laughs).
You seem like a fun guy. Do you ever think you’re going to lose that fun?
I like doing it. I like playing. I enjoy it. I like music. I like the business of music. I like the challenge of music. I like losing money at music (laughs). I like making money at music. It’s just fun for me.
You were in radio?
I’ve toyed with radio and stuff. I used to do a lot of radio DJing and stuff like that until it all kind of got took over by the corporate set. When I was doing radio there was a lot of like album rock and stuff so it was a lot of fun. I sort of lost a lot of my interest in that but now that I’m finding a lot of internet outlets and stuff like that I’m getting a little bit more intrigued with that kind of stuff. Like the DJ as rock star thing? It’s just kind of like this thing that’s going on now. Like it’s not that far off from when we were kids cause the DJs were rock stars … So I kind of get it. Even from that old school angle, like I got a lot of friends who have been in the business forever and they were in the business forever before we were in the business so they’re old now (laughs) and they talk about this DJ and they’re probably in their sixties and they talk about DJs and stuff and they’re like, “I don’t get this DJ as rock stars thing” and to me it makes perfect sense.
When I was a kid Danny Nevereath on WKBW Radio, he was as much of a rock star as Mick Jagger was to me, man. But it’s just that the world has changed a little bit and once again like I said at the beginning of this interview, the way people consume music has changed and that’s one of the changes. So you got to go with it or end up like Gregg Allman in a cloud of smoke trying to figure out what happened you know … Gregg Allman is amazing. Absolutely. I got nothing musically bad to say about Gregg Allman but I will have to say they definitely at some point they just stopped. And they kept being great in the same way. Like to me, there’s a whole vital world out there that I need to understand and in order to keep what we do relevant we need to experiment with that vital world and we need to understand it and I think that some people will say ok, know what, we’re ok here. We could have done that in 95 and you know what, we’d still be out playing gigs right now. But that’s not the way our brains work. We’re sort of wired in a different way. And I guess that’s the difference between the punk rock kids and the classic rock dudes.
Were you happy when the grunge era came about?
It made me realize that my band could actually get a record deal. Until then I thought our destiny was our band and then I saw Nirvana happening and I’m like WOW we can get a deal. That’s pretty much what I thought the first time I heard that.
Johnny once said that The Dolls were just kind of goofing off on the first couple of albums. What changed? Was it that desire to keep being different and experimenting?
Well we got to be a better band. He and I used to argue all the time when we were kids. He’d be like, “We can’t do that” and I’d be like, “Well, why can’t we do that? We can do anything we want”. We used to worry about … at the beginning John worried about it unbelievably, like “we can’t do this, we can’t do this”. And I would always feel like, “we can do anything we want”. And then it sort of like the tables started to turn a little bit and I was the one who started to worry about those eight thousand kids that still liked us. And he got it. And we started moving forward. And he started realizing that this little gang of people that became impassioned with what we were doing we could probably bring a lot of them along with us. We’ve lost some of them over the years, there’s no question about it, but we’ve gained so many and the ones who are growing up with us, and I’m not going to say are honest enough with themselves, but I would say the ones who happen to take that same path that we did are probably still enjoying us now.
Why did you guys leave Buffalo?
Well I live there now. I’ve been living there for the past three years. I’ve actually had a place there since 2002 actually, so for the past nine years I’ve had a place there. The band as a whole left early on because when we left it was in 95 and we needed to be where it was happening. We were a brand new band that was just getting big so when the “Tonight Show” called and said “can you guys be here in 15 minutes?” cause they had a band that cancelled we were there. We have our fourteenth appearance on the “Tonight Show” coming up, isn’t that crazy? Because we developed all those relationships, you know. Since then our manager doesn’t live in LA anymore. I don’t live in LA anymore. I think John is just about to a point where he doesn’t want to live in LA anymore. I don’t think it’s as important anymore to be there. The reason that I go to Buffalo though is because I just like it there. I really like it there a lot. I know a lot of people there that are really trying really hard to make the area function and I really respect that and I think that you can see things getting done there. You can put your hands on stuff and feel your efforts resonating in the community there and I really dig that. So I tend to try to do a lot of stuff within the community back home.
You have your own label. What can you tell us about it? And do you think you might find yourself more behind the scenes as time goes by?
I think as long as I can physically go and play rock music, I’d like to do that. But as far as Good Charamel goes, which is my label … we signed a band called Shonen Knife from Osaka, Japan, about four years ago. And we’ve done a bunch of tours with them here in the states and stuff and since then we just signed another four Japanese bands, girl bands. One of them is going to be over here called TsuShiMaMiRe and they’re going to be here in November. Shonen Knife will be here in September in the states touring. And another band called Molice will be here in September to play an anime convention in Atlanta. And another band called LAZYgunsBRISKY is coming over next February. They’ll all be over here in the states and as far as being behind the scenes of some enormous record label, perhaps not when we’re dealing with all Japanese girl bands (laughs) but I think that once again I’m in this because I really like to be in this. I really enjoy it.
