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Victoria-bound Goo Goo Dolls turn survival into an art

Goo Goo Dolls When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. Where: Royal Theatre Tickets: $50.25 (plus service charges) at rmts.bc.ca, 250-386-6121 or the Royal McPherson box office When you’re at the centre of a serious storm, it’s hard to know which way is up.
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Robby Takac, left, and Johnny Rzeznik bring the Goo Goo Dolls to Victoria on Wednesday.

Goo Goo Dolls

When: Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Royal Theatre

Tickets: $50.25 (plus service charges) at rmts.bc.ca, 250-386-6121 or the Royal McPherson box office


When you’re at the centre of a serious storm, it’s hard to know which way is up. A decade and a half later, Goo Goo Dolls bassist Robby Takac can still recall the feeling when the band he co-founded in his early 20s took off big-time in his early 30s.

The rocket ride didn’t stop until the fuel for its engine — the power ballad, Name — firmly established the group as one of the hottest rock acts of 1996.

The song made them popular in such a hurry, neither Takac nor singer-guitarist Johnny Rzeznik had time to think about its success. “The only thing you’re thinking about is what you’re doing that minute,” Takac said recently from Los Angeles.

“You’re barely holding on at that point. The big picture is something that you turn around later and look at and go, ‘My God, check that out. That’s crazy.’ ”

Name became one of the most-played songs on radio the year it was released, taking the two close friends and their band, once an underground punk act from Buffalo, from obscurity to stardom in what seemed like a flash.

The reality told a much different story. The band did everything it could to make it to the top, spending a hard, long decade in the trenches, fighting addiction, depression and industry ambivalence along the way.

The Goo Goo Dolls didn’t have much time to stop and take in the view once Name hit. Staying on top proved more difficult than anyone in the group could have imagined.

The ups and downs began soon after 1995’s A Boy Named Goo, the band’s breakout fifth album, ran its natural course. At the time they were to begin writing and recording their next album, Rzeznik encountered writer’s block.

Making matters worse, the band’s record label at the time, Metal Blade, sent a bill to the band claiming it was owed more than $100,000 for services rendered.

With little in the way of money to settle the dispute, the band toyed with the idea of quitting altogether.

But when Takac and Rzeznik sat down to discuss future matters, the lifelong friends knew the only option was to fight for survival. They went on tour, which ultimately raised enough money to settle the dispute out of court.

After the dispute, the Goo Goo Dolls went on to record Iris, the biggest hit of their career if not the rock-radio era as a whole. And that’s where the story of the band, as it exists today, begins.

Just when everyone though they were done, Iris spent a record-breaking four months at No. 1 and earned three Grammy nominations in 1998.

That warrior mentality has been a part of the Goo Goo Dolls’ fabric ever since, Takac said. “We just do what we need to do to make this next thing happen, musically and otherwise. We’ve been pretty lucky to be able to make everything match up. We have a willingness to do that.”

The group is coming to Victoria on Wednesday in support of Magnetic, which hit stores over the summer. The band’s 10th album sticks with the sound of A Boy Named Goo, Dizzy Up the Girl and Gutterflower, the most successful Goo Goo Dolls outings to date. It’s a winning formula, no doubt. Magnetic debuted at No. 8 on the U.S sales charts in June, the fourth consecutive album by the band to debut in the Top 10.

The band was dealt another blow in December when longtime drummer Mike Malinin, who had been with the group since 1994, announced his departure. With their Canadian tour already booked, cancelling wasn’t an option, so Takac and Rzeznik recruited Lifehouse drummer Rick Woolstenhulme Jr. to fill the position.

Hurdles have become a common occurrence for Takac and Rzeznik, who have weathered plenty of personal and professional conflict during the life of the group.

In the early years, Takac was the outgoing frontman, leading the group to prominence in the Buffalo punk scene.

The emergence of Rzeznik as a singer and songwriter altered the focus and sound of the group considerably, creating an old vs. new argument among fans that remains to this day. The shift in sound was considerable — Iris and Name are both sensitive ballads — but Takac said the angry tone of early fans has subsided in recent years.

“There is always going to be some dude in suspenders and Doc Martens running around Buffalo just pissed at us right now,” he said with a laugh.

“But there has always been a desire in this band to try and do something different. I don’t think from record to record you can hear it that much. The jump from album to album has never been unreasonable. But if you listen to the first record and you listen to the last record, you’re like, ‘How the hell did we get here?’ To me, that’s an intriguing part of this whole story.”

The band’s wild rust-belt roots remain a thing of legend nearly 30 years later. “We weren’t welcome in most places after we did a couple of shows there,” Takac said with a laugh, recalling a tour that brought them and Gang Green to Victoria in the late 1980s for a show at the former Harpo’s Cabaret.

The physically demanding nature of those early Goo Goo Dolls performances — which ran on a combination of drugs, alcohol and reckless abandon — are no longer part of the band’s concerts, but that era left a lasting impact nonetheless Takac said.

There is an outsider mentality to the band that will never evaporate, no matter how popular or successful it becomes, he added.

“Spending the first 10, 12 years of this band driving around in a van, trying to figure out how to make this happen, it made us look at things in a different way.”

mdevlin@timescolonist.com