Goo Goo Doll talks Wireless Festival

Goo Goo Dolls guitarist and lead singer John Reznik took time out from his schedule in the USA to have a quick chat with eFestivals about the band's forthcoming only English festival appearance at Wireless Festival on Sunday 6th July.

Hi John, Goo Goo Dolls are booked to play the Wireless festival have you got any impressions of the Wireless festival?
It's going to be amazingly fun, a lot of energy and a great crowd, there always is whenever we play in the UK.

you got any other festivals planned?
No, just that and then we're going off and doing dates on our own.

Describe to festival goers what seeing the Goo Goo Dolls live is like.
It's like a big rock show, really loud, we try to play as many songs as we can. It's fun everybody sings along, if you don't know the words you can sing along anyway.

You've got quite a back catalogue now, with over twenty years of making music, how do you select what you want to play live?
It's sort of like trying a mix of songs that people know and songs that are new. It's really important to do new material, try and stay current as we don't want to become an oldies band.

You have a new album out at the moment don't you?
Well, it's about a year old, we're actually working on the new record right now.

Will you play any of the new stuff at Wireless?
No, because when you get in front of a huge crowd and you play a song that they've never heard before that they stare at you, like, "What is this? Do I like this? Am I supposed to like this?"

How do UK festivals compare with USA ones?
I think it's more of a tradition there in the UK, I think people are more accustomed to it, roughing it in the weather, camping out and that. There's not a lot of festivals here in the United States, it's a different thing for sure.



Have you ever been to festivals as a punter?
No, when I'm in big crowds, I get really "'urgh' I got to get out of here!"

Who would you most like to see play a festival living or gone?
I actually got to see Muse, when we played a festival on the same bill with them, and that was the best rock show I've seen in my life.

If you could hold a festival in Buffalo, describe where you would hold it and who would you have from music history headline it?
There's a place called Dellaware Park it's a giant golf course you could put a hundred thousand people on there, but they won't let you do that because they love their golf course!

And who would you have headline your rock festival from any point in musical history.
I'd say the Rolling Stones around 1974 I think that would be pretty amazing.

What's the best gig you've seen?
It's a tie between the Muse show I saw last summer and The Cure I saw about 20 years ago, and they were incredible.

Who would you recommend new music wise to people to see?
There's a band here in the States called the Silver Sun Pick Ups, they're really, really good, and ... gosh I'm not really listening to a lot of new music, I love Kate Nash, I think she's amazing she's soooo angry. (laughs)

So what do you listen to?
Let's see I have my itunes here, I've been listening to Arcade Fire, The Arctic Monkeys, Basement Jaxx is in here, The Cocteau Twins, wow, Damien Rice, The Darkness, I love the Darkness, well the second record wasn't that good but the first record it was amazing, I thought, wow! I can't believe a band is actually doing this.

You do a lot of soundtrack work...
It's interesting doing soundtrack work because you have your subject matter infront of you and you can try to do a narrative of what's going or and put yourself into a character and try and write that way. You're trying to set the tone of the film, if you take the music out of certain scenes in films it completely loses its impact.

You've done quite a few soundtacks now what's the one you're most proud of?
Um, I think maybe the Transformers thing, because the song was good, the movie was kind of crap but the song was good. And obviously City Of Angels as that was what gave us a career in film.

You were one of the judges on 'American Idol'...
No, it was called 'The Next Great American band', but that's over. We tried to find some good bands and the guys that won were really amazing. I did it because I had some time off, I'd just got done touring and I was bored out of my mind I was like, "Oh my god what am I going to do with myself?" so they asked me to do it and I said yeah sure I do it. I think that will be the last time that I'll ever be on a reality TV show. It was hard because people come to you with their dreams and you want to be fair to them, it was difficult.

Do you think you'd have entered a reality show if the Goo Goo Dolls were starting out now?
To go on television? If I was struggling and trying to make it? I don't know, I don't think so. The music industry has changed so much, when we started out we made a record in a garage really cheap and then you got the van and you toured around playing clubs in front of nobody and hopefully the right person would see you. But it's not the like that anymore, the internet and downloading has changed things so much. People don't go out anymore here in the States, people don't go out to the local club and see a lot of music because everything is at home now and everything is the computer. It's sort of strange, people have these relationships, and they never meet each other, the whole things online.

Thanks John, anything else?
I just want to say thanks to all of our friends there, and hopefully we'll see you in Hyde Park and it's going to be a lot of fun.

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