In a recent chat on Kenny Aronoff’s ‘The Kenny Aronoff Sessions’ podcast, John Rzeznik revealed the thing about The Goo Goo Dolls that still bothered him.
The Goo Goo Dolls members picked the band’s name shortly before a concert in their early career, when their first choice, The Sex Maggots, got a firm no from the venue. Rzeznik regretted not giving more thought to the name, as he said:
“I still hate the name of our band now. I wish we would’ve had 10 more minutes to find a cooler name. We had a gig, and we had no name.”
The Inspiration Behind Name Choice
The band was inspired by a True Detective magazine ad for the ‘Goo Goo Dolls’ name. Meanwhile, their original pick was suggested as a joke by Takac, as the singer recalled:
“It was like a joke, and then it kind of, like, caught on. We made a record and we sold like 400 copies. And then Robby’s like, ‘We got a fan base. They’re not going to know who we are.’ I’m like, ‘It’s 400 people. They’ll get over it.'”
Moving On With ‘The Goo Goo Dolls’
The Goo Goo Dolls released 13 albums and sold over 15 million copies with this banner by 2023. As their fanbase started to grow in the ’90s, their name stuck, which the band’s vocalist mentioned before a 2011 show at Sacred Heart University:
“[Goo Goo Dolls] doesn’t really mean anything … The first name was bad, so we moved on to another bad name, got 15,000 fans, and were afraid to change it … At the time, we thought [the name] was just really inappropriate for what we were doing in that post-punk era that we were sort of wallowing around in.”
Latest Work Under The Long-Time Brand
The latest Goo Goo Dolls album, ‘Chaos In Blooms,’ dropped last year and was co-produced by Rzeznik. To support it, the band hit the road for a North American tour in spring and summer 2023.
This year, they released two songs. The Christmas song, ‘Who’s Gonna Hear Their Wish?,’ recently came out while ‘Run All Night’ hit the shelves shortly before the tour.
