Nothing lasts forever, except maybe the Goo Goo Dolls

If you’re a fan of the band the Goo Goo Dolls, a couple song titles on their latest EP Summer Anthem, dropping August 22, might worry you.

Tracks with names such as “Nothing Lasts Forever” and “Not Goodbye (Close My Eyes)” can’t help but conjure up concerns that one of the most prolific alternative rock bands in the last 40 years might be thinking about retiring.

Indeed, after a long career that includes 14 studio albums, nearly 40 singles (“Iris” being, arguably, one of most iconic love song/rock ballads in all of music), multiple Grammy nominations and nearly a dozen platinum and gold singles combined — what else is there for them to do?

In a recent interview with Morning Edition, band frontman John Rzeznik assured his fans that “Nothing Lasts Forever” is not his retirement song.

“I wish it was, but it was just more about the transient nature of our relationships and life,” Rzeznik told NPR’s A Martinez. “It’s like life just seems to be moving so much quicker than it was when I was 30 or 40.”

Growing older, finding focus

Rzeznik, a native of Buffalo, N.Y., who started the Goo Goo Dolls with fellow Buffalonian and long-time friend Robbie Takac in 1986, turns 60 in December — though you’d hardly know it.

Rzeznik continues to tour, putting on high-energy, resonating performances. He keeps in shape with lots of exercise, and has maintained his distinctive gravely and breathy, yet soft and soulful, voice through lessons with renowned vocal coach Eric Vetro. And he leaves his dirty blonde hair long — allowing it to fall across his blue eyes in the same way it did in the images of Rzeznik taped to bedroom walls and glued inside the Trapper Keepers of countless teenage girls in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Still, Rzeznik says he feels the clock ticking.

At this age he’s already outlived both of his parents. Rzeznik’s father, Joseph, died at age 53 of pneumonia in the hospital after suffering a heart attack and his mother, Edith, died at 51 from a heart attack. Rzeznik,who found himself parentless as a teenager, has previously discussed his father’s alcoholism, describing Joseph once as a “pretty serious drinker.”

Growing older than both his parents freaks Rzeznik out, he said. “And until I got myself cleaned up and got sober [in 2014], I was living as though that’s how I’m going to die – I’m just going to drink myself to death because that seemed to be a family tradition.”

Rzeznik said getting older is helping him focus on things like his family, particularly his 8-year-old daughter, Liliana. It’s also made him realize that he better find something relevant to say that his audience can relate to.

Time to evolve

At this stage in his career, Rzeznik says he has the creative freedom to just play for himself and his fans, as if he’s not even in the music business anymore.

“We’re a legacy band in a lot of ways, even though we’re releasing new material,” Rzeznik explained. “And it feels like I’m releasing material for myself and for my audience … I’m not trying to have big hit songs on the radio or whatever because of streaming and everything else.”

Rzeznik acknowledges that it’s a privilege to feel that way and that he is thankful to have been given years to evolve as a writer and a musician, pointing out that the band’s first big hit “Name” didn’t come until 1995, when the group was almost a decade old.

Younger artists today aren’t given that much time and resources to develop their own identities like he was, Rzeznik said. “They have to hit immediately or they’re just discarded.”

The Goo Goo Dolls, however, will seemingly never be discarded, especially if their sold-out 29-date Summer Anthem tour this summer is any indication. But Rzeznik says even though he’s been at the same company for almost 40 years, there’s more to do — like, actually learn to play the guitar.

Known for using a different guitar for every song during a performance, Rzeznik said he does it out of necessity.

“I don’t know all the chords,” he explained. “Like, you could say to me, can you play a D9 or whatever … I cannot, I don’t understand what you’re talking about.”

And while he could learn how to play “the right way,” Rzeznik is happy with the way he sounds and says he still digs just feeling around in the dark and experimenting when making music.

“I still try to find some kind of sound that maybe I haven’t done before … I’ll find something,” he said.

The broadcast version of this story was produced by Barry Gordemer and edited by Ashley Westerman.