No I Didn t See You Playing With Your Dolls Again
The story behind the song: Iris by Goo Goo Dolls
Johnny Rzeznik'southward life wasn't working out the way he'd planned it. The ring he fronted – the Goo Goo Dolls – looked to have peaked with their 1995 hit Proper noun. His confidence as a songwriter was in tatters. Worst of all, the collapse of his marriage had left him living out of a suitcase in a hotel in downtown LA.
"It was 1997 and I was feeling kinda schizophrenic," Rzeznik recalls. "My married woman and I had just broken up, and I'd met another girl who I was really into. I'd moved from my home in Buffalo, New York, and was living in this hotel. So it was a actually manic time in my life. I was looking for something to hold on to."
As always, Rzeznik chose music. On the forenoon of the day he wrote Iris, the vocaliser had attended an advance screening of Metropolis Of Angels – a film whose premise concerned an angel [played past Nicolas Cage] who surrenders his immortality to exist with the woman he loves [Meg Ryan]. Rzeznik hadn't peculiarly enjoyed the movie, but had his reasons for agreeing to contribute to the soundtrack.
"I didn't actually remember it was very skilful," he explains. "I just thought it was a sanitised version of [Wim Wenders'south 1987 film] Wings Of Desire. Only 1 of the reasons I wanted to do a song was considering the soundtrack had U2 and Peter Gabriel on it, and I wanted to be on the aforementioned piece of plastic equally them. It made me feel like I was hob-nobbing with musical royalty. I thought that someday I could show it to my kids – tell them their old human being was once on a record with Bono and Peter Gabriel."
Back in his hotel room, Rzeznik was amazed by how quickly his song took shape: "Most of the fourth dimension, for me, writing involves procrastination, fear, dubiety, criticism… About songs I write I take to torture myself; exist a prima donna for about an hr. Just Iris came so easy. I'd broken two strings on my guitar, so I'd started winding all the strings up and downwards in these weird configurations, and that song but came out. It was similar a gift – like: 'Oh, thanks God!'"
By the time Rzeznik had ironed out some of the "ugly chord sequences", he had a swooning future archetype on his easily. Just the name was required. "I'm horrible at naming songs," he says, "so information technology'due south the final thing I do. I was looking through a magazine called LA Weekly and saw that a great singer-songwriter called Iris Dement was playing in town. I was, like: 'Wow! What a beautiful proper name.'
Rzeznik recognised Iris every bit one of his greatest achievements to date, despite the championship lack of personal meaning. But it wasn't until he was recording information technology that he realised how far the song had taken the band from their punk roots.
"That was the first fourth dimension nosotros'd ever been in the studio with strings," he recalls. "I recall kneeling in front of the control room window, looking out at this 15-piece string ensemble, and then looking at Robby [Takac, bassist] and saying: 'I really retrieve we're turning a corner here, and I don't know if I want to'.
"But information technology's part of your personal development," he continues. "When I was xviii I played three power chords and wanted to be Paul Westerberg. But as you abound upward you alter, you want different things, and your art has to stay in step with where you are emotionally. And so I guess Iris is partly the audio of me growing up."
It was undoubtedly Rzeznik's ballad that pushed the City Of Angels soundtrack to the top of the US chart in June 1998 and bolstered the band'south own Dizzy Up The Girl album, while the song itself began a five-week run at No.nine in the US. Commercially, the Goo Goo Dolls had arrived.
"It didn't change u.s.a.," Rzeznik says, "but people around us changed. We started getting more than attention, made a chip of money… and information technology was actually actually, actually uncomfortable. It never fabricated me wish I hadn't written information technology, because now I'll be able to send my kids to college, but obviously there are by-products of that kind of success that you take to avoid. The number of choices you have grows exponentially, like, I can have this, I can have that, I can date her, I tin snort this – and I tin can beget information technology'."
Ultimately Rzeznik chose to cover his masterpiece and is meaning. In 2007 it remains the centrepiece of the Goo Goo Dolls' set-list, the ultimate alt.rock ballad and the singer'southward best chance of immortality.
"I'1000 proud of it," he admits. "Because it gave me some confidence in myself at a time when that was lacking. Every nighttime when nosotros play it and I put the mic out to the audience and everybody sings it, that's an amazing feeling. It'southward, like, at least one of the songs I've written will exist remembered."
Source: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-the-song-iris-by-goo-goo-dolls
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