My previous Goo Goo Dolls stories are here. And here.
By the next time I saw them, Hold Me Up had actually been released! I first heard it over the phone. Probably cost me $15 to hear (when I was living on $5 a day), but I had to hear it even if it did cost me 3 days of my budget! A friend of the band, Marcel, had an advanced tape of the album and when I called him, he would play some of it for me. Only I wanted to hear more! And more! He eventually played the whole album for me over the phone. And phone calls were NOT cheap back then. Love that album and to this day, it’s easily one of my top 10 all time albums ever recorded.
So the Goo Goo Dolls were coming around again, so I was going to see them as much as I could. I had just graduated college. I still had no money, but I actually had gotten a job up in Los Angeles, and with that, I was able to buy a car. A red Mitsubishi Mirage. These shows were all happening before I moved to LA for the new job, so I drove my new car up there from San Diego for the shows.
First up was an afternoon show at Cal State Fullerton. 5/15/91. Yep, an afternoon show at the quad there. It’s listed on A Site Named Goo as Becker Amphitheater, but it was really just the campus quad. A whopping 14 people there. I counted. My friend Duke was there and he can verify. Johnny mentioned me onstage twice. Once before playing “Two Days In February” saying that this was about a girl “Ted knows her!” and another time that I can’t remember the context offhand. They closed the set with Robbie singing a cover of Prince’s “Never Take The Place Of Your Man” and at the end when they pause before singing “MAAA-AAA-AAN”, Robbie was looking at me nodding “Get up here!” to sing it. I didn’t get it and/or I was way too shy to do something like that. So Duke ran up and did the duty. After the show, the band took me to the “backstage” room (which was just in a hall somewhere on campus) and fed me pizza. Robbie showed me how you can put Doritos on top of the pizza to make it extra cheesy and crunchy.
The next night, it was a show at Bogarts in Long Beach. Another totally rocking set. I couldn’t believe they played these places with no shoes on. During the encore, which I believe was “Tobacco Road”, Robbie had jumped over everyone’s head in the front row and into the pit to sing and dance along with the audience.
Lance Diamond wasn’t there for the Bogarts or Cal State Fullerton shows, but he was at the next show, which was Club Lingerie in Los Angeles. 5/17/91. I took the band and Lance in my red car to Barney’s Beanery for dinner before the show. Place was packed, but we somehow got in with minimal waiting. Pure luck, as 1) they weren’t famous yet, and 2) everyone in LA is famous or somebody, so even if they were famous, they wouldn’t have had any favoritism anyway. After that, it was the sold out show at Club Lingerie. The Doughboys and the Junk Monkeys opened up for them at Bogarts, this show, and the next one. And what a show! Classic fun punk rock Goo Goo Dolls show. With Lance Diamond (once again paying his own way to come across the country to help out the Goo) coming up onstage for a couple songs at the end. One funny moment was when Robbie just screamed out in the middle of a song “Holy shit! My landlord’s here!” And she was! After the song I think there was a joke about the landlord coming all this way to collect some rent from them. This show exists on video. Someone from Warner Bros paid Club Lingerie to record it. However, it hasn’t been leaked yet, unfortunately. Hopefully it’s not just sitting in a closet forgotten about.
The next day, May 18 1991, was San Diego. The Bacchanal. I slept on a friend’s couch up in LA after the Club Lingerie show. The band had called me that morning. Their van broke down and they needed me to drive them to San Diego for the next show. Our friend Joanna was going to drive Johnny, but could I drive George, Robbie, and Lance down? HELLS YES! So I did. Ride was uneventful, but they were all smoking and using matches from Robbie’s matchbook, which he handmade for his “solo tour”, The Robby Takac Band.
Soundcheck. Then dinner at some Mexican restaurant down the street. I remember Johnny saying that if he ever had money, he would “do whatever he wanted to do”. Like if he wanted to go skydiving, he would go skydiving. Whatever he wanted. Since they broke to the big time, I wonder if he’s even had time to do anything like that. I kind of doubt it. The show itself was great, though pretty sparsely attended. Club may have been about 40% full, if that. The big thrill for the band was that Milo from the Descendents was going to be there and show up he did. We knew each other from going to UCSD and I urged him to check out the Goo Goo Dolls. The Goo was thrilled to meet him, as his band the Descendents was doing what the Goo were doing years before them and were quite an influence.
Here’s some pictures Joanna took at the show:
EDIT: And even MORE pictures I was able to uncover. HERE!
After the show, we did the San Diego thing and went to a Robertos for some rolled tacos. Johnny was asked if he wanted quacamole on his. He didn’t know what that was. So I explained it was mashed up avocado. Then I had to explain what avocado was. Yeah, you may be laughing reading this, but coming from Upstate New York myself, I had no idea what guacamole/avocado was when I first moved here either. These things weren’t known in Upstate at that time. Then Johnny had no money to pay for it, so I gave him $1.25 to cover the cost of the tacos (no guacamole). Johnny had a girlfriend back in NY and missed her, so he was on the phone with her after that for like an hour (she eventually became his first wife) after this.
Metal Blade/Warner Bros had these promo postcard fold out things with a picture of the band with Lance Diamond performing live on them. The band really wanted to and had plans to do a full length album with Lance singing. I had them all sign it. Lance signed it “Thanks for the ride in the ‘red’ car” (which was the joke because when he asked me what kind car I had when I saw him at Club Lingerie, I just said “oh, it’s a red car”). When I got to Johnny, he was all pissed off about not being with his girlfriend, and he doesn’t like doing autographs (still doesn’t), so he goes “You want an autograph? Here’s your autograph! BLOW ME!”, which had me rolling up in stitches.
I also was pursuing this girl Karen for awhile and was hoping that I could get them to endorse me so I could get her to at least go out on a date with me. So I had them sign another card for her telling her what a great guy I was. It didn’t work.
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