Goo Goo Dolls’ Johnny Rzeznik admits he got lucky with “Iris,” the group’s contribution to the 1998 film City of Angels, starring Nicolas Cage and Meg Ryan. With more than three billion streams on Spotify, the song remains the alt-rockers’ biggest hit.
In a video for Genius, Rzeznik, the group’s guitarist, singer and songwriter, explains how he was asked to write a song for the film, about an angel named Seth who gives up immortality for the chance to meet the woman of his dreams. The result was “Iris,” which became the soundtrack album’s breakaway hit among contributions by established artists like U2 and Alanis Morissette.
“I can’t underestimate a bit of luck,” Rzeznik says, underscoring how accidental the song’s success felt at the time.
“When I meet people and they say, ‘Let me tell you my story about that song,’ it still moves me.”
After talking through the song’s lyrics to explain how he gave voice to Seth’s desire to become human, Rzeznik reveals the part of the song he likes best: the guitar solo.
Unfortunately, he didn’t play it.
“My favorite part of the song is the slide guitar solo,” he says over the video’s credits. “Which I wanted to play!
“We were lucky enough to work with a guy named Tim Pierce. When I did it, it sounded like a bunch of cats fighting, and when he did it, it was just this gorgeous, lush thing, you know?”
Pierce — the session guitarist behind hits like Bon Jovi’s “Runaway” and Michael Jackson’s “Black or White” — previously revealed to Guitar Player that he was actually hired to play mandolin on the track after the Goo Goo Dolls had been unable to get Dean Parks, the session guitarist best known for his work with Steely Dan. Pierce took the gig but decided to bring his entire guitar rig, hoping he’d get a chance to play something more on the record.
“Now, in my mind, I thought, This is a rock band. I’m not going to show up carrying a tiny mandolin case. I’m going to bring my rig and try to do some electric guitar. I called cartage and had them bring all my electric guitars and gear to the studio.”
I thought, ‘This is a rock band. I’m not going to show up carrying a tiny mandolin case. I’m going to bring my rig.”
— Tim Pierce
His move paid off.
“I did three mandolin passes, which everybody liked. I went into the control room, and Rob Cavallo, the producer, looked at my gear and said, ‘We’ve got this other section — wanna try your hand at a solo?’ I said, ‘Sure.’ My secret plan was working.
“I had my Les Paul, a [Crowther] Hot Cake boost and a Matchless amp. I thought, They’re not going to want typical guitar player licks, so I picked up a slide and played a very simple but melodic solo, all in one take. Rob is a great guitar player himself, so we worked on the ending a little bit, those last two bars; he helped me find a simple thing to do at the end.
“I found out later that the band was annoyed at me for bringing all my gear, but Rob was open-minded and said, ‘Let him play something on electric, and we’ll see what happens.’ And it started a love affair between me and the guys in the Goo Goo Dolls that's never ended.
“‘Iris’ is the biggest song I've ever played on. In some ways, it might be one of the best songs I've ever played on.”
As Rzeznik previously told Guitar Player, “Iris” earned the group some backlash from its hardcore fans, but the end result was a net gain.
“We took some serious abuse from a chunk of our original fanbase,” he recalled, “but we made a lot more new fans”
And they continue to. More than 25 years after its release, “Iris” topped the Billboard charts again in 2025 after it went viral on TikTok and Instagram.
