The Goo Goo Dolls are packing in the performances this New Year’s Eve. They’re managing to squeeze in a live appearance on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve before heading down to Atlantic City, New Jersey, to play the Hard Rock. The performance in Times Square will air on ABC at 8 p.m. ET. Meanwhile, their show at the Hard Rock starts at 10 p.m., so here’s hoping traffic on the Garden State Parkway isn’t too bad.
This New Year’s Eve is special for the indie duo for more reasons than just ringing in the 40-year anniversary of the band’s 1986 formation. It’s also been 30 years since the first time the Goo Goo Dolls appeared on Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve. Ryan Seacrest hosts the special now, but back then, Dick Clark was still at the helm.
Let’s rewind about 20 years, though, to July 4th, 2004. The Goo Goo Dolls filmed their Live in Buffalo concert album in their hometown, which produced some of the best renditions of their biggest hits. But the concert almost didn’t happen due to torrential amounts of rain. Once the storm stopped, the Goo Goo Dolls took the stage, but the downpour quickly started up again.
The Goo Goo Dolls’ Iconic 2004 Hometown Show Was Almost a Disaster
Speaking with the Zach Sang Show podcast in May 2025, frontman Johnny Rzeznik and bassist Robby Takac reflected on the 2004 show in Buffalo. They were initially asked about the “Iris” performance, which quickly became a fan favorite as they performed the stripped-back rendition in the pouring rain. But instead of focusing on the performance itself, lauding their feat, Rzeznik turned the conversation to Buffalo infrastructure. However, there was an important point to it.
When asked what they remembered from that night, Rzeznik recalled, “There were manhole covers blowing up at the end of the night.”
Takac added, “There was so much rain, it was tearing wires…and sewer covers, and the gas was exploding. Manholes were flipping about 10 feet in the air. It was crazy.” Rzeznik agreed, “It was a crazy night, man,” before launching into a description of the Buffalo sewer system.
“Okay, this is really inside baseball plumbing,” he began, prefacing the niche hometown knowledge he was about to drop. “But Buffalo is a very old city, and they have something that’s called a combination sewer. Which means not only does it carry the wastewater, but it also carries the s*** out.”
“So you have all this methane inside these sewer pipes,” he continued. As for the torrential show they played in 2004, Rzeznik explained, “So much water filled up the sewer that it concentrated the methane gas at the top, where there was air, so it was mostly methane. And there was a spark inside, because they also run electrical wires through these sewer pipes.”
Johnny Rzeznik, Local Buffalo Sewer Expert, Shares Details of Explosive 2004 Live Show
“There was a spark,” Rzeznik continued, “and it ignited all the methane. And boom, boom, boom, all these sewer manhole covers flying in the air, and you’re like, ‘What the hell is that?’ It was insane, it was like a Kiss concert.”
Robby Takac then explained that “The water was up around people’s knees in front of the stage” because of the rain. Rzeznik added, “And that was above ground.”
He continued, “But nobody got electrocuted that we know of, oddly enough. And we’re just standing up there, and we’re like, ‘Oh my God, it’s just like these massive tangles of wire to run the lights and the PA.’ We’re just like, ‘Could 50,000 people really get electrocuted all at once?’”
The Goo Goo Dolls ended up pausing the show to assess the risk that the entire crowd could be electrocuted simultaneously, obviously wanting to avoid that. Rzeznik explained that they had to run to the library to research this, because “There’s no Google.” (There was, in fact, Google in 2004, but not in the “computer in our pocket” way of today).
“You ask someone who ‘allegedly’ knows, and you go, ‘Fine, I have plausible deniability, let’s go,’” Rzeznik continued.
“Luckily, there wasn’t any lightning,” Takac added. “That was an unbelievable rainstorm, but if there was any lightning, they would have made us stop.”
The Goo Goo Dolls Joked They Would Have Been Kicked Out of Buffalo if they didn’t finish the Show
The duo recalled two more things about the show that stuck with them in vivid detail. First, Rzeznik said there weren’t enough toilets at the venue, which was actually Niagara Square in downtown Buffalo. He recalled having to beg for money the day before in order to get more toilets. They even played a last-minute show that day to raise money.
Apparently, the city claimed extra toilets were “too expensive.” Second, they hired a company to shoot the DVD in super-sharp HD in the early days of high-definition video. Unfortunately, the rain broke every single HD camera, so low-quality VHS footage was edited in.
“The quality really decays as it goes on,” said Takac, “But it worked.” In the end, the Goo Goo Dolls got their live album. For more than two decades now, fans have relived the incredible, rain-drenched, explosive performance.
Photo by Marc Andrew Deley/FilmMagic
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