Goo Goo Dolls
March 2002

The Goo Goo Dolls will release their sixth studio album "Gutterflower" on April 9th, and they’re in the radio.wazee spotlight with the first single from that forthcoming Warner Bros. release, "Here Is Gone."

The Goo Goo Dolls formed in Buffalo (my home town!, ed.), New York in 1986, with a line-up of bass player and vocalist Robby Takac, guitarist and vocalist Johnny Rzeznik and drummer George Tutuska. A continuous round of touring eventually brought them to paying gigs in New York City and Canada, though not always under the cushiest conditions. "We'd go out on tour in a rented or borrowed van, and if we couldn't afford a motel, the van was where we'd eat and sleep," recalls Takac. "We depended on the kindness of fans who would offer us their apartments to take showers."

The band's first two albums were compared to Cheap Trick and theReplacements. Their commercial breakthrough came with 1995's hit single "Name" from the album "A Boy Named Goo," which was produced by Pere Ubu, Hüsker Dü and Sugar accomplice Lou Giordano. In 1997, Tutuska departed, replaced by new drummer Mike Malinin, but rather than spelling disaster for the band, things took off for the Goo Goo Dolls. In November, "Name" reached No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, and the video was added to heavy rotation lists on MTV and VH-1. "The album was out for almost eight months before 'Name' took off," says Rzeznik. "We were just about to give it all up and go back to our day jobs." After ten years together and almost a year after the release of "A Boy Named Goo," the band was propelled to "overnight success," with sales eventually reaching over three million copies.

Similarly, the song "Iris" became a huge radio hit after featuring on the soundtrack of the Nicolas Cage/Meg Ryan movie "City Of Angels." On the back of that single, the new album "Dizzy Up The Girl" climbed to number 15 on the Billboard 200 album chart in October 1998, and the single "Slide" hit the U.S. Top 10 the following January.

"Gutterflower" was produced by Rob Cavallo ("A Boy Named Goo," "Dizzy Up the Girl") and recorded in the summer and fall of 2001 in Los Angeles. It is the Goo Goo Dolls’ first new studio album since 1998’s "Dizzy Up the Girl," but to tie fans over, the group released the compilation album "What I Learned About Ego, Opinion, Art and Commerce" in May 2001. As for that album's unconventional title, Rzeznik explains, "After doing this for fifteen years, you learn what the music business is composed of. It's unfortunate that 'art' seems to be the least important of the four words."

A world tour is expected after the release of "Gutterflower," and fans can also hear Rzeznik performing Pink Floyd’s "Wish You Were Here" with Limp Bizkit on the "America: A Tribute to Heroes" compilation CD, and the whole band is featured on the "Concert for New York City" album.