Top 40 goes gaga for Goo Goo Dolls
By Elysa Gardner, Special for USA TODAY

The Goo Goo Dolls' lead singer and guitarist, Johnny Rzeznik, has a theory 
about his band's sleeper success. "I tell people that we've been writing hit 
songs for years," he says. "It's just that nobody ever heard them."

Guys in Dolls: Mike Malinin, Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac have left the 
fringes for fame as the band the Goo Goo Dolls.

Even the most casual pop-music fans grew familiar with the Goo Goo Dolls 
last summer, when Iris, their pining contribution to the City of Angels 
soundtrack, became one of the most inescapable Top 40 radio tracks in recent 
memory. More astute listeners will recall that the group also scored a No. 5 
pop single back in 1995 with the buoyant Name.

But few realize this guitar-pop group has been around for the better part of 
two decades, or that their most recent CD, 1998's Dizzy up the Girl - which 
has thus far sold more than 2 million copies and spawned their third Top 10 
tune, Slide - was actually their sixth studio album, not including City of 
Angels.

"It's kinda weird, all this interest in us now," muses Rzeznik, 33. "When 
our band first got started, college radio was the only outlet for music like 
ours. Now we get played on college radio, alternative and Top 40. I think a 
lot of bands ghettoize or isolate themselves, but I'm more concerned with 
writing a good song than I am with what genre it fits into."

Last week, the Goo Goo Dolls, whose other members are bassist Robby Takac, 
34, and drummer Mike Malinin, 31, kicked off a concert tour headlining two 
other bands that have successfully blended modern-rock textures with classic 
pop hooks, Sugar Ray and Fastball. "This is like a big payoff," Rzeznik says 
of the tour. "We traveled around in vans and played in front of nobody for a 
long time."

Actually, Rzeznik and his bandmates have cleared more trying hurdles on 
their long road to commercial glory. The group's first record deal, signed 
in 1985, fizzled within two years. A subsequent contract, with Warner Bros. 
subsidiary Metal Blade Records, led to a legal battle and yet another deal - 
with Warner Bros. proper - a decade later. By this time, band tensions had 
led to the
dismissal of original drummer George Tutuska, whom Malinin replaced in 1995.

"I guess things never seemed horrible," says Takac. "There were small
victories along the way that kept us going." The memory of their struggles, 
he adds, "will stop me from going out now and buying nine cars and a dozen 
Jet Skis, and then next year wondering where all my money went."

"They were really living on bread and mayonnaise for a while," says Timothy 
White, editor in chief of Billboard and an early champion. "Their music is 
the story of making mid-course adjustments in life. They're good, messy, 
melodic rock 'n' roll songs - it's not tidy stuff. There's a lot of pathos 
in the music."

For Rzeznik, the Goo Goo Dolls' trials followed an equally turbulent youth.  
In an article published in Teen People earlier this year, the singer 
documented his late father's alcoholism and the suffering it caused his 
family.

"I'm proud of my past, just like I'm proud of where I am now," says Rzeznik. 
"What I was trying to do was to say to kids, 'Look at me - I had this 
(expletive) existence, and I still did something with myself.' "

When a morning radio DJ recently mocked the article, chiding Rzeznik for 
"whining," the singer was predictably peeved. "I would like to take that guy 
outside and smack ... him," says Rzeznik, who
won't identify the DJ. "It wasn't Howard Stern - he's really cool to us." In 
fact, when Iris was nominated for three Grammys earlier this year, the 
singer quipped that he would offer the statuettes to Stern. "I'm just sorry 
we didn't win, 'cause I was really looking forward to giving it to him."

The Goo Goo Dolls are making a more soberly charitable gesture by asking 
their fans to bring nonperishable food items to their concerts, which the 
food-delivery organization USA Harvest will distribute to needy people in 
each community. The group also will be endorsing PAX Youth Petition, an 
anti-gun-violence organization, and distributing MTV's Fight for Your 
Rights: Take a Stand Against Violence, a CD of music and celebrity 
commentaries on reducing violence, plus an action guide, at each show.

"I would say we'll have a lot of teen-agers in our audience - probably a lot 
of teen-age girls, since Sugar Ray is on tour with us," says Rzeznik.

When it is suggested to him that the Goo Goo Dolls are hardly suffering from 
a dearth of female adolescent fans, the singer - whose shaggy-haired sex 
appeal led one critic to dub him "Johnny 'The Cute One' Rzeznik" - turns 
coy: "Reeallly? Well, I hope we have more of an effect on people than 'Oh, 
they're cute.' There were a lot of years where I was out playing and wasn't 
considered that.

"That's all just peripheral stuff anyway - it's flattering, but it's not 
important. Our music isn't about what we're wearing, or our dance moves. 
It's all about the songs."