The Goo Goo Dolls got their start in on the small but active Buffalo, NY music scene in the mid '80s. Takac was in a punk band called the Monarchs with a cousin of Rzeznik's. Rzeznik was in a punk band called the Beaumonts. Chemistry ignited when the future band mates were introduced.
    Rzeznik was a self-described freak. Donning a Mohawk haircut that made him a target for bullies, the singer was
attending vocational school as an aspiring plumber. There was a dark emotional defect hidden inside Rzeznik that pipe wrenches would never have fixed, however.
    Born into a blue collar Polish family, his parents both died when he was only 15. Four older sisters helped raise him.
    Barely outta their teens, Takac and Rzeznik formed an angry punk band called Sex Maggot, with drummer George Tutuska. Their influences included the Replacements,
Dramarama, Buzzcocks and Rolling Stones, although Rzeznik once regrettably admitted that his favourite band growing up was Triumph.
    Impressed with Sex Maggot's performance at a local club, a promoter offered to start booking and managing them under any more acceptable name they could come up with. One night, while slightly under the influence, the boys looked through the pages of "True Detective" magazine and destiny looked back : it was an ad for something called a Goo Goo Doll.
    "It's a noisy, annoying little toy," says Takac. "They had them going back to when my grandmother was a kid. Believe me, if we could change our name, we probably would. But at this point..."
    "... we were drunk," said Rzeznik. "If we had 5 more
minutes, it might have been something else."
    Spending only $750 for studio time (about the price of 100 Goo Goo dolls) the group released its self-titled debut (Goo Goo Dolls/First Release) in 1987. The followup was Jed in 1989, released on Los Angeles indie Metal Blade Records.  The records tanked but, thanks to nonstop touring, the Goo Goo Dolls become a club attraction throughout the Midwest and South. The "Austin American-Statesman" newspaper even predicted the band "just might be to the '90s what R.E.M. and the Replacements were to the '80s..."
    In the beginning, Takac sang every song. "But little by
little, John started singing more and the commercial potential of everything started to look up," says Takac. "Not that we were necessarily driving for that, but it just sort of
happened."
    Hold Me Up followed in 1991, Superstar Carwash in 1993. Their latter album gave the group a regional hit in "We Are the Normal," which Rzeznik co-wrote with one of his idols, Replacement singer Paul Westerberg. But the band was still neither a platinum nor a national act, its albums selling in the area of 50,000~80,000 copies each.
    It took more than a decade together before the Goo Goos enjoyed their first real "Name" recognition. That
arrived via the 1995 hit "Name," from their fifth album, A Boy Named Goo ( a play on Johnny Cash's A Boy Named Sue.)
    "It probably took so long... because the climate at radio wasn't right. Back when we started, there was no hope even for a band like R.E.M. to get huge."
    Even with a hit, the band members were still earning a reported $6,000 in royalties each per year, requiring them to keep day jobs. "I don't remember how much money it was," sayz Takac, who worked as an overnight radio DJ in Buffalo. "That label signed us a long time ago, and shi* changes. Let's just say it wuz not a good relationship for one of the two  parties."
    The Goo Goos successfully sued to get outta that
contract; they now record exclusively for Metal Blade's
distributor, Warner Bros. Records. But the fustration tooks its toll on relationships within the band. Drummer George Tutuska received his walking papers in 1995. (He is now
playing with a Buffalo band called Hula).