WITH THE RELEASE of Dizzy Up the Girl in 1998, Goo Goo Dolls completed the transition from indie favorites to mainstream rock monsters. They’d already experienced chart success with their previous album, 1995’s A Boy Named Goo, boosted by the unexpected success of “Name,” which saw them enter the singles chart for the first time, peaking at Number 5. But the success of Boy paled in comparison to Dizzy, which spawned four hits, including radio favorite “Iris.”
Singer/guitarist John Rzeznik remembers the change in the band’s status and is understandably unapologetic for the alienation of some of the band’s early fans.
“We’d got used to our underground cult status,” he says. “Once the record broke big, our hipster fan base basically said, ‘fuck you’ to us. [Laughs] We had to just think, whatever, you know? We were always grateful that we were able to get out to a much bigger audience. When you come up from the underground DIY punk scene, those people shit all over you if you dare to break out of that niche. We took a lot of shit for succeeding. We lost a few friends, but we made a lot more new ones.”