"When we started," says bassist Robbie Takac, "what we used to do was just take pieces of paper and write chords on them in the dressing room. We’d go out, and I’d just scream over them. That was enough to get some beer and a ride home from a chickie."

The Goo Goo Dolls formed in Buffalo, New York in 1985 when punk rock was enjoying a new renaissance, as embodied by bands like Hüsker Dü and The Replacements. Although this new movement should’ve helped the Goo Goo Dolls’ early popularity, it hindered it instead. The music press dismissed the band as a cheap imitation of The Replacements and branded singer Johnny Rzeznik as a Paul Westerberg understudy.

Meanwhile, the band themselves were happy just being able to play, tour, and eat. It may have taken them more than 10 years to become rock stars, but success—to them—came much sooner. Takac felt like the band "made it" the first time they went on a national tour. He remembers: "We’d just get in the van and throw a mattress in there, because we couldn’t afford a hotel, and we’d leave for a couple of months, and go out and try to collect our $50 to get home again," he laughs. "But when did I feel successful? When I was standing in California, where I had never been in my life, on the beach, going ‘Oh man, I better get back to the club—I’ve got a gig tonight!’ I can just remember looking out and seeing kids who lived 4000 miles away from me singing songs we wrote. And I was like, ‘Okay man, this is great!’"

Of course, during those days he had no money in his pocket and the audiences were half empty nightclubs. That all changed in 1995 when the song "Name" became an unexpected smash single, and the Goo Goo Dolls were thrust onto the charts. Mainstream success was finalized in 1998 when the band released the song "Iris" as part of the City Of Angels movie soundtrack. "Iris" became a number one hit, staying at the top for an amazing 18 weeks, and remaining on the Billboard charts for nearly a year. The album, Dizzy Up The Girl, sold triple platinum and catapulted the band further into the commercial stratosphere.

But with success came growing pains, disgruntled fans, and pressure to capitalize with a follow-up album. Suddenly the Goo Goo Dolls were everywhere, even making a cameo on Fox’s "Beverly Hills 90210," and their pictures were all over teen magazines. Dizzy Up The Girl sounded a lot more polished and slick than the band’s earlier efforts, and naturally, although the band was now a commercial success, some early fans were turned off.

"You hope your fans are going to stick with you," says Takac. After contemplating it, though, he concedes: "You’re always going to piss somebody off. When we put out our second record, there were kids stomping around Buffalo, pissed off at us because we ‘sold-out’…If you’re at all brave about what you do, you’re unfortunately going to lose people along the way."

Fans of the band’s edgier sound will be relieved to hear that Gutterflower, the Dolls’ newest release, is every bit as biting as their earlier material. "We learned a big lesson after Dizzy Up The Girl," explains Takac. "We went in and recorded an album, and the album that you hear is not the album that we recorded." On Dizzy, the band lost control to the producer. On Gutterflower, the band saw the entire creative process through to the end-product.

"We’ve got to make sure first and foremost that we made the right record, we have the right songs, and we’ve got to make sure that we’re making a move," explains Takac. "But the thing that we try really hard to do is to not jolt people too hard when we’re making those moves. I have 16 years worth of reviews saying that we just made the last record again. As you can hear, that’s not true."

Now that Gutterflower is on shelves, and the band is on a summer tour, you’d think Takac would be able to sit back and relax. That’s definitely not the case. As he discovered, after years of hard work to become successful, once you make it, you have to work even harder to stay there.

"Holy cow, dude," says Takac, looking at his schedule for the next 48 hours. Right now, he’s on the phone from his hotel room in Boston, where he just checked in. Last night was a show in his hometown of Buffalo, NY. Tonight, the show is in Boston. "Directly after the gig, we hop on a chartered plane to New York, to do the Regis Philbin show in the morning, and then fly back here to Boston to do a five-song acoustic set at a hotel. Then we fly to Hartford to do a show there tomorrow night." He takes a breath and then adds, "Just insanity, isn’t it?"

The Goo Goo Dolls will showcase tunes from the new album, as well as hits from their entire career, when they headline Hersheypark Star Pavilion on August 25. Vanessa Carlton and Third Eye Blind will also perform.