George Tutuska - Musical Career

Musical Career

He played drums from 1985 to 1995, and parted from the band only a few months before the release of their breakthrough album, A Boy Named Goo due to disputes with long-time friend and singer/guitarist John Rzeznik. In late 1994, he broke up with the band because of a non-payment dispute for his contribution to the writing of "Fallin' Down." He has subsequently received royalty checks for songs he co-wrote and recorded with the band.

"I have no resentment toward continued success," says Tutuska from his Buffalo home. "The only thing that bothers me to this very day is I never got my due as a songwriter and most people think, 'So what, they fired the drummer; it's just the drummer.' If I could give people a list of songs I wrote, I think it would shock them."

Following the completion of the Goos' A Boy Named Goo (1995), Tutuska was fired from the band by frontman Johnny Rzeznik. Tutuska said he'd previously told band management he wouldn't tour behind the album unless Rzeznik agreed to split royalties evenly among the three members, a practice Tutuska claims the band had engaged in since the release of their 1987 self-titled debut. During pre-production for Goo, Tutuska had been rattled to the core by news that Rzeznik purportedly was hoarding royalties for the Superstar Car Wash single "Fallin' Down."

I said, "John, I'm kinda interested. I talk to friends all over the country and everyone tells me they hear on the radio," and I said, "John, I haven't gotten one check for that." And he said, "I got a confession to make. I've been getting checks for the last two years on this song." And obviously, at that point, the shit hit the fan.

Tutuska was fired from the band just shy of A Boy Named Goo's release and replaced by Mike Malinin. The album, on the strength of the hit single "Name," was a runaway success and has since sold one-and-a-half million copies in the U.S. alone. Though Tutuska still receives royalty checks from that album and the previous four albums, he still feels shortchanged by the perception he was merely a third wheel among the trio. "Up until A Boy Named Goo I had written probably well over half the lyrics and I collaborated on music, but we split everything," Tutuska claims. A lot of the songs that had gotten airplay I'd written the lion's share of, but I had taken my third and now he wanted everything." The Goo Goo Dolls had no comment on Tutuska's allegations.