MeanStreet article - April 2001
| Print interview with Rivers Cuomo | |
|---|---|
| Magazine cover Magazine cover | |
| Publication | MeanStreet |
| Published | April 2001 |
| Conducted | c. March 2001 |
| Interviewer | Lauren Viera |
| Interviewee | Rivers Cuomo |
| Title | Weezer |
| Sub-title | Hashing out the details. "I get so irritated by the pressure and that sense of responsibility to one's audience that I just want to put out an insane song to scare everybody away." |
| Format | |
| Associated album | Weezer (The Green Album) |
| References | See where this article is referenced on Weezerpedia |
|
Weezer
There was a time when cruising around the maze of suburbia's black asphalt back roads in mom's borrowed station wagon was the (only) thing to do on a Saturday night. It didn't really matter where you were headed, just that you were out of the house and going there. On balmy evenings, you'd have the windows down, and you might have been listening to a mixed tape, but by chance if you happened to flip past KROQ at some point on that aimless drive, "Undone - The Sweater Song" probably came on just as you and your companions were pulling into a Denny's parking lot, overcome with luck having come across That Song, the one that everyone's been talking about, the one with the spoken-word blurbs you all listened to so intently to decipher - something about a girl asking for a ride to a party because her friends didn't want to go - and the luck in it finding you via radio satellite from Pasadena, coaxing you to stay in the car for five minutes longer before your Grand Slam breakfast pit stop. You recognize it from the opening drum beats - two hits on the snare, one on the kick drum - the repeat, the fill, and then that infamous guitar one-liner that isn't quite a lick, isn't quite a melody, just four notes that take to you like candy to a baby. Those were the nights of your youth. In the '70s, they were known as the Wonder years. In the 90s, they were the Weezer years. "It was probably May of 1994." Rivers Cuomo's voice is faint via a fuzzy cell phone connection and he sounds absolutely beat. Regardless, May of '94 is etched in his mind as the first time he heard "Undone" on the radio. It's past nine o'clock in the evening, and Cuomo is back in the studio "polishing things up," having spent a full day under interrogation by record executives over details that, under normal circumstances for a May 15 release, would have been confirmed months previous. (At the time Mean Street went to press, the forthcoming album still didn't have a name). Judging from the sound of his voice, it's highly likely that on this day, the frontman of the band that re-wrote Buddy Holly's chapter in history has quite successfully given the staff at good ol' Geffen a collective ulcer. "I was living in an apartment with not one piece of furniture," Cuomo continues, "just sleeping on the floor, and my roommate at the time was sleeping on the other side of the room. And he started screaming, saying, 'Rivers, wake up!' And he ran over to me - we didn't have a stereo, but he had a little handheld radio with a single ear piece earphone, and he stuck it in my ear, and it was 'The Sweater Song' on KCRW. And I woke right up and started jumping up and down and screaming." Cuomo, drummer Patrick Wilson, guitarist Brian Bell and bassist Matt Sharp, collectively known as Weezer, have been around for nearly ten years now, and only in 1998 did the band undergo a change in line-up when Sharp was replaced by new bassist Mikey Welsh. While a slew of international shows, hit singles and MTV video awards have fueled the band's public career for the past decade, it's almost hard to believe that the new material due next month is only the third collection of songs ever to be released. The ten track, self-titled, much-loved "blue album" hit the streets in the spring of 1994 riding on Weezer's buzz band appeal. Ric Ocasek's reputation for solid production, and little else. But it survived, eventually becoming the prototype recording for a new style of fuzzy guitar rock 'n' roll, a style that so many bands would come to model themselves after in years to come. The record wound up scoring the band three hit singles whose collective airtime man-aged to surpass the much more popular grunge bands on the scene at the time. "I think a ten year period is really difficult to summarize for anybody," Rivers says, silent for several seconds after he finishes the sentence, letting the time lapse sink in. "Ten years ago, I had just moved to L.A.... Maybe I was still playing metal at that time. I hadn't even started singing yet. I didn't know what the hell I wanted to do, but I knew that it involved rock music. And then, it kind of all happened, and now here I am." So did it go by fast? "No, it seemed to take forever. When we first started practicing - I mean from our very first rehearsal - I thought to myself, 'We're amazing. This is incredible. Everybody's going to love us.' And then we started playing out in the clubs, and nobody would come to our shows, for months, and months, and months, and it seemed like forever. And I remember just being totally shocked at how little people responded to us, because I thought we were so good. I mean, we were playing the same songs that eventually became big hits, like 'The Sweater Song' and 'Say It Ain't So,' and we'd play 'em out in the L.A. clubs, and everyone would just be like, 'Go away. We want a grunge band.' I remember Matt [Sharp, Weezer's recently replaced bassist] and I just finally collapsing, like, nine months into the whole thing and just looking at each other and saying, 'We must be crazy. We must have bad taste, because we thought this was cool and nobody else is getting it. "We might as well just give up.'" He pauses. "And then we got signed. And then we got on the radio. And then it was all over." Only it's not. When Pinkerton, the band's self-produced sopho-more effort, was released in 1996, fans were beside themselves with indifference. Gone were the chugga-chugga pop songs and the garage band innocence of ditties like "Surf Wax America" and "In The Garage." The new album was unashamedly conceptual and showcased a dark side of Cuomo's songwriting career - and personal life - that wasn't necessarily user-friendly. Critics dug it; patrons didn't. Pinkerton wasn't a bomb by any means, but it left fans wondering when the real Weezer would return. Five years later, the band's third album has been built up to rekindle what little faith was lost in the downtime. Just don't try to classify it as anything but what it is - more Weezer than anything you've ever heard. "I know what people are expecting" Cuomo says. He's been talking about "Hash Pipe," the first single from the new album, and a track that the songwriter describes as a combination of Aldo Nova's "Fantasy," the riff from the "Spyhunter" theme, and, uh ... Weezer. "There's a lot of songs on the record that are like what people are expecting," he explains. "But I get so irritated by the pressure and that sense of responsibility to one's audience that I just want to put out an insane song to scare everybody away. And that's what all the stress was about today, because the president of our record company, the president of MTV and our manager all called me -everyone's haranguing me about switching the single, and in the back of my head I know they're all totally right, but as of right now, 'Hash Pipe' it is. "I don't feel like we have anything riding on this album." Rivers contests. "I feel like we're doing just fine, and I just don't want any-thing to get screwed up with what we're doing. I don't want to make some big play for the mainstream like everybody else seems to want us to do. I just want to keep on being Weezer" On the web: www.weezer.com. Upcoming shows: April 28 Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. |
