Guitar World article - July 2021: Difference between revisions
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{{ | {{Italic title|string=Guitar World}} | ||
{{Template:Infobox interview | {{Template:Infobox interview | ||
| Publication = [[:Category:Guitar World|''Guitar World'']] | | Publication = [[:Category:Guitar World|''Guitar World'']] | ||
| Interviewee = Rivers Cuomo | | Interviewee = Rivers Cuomo, Brian Bell, Patrick Wilson | ||
| Cover = Guitarworld-july2021-cover.jpg | | Cover = Guitarworld-july2021-cover.jpg | ||
| Caption = | | Caption = | ||
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| Link = | | Link = | ||
| Title = This Van's A-rockin' on the New ''Van Weezer'' | | Title = This Van's A-rockin' on the New ''Van Weezer'' | ||
| Sub-title =Weezer's Rivers Cuomo opens up a "Pandora's Box of evil guitar tools" and goes crazy. Below, he discusses his post-Eddie Van Halen shred influences, eighties hair metal and why Ozzy Osbourne had to approve one of Weezer's new songs | |||
| Associated concert = | | Associated concert = | ||
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{{Rivers|I think the moment I was converted to being a metal head, when it really became more than just music, was when I heard Quiet Riot's "Metal Health" on the radio. That was when I started to feel this sense of identity and belonging to a community.}} | {{Rivers|I think the moment I was converted to being a metal head, when it really became more than just music, was when I heard Quiet Riot's "Metal Health" on the radio. That was when I started to feel this sense of identity and belonging to a community.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|JB|Were you already playing the guitar?}} | {{Interviewer|JB|Were you already playing the guitar?}} | ||
{{Rivers|I had a drum set. My brother got a guitar, and I noodled a bit. But right after I heard Quiet Riot, for my eighth-grade class night, there was a group of boys who put together a band, and they covered "Metal Health." They played the opening riff, and the singer slid across the stage on his knees while screaming. I couldn't believe kids just like me, my age, got these instruments and were making this sound. It was so exciting. Within a few weeks, I got a white Yamaha Strat copy. That was for my 14th birthday, and I just started practicing and practicing. | {{Rivers|I had a drum set. My brother got a guitar, and I noodled a bit. But right after I heard Quiet Riot, for my eighth-grade class night, there was a group of boys who put together a band, and they covered "Metal Health." They played the opening riff, and the singer slid across the stage on his knees while screaming. I couldn't believe kids just like me, my age, got these instruments and were making this sound. It was so exciting. Within a few weeks, I got a white Yamaha Strat copy. That was for my 14th birthday, and I just started practicing and practicing.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|JB|Were you a natural on the guitar? Was it arduous?}} | {{Interviewer|JB|Were you a natural on the guitar? Was it arduous?}} | ||
{{Rivers|It was frustrating at first, because there were so few resources back then. There was obviously no internet, and even songbooks — I got a Kiss songbook, but it was for piano and vocal. They had chord diagrams so you could strum an acoustic guitar, but I was trying to play the "Cold Gin" riff, and it didn't sound right. | {{Rivers|It was frustrating at first, because there were so few resources back then. There was obviously no internet, and even songbooks — I got a Kiss songbook, but it was for piano and vocal. They had chord diagrams so you could strum an acoustic guitar, but I was trying to play the "Cold Gin" riff, and it didn't sound right. | ||
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{{Interviewer|JB|You must've had your chops together to be accepted.}} | {{Interviewer|JB|You must've had your chops together to be accepted.}} | ||
{{Rivers|Well, it wasn't Berklee proper. It was a five-week summer program for high school kids. I don't remember how selective it was, but I was pretty good.}} | {{Rivers|Well, it wasn't Berklee proper. It was a five-week summer program for high school kids. I don't remember how selective it was, but I was pretty good.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|JB|Who were your main guitar heroes at this point?}} | |||
{{Rivers|The first one was Ace Frehley. I learned all the Kiss songs, and my first band was a Kiss cover band called [[Fury]]. With my 14-year-old logic, I thought I could make it as a musician playing somebody else's songs. I just thought we were going to be Kiss, but called Fury, and that we'd make it somehow. And then I had another band called [[Warlock]], and we did Priest and Maiden, Mötley Crüe - everything that was popular in the early and mid Eighties. | |||
I also have to give due credit to the later metal bands. I got into a Metallica cover band, a Fates Warning cover band. I got into Yngwie Malmsteen and a band called Cacophony that featured Jason Becker and Marty Friedman. I just loved that so much, so that's where my head was at when I moved from Connecticut to L.A., right after high school. My band hit the Sunset Strip, and we were like, "All right, we're going to take this place over, because we shred like nobody else!"}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|I assume you mastered tapping. Thanks to Van Halen, it was ''de rigueur''.}} | |||
{{Rivers|Yeah. I didn't get it from Eddie, but from the guitarists he influenced. Definitely, whatever the cool new guitar trick was, that's what I was learning. At the time, it felt like it was really hard. I remember my fingers hurt from all the practice, but it all seemed to happen within a couple of years. I was thinking, "I'm pretty hot on guitar," which is kind of funny.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|There was a decided macho and sexist element to hard rock and metal in the Eighties. Guys were wearing leather, and the videos featured women in strip clubs. All of which doesn't seem like you, certainly not at that age.}} | |||
{{Rivers|I don't know... I think the whole gender thing in metal is pretty complicated. I don't think it's as simple as metal being macho or uber-masculine, because I think quite a lot of it was hyper feminine, with the long hair, makeup and glam. I remember we all thought being really skinny and not built was cool. If you were muscular, it was like, "Ew, that's not cool." It's complicated, and I don't have the gender studies background to understand it.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|If I can attempt to draw a parallel between you and Eddie Van Halen, it seems that while your high school friends were out partying, the two of you spent a lot of time practicing alone. Fair comparison?}} | |||
{{Rivers|Yes, except I had great friends, and we were all in the same boat together. We were all learning together, and there were so many musicians in my school trading ideas. I definitely didn't feel like a loner in my work as a musician.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Eddie was a pioneer in guitar construction. He made modding guitars very popular. Did you do any of that?}} | |||
{{Rivers|No, I didn't, and I have never had any kind of technical skill or interest around anything mechanical. My brain doesn't go there. I've thought about that recently, because in the last five years, I've discovered this incredible enthusiasm and knack for computer programming. It's not a physical object, but it's a lot of modding other people's scripts, and I just love it. But put a physical object in front of me, and I'm pretty much useless. I can't even figure out the TV remote control.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|At a certain point, you switched gears from metal. You got into the Beatles and [[the Beach Boys]]. I understand that the [[Pixies]] also made a big impression on you.}} | |||
{{Rivers|When my band got to L.A., the Sunset Strip was in the midst of the Guns N' Roses phase. Everybody was trying to figure out who was the next Guns N' Roses, and nobody knew what to make of us. We couldn't get off the ground, and most of the guys in my band went back to Connecticut. I got a job at Tower Records, and while working there I was exposed to all kinds of music. | |||
{{ | The people there schooled me. They'd put on Pet Sounds, the Pixies, Sonic Youth... At first, it just sounded like a bunch of painful noise. Coming from my metal background, I didn't know what to make of it, but over the course of 40 hours a week, week after week, I was like, "Oh, this is kind of great. I kind of dig this." My focus shifted from "How clearly can I play these harmonic minor scales and sweep arpeggios?" to "How catchy can I make a chorus?" Or "How emotionally honest can this verse be?" It was still the same focus on intense achievement, but now my trade was as a writer than a shredder.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|JB|It was a real growth period.}} | |||
{{Rivers|It was. But also, let me talk about singing. Even in my early days, I sang. I sang in the Kiss cover band. I sang in the school chorus, in a barbershop quartet, in madrigals. I loved singing, but I didn't think of myself as a deep singer. I couldn't hit the high notes like Geoff Tate from Queensrÿche or Rob Halford from Judas Priest. I just didn't think I could sing like that. In my serious metal bands, I was never the singer; I just thought of myself as a guitar player. But as I was exposed to all these alternative bands while working at Tower Records, I started to realize it wasn't so much about how high or how powerful you could sing. It was more like, "Do you have something to say?" | |||
When Weezer started, that's when I really became a lead singer, because I realized I didn't have to try to be like a lead singer. I could just be my normal self and sing like I did in choir. After that, it was quite easy. And the best training for a singer is to play shows, so we did that all the time. We played show after show in clubs.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Let's get into ''Van Weezer''. "The End of the Game" starts off with some tapping that sounds very Eddie-esque, though you'll probably disagree.}} | |||
{{Rivers|Actually, I was trying to emulate AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." It's not even tapping, I don't think. I was just like, "How can I do something like that?" So I pulled out the first technique that sounded somewhat like that. I think that's how it came out. I really like that harmonized tapping, and I also like the bar dive on the double artificial harmonic. [''Editor's note: "The End of the Game" was transcribed in the September 2020 issue of'' Guitar World.]}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|The rhythm patterns are really forceful.}} | |||
{{Rivers|That's got to be from Ratt, I think.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Warren DeMartini - he's quite underrated.}} | |||
{{Rivers|Yeah. I mean, I have no idea how any of those records were made. It was before I knew how to research that stuff. But definitely, so much of my technique is from learning Ratt songs or even the Scorpions.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|"I Need Some of That" is such a sweet look at youthful rocking. You namecheck Aerosmith and sing about plugging into a Marshall stack...}} | |||
{{Rivers|That one's tough for me, because, man, we wrote so many versions of it and had so many different lyrics. I'm pretty sure I was thinking about those days at the shack at my best friend [[Justin Fisher|Justin]]'s house. That's where we used to practice all the time.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|What's going on in "Blue Dream"? The riff, and even the drums and the verse chords - that's "Crazy Train" by Ozzy Osbourne.}} | |||
{{Rivers|[''Laughs''] Pretty similar.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|I'll say. Did you have to split the songwriting?}} | |||
{{Rivers|Yeah. They get half the song or something like that. It's kind of like a sample, really, but we played it.}} | |||
How did it come about? Were you playing "Crazy Train" and you thought, "I'm going to write a song around that"? | |||
{{Rivers|The song existed with another riff. The song was good, but the riff was... It was OK, but it wasn't the greatest guitar riff of all time, which I felt like it should be. Coincidentally, at the same time, our manager said, "Hey, you guys should sample the 'Crazy Train' riff in a song." I know he was thinking: "What's going to get people talking? What is going to confuse the internet?" He had no idea what I was making, but it just seemed to me like the perfect suggestion. So we tried it. The tempo fit, and it all just seemed to come together.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Did you ever hear a reaction from Ozzy?}} | |||
{{Rivers|They approved it, so I'm assuming he heard it. I don't know what their approval process is, but I didn't get a specific reaction. That's not the first time we contacted Ozzy. Actually, once, I think it was in 2000, he asked if I had any songs for him, and I just happened to have written "[[Hash Pipe]]." I sent it to him, but he didn't end up using it. In another reality, it might be interesting to hear him singing that song.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|We haven't really talked about thrash metal. "One More Hit" has a section that's pretty doomsday and thrash-like.}} | |||
{{Rivers|That dissonant Slayer mosh riff was a satisfying moment. That's an itch I haven't been able to scratch in all previous years of Weezer's history. I went through a huge Slayer phase. I remember right around the time I was learning to drive my parents' Toyota Tercel, I'd drive up and down the driveway blasting Reign in Blood. We had a short driveway, so I'd turn around and come back - over and over, just gunning the car. That record was exactly what I needed in my junior and senior years of high school. It had a lot of aggression.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Nothing feminine about Reign in Blood.}} | |||
{{Rivers|[''Laughs''] No. Not a lot of hairspray and makeup on that album.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|Speaking of hairspray, on "Precious Metal Girl" you do a beautiful acoustic love letter to the women on the Sunset Strip in the Eighties.}} | |||
{{Rivers|Yeah. They were really special. I don't know if those girls exist anymore, but I have good memories of the smell of the hairspray and the makeup. They're just great inspirations.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|You namecheck some of the mid-level bands of that era - Faster Pussycat, L.A. Guns. Were you a fan?}} | |||
{{Rivers|I was more into the girls that were into them.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|[''Laughs''] I see. I want to ask you about [[Suzy Shinn]]. She had been your engineer on a few records, but on ''Van Weezer'' she makes her production debut.}} | |||
{{Rivers|You know, I'm very resistant to new people around me, especially when I'm singing or writing in a very deep space. I need familiar surroundings. When I first met Suzy, we were making the "''[[Weezer (The White Album)|White Album]]''." | |||
I went to a session and was going to finish writing "[[California Kids]]." I was there with [producer] [[Jake Sinclair]], whom I was really excited to work with. Suzy was in the room, sitting behind a desk, and I was immediately thrown off my game. Not only was some random person there, but she was this young woman. I was like, "How am I supposed to operate here? This is not cool, Jake." But she had the perfect temperament. She was very laid back and unobtrusive, but at the same time she worked really hard. As I got more comfortable with her, she started pushing me more than any producer ever did. So I got dependent on that, and every time I had to sing, I would ask her to basically produce my vocals. After a while, it just seemed like, "Why not have her do the whole record?"}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|What were your Van Weezer guitars?}} | |||
{{Rivers|We started with the idea to pull out some of the guitars from that era and get some of those sounds, but then we realized the album is called Van Weezer, so you've got to have as much Weezer as you do Van. So we made sure the meat and bones of the album were straight-up, classic Weezer sounding. I used the Les Paul Junior that I got from [[Ric Ocasek]] and played on our [[Weezer (The Blue Album)|first album]]. I used the same Boogie amp, too. I think it all sounds like classic Weezer.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|JB|How about your Warmoth Strat copies?}} | |||
}}}} | {{Rivers|I never use those on records. They sound good on stage, but they can't compare to the Les Paul in the studio.}} | ||
{{Interviewer|JB|Anything else?}} | |||
{{Rivers|There was some Explorer and other guitars. But then we'd send out for guitars. It was like, "We need an absurd guitar with a whammy bar on it," so we'd sound out to Truetone in Santa Monica or to Lon Cohen Studio Rentals - "Send us a crazy guitar." The studio quickly turned into Guitar Center, with all this mad shredding going on. It was super fun.}} | |||
==BRIAN'S SONG== | |||
<big>Weezer guitarist '''Brian Bell''' talks ''Van Weezer'', guitars and poser metal</big> | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|Was ''Van Weezer'' as much fun to make as it sounds?}} | |||
{{Brian|It is a fun record, isn't it? It'll be a party to play. As far as making it... it wasn't a party, that's for sure. [''Laughs''] Working is our way of partying. A lot of it was recorded during the pandemic, so just to have an excuse to get out of the house and go to the recording studio was certainly welcome. I was so thankful to be productive during that time. We were also recording OK Human at the same time, so I had to juggle that. ''Van Weezer'' was electric, ''OK Human'' was acoustic.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|How would you describe your guitar relationship with Rivers?}} | |||
{{Brian|Rivers is a shredder. He can tear your head off with blistering speed, but he also has this tasteful, Brian May-ish gift for melody. Coming from a piano background, my style is unorthodox. I started playing classical guitar, so I have a picking ability that fits in with Weezer. I think I bring some interesting chord voicings to the music. I'm really good at coming up with what's needed. Because Rivers is singing, I try to think of what is needed under his voice.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|Are the two of you big jammers?}} | |||
{{Brian|Mmm... not really. We do have some jam moments in rehearsal. It's funny when I joined the band, we would jam a bit, and I would say, "That was some of the best music I ever heard and some of the worst!" [''Laughs''] I wish we would do more of that now. Mostly, we try to woodshed and come up with ideas, and i do enjoy that. There's some jamming involved with that process. I present ideas to the producer and say, "Pick what you like. I know they all work." There's nothing sexy about how this happens; it's a lot of perspiration.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|Van Halen is sort of a motif for ''Van Weezer''. Where does that band sit in your roots?}} | |||
{{Brian|I'll get flack for this, but growing up, I wasn't a big fan. Now I really appreciate them. Those were some great songs, and what's not to appreciate about Van Halen's guitar playing? I heard this Van Halen cover album by the Bird and the Bee, and the chord progressions in "Jamie's Cryin'" were fantastic. But when I was younger, I didn't think Van Halen were metal. I was more into Black Sabbath, Iron Maiden and Dio. When we started this record, I thought, "I want to bring some Maiden into this." Not that you hear any of that. It was more of a love for metal in general.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|A lot of Rivers' lyrics on ''Van Weezer'' harken back to the Eighties rock scene on the Sunset Strip. Was that part of your world?}} | |||
{{Brian|No, not really. When I came to LA, I liked Slayer and Metallica. I thought hair metal was poser music and really kind of lame. Guys in spandex seemed really silly to me. The Sunset Strip stuff, like Warrant and Faster Pussycat... oh, God. You could look at it with nostalgia, but that was crap to me. It took Nirvana to make that scene go away, pretty much overnight.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|Between you and Rivers, which metal bands meet with your agreement?}} | |||
{{Brian|A lot of them. For guitar virtuosity. certainly Yngwie Malmsteen, Slayer and Fates Warning. Rivers loves Fates Warning. I mean, he knew those guys from his hometown in Connecticut. When I heard that, I said, "Fuck. I'm in the right god-damned band!" [''Laughs'']}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|Do you guys disagree about any metal bands?}} | |||
{{Brian|Well, it's not metal, but for all I know, he was probably into the songwriting of Cinderella. My main concern was, "Is it Satanic or not?" The more Satanic, the better. [''Laughs''] The good thing about hair metal bands was the ballads. Everybody had those power ballads. Rivers has an interesting pop sensibility, even in the metal-ness of him. I can appreciate a good song now, but at the time when that stuff was happening, I just didn't care about any of that.}} | |||
{{Interviewer|Joe Bosso|What were your main guitars for ''Van Weezer''?}} | |||
{{Brian|I was armed with great guitars. I recently purchased my dream guitar, a 1958 Gibson Les Paul Custom. I also bought a '58 Strat. Between the two, there was no need to plug into any silly pedals and ruin their sound with signal loss. I have an early Sixties SG that I've been using for a while. It's a great lead instrument. I mainly used the Les Paul for unison lines and filler parts.}} | |||
}} | |||
<gallery>Guitarworld-july2021-cover.jpg | <gallery>Guitarworld-july2021-cover.jpg | ||
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==See also== | ==See also== | ||
*[[List of interviews]] | *[[List of interviews]] | ||
{{Navbox Weezer interviews| | {{Navbox Weezer interviews|Weezer|2021|Guitar World}} | ||
[[Category:Weezer interviews - | [[Category:Weezer interviews - July 2021]] | ||
[[Category:Interviews]] | [[Category:Interviews]] | ||
[[Category: | [[Category:Rivers Cuomo Interviews]] | ||
[[Category:Weezer interviews - | [[Category:Patrick Wilson Interviews]] | ||
[[Category:Brian Bell Interviews]] | |||
[[Category:Guitar World]] | |||
[[Category:Weezer interviews - 2021]] | |||