Alone liner notes: Difference between revisions

When I make a record with Weezer, recording is a public process. I've got the band there, of course, sometimes a producer, always an engineer, one or two assistant engineers, pizza delivery guys, etc. But my demo recordings were made, for the most part, in solitude, with me trying to figure out where to plug things in, how to turn things on, how to get semi-decent sounds out of things, how to not blow things up, and with me being totally unafraid of what anyone would think because no one was there. I was freestyling it. Therefore, some very inspired moments occured. However, for this reason I also let things slide that I would be less likely to let slide on a Weezer record, botched lyrics, out of tune vocals, sloppy drumming. I wasn't thinking that any of this would be on a record some day, listened to by millions–okay, maybe thousands...or hundreds–of people. But I've always loved these recordings for what they are, not a polished studio album, but the creative sounds someone makes when they think they're alone.

I called 1-800-2-LA-RIDE, the RTD info line, and figured out how to get downtown on the bus. For the amazing low price of a dollar I got on the Blue Bus right by my house and went all the way downtown (on the highway) and was dropped off in front of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion. For five dollars I bought a student rush ticket and was seated in the center of the second row for the debut performance of the L.A. Philharmonic's new conductor, Esa-Pekka Salonen. They played Mahler's Third symphony and my mind was blown.

<span style="color:#aa0000">'''THE WORLD WE LOVE SO MUCH.'''</SPAN>

I took some time out from writing my own songs and from collaborating with Pat to record one of Gregg Alexander's songs. I was in love with the over-the-top personal emotionalism of his vocal performances and lyrics. I pictured him at sixteen, breaking down in his dark little vocal booth, crying as he was singing his songs, which was pretty much how he was presented in the CD booklet. Gregg Alexander's music was a beacon leading me towards more personal emotionalism in my own art.

I was subletting a room from another musician who had taken off to Australia for a while. He had left behind a nylon string acoustic guitar, which I happily used to record this song, and a bunch of ineffectual acoustic foam on the walls. I dreaded the thought of being heard while I was emoting like this so I embraced the illusion of privacy provided by the foam.

Did everyone else's mom tell them the lemonade story? If life gives you lemons make lemonade. In my case, the lemonade I was making was my recent songs ("Say it ain't So", "No one Else", etc.).

Oh, lemonade</span></poem>

As much as I had loved rap music and funk in recent years, it seemed like Weezer's sound was evolving in quite the opposite direction, towards uber-white non-funkiness. In fact, any attempt by any white musician to play anything remotely "black" or funky struck Matt and me, with out new ultra-refined sensibility, as "bad style." We cringed with embarrassment and disgust whenever we saw a white person trying to rap or be funky in earnest. ''White people shouldn't try to be funky'' was the underlying belief.

I believed that nothing could come of musical explorations like this but it was still really fun to do.

In the liner notes for ''[[Alone]]'', Cuomo explained how he was inspired to write the song after a friend from his choir lent him a Korg keyboard:

I was in the Santa Monica College Choir and I met a kid named Steve Graff who lent me his Korg Keyboard. Inspired by its goofy synth sounds, I decided to write some new-wave influenced songs.

What's a matter babe, are you feelin' blue? oh-oh!</span></poem>

In 1992, I had written about half the songs that would end up on ''The Blue Album'', including "the Sweater Song" and "Say It Ain't So". It was clear that we were going to get a record deal and make a record. But then the songs stopped coming. I felt more and more pressure to write the rest of the record, to write top notch Weezer-style songs. Finally, I shook off all expectations, from both myself and from everyone else, and let myself write whatever came naturally upon strumming a D major chord over and over on an acoustic guitar. The result was "Chess". I knew it wouldn't work for Weezer, but it at least got me creating again and having fun. Within two months, I wrote the rest of the songs for ''The Blue Album''.

I know it's hard cause you got a lot to do</span></poem>

In the midst of struggling to make it as a rock star in Los Angeles, I started longing for the safety, peace, quiet, simplicity, and family structure of my New England childhood.  I thought back to one of my favorite memories, lying in the bottom bunk, my brother in the top, in our bedroom in our farmhouse in Eastford, Connecticut, in the hot, hot, summer, 7, 8 p.m., sun still up, but having to go to sleep because it's our bedtime, one of those big box fans blowing, and my parents, Ma and Steve, sitting at our bedside, singing an old hippie song to us, to calm us down and ease us into sleep, "May the Longtime Sun Shine Upon You."

Longtime sunshine, longtime sunshine upon me</SPAN></poem>

The success of Weezer's first album stirred up a lot of mixed feelings in me-- "Yay, I'm happy" as well as "I'm not sure this is the life I want to lead." I set about exploring and expressing those feelings in a rock musical called ''Songs from the Black Hole''.

Or at least a cheap ho...</span></poem>

This was an interstitial piece from ''The Black Hole'' to be sung by one of the female leads, a character named "Maria", the "bad" girl.

I despise him</span></poem>

One of my introductions to the realities of the music industry came when my manager told me that a movie production company wanted me to compose a song for the movie, ''Angus''. I felt honored to be presented with such a big challenge, to write a song to accompany someone else's story. I wanted to do a great job. I studied the script and attained a pretty thorough understanding of the main character and his situation. He was an outcast, like me. I liked him.

Now I'm alone, and I wish you were home</span></poem>

"Dude, We're Finally Landing" was to be sung by the three male leads in ''Songs from the Black Hole''. Wuan and Dondó are excited because they are about to achieve their mission's objective after a long, excruciating haul through space [they represented the part of me that was excited about becoming a rock star] and Jonas is disillusioned as usual [he represented the part of me that wasn't satisfied with my life even as I was achieving such a momentous goal].

So who gives a damn?</span></poem>

"Superfriend" is from Act I. It's a conversation between Jonas and Laurel, after Jonas has slipped again with Maria.

A super friend to make things right</span></poem>

''Songs from the Black Hole'' morphed into ''Pinkerton'', which maintained an emphasis on personal, dramatic narrative and symphonic development, along the lines of Puccini. After that album came out, I started looking for a new, more minimalistic, less personal style.

Your lover in the snow</span></poem>

After trying Romantic-Minimalism in 1997, I turned to more traditional pop song forms, like verse-verse-bridge (with no chorus), the form used by most pop songwriters, like The Beatles, up until the 1970's. One such song I wrote with this form was "Crazy One"

A love that never starts</span></poem>

For Weezer's sixth album, I was feeling extremely adventurous again. I wrote an epic, 6-minute symphonic type of art song called "Daydreamer". After I wrote the song, though, I reversed myself again, deciding to write a straight-ahead, nothing-fancy, middle-of-the-road, urban pop type of song. I took the chords from a Mario hit, fired up the drum machine and the synth pads, and wrote "This is the Way".

This is the way, baby, this is the way</span></poem>

2003 was a period of big change for me, when I was throwing out all my expectations about who I was supposed to be in an attempt to dig deep and find something that felt really important.

<br>Recorded and mixed by Rod Cervera</small>

Justin, Eric, and me at a rehearsal of our first band, Fury.

I'm the pushy one.

In 2004, a particular style of song was calling me again, I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to write melodies, giant, huge, beautiful soaring melodies. I especially liked to compose at the piano, where the melodies could flow beyond the constraints of my limited voice, and my left hand could explore the pleasures of melodic counterpoint in the bass line. I started taking music composition lessons from Bruce Reich at UCLA.