Alternative Press interview with Weezer - January 1997: Difference between revisions

'''Happy [cancelled] Days'''

''America fell in love with the band that looked like "Buddy Holly," but the video for that song and the ensuing success of Weezer’s debut created tensions between Rivers Cuomo and his bandmates that they’ve yet to resolve. On tour with the group in Australia and New Zealand, David Daley discovers that sweaters aren’t the only thing unraveling in the Weezer camp.''

 

 

 

This afternoon, more than 300 people, mostly teenagers too young to get into the band’s two sold-out Sydney shows, have crammed themselves into Red Eye, a small record shop below street level, on one of the first sunny days of spring in Australia. Weezer’s acoustic set for the in-store contains only five songs and lasts just 20 minutes. But the band—Cuomo, guitarist Brian Bell, bassist Matt Sharp and drummer Pat Wilson—spend the next 90 minutes signing autographs for a long stream of polite, clean-cut and well-behaved Sydney teens.

So Rivers Cuomo is a rock star. But he’s still far from happy. On Weezer’s new album, ''Pinkerton'', Cuomo’s emotions run from confusion to self-loathing. In the first song, he proclaims he’s tired of meaningless sex. He yearns for commitment but desperately fears it. He seems ready to settle down in "El Scorcho" and "Falling For You," eager to stop being "bitter and alone" in "The Good Life." But "Getchoo" and "Why Bother?" find him closed off again, his fear of being hurt exceeding his fear of loneliness. In "Pink Triangle," the woman of his dreams turns out to be a lesbian.

Cuomo’s dreams have come true, but he’s still deeply disillusioned. Kids flock to his in-stores and try to talk to him after shows, but he has few friends. He has wealth and fame, as well as the same problems with girls he had when he was in high school. Indeed, after Cuomo finished touring in support of Weezer’s first record, he was back in school completing his undergraduate degree at Harvard, but he knew no one in Boston. But the ache in his heart was nothing compared to the pain in his leg. One leg had always been two inches longer than the other, so Cuomo underwent surgery to stretch the bone of the other leg until both were the same size.

Indeed, it’s been a year of considerable frustration and some turmoil inside the band, as well. Cuomo struggled with intense writer’s block before he penned ''Pinkerton''. His bandmates wondered whether a second album would be recorded. Meanwhile, Cuomo watched as his three bandmates embarked on side projects, including Sharp’s high-profile Moog-flavored music with The Rentals. He also dealt with the confusion of whether his songs became popular because of Spike Jonze’s brilliant video for "Buddy Holly" which spliced the band into the ‘70s sitcom ''Happy Days''. Cuomo responded by making the band less of a partnership and more of a "selective democracy," in the words of the somewhat annoyed Sharp and Wilson. His bandmates responded by making this their only interview to publicize ''Pinkerton''.

"I’m a sick bastard," says Cuomo. "If I have no self-confidence by now, I can’t ever imagine having any. I’m sitting there in class, I’ve sold two million records, I’ve toured around the world singing in front of thousands of people. And there’s a girl sitting across the table from me in English 101, and I just kind of look up at her every once in a while and put my head back down. I’m still a pathetic fool. It’s amazing. No matter how many records I sell, I’m never going to be in Kiss."

The Rivers Cuomo story begins with Kiss. An outsider and a loner, Cuomo joined the Kiss Army early, and the band fueled his first suburban rock star dreams. After he learned to play the drums (age 11) and the guitar (age 13), Cuomo started a metal band of his own called Fury. They debuted as a Kiss cover band. Ace Frehley and Peter Criss would later make a cameo in the Weezer song "In the Garage." Earlier this year, Weezer turned down an opportunity to open for Kiss when the aging rockers reunited and donned make-up yet again. "Some dreams just shouldn’t come true," Cuomo says.

Another metal band, called Avant Garde, followed. ("It was anything but," quips Rivers.) Kenneth Holton, who taught Cuomo’s music classes at E.O. Smith High School in Mansfield, Connecticut, and led him in the chorus and 16th-century Madrigal singing groups, remembers Cuomo as one of his favorite students.

"We just kind of sucked," admits Avant Garde guitarist Kevin Ridel. "We were trying to be the kings of our instruments and just disregarded the idea of writing good songs. We were striving for technical prowess, but we still couldn’t really play."

In 1988, Cuomo and Ridel brought Avant Garde to Los Angeles, where Cuomo moved after he graduated from high school, after his parents divorced, and after his girlfriend dumped him. But LA was changing, and so was Rivers. Jane’s Addiction and Rage Against the Machine were the city’s new standard-bearers, replacing Guns N’ Roses. And after Cuomo got hired at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard, co-workers introduced him to the Velvet Underground and the Beatles. That was it for Avant Garde. Even Ridel discovered Tom Waits and formed a pop band of his own, Ridel High.

Weezer’s first guitarist, Jason Cropper, remembers Cuomo as a big heavy metal fan who somehow knew that alternative music was about to explode. He remembers working with Cuomo at an Italian restaurant in LA (Rivers washed dishes) and hearing Nirvana’s "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the radio for the first time. They both stood there in amazement, before Rivers got angry that he hadn’t written that riff—so catchy, so perfect, so simple.

Nevertheless, Cuomo struggled. He had four songs already done—"Tired of Sex," "Getchoo," "No Other One," and "Why Bother?"—the first four on ''Pinkerton''. But those songs had been written just after the band recorded Weezer. ("Tired of Sex" has been banned in Singapore, much to Rivers’ amazement, since he considers it one of the most Puritanical rock songs ever.) He’d gone about eighteen months without writing much of anything. Sharp offered to collaborate on some songs, but when he and Cuomo tried, they just ended up sitting around with their guitars and talking about old times.

Then came the letter from Japan, which Cuomo turned almost verbatim into the first verse of "Across the Sea" (he’s sharing royalties with the fan). The song bristles with the frustration of having someone he likes so far away, ending with this clever restatement of the relationship between rock star and fan: "I’ve got your letter, you’ve got my song." Cuomo had his first new song in months. ''Pinkerton'', which presents ten songs in chronological order as written, has a 20-second instrumental bridge before "Across the Sea" to symbolize Cuomo’s period of depression.

Cuomo, however, had the inspiration for the record. Taking the theme from Puccini’s opera ''Madame Butterfly'', Cuomo turned Pinkerton, a Navy sailor in the opera, into a rock star who sleeps with women from port to port.

Brian Bell, after several years in Carnival Art, whose records were released direct to the discount bin, is thrilled to be in a band people like. He’s ecstatic and also seems to play a conciliatory role inside the band. Matt Sharp and Pat Wilson both love playing the bass and drums, respectively, and insist they’re both happy simply to get better as musicians and help improve Cuomo’s songs.

At the same time, Sharp and Wilson believe that by focusing solely on Cuomo and his songs, the band aren’t as good as they might be if everyone contributed equally to songwriting. But they’ve accepted their roles and simply keep their own songs for side projects The Rentals and Special Goodness. That both are financially secure thanks to Weezer helps.

Neither one knows what will happen next for Weezer. Both see the band becoming more of a studio project and less of a touring band. And since it takes Cuomo so long to write, Sharp and Wilson don’t expect to be asked to go into the studio again for at least a year. During that time, Wilson and Sharp will likely have albums of their own out. The debut from Wilson’s Special Goodness is slated for a September 1997 release on Geffen, and Sharp’s second album—which may be something other than a second Rentals record—should be out by then as well.

Bell has the style and flavor—he’s Weezer’s equivalent of the Foo Fighters’ Pat Smear—while he adds a powerful guitar presence that grounds Weezer in rock, not in pop. Wilson wears a toga onstage during one show, and adds personality to the drums, as well, a cascading crunch that propels "Pink Triangle" and "Why Bother?" Sharp adds endless energy and essential harmonies. Weezer romp through a celebratory "Buddy Holly," bound through "Surfwax" and attack "My Name is Jonas," while playing b-sides "Jamie" and "You Gave Your Love To Me Softly" for trainspotters.

"A small part of me is jealous and wishes I was in complete control of the universe," he admits. "A greater part of me realizes that’s totally unrealistic. The other guys are songwriters. Good songrwriters. They have to do that. I can totally relate to that. I’m completely at peace with that. And I see how it really improves this band."

At the same time, he says he wouldn’t want to play a Rentals, Space Twins, or Special Goodness song live, even if one of those bands had a hit song as big as "Buddy Holly" or "Say It Ain’t So" and the audience requested it.

"I don’t like doing cover songs at all," he says. "But that would be a band decision. I’m not the dictator in this band. They way it has evolved now has gone naturally. Everyone’s happy with it. I know it seems strange, but it’s healthy to us. We may very well evolve to the point where we have more than one songwriter."

"I feel we’re about as much as a band as you can possible be, but at the same time [we have] just one songwriter. When I listen to this second record especially, I just hear so much creative input from the other guys. I hear four distinct personalities."

[[Category:Transcripts]][[Category:Interviews]][[Category:Rivers Cuomo Interviews]][[Category:Patrick Wilson Interviews]][[Category:Brian Bell Interviews]][[Category:Matt Sharp Interviews]][[Category:Weezer Media Archive]]