Pinkerton Tour

The Pinkerton Tour, spanning August 1996 to August 1997, was a series of live concerts to promote Weezer's 1996 sophomore record Pinkerton.

Overview

Right now, I'm living the life of the id. I've really gotten into this whole thing of getting drunk, having lots of sex and trashing dressing rooms. I guess I waited till now to go through my teenage rebellious stage.

—Rivers Cuomo, Interview with The Los Angeles Times, July 1997^[1]

The tour for Pinkerton was among the most extensive and taxing the band has ever embarked on. The tour ended in tragedy, with the death of the band's fan club founders Mykel and Carli Allan. The tribute performance organized for the Allan sisters would be the band's last public performance for three years. It was also That Dog's final performance before their initial break up. With this event and Pinkerton's middling reviews, Weezer would retreat into an extended hiatus and leave many to believe they had broken up. Despite this, the tour and its namesake record would receive a critical reappraisal in the 21st century.

The tour began with multiple European dates in August and September 1996, including multiple festival dates. During these shows, Weezer would debut "Pink Triangle", "El Scorcho", "The Good Life",^[2] "Falling for You"^[3] and "Butterfly"^[4] from the then-unreleased Pinkerton. The band's performance at the 1996 Bizarre Festival in Germany is widely bootlegged, and video of the show has reached over three hundred fifty thousand YouTube views as of January 2025.^[5]

To celebrate the release of Pinkerton, Weezer performed in a Tower Records parking lot in Los Angeles, California, on September 24. The Pinkerton banner they brought with them had to be partly covered up, as the Pinkerton Security Agency filed a lawsuit that same day.^[6]^[7] Further shows were done in Australia, Japan, and the United States throughout the fall and winter of 1996, with one notable acoustic performance taking place at Shorecrest High School on November 6. This show was part of a contest with radio station KNDD 107.7 The End, where the winner would get Weezer to perform at their school.^[8] Superdrag, Placebo and Ash were among the opening acts for these dates.

Rivers Cuomo and Matt Sharp performing at the Palace in August 1997.

The tour continued through January 1997, with rock band Nerf Herder opening. Nerf Herder reminisced on their experience sharing a bill with the band in the 2016 song "We Opened for Weezer." "Devotion" was added to the setlist for an unknown amount of shows,^[9] which wasn't performed again by Weezer until the Memories Tour in 2011.^{[citation needed]}

The final show of the January leg was a show at the Barrymore Theatre, after which Rivers Cuomo went back to Harvard for the spring.^[10] During this time, Matt Sharp went to the United Kingdom to continue extensively recording the Rentals' second album, and he had expressed that he wanted to tour in the summer to promote it.^[11]^[12]^[13] Due to a upcoming tour opening for No Doubt, auditions were held at their rehearsal space in March 1997 for a fill-in bass player.^[14]^[15] A couple bassists auditioned (including Scott Riebling, who would fill in for the "Pink Triangle" remix sessions) but the Rentals' second album wasn't completed and Sharp soon returned on bass.^[13]^[14]

Rehearsals began in Boston in early April 1997 to prepare for the upcoming tour and a May 19 gig for WFNX's Best Music Poll Festival.^[16] The tour took place from May to June 1997,^[16] with few headlining shows in-between. Setlists for these shows were shorter and mostly consistent^[17] to account for the other openers, which included Ednaswap, Lunachicks and Face to Face. In contrast to previous tours,^[18] Rivers Cuomo enjoyed the Pinkerton Tour, living a rock star life style of one-night stands and getting wasted.^[19]^[20]

On July 9, 1997, Mykel and Carli Allen died in a rollover accident on their way to a show at the DV8 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The band, along with Karl Koch, attended the funeral on July 14.^[21] A concert at the Palace in August 1997 was held as a benefit for the family of Mykel and Carli.^[22] This would be the last concert to feature Matt Sharp on bass, and the last performance as Weezer for three years.^[23] At the time, there was on-and-off fighting between the members.^[11]

Interviews

Frontman Rivers Cuomo sat for some now-famously unsuccessful interviews during this tour. Two particularly awkward ones came during the band's trip to Australia.

Tour dates

Editor's Note: All of these dates, cities, venues and festival names were checked and, if necessary, corrected. So they may vary from other sources. In some cases individual notes were made when given information were contradictory.