Walt Disney
| "Walt Disney" | |||||
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| Demo by Rivers Cuomo | |||||
| Album | Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo | ||||
| Released | Unreleased | ||||
| Recorded | January 1995 | ||||
| Length | 2:53 | ||||
| Label | Geffen | ||||
| Writer(s) | Rivers Cuomo | ||||
| RC# | 194 | ||||
| COR# | N/A | ||||
| Producer(s) | Rivers Cuomo | ||||
| Status | Released | ||||
| Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo track listing | |||||
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| Rivers Cuomo song chronology | |||||
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"Walt Disney" is the fifteenth track from Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.
Appearances
Overview
Cuomo performed the song during a a livestream on October 16, 2020.
The lyrics of the song make reference to the urban legend that Walt Disney was placed in suspended animation upon his death The lyrics themselves deal with Cuomo's frustrations with touring:
Alone II liner notes
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In August '94, I felt like I hadn't written anything truly exciting in over a year, since before Weezer had gone to New York to make The Blue Album. My thoughts turned negative even in the midst of Weezer's take-off for giant success and of all my dreams coming true. On August 5th, I wrote:
We've been on tour for a while now. I'm sad. We're ruling I guess. I've been so brainless. My life is such a waste now. I've haven't written in my journal, written one song, read one book, thought one thought, written one postcard. I'm a full-on vegetable. And then I wrote to a friend: I'm going to try to save my soul from the hell of rock stardom by writing to you. Hopefully this act will spark some sort of life into my spirit. I'm basically dead right now. It sucks. I have no desire for anything. I barely eat at all. A few bites of bagel or a handful of pretzels and I lose whatever appetite I might have worked up. (I used to be a pig.) My head doesn't turn for pretty girls anymore... I'm just not interested. Ho-hum. I rarely think about you anymore. I don't reread your old letters and, obviously, I haven't written in a while. I don't think about anyone else, either. Actually, I don't think at all. I haven't written any songs, poems, stories–nuthin'. I'm a veggie. Our manager tells me things that should make me happy–sales and airplay statistics–buy instead, they just sound like random meaningless numbers. My thoughts grew even more negative. By December, I felt bad even about performing. On December 5th, I wrote: Tonight/today was miserable. Madison Square Garden. It was the most passionless piece of garbage ever. And last night, too in Connecticut. This is the lamest job in the world. How much longer can I keep it up? I felt tortured on stage because I assumed everyone was looking to me to be a passionate performer but I perceived not even an ounce of passion in myself for what I was doing. Weezer had been working non-stop for six months. My voice and my body were sore and exhausted. Before the last show of the year, the KROQ Christmas show on the eleventh, I described the depths to which I felt I had sunk: I guess I should record these blackest of feelings before our last show. For the past couple weeks I've been completely miserable. I was completely burnt out. After the KROQ show, I flew back to Connecticut for a vacation and on Christmas Day, I wrote in my journal with apprehension about the next year's schedule. I'm petrified to return to the band, to return to the stage. I hate that life with all my heart... I went on to clarify my feelings in January in a Rolling Stone interview, unpublished to this day. Possibly the worst part about being on tour is that my emotional life is completely on hold. It's been about four months since I've had substantial (or even insubstantial) contact with a female, or anyone, for that matter, outside of my band-mates. I rarely feel any emotion at all anymore. I'm never really sad, happy, or even lonely. I'm just numb like a robot. I miss the soap opera of settled life. What really worried me about not having an emotional life was that I had nothing to write songs about. Now a year-and-a-half had passed since I'd written anything that I loved. I believed that what I needed as a writer was to shut myself off from the world and from the over-stimulation of being a touring rock star, and to let my feelings rise to the surface again so that I could describe them in songs. On January 12, three weeks into my vacation, I wrote in my journal: I'm starting to feel the blackness closing in. I'm really alone. I'm really insane. I play piano constantly. I'm at least four hours a day of total, complete concentration and mindlessness... I'm definitely going nuts. The song I had written that day was a song called "Walt Disney" (Track 15). In this song I tried to describe the frozen, numb condition I had fallen into after seven months in the spotlight on the road. The song had a beautiful, mellow sound. I really appreciated it and was grateful to it. It did capture the state of my life at the time: the "phone singing" in the third verse standing in for Weezer's manager calling me to go over the details of our impending tour, which I clearly dreaded.
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Audio
Personnel
- Rivers Cuomo – lead guitar, lead vocals, percussion, rhythm guitar, bass guitar, keyboard
Lyrics
It's cold outside
Seven months of suicide
I've been in
Suspended animation
Just like Walt Disney
My only love
Asks for me to wait out there
I waited
Waited but she didn't care
Just like Walt Disney
I'm just thawing out
My fingertips and toes are frozen to the bone
Give me an hour before you throw me in the cold
Ring ring ring
Now I hear the phone singing
Calling Me
Telling me to start freezing
Just like Walt Disney, yeah
I'm a block of ice
My fingertips and toes are frozen to the bone
Give me an hour before you throw me in the cold
Give me an hour before you pick me up and throw me 'cross the sea
Why don't you please?
Just like Walt Disney
