Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo
Background information
Birth name	Rivers Cuomo
Born	June 13, 1970 (age 53) New York City, U.S.
Origin	Connecticut, Los Angeles
Occupation(s)	Musician, songwriter
Years active	1989–present
Instrument(s)	Vocals, guitar, drums, bass, piano, harmonica, clarinet
Website	http://www.weezer.com/ http://riverscuomo.com/
Associated acts
Weezer Avant Garde Zoom Fury Warlock Homie Goat Punishment 60 Wrong Sausages AM Radio Scott & Rivers
Notable instrument(s)
Warmoth Custom Fat Strat Gibson SG Standard Rivers Cuomo's equipment history

Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician. He is the lead vocalist, guitarist, and principal songwriter of the rock band Weezer. He has also released works under his own name, and has contributed to numerous songs by other artists.

Early life

Cuomo's 1978 school photo

Rivers Cuomo was born on June 13, 1970 in Manhattan to Frank Cuomo, of Italian descent, and Beverly Shoenberger, of German-English descent. According to Rivers, his mother claims that he was so-named because she first heard the sound of a river outside her hospital window after his birth, while his father claims that Rivers was named after three soccer players from the 1970 FIFA World Cup: Brazilian player Roberto Rivellino, and Italian players Gigi Riva and Gianni Rivera. Shoenberger gave Rivers no middle name in order to permit him to choose his own (which he never did). Rivers was, according to his younger brother, Leaves, almost named "Apple" (most likely because he was born in New York City).

Rivers lived the first few years of his life at the Rochester Zen Center in upstate New York, where his parents first met. Frank Cuomo was a musician who notably played percussion on the 1971 album Odyssey of Iska by jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter. Frank left the family when Rivers was four years old, and was largely absent from Rivers' youth. Shoenberger moved with Rivers and Leaves to Yogaville East in Pomfret, Connecticut, where they lived until 1981. Shoenberger married Steven Kitts in 1976. At Yogaville, Rivers was given the name Rama by the Indian guru Swami Satchidananda. When Yogaville relocated to Virginia, the Kitts family remained in Connecticut, moving to Storrs/Mansfield area, where Cuomo lived for the remainder of his adolescence.

Cuomo has described himself as a "very somber child." Said Cuomo, "My teacher asked my mother what was wrong with me because I never looked happy. So, my mother advised her to say, 'Let me see that smile,' and then I would smile. So she did that -- in front of the whole class. She got the whole class to turn around, look at me and say, 'Let me see that smile.'" While attending Mansfield Middle School and E.O. Smith High School, Rivers and Leaves Cuomo went by the more "ordinary" names Peter and James Kitts, respectively.

Cuomo was greatly interested in soccer from a young age, initially wanting to be a professional soccer player when he grew up. "...because I rarely saw my dad as I was growing up, I romanticized everything about him. One of the things I romanticized was his passion for soccer; I tried to cultivate it in myself. I took my first step trying to kick a soccer ball." Cuomo also played on a boy's soccer team. However, in 1981, Cuomo learned that he had been born with a congenital femoral deficiency in his right leg. Though his legs were of equal length at birth, by the time of his diagnosis in 1981, Cuomo's right femur had grown 1¼ inches shorter than his left, reaching a 2-inch differential at his full height. Cuomo's interests later pivoted to music.

Cuomo as a teenager

Cuomo was first exposed to American rock band Kiss at age 7. "This little girl came through the ashram for a visit, and she brought a Kiss record, Rock and Roll Over. She came over to our house, and while we played the Kiss record, we recorded ourselves running around in circles as the tape played. It was like, 'this kicks ass.'" Cuomo later joined the Columbia Record Club and bought every Kiss album he could, eventually bonding over his love of Kiss in the sixth grade with friend Justin Fisher, the son of a friend of his mother's. Cuomo was first inspired to learn guitar after witnessing classmates perform "Metal Health" by Quiet Riot at a school assembly. "I just couldn’t believe that kids my age were playing these real instruments and playing this song I loved... it just blew my mind! And so I got my own guitar shortly after that, and I started learning all the metal songs of the day." Cuomo received his first guitar on his fourteenth birthday, in 1984. Cuomo's first band was a Kiss cover band, called Fury, consisting of himself and his brother on guitar, Justin Fisher on bass, and Eric Robertson on drums.

Music career

Early career

Avant Garde

Cuomo and Fisher performed in several bands throughout the 80s, covering songs by bands such as Metallica, Yngwie Malmsteen, and Fates Warning, with Cuomo even taking guitar lessons from Fates Warning guitarist Jim Matheos. In 1985, the pair formed the glam metal band Avant Garde, recruiting classmate Bryn Mutch on drums and brothers Kevin and Eric Ridel on lead vocals and guitar, respectively. The band recorded three demo tapes between 1987 and 1989. In 1987, Cuomo attended a five-week music program at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, where he met Texas native Michael Stanton, who later moved to Connecticut to replace Eric Ridel. In 1989, the band relocated to Los Angeles and changed their name to "Zoom," recording another demo tape in early 1990. Zoom played their final show in March of that year before their ultimate dissolution.

After the members of Zoom were evicted from their appartment, Cuomo moved in with a girlfriend and got a job working for Tower Records in Anaheim, California in 1990 before transferring to the company's Sunset Strip that summer. While working for Tower Records, Cuomo first met Patrick Finn, who encouraged Cuomo to write and sing his own songs and exposed him to bands that would later greatly influence his songwriting, like Nirvana, the Beach Boys, and the Pixies. Finn introduced Cuomo to future Weezer bandmates Patrick Wilson, Jason Cropper, and Matt Sharp, in addition to Karl Koch.

In early 1991, Cuomo and Wilson formed the band Fuzz with bassist Scottie Chapman. Fuzz featured a more Grunge-influenced sound, reflective of the music Cuomo was interested in at the time. The project was short-lived; after a single 8-track demo and two shows, the band fizzled out as Cuomo and Wilson shifted focus toward a new project, 60 Wrong Sausages, formed alongside Finn and Cropper. Throughout the fall of 1991, the band recorded a demo, held several rehearsals, and performed one show before dissolving.

Formation of Weezer

Weezer's earliest incarnation. From L—R: Jason Cropper, Patrick Wilson, Rivers Cuomo, Matt Sharp

Following the dissolution of 60 Wrong Sausages, Cuomo and Wilson expressed a shared interest in moving toward the type of songs that bands like Nirvana and the Pixies were recording. "There was so much anxiety about authenticity at the time," said Cuomo, "and we’d all just made this radical transformation from being metalheads to being alternative. You didn’t want anyone to find out what you looked like 12 months ago." The two resolved to attempt to write fifty songs between the two of them before pursuing a new band project. "We wanted to write a bunch of tunes before we even played together," said Cuomo, "so that we could have an idea of where we were heading before we started wasting our time and money paying for a rehearsal studio. I didn't want to get back into a band until I felt like I had a bunch of songs that were good and that had cohesive style. So I just wrote songs and didn't play at all for a long time." Though the two did not make it to fifty songs, future Weezer tracks such as "Undone - The Sweater Song," "My Name Is Jonas," and "The World Has Turned and Left Me Here" were written during this period. In January of 1992, Wilson shared a tape of the duo's material with Matt Sharp while the latter was living in Berkeley. Sharp was so impressed that he insisted on being Cuomo's bass player, resolving to move back to Los Angeles. "Rivers was able to articulate something that up to that point had been elusive for me," said Sharp, "I thought, ‘I’m doing this, no matter what has to be done to make it happen.'" Cuomo was greatly validated by Sharp's confidence. "It confirmed all my greatest hopes for myself." said Cuomo, "Knowing he felt so strongly about the songs was all the confidence I needed."

Cuomo, Wilson, Cropper, and Sharp formed the band that would later be dubbed Weezer in February of 1992, rehearsing for three days at T.K. Productions & Rehearsal Studios in west Los Angeles. The band performed their first concert the following month, at Raji's on Hollywood Boulevard, performing in support of headliner Dogstar (a band notable for featuring actor Keanu Reeves on bass). Hours before the show, Raji's promoter, Lawrence Mann, asked Cuomo what name to put on the bill. Without consulting the other members, Cuomo answered with "Weezer," a childhood nickname given to him by his father after the character "Wheezer" (Bobby Hutchins) from The Little Rascals.

Weezer recorded multiple demos and played numerous shows around Los Angeles before signing to Geffen Records on June 25, 1993. The band's eponymous debut album was recorded later that year and released the following spring, on May 10, 1994. Over the course of 1994, however, Cuomo became lonely and disillusioned with the lifestyle of constant touring. He began formulating a potential concept album based on this disillusionment, later dubbed Songs from the Black Hole. Later in the year, Cuomo began applying at colleges with the intent of studying musical composition.

On April 14, 1995, Cuomo underwent an operation to correct his congenital femoral deficiency. The surgery involved breaking his femur and fitting it with a metal brace (called an Ilizarov apparatus). Said Cuomo, "Each day I would turn some screws on the rods so that they would extend and increase the space in the break in my bone. After 6 months, the bone was supposed to be totally filled in and they would take off the metal frame. Two months in I was back out on the road with Weezer, stumbling around with a cane." Cuomo required an additional surgery in January of 1996.

Boston

Cuomo's Harvard student ID

There appears to be some sort of brewing here—with regards to men's self-image. Our natural tendencies were repressed by the peace and love crap of my parents' generation; these tendencies were perverted and relieved in maladjusted ways. In the past 10 years, several voices—Howard Stern, Joe Matt—have had the courage to uncover these tendencies—and found large audiences of sympathizing men. These individuals are struggling to uncover and assimilate their urges in a way that does them justice. There is a large element of shame and self-deprecation in uncovering these urges. But always an unflinching desire to know the self. Who am I? Who is man? What is man? What am I? —Rivers Cuomo; journal entry; March 12, 1996

In September of 1995, Cuomo moved into a house in Cambridge, Massachusetts to attend Harvard University. Cuomo was largely anonymous to his peers while in school. "Most of our fans at that time were, like, ten years old," said Cuomo, "It wasn't really a college audience...I grew a very long beard and long hair and I was undergoing this procedure on my leg, so I was walking with a cane. I just looked like some really weird, super-old, weird guy."

Cuomo wrote very few songs (composition homework notwithstanding) during his time at Harvard, though several of the few songs he did write would later comprise the latter half of Weezer's subsequent album, Pinkerton. These songs about personal experiences at Harvard lead Cuomo to, ultimately, abandon the previous "rock opera" conceit of Songs from the Black Hole. Pinkerton released in September of 1996 and the band toured throughout 1997. The album, however, failed to achieve the same success as the band's debut album, polarizing critics and failing to meet sales expectations. Cuomo began distancing himself from the album for several years thereafter, calling it a "hideous record" in an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2001, adding, "It was such a hugely painful mistake that happened in front of hundreds of thousands of people and continues to happen on a grander and grander scale and just won’t go away. It’s like getting really drunk at a party and spilling your guts in front of everyone and feeling incredibly great and cathartic about it, and then waking up the next morning and realizing what a complete fool you made of yourself." Following the conclusion of the tour, Weezer entered a fallow period.

Cuomo initially intended to return to Harvard for the fall semester of 1997, but decided not to at the last minute. Cuomo instead focused on songwriting again, in addition to performing shows with friends in the Boston music scene. Cuomo fronted a handful of small-venue concerts to try out new material and audition potential new bassists for Weezer following the departure of Matt Sharp, experimenting with both "goofball" songs (under the moniker "Homie") that didn't fit with the darker, more personal songs of Pinkerton, as well as minimalist, "drone rock" compositions utilizing as few chords as possible (a reaction to the negative response to Pinkerton, which featured numerous chords and key changes).

The Green Album and Maladroit

Mikey Welsh and Cuomo, 1998

Cuomo ultimately selected bassist Mikey Welsh to join Weezer, and the two moved into a townhouse at Park La Brea in Los Angeles with Pat Wilson. Weezer resumed rehearsals, primarily at T.K. Rehearsals in Los Angeles. Cuomo and Welsh later moved into an apartment on Sepulveda Boulevard. By the beginning of 1999, however, Cuomo had failed to write any material in which he felt confidence. "My band-mates each were pursuing other projects." Cuomo reflected in 2008, "Weezer's manager and record company rep stopped calling me regularly. Friends and family grew distant. I encouraged the space so that I could be alone. I determined that with enough concentration and effort, I could analyze my way out of the predicament I imagined myself to be in, the predicament of 'poor songwriting'." Cuomo began an analytical process of regarding his songwriting sessions as "experiments," assigning each a number and maintaining a log dubbed "The Catalog o' Riffs." "I analyzed a large number of writing methods, varying what seemed to be every possible facet of the process: the order of the steps (guitar, melody, lyric, beat, riff, etc.); the tempo; the feel; the level of distortion on the guitar; whether I was composing aloud or in my head; the time of day; my emotional state; whether I had eaten or not; the number of drinks I had imbibed, if any. My goal was to ascertain the one method by which I could write the best songs." Meanwhile, he unplugged his phone, painted the walls and ceiling of his apartment bedroom black and covered the windows with fiberglass insulation. He began studying and dissecting the songs of the bands Nirvana, Oasis, and Green Day, assembling his studies into a three-ring binder he called "The Encyclopedia of Pop," in hopes of discovering a formula for writing pop songs. By late summer of 1999, Cuomo felt despondent in his efforts and briefly considered returning to school, but missed the registration deadline. Weezer performed secret shows during this time—under the pseudonym "Goat Punishment"—wherein the band (sans Pat Wilson) covered songs from Nirvana and Oasis' respective debut albums.

Cuomo during recording sessions for The Green Album

In December of 1999, Cuomo moved into a house and built a rehearsal studio in the garage. In June of 2000, Weezer performed a number of shows at smaller venues under their own name before joining the Vans Warped Tour. The band continued playing concerts and rehearsing throughout the remainder of the year while Cuomo continued writing new songs. From December through the following February, Weezer recorded their third record, the eponymous Green Album. In contrast to earlier albums, Cuomo largely eschewed personal songwriting. "The Green Album and Maladroit were, very intentionally, not about me." said Cuomo in 2006, "Not about what was going on in my life, at least in a conscious way." The lead single from Green, "Hash Pipe," was reportedly written about a "homosexual transvestite prostitute" during one of Cuomo's "Catalog o' Riffs" experiments, wherein Cuomo chased Ritalin with three shots of tequila. Conversely, however, songs like "O Girlfriend" and "Photograph" were written about real experiences.

Cuomo on the cover of Kerrang!, 2002

Dissatisfied with his management, Cuomo sought to manage the band himself. He had dinner with Fat Mike, frontman of the self-managed band NOFX, who encouraged Cuomo not to pay someone a percentage. Immediately following the release of the Green Album, Weezer fired their management, Atlas/Third Rail, and longtime manager Pat Magnarella (who subsequently sued). According to Karl Koch, the firing was a "statement of intent" and Cuomo felt that the band didn't need management, and could simply fund their next album with their own money and pay themselves back when the album sold. "I sought to cultivate the same ruthless practicality in my business that I had achieved in my music." Cuomo later reflected in an essay, "I studied the lives of Napoleon and David Geffen, Machiavelli’s The Prince, and contemporary texts on leadership and management. I gradually took over all of the business responsibilities from our manager and managed the band completely by myself. My performing, writing, and recording continued but were now joined by my business activities, all of which together I viewed as converging on the one goal of 'world domination'."

Within weeks of the release of Green, Weezer began recording new demos for the follow-up album. Cuomo shut out record label Geffen from the recording process, and the band financed and produced the record themselves, sharing in-progress recordings with fans online during studio sessions and sending CDs with finished songs to radio stations without the label's foreknowledge. Using this leverage, the band was able to renegotiate their contract, but the finished album, Maladroit, under-performed, selling less than a million copies. Cuomo's behavior also became pointedly antagonistic, demanding a publicist exit his tour bus and walk back to the hotel before consenting to an interview for Kerrang! and referring to fans as "little bitches" in an interview for Guitar World. He also began interacting with fans on internet message boards under the handle 'ace.'

Make Believe and discovering meditation

[W]hen Hafiz says, “Self-Effacement is the emerald dagger you need to plunge deep into yourself upon this path to …God”, I read it as “Self-Effacement is the emerald dagger you need to plunge deep into yourself upon this path to Musical Creativity." —Rivers Cuomo, 2004

Songwriting and demoing for Weezer's fifth album had begun before Maladroit had even been released, but plans were halted in the summer of 2002. Soon after, producer Rick Rubin agreed to produce the record. The band continued demoing new songs, but Cuomo wasn't pleased with the music he was making. Said drummer Pat Wilson, "He didn’t believe in the music, because he didn’t believe in himself [...] Didn’t matter how many times we said, 'That’s rad, Dude.' There were times he was physically ill coming out of the studio." Rubin, wanting to help Cuomo, gave him a copy of The Gift, a book of poems by the fourteenth-century Sufi poet Hafez. Hafez, who wrote hundreds of ghazals about different forms of love, led Cuomo to an epiphany: "If the feeling these mystics get in union with their God is analogous to the feeling I used to get in union with my music, then their teachings for how to achieve their union should likewise serve to instruct me how to achieve my union." Cuomo subsequently sold his house and most of his possessions, moved into an empty apartment next to Rubin's house, and began volunteering six days a week at Project Angel Food in Hollywood, providing meals to people with HIV. Although initially skeptical when Rubin suggested meditation, Cuomo found himself drawn to the technique of Vipassana.

Cuomo with Vipassana teacher S.N. Goenka in 2005.

The effect of meditation had an effect on Cuomo's songwriting. One song, "Pardon Me," was written after Cuomo attended a meditation course in which the teacher told him to repeat over in his mind "I seek pardon from all those who have harmed me in action, speech or thought." Another song, "Hold Me", was written while fasting. Weezer's fifth album, Make Believe, was released on May 10, 2005, eleven years to the day after the Blue Album. The album received mixed reviews but was a commercial success, debuting at number two on the Billboard 200 albums chart.

Cuomo resumed classes at Harvard in December of 2004.

Other creative pursuits

Cuomo has written or co-written numerous songs for other artists.

Acting

Cuomo appears as himself in the short film/music video "Cocaine Blues" by American psychedelic rock band the Warlocks. He also makes a brief cameo appearance in the music video for "Murder (You Know It's Hard)" by the Crystal Method, directed by Marcos Siega (who also directed the music video for Weezer's "Hash Pipe").

Personal life

Relationships

Cuomo was in an quasi-relationship (referred to by Cuomo as his "sort-of-girlfriend" or "'girlfriend'" in quotes) with musician Jennifer Chiba in the 90s. Several songs written by Cuomo were inspired by Chiba, and she was the basis for the character of Maria in the aborted Songs from the Black Hole concept album. The cover for Pinkerton was based on a postcard sent to Cuomo by Chiba. Chiba was in a relationship with musician Elliott Smith at the time of his death in 2003, and the Weezer song "The Other Way" was written by Cuomo about his conflicting feelings about attempting to comfort Chiba.

Cuomo met Kyoko Ito in 1997 at one of his solo concerts in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The two married on June 18, 2006. The pair have two children.

Beliefs

Cuomo has been a vegetarian since childhood.

Discography

See Rivers Cuomo discography

As a band member

with Weezer

• Weezer (The Blue Album) (1994)
• Pinkerton (1996)
• Weezer (The Green Album) (2001)
• Maladroit (2002)
• Make Believe (2005)
• Weezer (The Red Album) (2008)
• Raditude (2009)
• Hurley (2010)
• Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014)
• Weezer (The White Album) (2016)
• Pacific Daydream (2017)
• Weezer (The Teal Album) (2019)
• Weezer (The Black Album) (2019)
• OK Human (2021)
• Van Weezer (2021)
• SZNZ (2022)

This discography lists only Weezer's albums. For more detail, please see the Weezer discography

with Homie

• 1998 - Meet the Deedles Soundtrack ("American Girls")

With Scott & Rivers

• 2013 - スコット と リバース (Scott & Rivers)
• 2017 - ニマイメ (Naimaime)

as a solo artist

Album releases

• Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007)
• Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2008)
• Not Alone: Rivers Cuomo & Friends Live at Fingerprints (2009)
• Alone III: The Pinkerton Years 1994-1997 (2011)
• The Space Between Original Motion Picture Soundtrack (2021)

This discography lists only album releases. For digital compilations, see Rivers Cuomo discography.

Solo singles

Cover	Album
	Medicine for Melancholy Released: March 16, 2018
	Two Broken Hearts Released: December 21, 2018
	Backflip Theme song from the Green Eggs and Ham TV series Released: October 31, 2019
	Anak Sekolah Released: November 10, 2022
	Halik Released: September 29, 2023
	Home Released: October 9, 2023

List of bands

• Fury (1984)
• Warlock
• Avant Garde (1985)
• Zoom (Avant Garde renamed, 1989)
• Fuzz
• 60 Wrong Sausages (1991)
• Weezer (1992-present)
• Homie (Sometimes erroneously dubbed the Rivers Cuomo Band, 1997-1998)
• Scott & Rivers (2013-present)

Equipment

See Rivers Cuomo's equipment

Interviews

See Category:Rivers Cuomo Interviews

Essays

• A Mad and Furious Master (2004)
• What I've Been Up To Since I Left School (2004)
• Letter for Readmission to Harvard (2005)

See also

• List of Rivers Cuomo songs
• List of Weezer songs

• Rivers Cuomo's equipment
• Beverly's letter
• Rivers' Photo Gallery

External links

• The Official Site of Rivers Cuomo

Social media

• Facebook
• Facebook (Japanese)
• Twitter
• Twitter (Japanese)
• Instagram
• Tumblr
• YouTube
• YouTube: RiversCuomoAlone (old account)
• Snapchat
• Vine
• Periscope
• Ustream
• MySpace (protected account)