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WEEZER: THE GOOD FELLAS
Author: Sefio Fortuño (Rock & Pop)
Published: June 1995
- It's too early to know if Weezer represents an important milestone in the history of rock and roll. But it can be assured that the north American quartet has broken with the tormented and twisted image of the 90s rockstar. Rock and Pop has talked with the guitarist of the group, Brian Bell, about the history, the plans, and the experiences of the band.
Weezer suffers from the main symptoms of the agony of grunge. Rapid success, guys with nerdy faces that don't look like they've carried the pain of the world, and songs with an indisputable pop influence. Enough to imagine a pink-colored story behind every one of the four ramshackle guys that appears in the cover of their debut record, that has the same name as the band.
But nothing was that easy. In fact, Weezer was born from two failures that happened simultaneously in the life of the vocalist, frontman and compositor of the band, Rivers Cuomo. At 18 years of age, he had decided to leave for Los Angeles and abandon the Hindu community from Connecticut where he had been raised, a place called Yogaville, where everyone meditated and no one ate meat. He wanted to be a rockstar. After some time, he realized that he was never going to make it. While he assumed defeat, his woman left him. Doubly sad, he started to write songs about the state he was in and discovered that he was one of those beings incapable of communicating with words and that spill everything they need to say in verses and with the accompaniment of a band.
In California, he ended up sharing a house with the drummer Matt Sharp and the bassist Patrick Wilson[sic]. Two dudes who used to make a living selling shampoo for dogs. The guitarist Jason Cropper joined them, and on the 14th of February of 1992,[Note 1] Weezer was officially born.
After 17 months in the semi-darkness of the Los Angeles venues, the band signed a contract with the multinational company DGC and began to record their debut record, from which the singles "Undone - The Sweater Song" and "Buddy Holly" come from, with videos that are stuck at number one on MTV, and were directed by the new pop guru, Spike Jonze, who also directed the videos for the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" and the Breeders' "Cannonball". Cuomo, a fan of The Cars, had sent some demos to Rick Ocasek[sic], ex-leader of the band, one of the most representatives of 80s pop. To the surprise of Cuomo and of the group, Ocasek agreed to produce for Weezer.
Weezer, the debut record, was recorded in Electric Lady Studios in New York, from where Rivers Cuomo called up a guy who had been born in Tennessee and had a band called Carnival Arts[sic]. Brian Bell answered the phone and knew that the guitarist Jason Cropper had separated from the group and that they were inviting him to take his place. "I had seen them play and I had told them I liked the band", Bell remembers, talking on the phone with Rock & Pop. "They had seen me play a few months after and we had exchanged phone numbers".
Without aversions for pop
A bit sleepy and in the middle of a break before Weezer starts a second tour in Europe this month, Bell says that he and the members of Weezer share music tastes when it comes to classic bands like the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Rolling Stones, and other recent bands like Pavement and the Pixies. In fact, the first single from the group, "Undone - The Sweater Song", has a lot to do with the sound of the Boston based band, led by Frank Black.
Weezer's might be one of the most successful mixes between the classic sound of rock and roll, and the rawness of the songs from the 90s, and a bit of pop wisdom in the creation of catchy phrases and verses. "That's why we chose Rick Ocasek[sic], we all love the Cars. They made perfect pop songs and that is what we wanted to do", Bell points out, "We fell in a niche that had to be filled in music. It's also a matter of showing up at the right time. I think we're good, we made good videos, we made a good album, and there are good people behind us".
Bell agrees that the band's success was fast. But he still believes it was "a gradual ascent. It might not seem like it when you look at it as someone who suddenly sees the name Weezer on the charts. But for us, being part of Weezer, was step by step and not overnight".
Of course, there was a lot of hard work. Weezer went through an uninterrupted year of tours in the United States and Europe. For Brian Bell, "it's been very strenuous. Sometimes, when you're tired, you ask yourself if this is really what you want to do. And it really is what I want to do. I wouldn't do anything else. It's awesome. You're playing every night".
In the tours, there were comically-tragic moments. This is an anecdote that Brian Bell tells us and that, well, everyone will have the liberty to believe it or not: "One day we were on tour in our van, bored, playing around at a gas station, and Matt had a high-powered squirt gun. He started shooting everywhere, and out of nowhere he shot at the van. The impact broke the radiator, and it started to spew a bunch of green smoke. We were stuck in a lost town in Nevada. We fixed it ourselves and we continued to San Francisco".
In Philadelphia, the group experienced the most hysterical dimension of fame. "After a show", Bell accounts, "we left towards our bus, which was surrounded by hundreds of fans. They all started screaming. It was like A Hard Day's Night. I ran. I had a stunt double (he joked) and I managed to run towards the bus and I saved myself from getting my clothes ripped off. I got scared".
Great Buddy[sic]
Before going to Europe, the members of Weezer are gonna reunite in New York to record in Spanish the vocals for "Undone - The Sweater Song" and "Buddy Holly". We'll have to see what comes from this. Meanwhile, in Chile, the song is still being listened to in English, and it can pass as an homage to one of the most influential classic rock-and-rollers in music, but this isn't the case. "It's about a Korean girl who is friends with Rivers", Bell explains, "That is the explanation he gives. The Buddy Holly thing is just a reference. She is Mary Taylor Moore (the other character mentioned in the song) and he is Buddy Holly".
"It was very fun making the video for that track", Bell recalls. Spike Jonze's idea was to insert the group into an episode of the 70s show "Happy Days". When Jonze showed what the clip was gonna be like, the Weezer guys replied "Yes, but didn't Nirvana do the same thing before with the video for 'In Bloom'?". Bell recounts that "He convinced us that this would be different, so we embarked. He said "¡action!" and we acted".
Weezer's story is curious. While they worry about enriching their tracks with videos that draw attention and while they prepare for a typical market operation like recording tracks in Spanish, the band will enter a break so that each member can dedicate themselves to their own thing. Rivers Cuomo will go back to university and the rest will dedicate themselves to side projects. Bell has a band called Space Twins that plans to start up again when Weezer's leader is in his classes. For the December holiday break, Weezer will start recording their second record.
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