Ziazine! article - August 2002

Print interview with Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson
Publication	Ziazine!
Published	August 2002
Interviewer	Gary Graff
Interviewee	Rivers Cuomo, Patrick Wilson
Title	Emo in Motion
Format	Print
External link	Archived via Weezer Media Archive
References	See where this article is referenced on Weezerpedia
This material was initially documented in the Weezer Media Archive.

Emo in Motion Author: Gary Graff (Ziazine!) Published: August 2002 Less than a year after the triumph of "The Green Album," Rivers Cuomo and Weezer skewer expectations (again) with the equally impressive Maladroit. A couple of years ago, the only thing more surprising than a new Weezer album would have been two Weezer albums less than a year apart. Excuse us, then, while we pick our jaws up off the floor. After a five-year break, Weezer stormed back onto radio playlists with last year's Weezer, aka The Green Album, and its hits "Hash Pipe" and "Island in the Sun." Considering the gap that preceded it, fans were rightly surprised when the new Maladroit surfaced a scant 11 months after Weezer appeared-a lightning-speed turnaround for rock in general, much less Weezer itself. Moreover, Weezer frontman and songwriter Rivers Cuomo says he has more than 350 other songs in hand, just waiting to be released-with the next batch coming perhaps as soon as February. Simply put, Weezer is in a groove that Cuomo doesn't feel is terribly difficult to explain. "Probably the number one reason is just accepting whatever comes when I sit down to write instead of having preconceptions about what I should be writing," the bespectacled 32-year-old singer, songwriter and guitarist says. "Everything I do now is just spontaneous and natural, whereas before I had this particular sound in my mind that I was forcing myself to write like all the time. "So things went much slower back then, 'cause I was constantly rejecting things that popped up naturally, just 'cause I didn't think they were what I thought I was supposed to sound like." That original model was 1994's Weezer aka The Blue Album. Thanks to the hits "Undone (The Sweater Song)," "Buddy Holly" (and its "Happy Days" video) and "Say It Ain't So," it was a triple-platinum debut smash that gave the Connecticut-bred Cuomo and his bandmates standing amidst all sectors of the then-burgeoning alternative rock audience. But Weezer's success also boxed Cuomo into a stylistic corner, and when the band emerged with 1996's Pinkerton-a darker song cycle that was initially rejected by both fans and critics-Rolling Stone magazine dubbed it the Worst Album of the Year. Dispirited, Cuomo put the band on hiatus, heading back east to matriculate for a while at Harvard. "Your brain is always searching for reasons to doubt yourself; I'm pretty experienced with that," Cuomo says with a laugh. "I just wasn't feeling exactly what I wanted to say at the time, artistically. So I just kept waiting and trying and trying and hoping that I would really feel something." He acknowledges that, "there were some times when it looked pretty bleak as far as [Weezer's] future prospects went. There were a million antagonistic factors. But I still got up every day and kept trying; I didn't let it get me down." Though bassist Matt Sharp quit to work in another band, the Rentals, the other members of Weezer-who also dabbled in side projects-bided their time waiting for Cuomo's return. "I always knew that somehow it would come back together," says drummer Patrick Wilson. "I think Rivers had to figure out how he was gonna reintroduce his songwriting-what was he going to write about that he could stand behind? I think he felt a lot of pressure to live up to this expectation that not only the fans have but maybe the industry as well." As Cuomo felt his muse return, he called Weezer back together during 2000 for some low-key touring, including club dates and a slot on that year's Warped Tour. The rapid response was disarming; Pinkerton had become an expos facto hit, and fans flocked to see a revived Weezer play life. "We were totally astonished," Cuomo says. "We were afraid no one would come or people would laugh and throw things. We just kept getting surprised." The return wasn't all smooth, despite the double-platinum showing of the third Weezer album. Bassist Mikey Welch disappeared during the 2001 tour, eventually surfacing in a psychiatric ward-he was replaced by Scott Shriner, who makes his recording debut with the band on Maladroit. And Cuomo-who's managing the band these days-did battle with Weezer's label, Interscope, generally over his habit of posting (and numbering) his new songs on the Internet and specifically for distributing an early, eight-song preview CD of songs slated for Maladroit to reporters and radio stations. When stations began playing some of the songs, Interscope muscled Cuomo into issuing a cease-and-desist request, acknowledging that he "jumped the gun." "I think there's been several conflicts [with the label] so far, and I was really anticipating a big fight over Maladroit, 'cause we were squabbling quite a bit," Cuomo says. But the problems apparently aren't insurmountable, he adds. "I think now we're really seeing eye to eye," he says, "and I anticipate that our artistic output and metabolism is going to very naturally sync up with the business. "I'm gonna be slowing down; I'm already slowing down, really, and taking more time on my lyrics. So whereas before I'd gotten into the habit of writing a song every morning without fail, now I feel like my default mode is to do nothing but lounge around, and if a song comes along, I'll go with it. "Before I wanted to keep moving, whereas now I feel I've arrived." Cuomo agrees with those who consider Maladroit a harder rocking effort than its predecessors. "I think that's probably a result of peeling away the layers of repression and expectations I put on myself as a writer-basically, to sound like the first album," he explains. "I finally came across a layer of heavy metal that has been residing there since my teenager years-my favorite bands in the '80s were Kiss, Scorpions, Metallica, Slayer, Yngwie Malmsteen." That said, Cuomo is quick to quell any concerns that Weezer is abandoning the pop craftsmanship that's marked all its albums. "I think Maladroit is just kind of an extreme in one direction," he says. "I think we've kind of felt out that border, and we'll continue to explore in different directions." Cuomo is purposefully vague on what those directions might be, however. "They're even more natural, I would say. They just sound very relaxed and mature," is as far as he'll go in assessing his new material for Weezer. But he does promise "plenty of space for all the band members to contribute"-including a keyboardist that's recently been added to the lineup. Mostly, Cuomo says, he hopes Weezer's next album will showcase the greater care he's putting into the lyrics of his most recent songs. "My goal on this album, my one artificial constraint, is I want to write an entire album without using the word 'I,'" he says. "I want to write about as many external things as possible. I'm really trying to express my point of view, which is something I haven't really done since 1996. "I'm not too politically aware, but probably some things I'm saying will have some kind of political ramifications. I'm not too obsessive these days, so I'm not gonna write, like, some insanely obsessive album about a girl or something like that. I feel very relaxed; I'm writing about whatever subject pops into my head, in a very sober fashion. It's really fun."