Speaker 1: Pushkin. Most people know Rivers Cuomo as Weezer's brilliant, quirky
Speaker 1: bleed sing chops of water flood cascading from the sky
Speaker 1: and it streaks my winship who I opened up the door.
Speaker 1: But one thing you may not know is that several
Speaker 1: years ago a bizarre conspiracy theory started to make its
Speaker 1: way around the web. The Rivers was actually Kurt Cobain,
Speaker 1: as in Kurt stage Is suicide in nineteen ninety four
Speaker 1: and carried on living his life as Rivers Cuomo. While
Speaker 1: Nirvana and Weezer at seemingly opposite ends of the nineties
Speaker 1: music spectrum, a close look reveals they're actually a lot
Speaker 1: more similar than you might think. In anticipation of Weezer's
Speaker 1: ambitious and incredibly catchy new album Okay Human, Rivers explains
Speaker 1: to Rick Rubin why the band ditched their classic guitar
Speaker 1: based style for an orchestral sound. They also talk about
Speaker 1: the specific substances that Rivers took to write the hit
Speaker 1: song hash Pipe, and Rivers entertains the Kurt Cobain conspiracy
Speaker 1: and plays along with Rick as if it were all true.
Speaker 1: This is broken record. Liner notes for the digital age
Speaker 1: I'm justin Richmonds. Here are old friends Rick Rubin and
Speaker 1: Rivers Cuomo talking over zoom. Have you seen the website,
Speaker 1: the conspiracy website that says that Kurt Cobain did not
Speaker 1: kill himself and that it's actually you are Kurt Cobain.
Speaker 1: Have you seen that? Yeah, I've heard of that is
Speaker 1: I hadn't seen the website before, and then just just
Speaker 1: yesterday somebody forwarded it to me. Is that like suddenly
Speaker 1: going around for some reason? It's I know that conspiracy
Speaker 1: has been around for a long time. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I just thought. I just thought the other day, and
Speaker 1: I thought interesting, and I thought it might even be
Speaker 1: interesting if I were to ask you questions as if
Speaker 1: it were true, because that could be fun for both
Speaker 1: of us. Yeah. So, if if you were Kurt, tell
Speaker 1: me how you imagine you would have transformed yourself into Rivers. Well,
Speaker 1: first of all, I'd have to stage my death, which
Speaker 1: seems seems easy enough. And then yeah, the Blue album
Speaker 1: came out a month later after he died. You could
Speaker 1: have been you could have been working on that like
Speaker 1: for years. Yeah, and I know he was. He seemed
Speaker 1: to be very interested in very like innocent naive music,
Speaker 1: like they covered the Raincoats, which is not that different
Speaker 1: from Wheezer. I guess, you know, major key and we
Speaker 1: kind of picked up picked up that ball and ran
Speaker 1: with it. So yeah, I think kind of running the
Speaker 1: opposite direction from grunge and you know where the button
Speaker 1: down shirts and cut your hair short and and sing
Speaker 1: with a very pure voice rather than rock voice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seems like that would be a nice um if you, like,
Speaker 1: if you're tired of being Kurt Cobain, this might be
Speaker 1: a nice career decision, like get away from all that madness,
Speaker 1: essentially canceled the past and starting new with no none
Speaker 1: of the old pressure of being in this the band
Speaker 1: that changed the world, and where you could just have
Speaker 1: fun and write pop songs and enjoy yourself. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: guess the grass is always greener, but yeah, and I
Speaker 1: think for for everyone outside of Nirvana, it seemed like
Speaker 1: he had did pretty good. Like that's what we all wanted, right,
Speaker 1: We want to be not only the band that's selling
Speaker 1: ten gazillion records, but like the band that everyone knows
Speaker 1: like they revolutionized music and culture. You know, they're always
Speaker 1: going to be that band and the rest of us
Speaker 1: We're just like little little dwarfs kind of dancing around
Speaker 1: their heels. But it looks like it felt bad enough
Speaker 1: for him to either end his life or decide to
Speaker 1: become you. One of the two, which is better? She
Speaker 1: is different stylistically. Did you have any in the transition
Speaker 1: from the songs you wrote for Nirvana versus the Weezer
Speaker 1: songs you wrote you decide to, like really clear the
Speaker 1: decks and and think of it in a new way.
Speaker 1: I think it all it all came about because I
Speaker 1: changed my style of singing. Now. When I was singing
Speaker 1: the very thick rock voice, so many overtones and all
Speaker 1: this distortion. Naturally in my vocal chords, I was able
Speaker 1: to sing one melody four times in a row and
Speaker 1: call that a verse four times in a row and
Speaker 1: call that a chorus, and no one would get tired
Speaker 1: of my voice because it was so rich. But once
Speaker 1: they started singing with a very pure voice, like a
Speaker 1: choirboy voice like you hear in say Buddy Holly, I
Speaker 1: had to change my melody writing in my chord writing
Speaker 1: because the voice just wasn't as rich. You gotta put
Speaker 1: the variation and the richness into the composition. So At
Speaker 1: that point I started writing a lot more involved chord
Speaker 1: progressions and melodies. Interesting, did you let anyone at all
Speaker 1: know what was going to happen or to be played? All?
Speaker 1: Pretty close to the best? I let my lawyer, No.
Speaker 1: But apart from that, I wanted to complete break. Were
Speaker 1: there any things that happened early on where you felt
Speaker 1: like you might get caught? No, there's there's been these
Speaker 1: conspiracies and movies about me, about my death, and I
Speaker 1: don't think anyone's really ever come close to figuring it
Speaker 1: out because it's Wheezer is just so different from Nirvana.
Speaker 1: Yes and no. Yes, I mean you both do the
Speaker 1: soft loud thing. You've sort of kept that in the repertoire. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did that without even noticing. Honestly, Yeah, it's just habit.
Speaker 1: I hadn't yet broken. I thought the idea of adding
Speaker 1: the glasses was a great idea because it really is,
Speaker 1: like it's a perfect It camouflages your face in a
Speaker 1: way that it really does create a new persona. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I did wear them in the big Nirvana video
Speaker 1: I was in Bloom, So it's just like a little
Speaker 1: breadcrumb for people who are really paying attention. I guess foreshadowing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I was actually shooting that video that gave
Speaker 1: me the whole idea. I was looking back at it
Speaker 1: and I was like, you know what, I look pretty
Speaker 1: pretty cool man. This is just like the biggest fu
Speaker 1: to what everyone wants from Nirvana is me and these
Speaker 1: dorky glasses. Yeah. I remember meeting you backstage at a
Speaker 1: at a Chili Pepper concert, and I didn't make the
Speaker 1: connection when I met you the Rivers you. I didn't
Speaker 1: make the connection then, But now looking back, it all
Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. Yeah. I was probably pretty out of
Speaker 1: it when you met me the first time. Right, You're
Speaker 1: pretty out of it when I met you the first time.
Speaker 1: You pretty out of it both times, actually both times
Speaker 1: in a different way, in a different way. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about how your songwriting has progressed over the years. You
Speaker 1: can start back as far as you're as you want,
Speaker 1: if you want to include the thinner running years or not,
Speaker 1: up to you. But your relationship to music and how
Speaker 1: your songwriting has evolved. Well, started out just about the guitar,
Speaker 1: really and wanting to shred and thinking if I get
Speaker 1: fast enough on with these harmonic minor scales, if I
Speaker 1: if I get my metronome setting up high enough, then
Speaker 1: I'm going to be a huge rock star and it's
Speaker 1: going to be great. So I moved with my band
Speaker 1: to LA and we've tried to shred our way to
Speaker 1: a record deal and nobody was interested. They were they
Speaker 1: were interested, and like something called songs and hooks and lyrics,
Speaker 1: and I was like, what the heck is all that about?
Speaker 1: But that became like technique for me. I was like, Okay,
Speaker 1: if if that's what it is, and I'll practice that,
Speaker 1: I'll work on that and until I in shred shred
Speaker 1: of Chorus. Basically, what were you listening to at the
Speaker 1: time that the shredding was going on? What we were inspirations?
Speaker 1: Then that would have been Ingvy Malmstein and Paul Gilbert
Speaker 1: and there's a number of other lesser known shredders. You know,
Speaker 1: it's all instrumental guitar solos, and the band felt apart
Speaker 1: that it was tough. It's five guys in a one
Speaker 1: room studio apartment on Cherokee right off Hollywood Boulevard, and
Speaker 1: you know, you turn the lights on it when you
Speaker 1: come home at night and thousands of cockroaches would scatter
Speaker 1: all over the kitchen counter. You know, it's just no
Speaker 1: fun for most guys. For me, I was like, this
Speaker 1: is amazing. Where did you move from in this story?
Speaker 1: I moved from a small town in northeastern Connecticut. And
Speaker 1: when most people think Connecticut, they think in New York.
Speaker 1: But New York seemed about as far away as La.
Speaker 1: To me, I was I was closer to like Providence,
Speaker 1: or you know, there was really no city around me
Speaker 1: is a college, rural college town right where Yukon is.
Speaker 1: There was a strange number of really talented musicians, like
Speaker 1: talented technically because we all just sat around and practice
Speaker 1: scales and our peggios and metronomes. And so eventually five
Speaker 1: of us moved to LA. And when that fell apart,
Speaker 1: I got a job at Tower Records and it was
Speaker 1: there that every every day, for eight hours a day,
Speaker 1: I was being exposed to quote cool music, and at
Speaker 1: first it just sounded like complete noise to me. It
Speaker 1: was like Thonic Youth Pixies as well as early Nirvana
Speaker 1: and Beach Boys. Pet Sounds reissue came out around or
Speaker 1: CD version came out around that time, and they hammered
Speaker 1: it into me day after day, and gradually it came
Speaker 1: to sink in and have a real influence. And I'd
Speaker 1: go home at night, pretty tired on the bus and
Speaker 1: get to my apartment and I got an eight track recorder,
Speaker 1: and actually that's when I started singing. I was like, well,
Speaker 1: my band broke up to that point, I'd just been
Speaker 1: the lead guitar player, and I was like, well, somebody's
Speaker 1: got to sing. So I tried to sing, and it
Speaker 1: sounded like somebody trying to sing early Nirvana basically, and
Speaker 1: I came to really love what I was doing. I'm
Speaker 1: sure nobody else would have, but it was very cathartic,
Speaker 1: and I would sit there and listen back to my
Speaker 1: cassettes and just I don't know if I literally shed tears,
Speaker 1: but I felt very emotional listening to my own voice
Speaker 1: and my own songs. It's like, yes, that's exactly how
Speaker 1: I feel, which in retros act you know, of course
Speaker 1: that's how I feel. I wrote that it was about
Speaker 1: how I feel. I knew that's why I wanted to
Speaker 1: do at that point. So and it was also through
Speaker 1: that job at Tower that I met my friend there
Speaker 1: who knew the other guys in Weezer, so he got
Speaker 1: he got me to jam with him and included those
Speaker 1: other guys. And there are a few false starts, a
Speaker 1: few strange iterations, including sixty wrong sausages, But eventually it
Speaker 1: turned into Weezer amazing lyrically, when you when you started
Speaker 1: writing those first songs on your eight track and you
Speaker 1: said that if the song sounded like you felt, do
Speaker 1: you remember lyrically what you were writing about. Would it
Speaker 1: have been based on something that you saw or something
Speaker 1: that you felt? Would it have been a diary line?
Speaker 1: In other words? Yeah, not so much external um observations,
Speaker 1: just more like my own feelings and my own philosophies,
Speaker 1: my own points of view, my own realizations. That's what
Speaker 1: it mainly is. It's like, oh, this is this is
Speaker 1: what's going on in the situation. Beautiful that you were
Speaker 1: able to feel it and happen to it and express it,
Speaker 1: and I imagine cathartic for you to give it voice
Speaker 1: and get it out, as opposed to just having it
Speaker 1: inside and drilling a hole in your in yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I often use the word cathartic. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure that's exactly what it is. It's it's more like
Speaker 1: when I clarify exactly what's going on, and I'm specific
Speaker 1: about it, and I get it in words and melody.
Speaker 1: It's almost like I've got an outside of me now
Speaker 1: and now I'm in a way I'm healed, and I
Speaker 1: don't I don't necessarily have to fall into that pattern anymore.
Speaker 1: There's an example on a New Right. We're working on
Speaker 1: a record right now called Okay Human, and there's a
Speaker 1: song called numbers, and that one I just I found myself.
Speaker 1: I don't know what what song we had out, but
Speaker 1: every day I was checking checking a chart, like some
Speaker 1: radio chart. Well, you know, at first it's like it's
Speaker 1: going up, it's going up, this is amazing. And then
Speaker 1: of course it's going down. It's like, oh this this
Speaker 1: other band is getting higher than us and we're falling.
Speaker 1: And it was very painful. And then you know, it's
Speaker 1: like checking Instagram or how many likes or followers do
Speaker 1: I have and how many people retweeted this tweet I posted,
Speaker 1: and I realized, So it's just spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time and emotional energy looking at numbers, which we're telling
Speaker 1: me what my worth was in. So I wrote a
Speaker 1: song specifically about that. There's always a number that'll make
Speaker 1: you feel bad about yourself, and so what since I
Speaker 1: wrote that song, I don't Maybe as soon as I
Speaker 1: start to feel that instinct check a number, I'm like, now,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't need to do that. I know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. Beautiful. Is there ever, or always
Speaker 1: a relationship between the valence of the lyrics and the
Speaker 1: sound of the music. I remember hearing very frequently when
Speaker 1: we put out our first album that there was a
Speaker 1: big mismatch between the emotion of the lyrics and the
Speaker 1: emotion of music. Many people said, oh, the music is
Speaker 1: so happy, it just makes you want to smile and
Speaker 1: jump around, and but man, these lyrics are depressing. So
Speaker 1: I don't know how it happened. But when I'm writing it,
Speaker 1: there's definitely a match, But when people were hearing it,
Speaker 1: there's a mismatch. And I think sometimes there's something really
Speaker 1: interesting about that, Like hearing an energetically happy song with
Speaker 1: really sad lyrics is much more interesting than one that
Speaker 1: where it's everything's match. It plays on different levels and
Speaker 1: it gives it depth. Yeah, And I just I think
Speaker 1: I just love happy music or happy Maybe happy is
Speaker 1: the wrong word. It's more like triumphant and uplifting. I
Speaker 1: don't like music that's too like weak and sad, you know, Matt.
Speaker 1: Matt always would say, what do you love? My about
Speaker 1: my music writing was that it sounded like somebody waving
Speaker 1: a big flag from across a stadium, just in Triumph,
Speaker 1: so he called it my my flag waving. Yeah, we
Speaker 1: would use the word anthemic sometimes, so we would talk
Speaker 1: about some of your hooks when you wrote one of those, like, wow,
Speaker 1: that really sounds anthemic. That's right, it's a great, great feeling. Well,
Speaker 1: I've certainly tried many different approaches in the how many
Speaker 1: years has been? Twenty twenties years? Wow, I could be
Speaker 1: a decade off that math is not my strong suit.
Speaker 1: But this album I'm talking about, okay Human is all piano,
Speaker 1: not just piano compositions. But I don't play any guitar
Speaker 1: on the whole album. It's just all on piano and
Speaker 1: with an orchestra. That is that is very different. And
Speaker 1: I'm able to do all this stuff that I just
Speaker 1: can't do on a guitar. And I just posted this
Speaker 1: cover of my song heart shape Box or my d
Speaker 1: quotes song heart shape Box from my album in Utero.
Speaker 1: When I first started practicing. It was I was doing
Speaker 1: on guitar, and you know, it sounded like what you'd expect.
Speaker 1: It is basically like Nirvana cover. And then I was like, heck,
Speaker 1: I'll try it on piano, and man, I was like
Speaker 1: doing all this crazy stuff as background music on the piano.
Speaker 1: It's like playing this symphony orchestra on the piano, and
Speaker 1: it feels like this massive new frontier for me to explore.
Speaker 1: Did you originally write that one on piano? Uh? No? Um,
Speaker 1: I wrote that on my on my Fender Mustang UM
Speaker 1: and I did not even play piano back then. Cool.
Speaker 1: When did you learn to play piano? I learned to
Speaker 1: play piano. Um, right around the time, right after a
Speaker 1: stage my death. It was like, okay, let's let's try
Speaker 1: something totally different here, good idea. Yeah yeah, no one,
Speaker 1: No one would expect Kirt to play piano. The glasses
Speaker 1: the piano, it's like you're home free. It's a good disguise.
Speaker 1: And now the mustache, Yeah yeah, I almost didn't recognize it.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's a Beatles era mustache. I can't
Speaker 1: remember which one, but if we look at the Letter
Speaker 1: B album, someone has that mustache. Yeah, might be Paul
Speaker 1: maybe or it may have been Georgia. I can't remember.
Speaker 1: It definitely feels like yeah, and they had glasses too, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then the hair could work. I mean you could
Speaker 1: be Yep, so be Nirvana, Weezer, Beatles would be your
Speaker 1: order of wow, three favorite bands right there? Can you?
Speaker 1: Can you be in one of your favorite bands? Is that?
Speaker 1: Does that work? Are you allowed to be on your
Speaker 1: list of favorite bands? You let to put yourself in it.
Speaker 1: I feel like if your band is unique enough, because yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, no other band makes me feel like Weezer,
Speaker 1: so they have to be. I just love I love
Speaker 1: the music so much and there's nothing else quite like it,
Speaker 1: so they have to be on my list. After a
Speaker 1: quick break, we'll be back with Rivers Cuomo and Rick Rubin.
Speaker 1: We're back with more from Rivers Cuomo. There was a
Speaker 1: point where you decided, even after being a very successful musician,
Speaker 1: to go back to school. Yeah, tell me what you
Speaker 1: were thinking. Now. This is the time, like mid two thousands,
Speaker 1: as we were finishing up Make Believe. Is that is
Speaker 1: that the time you were talking about I think so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I remember there was a moment where we talked about
Speaker 1: the schedule had to be around the Harvard schedule because
Speaker 1: you were going back, right, Okay, I seem to remember
Speaker 1: I really wanted to get married, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: a good, good place to meet somebody if you want
Speaker 1: to get married. Maybe not so much anymore, but there
Speaker 1: was there was a time when that was the result
Speaker 1: of going to college, as you'd find somebody and get married,
Speaker 1: and you find a lot of like minded people there,
Speaker 1: you know. Of course I have many motivations for anything
Speaker 1: I do, for whatever breakfast serial I pick in the morning,
Speaker 1: but that I think that was near the top of
Speaker 1: my list for reasons. And also I just like finishing stuff.
Speaker 1: I start like in a slightly OCD way, like, gosh,
Speaker 1: I'm so close to having a degree. It doesn't really matter,
Speaker 1: I don't really need it, but why not just finish
Speaker 1: it up? And then, of course I love learning, and
Speaker 1: that's why I went back in the first place. In
Speaker 1: the mid nineties, at the height of the Blue album success.
Speaker 1: This is so bored going around the country over and
Speaker 1: over in a tour bus. There's no intellectual stimulations. So
Speaker 1: we were we happened to be in Boston and I
Speaker 1: went to Harvard, and I was like, man, this place
Speaker 1: is great. Let me get an application. I filled it
Speaker 1: out and I got accepted, so it's like, yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna do this, and it was fun. It's really stimulating.
Speaker 1: And even now every morning, first thing I do is
Speaker 1: log into con Academy and start working on algebra. Totally useless.
Speaker 1: I was right when I was fourteen and not doing
Speaker 1: my homework that you know, there's there's no use for
Speaker 1: this in my life as a rock star. But I
Speaker 1: just like these little puzzles and working on them and
Speaker 1: keeps my brain occupied and stretched out and tickled. This
Speaker 1: is the opposite of what you just said, but I'll
Speaker 1: ask it just occurs to me. Was there any part
Speaker 1: of you that felt like, well, I guess you said
Speaker 1: the boring aspect of repetitive nature of being on tour.
Speaker 1: Was there any sense of escaping your rock star life
Speaker 1: by going back to schools? Well, definitely. The first time
Speaker 1: I went there, we were we were at our low
Speaker 1: point interpersonally, and the whole experience of becoming a rock
Speaker 1: star was pretty disillusioning, as it was for apparently so
Speaker 1: many musicians of our generation, like you finally get this
Speaker 1: thing you always wanted, and then you're miserable. I don't.
Speaker 1: It seems like that doesn't happen as much anymore. But
Speaker 1: one of the many motivations was I want to get
Speaker 1: away from this and I don't know if I'm ever
Speaker 1: coming back, and I just want to disappear and screw
Speaker 1: that whole life. Basically, well, I'm glad you decided to
Speaker 1: go back to school instead of feigning your suicide again,
Speaker 1: because I would be really sad if if Rivers was
Speaker 1: believed not to be alive. I admssed you a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. We talked a little bit about the way
Speaker 1: you've written in the way that it has. You've tried
Speaker 1: different things, but essentially the way you wrote on your
Speaker 1: new album and the way you wrote on your first
Speaker 1: album are pretty close. Is the way you appreciate music
Speaker 1: the same. No. I think in the early nineties I
Speaker 1: was I would get obsessed with a record or a
Speaker 1: few records, and often it would be an artist or
Speaker 1: a few artists. I remember I was just mad about
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, all the Beach Boys stuff, especially
Speaker 1: pet Sounds, all the Beatles stuff. Then there was Van Morrison,
Speaker 1: astral Weeks and Love Forever Changes, so I'd go through
Speaker 1: these phases of real deep obsession with a particular album
Speaker 1: or artist. And now I've gotten really into computer programming,
Speaker 1: and I wrote this program that creates a Spotify playlist
Speaker 1: for me every day, and it's extremely eclectic and wide
Speaker 1: ranging and anything I could possibly be interested in, it
Speaker 1: will take a sampling of it, and then it mixes
Speaker 1: it all together and presented to me every day. And
Speaker 1: so I just listened like that, and I'm just I
Speaker 1: just very quickly go through songs like because it's easy
Speaker 1: for me to mark, like Okay, I don't want to
Speaker 1: hear this again for another eight hundred songs, or I
Speaker 1: never want to hear this again, I never want to
Speaker 1: hear this artist again, or I want to hear more
Speaker 1: of this album. I can give it these all the
Speaker 1: instruct to the algorithm very easily, and so the playlist
Speaker 1: is constantly evolving for my taste every day. And I
Speaker 1: guess it's a it's a very different way to take
Speaker 1: things in. Tell me how will tell you more about
Speaker 1: the algorithm. How does it decide to what to add
Speaker 1: to your lists? Okay, so it gets some songs from
Speaker 1: pop radio and alternative radio, some songs from top songs
Speaker 1: on iTunes and some of the playlists on Spotify Today's
Speaker 1: Top Pits, and then any songs I've heard, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes I just hear a song, happen to hear a song,
Speaker 1: and I like it, so it will add those, and
Speaker 1: then songs from New Music Friday, and then there's a
Speaker 1: bunch of specific playlists. I like to take examples from Beethoven, Bach,
Speaker 1: heavy Metal, bubblegum pop, Rolling Stones, Top five hundred album
Speaker 1: and then whatever albums I happen to be interested or
Speaker 1: checking or I'm checking out, like right now Mitski is
Speaker 1: in there, and The White Reaper, then alternative nineties, hot country,
Speaker 1: Lauretta Lynn, and then I have a cool playlist called
Speaker 1: Obscure Wheezer, which is basically every Weezer or Rivers solo
Speaker 1: song that is not in the top forty songs I
Speaker 1: always have to play. So it's 'lb songs I may
Speaker 1: not have heard for for years, and it's really cool
Speaker 1: to hear them pop up randomly in this in this
Speaker 1: context of that is so wide ranging. Suddenly I hear
Speaker 1: this song, a song I made ten years ago, and
Speaker 1: it's like I can hear it with these really fresh
Speaker 1: ears it's great. Does it ever do do they ever
Speaker 1: come on? And does it take you a moment to
Speaker 1: realize that it's one of yours? Yeah? Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: real treat, like, wow, this sounds amazing, what is it?
Speaker 1: And then and then I realized, oh, yeah, that's that's us.
Speaker 1: That's cool. Yeah, it's a great feeling when when that happens. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the surprise aspect of it. I can remember once she's
Speaker 1: amming a song that I couldn't that was just so
Speaker 1: cool and I couldn't figure out what it was the
Speaker 1: record I produced a long time ago, like completely blanked
Speaker 1: on it. That's great. In the world of being a
Speaker 1: rock star, what's the most fun part of it for you? Man,
Speaker 1: It's really hard to pick. There's just so much stuff
Speaker 1: that's so great. So maybe I'll just rattle some things off.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know if I can rank them.
Speaker 1: But the high of singing a song for an audience.
Speaker 1: You know, you have some stage fright, you have some
Speaker 1: extra hormones coursing through your blood, so you're you're just
Speaker 1: operating on like peak efficiency, and your brains is so
Speaker 1: concentrated and you can hear like the subtlest little movement
Speaker 1: of spittle in your mouth against your tongue when you're
Speaker 1: pronouncing a word, and it's it's just such a high
Speaker 1: to be in that concentrated state. I love that. I
Speaker 1: still love writing, getting my observations out very precisely. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's maybe precisely because I have such a hard time
Speaker 1: explaining it with words. If I get it in a song,
Speaker 1: it's like, ah, yeah, that's that's my mode of communication.
Speaker 1: So maybe the biggest ego reward you get is when
Speaker 1: you're in front of a giant audience, not even giant, okay,
Speaker 1: even in a small club. I still play these little
Speaker 1: shows and when the audience is singing along and it's
Speaker 1: a B side or an obscure album, old album track,
Speaker 1: and everyone's singing every word like they believe it and
Speaker 1: they mean it so much and it's so important to them,
Speaker 1: and they're just declaring it to the world. In unison
Speaker 1: is this big chorus and you know, like this is
Speaker 1: this is something I came up with, Like I put
Speaker 1: those words on paper, and look at what it's doing
Speaker 1: for all of the for all of us. And I mean,
Speaker 1: that is just a the greatest reward for an art
Speaker 1: that was one of the things that I found really
Speaker 1: interesting when we've met, you explain the different ways that
Speaker 1: the lengths he would go to to write songs. You
Speaker 1: want to share with us how you wrote hash Pipe
Speaker 1: the process. Yeah, so, well, at that time, I was
Speaker 1: taking very careful notes on all the parameters that went
Speaker 1: into the us any given songwriting session, and like what
Speaker 1: time and day it was, or what I had eaten,
Speaker 1: or what kind of drama I'd lived through in the
Speaker 1: last twenty four hours. And it's somehow in my chain
Speaker 1: of experimentation, I had the idea to try riddling, and
Speaker 1: not connected that I was also reached the point where
Speaker 1: I wanted to try three shots of tequila. So that
Speaker 1: day I had a riddling and three shots of tequila,
Speaker 1: and you know, a few minutes later, I went into
Speaker 1: my backyard, sat down with a paper and pencil, and
Speaker 1: in about two minutes wrote the song from start to
Speaker 1: finish in my head and then onto the paper, not
Speaker 1: even a guitar in my hand, and my whole nervous
Speaker 1: system was on fire and it was a total frenzy
Speaker 1: and felt exhausted right after, and I went up and
Speaker 1: took a long bath. Yeah, I wouldn't recommend that, and
Speaker 1: I haven't tried it since maybe I should. We'll be
Speaker 1: right back with more from Rivers Cuomo after this break.
Speaker 1: We're back with the rest of Rick's conversation with Rivers Cuomo.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the history of this album. What's the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Okay, human story? Okay, I'm bad at
Speaker 1: history because everything I'm you know, like you very in
Speaker 1: the moment, and then I just kind of forget everything
Speaker 1: that happened. But let's see, I remember, I guess a
Speaker 1: couple of weeks, a couple of years ago, I went
Speaker 1: to Jake's house Jacob. Jake is the producer Jake Sinclair.
Speaker 1: He produced our album called The White Album with two
Speaker 1: two albums ago and he's he's more known for um
Speaker 1: Fallout Boy and Panic at the Disco. He did that
Speaker 1: really big song High Hopes by Panic at the Disco.
Speaker 1: But I know him as the guy the frontman for
Speaker 1: a Weezer cover band called Wanna Beezer. So he's like
Speaker 1: a real hardcore Weezer fan. But um, very very talented
Speaker 1: young producer. So I went over to his house and
Speaker 1: without even an invention of starting a project, as just
Speaker 1: going to say hi, and he said he had an
Speaker 1: idea for an album for Weezer, and he described it
Speaker 1: to me, and it's basically what we just finished making
Speaker 1: is exactly what he set out to make. It is
Speaker 1: really his vision from the beginning. And what he said
Speaker 1: was no electric guitar. It's just going to be you
Speaker 1: on piano, and you're going to bring in all your
Speaker 1: love of classical music and we're going to use an
Speaker 1: orchestra and you're just gonna totally go for it with
Speaker 1: the songwriting and the lyrics and don't try in any
Speaker 1: way to be successful. You're just going to make your weirdest, wildest,
Speaker 1: most riversy weezery record you can make as a songwriter.
Speaker 1: And he gave me a reference album too, is obscure
Speaker 1: album called Nielsen Sings Newman, which I'd never heard before,
Speaker 1: and it's it's similar to what I just described. Is
Speaker 1: very quirky, odd, unsuccessful commercially but super interesting album. We're
Speaker 1: all of the songs written specifically for this project. Yeah, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: just about every answer I'm gonna give you, it's gonna
Speaker 1: have an asterisk by it, which which is except for
Speaker 1: the song called all my Favorite Songs so that one
Speaker 1: is like that kind of last second. Here is a
Speaker 1: song that we that just came up, wasn't written specifically
Speaker 1: for this album, but it sounds like it could be
Speaker 1: a big song, have a much broader audience, and it
Speaker 1: sounds like it could go on the album with a
Speaker 1: few tweaks. I guess we have yet to see whether
Speaker 1: it's going to be the song that everyone actually knows
Speaker 1: from the album or not. But that's that's the intention.
Speaker 1: It's the first single, and you know, there's like no
Speaker 1: rules when it comes to the first single. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: the Beauty of I listened to the album without knowing that,
Speaker 1: and I absolutely love that song. And if anything, I
Speaker 1: felt like that was the template for the whole album.
Speaker 1: So it did not it did not stand out as
Speaker 1: not belonging, just the opposite. It felt like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is the perfect song, and now we're going to do
Speaker 1: a whole album like this. Fantastic. Oh my favorite songs
Speaker 1: are slow in oh my favorite people made me man,
Speaker 1: everything that feels so good is bad. All my favorite
Speaker 1: songs are slow and said, I don't know what's wrong
Speaker 1: with me? What's wrong with me? So let's talk about
Speaker 1: that song? How did that song come up? What was
Speaker 1: going on? When did it happen? Tell me the story
Speaker 1: of that song. I think that one came up really recently,
Speaker 1: like maybe four or five months ago, and we were
Speaker 1: actually working on another record. We were finishing our heavy
Speaker 1: metal record called Van Weezer, and my manager sent me
Speaker 1: an early version of the song with a chorus. It
Speaker 1: was written by one of his favorite writers. Her name's Elsie,
Speaker 1: and it was actually like a country song, and actually
Speaker 1: sent me a small batch of country songs like song starters,
Speaker 1: and I just started playing around with all these country songs,
Speaker 1: not really knowing what they're for, and that one, for
Speaker 1: some reason, when I sang it, it just it sounded like, Wow,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a big universe versal song. It still
Speaker 1: sounds like Rivers and Weezer, And we could kind of
Speaker 1: massage it onto a couple of different albums. It could
Speaker 1: be on a metal album, it could be on Okay Human,
Speaker 1: we could make a country album and let's just start
Speaker 1: fooling around with it. So we tried. We tried to
Speaker 1: put it on I think we tried on Van Weeds
Speaker 1: or first, but in any case, it just as we
Speaker 1: shifted years into making Okay Human. We realized, as much
Speaker 1: as we love the album, it would really benefit from
Speaker 1: having that big flag waving single that that brings in
Speaker 1: a wider audience to But it's probably a pretty difficult album.
Speaker 1: So we started tweaking it to fit an on there
Speaker 1: and it worked out really well. Yeah, it fits like
Speaker 1: a glove. And again, not knowing the backstory, I would
Speaker 1: have assumed that was just one of the batch that
Speaker 1: you wrote, and it was a particularly great one, and
Speaker 1: it sounds really like you, And the fact that that
Speaker 1: started with someone else's shocking to me because it sounds
Speaker 1: like a perfect Rivers, perfect Rivers song. Great. Do you
Speaker 1: remember by any chance? I know we we history is
Speaker 1: neither of our long suits. Do you have any idea
Speaker 1: what the first song that you wrote for this for
Speaker 1: the Okay Human album was? Any memory? Did you hear
Speaker 1: the song bird with a Broken Wing? That might okay,
Speaker 1: that might be one of the first or playing my piano? Yeah,
Speaker 1: playing my pianos spectacular, It's cool. It's one of my favorites.
Speaker 1: Can we can we you mind if we listen to
Speaker 1: that right now? No, I'd love to you. Let's listen
Speaker 1: to playing my piano? Okay, my wife finds upstairs. My
Speaker 1: kids are upstairs, and I haven't washed my hair in
Speaker 1: three weeks. I should get back to these zoom interviews,
Speaker 1: but I get so absorbent time fly, I just can't
Speaker 1: I go. When I'm playing my piano, I'm playing my piano,
Speaker 1: I'm counting at the bass, singing at the too. I
Speaker 1: never see the song that I'm I'm playing my pian
Speaker 1: Heaven cancer, man, Heaven can help this man. Heaven, Heaven
Speaker 1: turns his back on this man, Heaven shuts the door
Speaker 1: on this man. Actually about that, Um, so I'm I'm
Speaker 1: imagining that ending was an improvisation of looking for lyrics.
Speaker 1: Is that correct? Yeah, that's my that's my original voice. Note. Um,
Speaker 1: when I was writing the idea and I couldn't come
Speaker 1: up with the lyric for the last line, and I
Speaker 1: was trying all these things, and finally I gave up
Speaker 1: and I just sent it to Jake because I like
Speaker 1: the melody. He's like, yeah, this is great, And there's
Speaker 1: a couple of spots on the album where he's like,
Speaker 1: includes these things where you're like, you're not supposed to
Speaker 1: show that to people. There was one spot in uh
Speaker 1: was it LaBrea tarpits where we were tracking the basic
Speaker 1: tracks with Pat on the drums, and right in the
Speaker 1: middle of the song, his wife calls, so he just
Speaker 1: stops playing. He picks up the phone, he starts talking,
Speaker 1: and Jake puts it on the album, like the song
Speaker 1: where we're playing the song and the song stops and
Speaker 1: then you hear Pat talking to his wife on the phone.
Speaker 1: I think that those might be some of the best
Speaker 1: parts on the album. I mean, it does. It creates
Speaker 1: a reality. It's like, this is really happening. You know,
Speaker 1: it's not This is not this plastic thing rapped on
Speaker 1: a shelf. This is a live moment in time, and
Speaker 1: it's a real sense of reality. And I was I
Speaker 1: was really moved by that ending. I thought it was beautiful.
Speaker 1: You're looking for the words, and how each of the
Speaker 1: choices was good in a different way and all equally
Speaker 1: hopeless in their message. I like what I eventually settled on,
Speaker 1: not in the voice note, but months later it finally
Speaker 1: occurred to me. It's one of those things where like
Speaker 1: I know the answer is going to come, but there's
Speaker 1: just no way I can sit here and try to
Speaker 1: force it. I just have to put it away for
Speaker 1: a while and then one day it'll just pop into
Speaker 1: my head and hopefully that's before we released the album,
Speaker 1: and that's what happened. Luckily. This really feels like an
Speaker 1: entirely different world, even though it still sounds like you,
Speaker 1: and it still sounds like your songs. How did you
Speaker 1: go about recording these songs? Obviously it's different than the
Speaker 1: way you've recorded anything else because a whole different it's
Speaker 1: essentially a different band, even though it's the players of
Speaker 1: the players. It was the most insane recording problems. It
Speaker 1: just made me so anxious through the whole thing. I
Speaker 1: just really had to trust Jake because he had a
Speaker 1: very strong idea for how he wanted to do it,
Speaker 1: and it's just totally asked backwards. Forgive my pardon my French,
Speaker 1: but he okay, So this is what we did. We
Speaker 1: got together at his house, me and Pat and Jake
Speaker 1: and Pat never heard the songs before, and they handed
Speaker 1: me an acoustic guitar actually in a microphone and said, okay,
Speaker 1: play your songs, and then Past is going to play
Speaker 1: along like he's like right across from me in the
Speaker 1: same room. No baffles. He's just kind of playing softly
Speaker 1: and we did like two, three, maybe four takes of
Speaker 1: each song, and that those were the drum takes. So
Speaker 1: I mean, what you're hearing on the album is pat
Speaker 1: like hearing the songs for the first time and trying
Speaker 1: to figure out like how it goes, and talking to
Speaker 1: his wife on the phone, and it's just kind of
Speaker 1: terrifying as as a songwriter, like you want, you want
Speaker 1: everything to go right. And so from there and they
Speaker 1: really love, they really love that vibe, like that kind
Speaker 1: of exploratory and not not too self conscious or not
Speaker 1: playing a part. You already know how it goes, so
Speaker 1: it has a real sense of vitality to it, I guess.
Speaker 1: So then they take those drums and he goes to
Speaker 1: the he brings it to the arranger and they listen
Speaker 1: to all my piano arrangements and they turn that into
Speaker 1: orchestra arrangements and they bring they bring the session to
Speaker 1: Abbey Roads Studios in London and record all the strings
Speaker 1: and then they ditch my basic acoustic and vocal tracks.
Speaker 1: And so at that point you have all you have
Speaker 1: her drums and this massive orchestra and it I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously that orchestra is usually the last thing you put
Speaker 1: on once you have a really solid foundation. Then they
Speaker 1: did bass, and then I did all my vocals, and
Speaker 1: then finally and then Brian did all his stuff, little
Speaker 1: flourishes here and there, a lot of Hammond and acoustic guitar,
Speaker 1: and then finally I did my piano, which was supposed
Speaker 1: to be the centerpiece of the album. But in the
Speaker 1: final version, when you have so many tracks like this,
Speaker 1: you end up mute. It's the more you mute, the
Speaker 1: better it ends up sounding. So we've muted so much
Speaker 1: stuff and one of the things that got sacrificed was
Speaker 1: my piano, which is shocking to me because it was
Speaker 1: really supposed to be the centerpiece along with the orchestra.
Speaker 1: But the orchestra really took over what I was doing
Speaker 1: and it ended up being much more interesting to listen to.
Speaker 1: So all of the orchestrations are based on your piano parts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm really When I listened to it, I'm amazed, like,
Speaker 1: how many of these cool little counterpoint parts and melodiasy
Speaker 1: here weaving in and around my vocal actually from my
Speaker 1: original piano demos like um. But then there's some that
Speaker 1: are not me that they came up on their own,
Speaker 1: so my ego is totally satisfied because I feel like, Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't I did some amazing stuff. I really contributed
Speaker 1: to the orchestration. And at the same time, I'm really
Speaker 1: pleased with the string the orchestra arranger, because he contributed
Speaker 1: a lot of incredible stuff too. It's fantastic. Yeah, let's
Speaker 1: talk about rock my audible cool. Where the idea come from?
Speaker 1: I guess for a couple of years, I'd been every
Speaker 1: night listening to classic novel on Audible, and I'm not
Speaker 1: a great sleeper, so often i'd wake up in the
Speaker 1: middle of the night and I'd continue the novel then,
Speaker 1: and I it's a really pleasurable state where I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not I'm like not not even have asleep, maybe a
Speaker 1: quarter asleep, not not really getting the benefits of deep sleep.
Speaker 1: But I'm in this very like open what is it
Speaker 1: some kind of beta wave thing. I'm just very open,
Speaker 1: like I'm living in these novels, and it's such a
Speaker 1: wonderful experience like it. But during the day, forget it.
Speaker 1: I can't. I don't have the the calmness or the
Speaker 1: concentration to read like a thousand page novel or something,
Speaker 1: and really get focused and drawn into it, or even
Speaker 1: listen to it on audible. But it's just these nighttime
Speaker 1: audible sessions that we're so great for me, And so
Speaker 1: I wrote a song about it. Great. Can we do
Speaker 1: you mind if we listen to that one? No, let's
Speaker 1: listen to that one. I can feel my breathing. It's
Speaker 1: so nice. It's like a blanket on my life. Let
Speaker 1: me stay here for forever. In the state of classical denial,
Speaker 1: I'm cranking Missus doll Away, Moby Dick, drip on the world.
Speaker 1: He's dyna just like me, with thirsty, folded deep. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna round by houdible headphone grapes up five ships off
Speaker 1: to a blabon. I just don't care. I just don't care,
Speaker 1: Like my houdoball head phone grapes up five ship off
Speaker 1: to a blabion. You think I care, I just don't care.
Speaker 1: I just don't care. I'm paying. That's so nice. What
Speaker 1: a great song that The chorus is really a super
Speaker 1: duper anthemic chorus. And it's so funny to hear those
Speaker 1: lyrics on that chorus and it works great, But it's
Speaker 1: really haven't heard that before? Yeah, I can't remember what
Speaker 1: it was like. I remember I went online. I was like, okay,
Speaker 1: I got to write a chorus. And I just went
Speaker 1: online and I searched for like inspirational phrases and it was,
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I'd have to go back and see what
Speaker 1: it was. But some really cheesy inspirational phrase like get
Speaker 1: up and go or some something like that. And so
Speaker 1: that's how I came up with the music and the melody.
Speaker 1: And then I was like, well, that lyric is not
Speaker 1: going to work, so I just kind of grafted my
Speaker 1: other story onto it, onto the uplifting music. It really
Speaker 1: works like it's unbelievable. And interestingly, also by using the
Speaker 1: current reference of Audible, it almost has a hip hop
Speaker 1: like modernity because it's not unusual in a hip hop
Speaker 1: song to hear, you know, Audible as a brand, to
Speaker 1: hear a brand flaunt it in a song, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: or like Insta or something. But in my case it's Audible. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It makes it very modern. It really does. It's really
Speaker 1: good cool. I can't wait for people to hear it.
Speaker 1: I think it's really I think it's really really good
Speaker 1: and it's wow. It's refreshing to hear it sounds so
Speaker 1: different yet so much like you, and for the songs
Speaker 1: to be so great. It's, i mean, one of my
Speaker 1: favorites of your work. Wow, that means so much coming
Speaker 1: from you. Thank you. Yeah, it's really beautiful, great work. Well,
Speaker 1: I've got to give Jake a lot of credit because
Speaker 1: I feel like I'm the same person I was for
Speaker 1: It was really his vision and I immediately realist, oh
Speaker 1: that's a really cool idea, let's do that, and turned
Speaker 1: out just like he imagined. So a lot of credit
Speaker 1: to him. Great. Please thank him for me for making
Speaker 1: something that I love so much. I will He'll be
Speaker 1: very excited to hear hear you sid that thanks the
Speaker 1: Rivers Cuomo for entertaining that puzzar conspiracy theory for us.
Speaker 1: You can hear all of our favorite Weezer songs on
Speaker 1: my playlist at Broken Record podcast dot and be sure
Speaker 1: to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
Speaker 1: slash Broken Record Podcast, where we can find extended cutstuff,
Speaker 1: new and old episodes. Broken Record is woods would help
Speaker 1: Fumy Arose Jason Gambrell, Martin Gonzalez, Eric Sandler, and Jennifer Sanchez,
Speaker 1: but engineering help from Nick Chafee and his executive produced
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Speaker 1: Is by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richmond, bass