Speaker 1: Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Just Fake
Speaker 1: It Tea, make It Here we Go.
Speaker 2: Suprema Shuck Suh, Supremo role called Suprema shut shut Supremo
Speaker 2: role called Supremo shut sup Supremo.
Speaker 1: Role called Supremo shut Up. Supremo role calls Ryner Cuomo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wilson Belle four Heroes in ninety four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, save me from Hell.
Speaker 4: Roll call Supremo Suh sut Supremo role called Suprema suck
Speaker 4: suh Suprema role call.
Speaker 1: My name is Fante, Yeah, not Deze's on me hero.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Found out about Wheezer playing on guitar Hero.
Speaker 2: Supprimo Sun Sun Supremo role called Supremo Sure Sun Supremo.
Speaker 5: Role call name is Sugar. Yeah, I'm such a Geezer.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: My first concert, Yeah it was the actual Buddy Holly Suprema.
Speaker 1: Roll call Dreamer So Supremo.
Speaker 6: Roll call I'm me yes me b Yeah, goddamn yeah,
Speaker 6: I am roll.
Speaker 4: Sir s Suprema roll call Suprema so so Supremo.
Speaker 2: Roll call.
Speaker 7: My name is Patrick Wilson's him in New York City. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I want to say ahead of my wife because she's
Speaker 7: exceptionally pretty.
Speaker 1: From downtown.
Speaker 4: Suprema roll call, Suprema So soun Suprema roll call.
Speaker 8: My name is Jonas, Actually it's not. Yeah, it's Rivers. Yeah,
Speaker 8: busted rhymes on the spot.
Speaker 4: So Prema roll call, Suprema Su Sun Suprema roll call,
Speaker 4: Suprema su su Suprema roll Suprema Sun Sun supremea roll.
Speaker 6: That's the first time a guest has ever voluntarily raised
Speaker 6: their hand to go next.
Speaker 3: Yes, well done. Every other guest is like, not me,
Speaker 3: I'm not doing. Pladies and gentlemen, Welcome to quest Love Supreme.
Speaker 3: I am quest Love your host team Supreme.
Speaker 1: Good people. Morning, good morning, morning, good morning, yes, good morning.
Speaker 5: Fucking cough, good morning.
Speaker 1: Nothing happened. Nothing happened today.
Speaker 3: Speaking of ninety four, yo, whoa right, wow, okay, met as,
Speaker 3: we kind of reflect on the significance of April ninety four,
Speaker 3: which was probably significant for two X June.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well no, no, well, April ninety four being the the
Speaker 3: domino that also ends in June.
Speaker 1: Wait, how do you know the date by heart?
Speaker 5: I'm talking about Ojson.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I know that you're talking about. Who commits that
Speaker 3: to memory? Oh because of the basketball game.
Speaker 5: Now, I watched the I was unemployed that summer, so
Speaker 5: I watched the whole trial.
Speaker 1: You weren't working on an Electric lady then.
Speaker 5: Now it was right before I started.
Speaker 1: Did you start there?
Speaker 5: Ninety six? Yeah, middle ninety so this.
Speaker 1: Is the way after you guys. Okay, I see.
Speaker 3: Basically, I will probably say that today's conversation is long overdue.
Speaker 3: I think everyone thinks that they have a special relationship
Speaker 3: with an entity or whatever, like theirs is unique alone.
Speaker 3: But I think that my relationship to our guest today
Speaker 3: is fairly unique than that of their fan bases connection
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what did your role call mean?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was going to say that when I tell
Speaker 3: the folklore of the roots time at DGC Records back
Speaker 3: in ninety three to ninety four, when we first signed,
Speaker 3: I would assume that both acts got their record deals
Speaker 3: around the same time. I was made aware that they
Speaker 3: were releasing their record in ninety four, and kind of
Speaker 3: when we had that stalled beginning of which our album
Speaker 3: was supposed to come out in June of ninety four,
Speaker 3: and then the labels like not yet, we have to
Speaker 3: get you a staff first, and all those things. Those
Speaker 3: were really really lean years. So I can't believe I'm
Speaker 3: telling this story so pretty much for quick survival money.
Speaker 7: Closet.
Speaker 1: Wait you two, Oh my god, wait the way And
Speaker 1: I'm like that was too easy.
Speaker 3: I wonder I'm like under trepidation of like I don't
Speaker 3: know if I was telling the story, yo, But I
Speaker 3: will say that as far as value was concerned, you guys, ecstasy.
Speaker 1: And back.
Speaker 3: No, seriously, like at any moment of like the moment
Speaker 3: that we all had to like go see pault fiction.
Speaker 1: All right, let's go get them real quick, grab some wheezers.
Speaker 3: Yes, wait a minute, but how you guys who were
Speaker 3: the people that provided, in some indirect way the finances
Speaker 3: for my survival ninety four also doing the same.
Speaker 8: Thing we were ninety three. We were going there in
Speaker 8: ninety three and it was like guns and roses, use
Speaker 8: your illusion.
Speaker 3: Yes, oh my god, thought dude, I literally thought that
Speaker 3: showing them hockey, Yeah, yeah, that was.
Speaker 5: Just taking to listen to.
Speaker 1: So this is a crime, all.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, yes, I using our guest today. But the
Speaker 3: thing was is that I was always shocked the period
Speaker 3: that I was doing it. In my mind, I'm like, okay,
Speaker 3: they'll want the spaghetti incident, use your losing, and it
Speaker 3: was like, no, all the Neil Young Geffen era records
Speaker 3: trans all that stuff, Nah, they wanted Weezer. And then
Speaker 3: one day, after like six months of hawking you guys,
Speaker 3: I'm like, all right, let me listen to this.
Speaker 1: And then I became more obsessed.
Speaker 3: And then once I started reading about like your kiss
Speaker 3: obsession and all that stuff, I was like, wow, like
Speaker 3: there's some weird kinship here. And plus, you know, I
Speaker 3: really credit you guys more than anything for at least
Speaker 3: making me aware of Spike Jones as a video director. Anyway,
Speaker 3: longest intro in history, Ladies and gentlemen, Please welcome Weezer
Speaker 3: to the show. Yeah, welcome. I had a whole scroll
Speaker 3: of fan letter to do the intro, but I decided
Speaker 3: not to do that. Just a confession, that's all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Are you really that this was going down? No,
Speaker 1: you gotta do what you gotta do. You never did that.
Speaker 5: I've stolen so much shit from you, from everybody?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? I was supposed to do it?
Speaker 1: So wait.
Speaker 3: First thing I'll ask is because of the I mean,
Speaker 3: your entire canon now, and you know you're running out
Speaker 3: of colors and and I'm only jealous of the synesthesia
Speaker 3: of it all, like the fact that you know each
Speaker 3: album represents a mood or whatever. I'm so jealous that
Speaker 3: you guys really got to explore that. Is it cringe
Speaker 3: worthy to listen to your first record? Like do you
Speaker 3: accept where you were as artists when you're making this
Speaker 3: in ninety three or is it you listen to and
Speaker 3: you're like, I could have that Stanza could have been better,
Speaker 3: or this mix could have been better, or like, are
Speaker 3: you overly critical?
Speaker 1: For me?
Speaker 8: I'm less critical now than I was then when we
Speaker 8: finished it. I remember at the time and we made
Speaker 8: some big mistakes, specifically like the I wish we had
Speaker 8: gone bigger with the drum sound, and then we did
Speaker 8: exactly that on our second record, Pinkerton. We just turned
Speaker 8: up the room MIC's uhs more that. But now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 8: that's that's what the album sounds. It sounds how it's
Speaker 8: supposed to sound.
Speaker 1: I love it.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about the perception of Pinkerton and
Speaker 3: the fact that, I mean, it's basically the standard of
Speaker 3: I won't say postmodern and leftist center records. I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of it, but just the fact that
Speaker 3: now it's used as like, well, I'm a real fan
Speaker 3: because I have Pinkerton tattooed, or you know what I mean,
Speaker 3: Like the amount of dissertations I've read about the album
Speaker 3: and on the internet and your Weezer Palooza. Have you
Speaker 3: guys been on your own Weezer Palooza page at all?
Speaker 1: No, it's very.
Speaker 8: Scary, yeah, weezer Pedia.
Speaker 1: Maybe. Oh I'm sorry, Yes, Weezer.
Speaker 8: That's a good idea though, well yeah, yes, you know,
Speaker 8: fans are gonna fan and that's great, and I don't
Speaker 8: I don't think it's I don't think I should be
Speaker 8: like paying too much attention to that stuff. What I
Speaker 8: care about is, like I just want when we play
Speaker 8: a concert, I want as much harmony as possible in
Speaker 8: the room, just like everyone to be united. I love
Speaker 8: that feeling. So the only time that's the problem is
Speaker 8: when like you have different segments of the crowd want
Speaker 8: to hear different songs. But that's why it's great to
Speaker 8: like play huge venues sometimes and then sometimes play really
Speaker 8: little venues. You know, the super hardcore fans, they're gonna
Speaker 8: want to hear Pinkerton some B sides, that kind of thing.
Speaker 8: That's super fun too.
Speaker 1: I assume that come twenty twenty six, you guys will if.
Speaker 8: We can get past the blue album thing, that will
Speaker 8: be fun.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: What is it like to return to it? Do you do?
Speaker 3: You have seminal memories of the making of the album.
Speaker 3: And I'm also kind of else that you guys know
Speaker 3: what Electric Lady was like when the dome was in
Speaker 3: front of it?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. Wait were you there with
Speaker 1: us the day we were going to protest and.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, we were trying to like tire ourselves.
Speaker 1: To Yeah, the last day, the last day of that
Speaker 1: that the dome that was in front of Electric Lady.
Speaker 5: He's calling it a dome, but it's a rounded brick wall.
Speaker 5: Well or no, a dome goes above you.
Speaker 3: But yes, okay, so it's at the time I thought
Speaker 3: it was an igloo or whatever. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: know what to make of it. But rounded brick wall, yeah,
Speaker 3: brick wall, circular brick wall because Jimmy Hendricks didn't believe
Speaker 3: in corners. Yeah, oh really And yeah, so our first
Speaker 3: week there of doing d' Angelo's Voodoo and we found
Speaker 3: out they were going to knock the wall down and
Speaker 3: we were going to go all vigilant and chain ourselves
Speaker 3: to the front door, like in front of the breaker.
Speaker 1: And then of course at six am, none of us
Speaker 1: were now to stay up in front of it. Oh well,
Speaker 1: we got to work like it's going on. Actually, let
Speaker 1: me start you pet, what was your like your first
Speaker 1: musical memory in life?
Speaker 7: Very man low? What that's the biggest ones for you?
Speaker 7: His face on the cover is huge. I don't know
Speaker 7: why I liked it, but I was like, it was
Speaker 7: pretty small.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he was unavoidable.
Speaker 5: Also, yeah, you know you like the even Now album,
Speaker 5: that's the one nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 7: It all sounds like a seventies movie to me, but
Speaker 7: I love it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the same mellow intro in it exactly. So you
Speaker 3: mean purchasing that record or just.
Speaker 7: I don't know how I got it, but I got it.
Speaker 7: My brother and sister are much older than me. They're
Speaker 7: they're like in their early seventies now, so they would
Speaker 7: leave records lying around people like, oh, here's weird Neil
Speaker 7: Young record, here's you know, the Who, Quadraphinia and all
Speaker 7: this stuff, and I just thought they were great to throw.
Speaker 1: You know, it's a little Casby.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, this is whatever. But eventually I started listening
Speaker 7: to it, stuff like Van Halen. Then I got into
Speaker 7: it on my own or like Rush right, and that's
Speaker 7: when I, you know, got into rock.
Speaker 1: Where were you born?
Speaker 7: Buffalo? Okay, okay, Buffalo, New York, up state?
Speaker 1: Nice? All right, Riverskay? What was your first musical memory?
Speaker 1: It was all right right?
Speaker 8: First memory would be listening to my dad play the drums.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 8: He is a jazz drummer, so it would have been
Speaker 8: him and his buddies jamming.
Speaker 7: Who do you play with?
Speaker 1: Uh wah?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 8: He made it onto a Wayne Shorter session in nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy right here, I think in Manhattan or Brooklyn.
Speaker 1: And what was your dad's name?
Speaker 8: Frank Cuomo? So Francis actually legally it's Francis. Yeah did that?
Speaker 7: How did you know that?
Speaker 4: I just.
Speaker 5: I didn't know.
Speaker 3: We're in a band together. So your father playing drums
Speaker 3: around the house. That was your first musical remember?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Okay, you know I've read this interview long ago we
Speaker 3: described I guess the discovery of Kiss.
Speaker 1: Was your kind of come to Jesus moment? Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: can you describe that?
Speaker 3: Like, what was that feeling? I mean, you're one year
Speaker 3: older than I am. But it's so weird that you
Speaker 3: actually listened to the music. I was obsessed with Kiss,
Speaker 3: but only as to whenever we would go to like
Speaker 3: a department stores or whatever like sears, I would immediately
Speaker 3: be lined for the record section and just stay there
Speaker 3: for like the two hour derivation while they're shopping around.
Speaker 1: And I'm noticing that for a band that started.
Speaker 3: In seventy four, like they released a whole like a
Speaker 3: whole collection by nineteen seventy six, where and I would
Speaker 3: obsessed over these record covers but never listen to the music.
Speaker 3: So like I think my first experience was Love Gun
Speaker 3: and Christine sixteen, but for yours, like what was it about?
Speaker 3: You actually listened to the music, Like I just got
Speaker 3: as far as the cover and that was it. Tried
Speaker 3: to imagine what they sounded like.
Speaker 8: So when I was five or so, my family moved
Speaker 8: to an ashram and we were pretty cut off from
Speaker 8: pop culture at that point. There was a lot of
Speaker 8: like Sanskrit chanting that that was my main music experience
Speaker 8: at that point. I listened to now, but there was
Speaker 8: some hippie music too. I remember Kat Stevens, Joan Biaz,
Speaker 8: Bob Dylan, that kind of stuf. I would hear those records.
Speaker 8: But then there was this one girl who was my age.
Speaker 8: She came and visited the Ashram. Her name was Shanty
Speaker 8: and she had rock and rock and roll over by Kiss.
Speaker 8: So it's probably seventy seven, and she poisoned the whole
Speaker 8: that she accidentally left it, and we put it on
Speaker 8: the record player and we had like a little cassette
Speaker 8: player also, so we pressed record as the record was going.
Speaker 8: So then I had a recording of this record, and
Speaker 8: that's the only Kiss album I had at that point.
Speaker 8: It's really the only kind of rock or intense music
Speaker 8: I had, but we would listen to it over and over.
Speaker 8: But it had the sound of my brother and I
Speaker 8: running around the coffee table in circles over and over,
Speaker 8: like spazzing out as we're listening to this rock. Like
Speaker 8: I said, that's what I listened to for a couple
Speaker 8: of years. And then then I started going to record
Speaker 8: storees myself, exactly like you did, and I went straight
Speaker 8: to the K section to find the Kiss albums and LEXI, yeah,
Speaker 8: this is incredible.
Speaker 7: Now cut to my mom in seventy seven saying, honey boy,
Speaker 7: that's the Devil's music. That's kids in Satan's snare.
Speaker 3: Well, I got to add to this story. I don't
Speaker 3: know if you guys know this story. So you know,
Speaker 3: I grew up my father was like a duop singer
Speaker 3: in the fifties. So by the seventies he's going through
Speaker 3: his what I can call like the revival face like whatever, fifties,
Speaker 3: yeah and so yeah, anything that have remotely to do
Speaker 3: with du wap music or you know, the revival of
Speaker 3: American Gaffiti, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley Greece, all that stuff.
Speaker 1: My dad was a part of it.
Speaker 3: But somehow like he got off that circuit and sort
Speaker 3: of pivoted to just a regular nightclub act of which
Speaker 3: in the seventies, if you're looking for a good time
Speaker 3: on you know, a weeknight or whatever, you go to
Speaker 3: your local holiday inn and somewhere in the bar there's
Speaker 3: you know, some legend of Yesteryear playing. So weird enough,
Speaker 3: this is in Buffalo, New York, nineteen seventy eight, and
Speaker 3: I guess the protocol of the day is that acts
Speaker 3: would stay at the Airport Hotel always because it's right
Speaker 3: next to the airport. And we did about three weeks.
Speaker 3: I think of Sheridan in Buffalo, of which you know,
Speaker 3: Boston came through the group Kansas, and I also came
Speaker 3: through a lot of city and state names.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: But one particular night, it was on a Friday night,
Speaker 3: and all I remember was, this might have been seventy nine.
Speaker 3: I remember Dan Hartman was just did his second song
Speaker 3: on Midnight Special.
Speaker 1: It was like the whatever.
Speaker 3: The follow up song was the instant replay. I think
Speaker 3: a song called this is It? So he does it
Speaker 3: and the credits are going up, and I was thirsty.
Speaker 3: It's like, I guess, like one thirty two in the morning,
Speaker 3: I go to the dresser, grab fifty cent to get
Speaker 3: a soda, and I walk in the hallway. Now this
Speaker 3: is a circular hotel. I walk in the hallway to
Speaker 3: the soda machine, get my soda, and then.
Speaker 1: The elevator opens. Now I'm eight years old.
Speaker 3: In that entire Hire album cover artwork is now coming
Speaker 3: to life, like it's it's fucking Chris and Ace and
Speaker 3: Paul and Jean and their bodyguards in no kind of
Speaker 3: post makeup. All I remember was I looked, and I screamed,
Speaker 3: and I ran to the right and the thing was
Speaker 3: I actually ran.
Speaker 1: Literally, so they were performing there for three days, and.
Speaker 3: You know, instantly it was like elation, curiosity, but mostly
Speaker 3: terror because also I saw kiss Me to the Phantom
Speaker 3: O My God, which as an eight year old, like
Speaker 3: that totally fucked with me. I mean, now is a
Speaker 3: total camp film. But the next day I remember going
Speaker 3: to the game room in hotels all the arcade games
Speaker 3: and bin ball games would they would have arcades inside
Speaker 3: of those hotels, and I remember going down there and
Speaker 3: it was just it's it's like something out of almost famous,
Speaker 3: like all these women, like seeing Paul without his makeup
Speaker 3: one and Gene and they signed autographs and whatnot, and
Speaker 3: that was like and someone gave me a Christine sixteen
Speaker 3: forty five, Oh dude, and that was kind of.
Speaker 1: My kiss induction.
Speaker 5: Wow, that's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But yeah, but for you, like what spoke of it?
Speaker 3: Because as I got older, I was taught that that's
Speaker 3: not you know, I'm listening to older generator, that's not
Speaker 3: real rocky, like you know, that's camp rock.
Speaker 1: But what was it that spoke to you?
Speaker 8: They're not supposed to be the most credible rock act
Speaker 8: of all time, but they sure seemed to inspire. A
Speaker 8: lot of kids are our age at that time, and
Speaker 8: a lot of us went on to start bands ourselves.
Speaker 8: So I'm not sure what it was because in my case,
Speaker 8: I didn't have the visual. It was just the music.
Speaker 8: I mean, I had seen briefly the album cover, but
Speaker 8: it's just this weird, kind of abstract thing of their
Speaker 8: design of their faces. I didn't know what they looked like,
Speaker 8: or what the costumes were, or about the pyro or
Speaker 8: the production. I just had the music and that was
Speaker 8: enough to completely get me excited. It was it was
Speaker 8: the sound of the guitar, the intense riffage, and the
Speaker 8: sound of their singing Paul Stanley going up into that falsetto.
Speaker 8: I didn't I didn't understand what the lyrics were at all.
Speaker 1: Have you ever met them? I was going to say,
Speaker 1: have they broke your heart?
Speaker 7: Recently we met him?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I met him a couple of times, but recently
Speaker 8: we just played We opened for them. They asked us
Speaker 8: to open for them at their last show in Australia, so.
Speaker 1: He uh, we were.
Speaker 8: I was so excited.
Speaker 1: It was nice.
Speaker 8: They were in this uh they were doing this big
Speaker 8: meet and greet with all these fans and and they
Speaker 8: interrupted the line to bring Weezer in there and say hi,
Speaker 8: And I was so excited, and they're they're so tall,
Speaker 8: They're like seventy seven feet tall in these big heels.
Speaker 8: And I went up so expectant, and and Jean saw me,
Speaker 8: and what do you say? He was like, Rivers, you're
Speaker 8: gonna be famous in.
Speaker 7: Jail, was like going for the ages, You'll be the
Speaker 7: most famous guy in jail.
Speaker 1: And you were like what does that mean?
Speaker 7: He's like, it doesn't have to mean anything.
Speaker 8: And to this day, I'm still puzzling and over like
Speaker 8: what does that mean? It sounds crypto significant, but I'm
Speaker 8: not sure.
Speaker 3: It's kind of weird now because yeah, like when I've
Speaker 3: seen him a few times and you know, he's been
Speaker 3: to the Tonight Show whatever, and then he kind of
Speaker 3: talks like who's the comedian Jackie uh, Jackie Mason, like
Speaker 3: it's it's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, he was trying to be funny and he
Speaker 5: has a lasts level like I.
Speaker 3: Wasn't used to that, Like everything was did it? Yeah,
Speaker 3: It's like is this Jean's Jean Summons that I've heard it?
Speaker 1: Like that sort of thing.
Speaker 8: But yeah, but the other time I met him was
Speaker 8: probably around two thousand. It was some private movie screening
Speaker 8: and he sat next to me, and I remember the
Speaker 8: one thing he said was just whatever you do, make
Speaker 8: sure you screw over your hardcore fans.
Speaker 5: They're going to give you some notable quotables.
Speaker 8: Don't listen to them. They're going to lead you astray.
Speaker 8: They want you to stay the same.
Speaker 7: And you're like, well, you know, I liked it when
Speaker 7: you guys were makeup.
Speaker 3: I always wondered if the design of the Weezer logo
Speaker 3: was that you're like brains out to come up with
Speaker 3: something that will stick with the fan base in a
Speaker 3: way that the kiss logo, you know, like many of
Speaker 3: us would just draw it.
Speaker 8: And yeah, and in the eighties and in high school,
Speaker 8: you'd spend a lot of time drawing band logos in
Speaker 8: your in your notebook as you're supposed to be listening
Speaker 8: to the teacher, right right. It wasn't his kiss there
Speaker 8: as many of them.
Speaker 7: It's a standard gen X move, like van Halin, Like
Speaker 7: I just drove vhs all day.
Speaker 8: Do kids do that still?
Speaker 5: No, Captain Kirk still does that.
Speaker 1: He does. Yeah.
Speaker 5: I have a question though, still with regards to kiss.
Speaker 5: But maybe this will segue. Was it Kiss, Were they
Speaker 5: the reason wanted to go to Electric Lady or was
Speaker 5: that a Rick Okasik decision?
Speaker 8: He pronounced it ocassick ocassick, But yeah, that was his call.
Speaker 8: He he wanted us to come to New York and
Speaker 8: he wanted us to work at that studio. But of
Speaker 8: course I immediately made the connection because I remember staring
Speaker 8: at the back of those LPs for hours on end,
Speaker 8: just kind of reading them over, not knowing what anything meant.
Speaker 8: But it's like, Electric Lady, Electric Lady. It's like, yeah,
Speaker 8: let's go there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they did a bunch of records there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what period were you working? You Hat Tower Records
Speaker 1: on Sunset.
Speaker 8: I worked there like all of ninety and half of
Speaker 8: ninety one.
Speaker 3: Even though I've worked at a record store once before. Like,
Speaker 3: to me, that was like one of my first fantasies
Speaker 3: in life. Like everyone's playing House and Doctor and I
Speaker 3: would play record store in the house during prime record
Speaker 3: shopping season or the time period in which actually going
Speaker 3: to the record store was, you know, a thing that.
Speaker 1: Was an everyday occurrence.
Speaker 3: What was it like back then, like your experience in
Speaker 3: like were you the cool taste maker guy that I
Speaker 3: would ask, like, okay, so what are you into, Like,
Speaker 3: give me something.
Speaker 1: Were you that person?
Speaker 8: No, I was the opposite. Yeah, when I got there,
Speaker 8: I was pretty much straight from the sticks in Connecticut,
Speaker 8: upstate Connecticut, and I'd just grown up listening to like
Speaker 8: heavy metal music, and I came to La to be
Speaker 8: a shredder and I got a job there, and other
Speaker 8: peop people there were a few years older, which meant
Speaker 8: a lot at the time, even just a few years,
Speaker 8: and they had a much broader knowledge of the history
Speaker 8: of music, and especially rock music and alternative music. I
Speaker 8: didn't know anything about that, So working there was a
Speaker 8: real education, and I got exposed to all different kinds
Speaker 8: of music, and slowly my own style evolved from being,
Speaker 8: you know, a Metallica cover band type to what you
Speaker 8: hear on the Blue Album.
Speaker 3: First of all, what was Sunset Boulevard like? Like, my
Speaker 3: period of Sunset Boulevard was more akin to ninety four
Speaker 3: ninety five, And if you ask any rapper of ninety
Speaker 3: four ninety five, like this a different environment for us,
Speaker 3: because I believe like that's the first time that mainstream
Speaker 3: raps sort of had real estate on that particular street.
Speaker 3: So my thing was more or less like, h this
Speaker 3: looks like a death Row party, or hmmm, I'm good
Speaker 3: on that. I'm gonna stay in the hotel, like that
Speaker 3: sort of thing. But for that period of which you
Speaker 3: know from the books that I've read of Neil Strauss
Speaker 3: and the Motley Cruse stuff like, were you thinking that
Speaker 3: you would have to morph into what was then the
Speaker 3: hair the glam hair rock scene.
Speaker 8: Or yeah, so I got I got to Sunset Boulevard
Speaker 8: in nineteen eighty nine, and it was probably the last
Speaker 8: year of that phase, and it was just a paradise
Speaker 8: for metal heads. Is every Friday and Saturday night is
Speaker 8: packed with hundreds thousands of kids and like guys with
Speaker 8: long teased hair and wearing spandex and passing out flyers.
Speaker 8: And I was coming from a more I don't know again,
Speaker 8: like shreddy progressive metal type of thing.
Speaker 1: Who your heroes not at all glam.
Speaker 8: I mean the best, best well known would be Metallica,
Speaker 8: But I was also into less known bands like uh
Speaker 8: well maybe Ingvey, he's pretty pretty well like real more
Speaker 8: like shreddy instrumental type music. Yeah, not no girls, yeah anywhere,
Speaker 8: Yeah I get so so Yeah, we didn't fit in
Speaker 8: when we got to the Sunset strip and we tried
Speaker 8: to make it a little more poppy for sure.
Speaker 3: Was it easy to amalgamate in the scene at all
Speaker 3: or or did you feel like an outcast or.
Speaker 8: Didn't quite work? The band broke up, then guys moved
Speaker 8: back to Connecticut. Yeah, and that that's when I got
Speaker 8: the job at Tower.
Speaker 1: But the plan was literally like let's go to let's
Speaker 1: go to California.
Speaker 8: And yeah, like we're going to be huge. People are
Speaker 8: gonna love the They're going to be.
Speaker 5: Able to resist that upstate Connecticut down.
Speaker 3: How do you feel about the perception of Weezer versus
Speaker 3: what you really feel you are in your heart? Because
Speaker 3: I think that if someone were to say, like, you know,
Speaker 3: to try to power phrase what you guys are on surface,
Speaker 3: I'm certain you've read or whatever, it's like, okay, like
Speaker 3: this whole revenge of the Nerds thing, like finally geeks
Speaker 3: get to see the table whatever.
Speaker 1: But you guys did it.
Speaker 3: At a time where that wasn't seeing as cool, like
Speaker 3: it was still in us in them or kind of
Speaker 3: a divided conflict of atmosphere, whereas now I see a
Speaker 3: lot of non nerds claring Oh I'm always a nerd
Speaker 3: like dog just because you got glasses on or whatever.
Speaker 3: But because I know that at early Roots shows we
Speaker 3: would have conflicts about it, because my perception was that
Speaker 3: Treek was upset that I was too doweeby in interviews
Speaker 3: and publicly. And then once like the internet started that
Speaker 3: like I made my thing known, the sort of champagne
Speaker 3: life that he was expecting that we were all going
Speaker 3: to have as a rap group was passing the spy
Speaker 3: and like all the nerds were coming here. And that's
Speaker 3: always been like a silent Now of course, like we're
Speaker 3: you know, we have an embracement of our audience, but
Speaker 3: I think in the very beginning there was kind of
Speaker 3: resentment that like, wait, why does our audience look like
Speaker 3: a mirror?
Speaker 1: Like how did you feel? Because again only having.
Speaker 3: Known you guys as a very convenient way for me
Speaker 3: to have one hundred dollars in my pocket that weekend
Speaker 3: for whatever I wanted hawk in the CDs. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: you know, once I listened to it, I'm still trying
Speaker 3: to wrap my head around what you guys were because
Speaker 3: the guitars are so aggressively loud. And then when I
Speaker 3: looked at the cover. I was like, wait a minute,
Speaker 3: these aren't like rock looking guys or whatever. And so
Speaker 3: but for you, how do you feel about like the
Speaker 3: idea that you guys are the cat nip to sort
Speaker 3: of nerd nation that never felt seen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's definitely a lot of conflict, especially when we
Speaker 8: first broke through, and it's interesting to hear that you
Speaker 8: guys went through the same thing, a similar thing.
Speaker 1: We're still going through it. I just accepted.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I feel way more accepting now too. I think
Speaker 8: our core fans really know that there's a lot more
Speaker 8: to us than the quirky image, and whether it's the
Speaker 8: emotional catharsis of Pinkerton or the eight minute guitar shreddage
Speaker 8: and only in Dreams on the first album, it's like
Speaker 8: they know there's a ton of emotional depth there, and
Speaker 8: as long as we have that connection with that audience,
Speaker 8: I feel pretty satisfied. But early on, yeah, we were
Speaker 8: you know, people just took us at face value. And
Speaker 8: that's why, like on the album cover I was like,
Speaker 8: I'm taking my glasses off, or on the Buddy Holly video,
Speaker 8: I take the glasses off. I don't want to just
Speaker 8: be a shtick, you know, when we put the record out,
Speaker 8: they're like, Okay, we're going to send out this bio,
Speaker 8: so give the press an introduction to who you are.
Speaker 8: Like yeah, it's like, no, we're going to write our
Speaker 8: own bio. So we wrote our bio. And it was
Speaker 8: the worst decision we ever made. Ye were like, because
Speaker 8: we had started to see what the press were latching
Speaker 8: onto even as we're playing the clubs in LA and
Speaker 8: every article said like, quirky geeks, fun all this stuff,
Speaker 8: and so we said, okay, write whatever you want, but
Speaker 8: do not use any of the following words quirky geek.
Speaker 8: You know, we just went down this list.
Speaker 1: Do you try to give them a restriction?
Speaker 8: Yeah, we literally did that. Sin is the worst first move,
Speaker 8: I know.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: My trick was, whoever wrote the worst review of your album,
Speaker 3: you hire that person and write the bio of your
Speaker 3: second record. That way, by conflict of interest, they can't
Speaker 3: review this, right, they can't review the record. So like
Speaker 3: the six critics that never liked the roots or whatever, like,
Speaker 3: I've always made sure that they are brilliant.
Speaker 1: And then one of them caught on like wait a minute,
Speaker 1: oh I know what you're doing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, I'm stopping you from right exactly. Well, first
Speaker 3: of all, getting a deal at Geffen, Like why did
Speaker 3: you why did you guys choose DGC at the time.
Speaker 8: Well, a lot of the bands that came up with
Speaker 8: us or right before us, they went the indie route
Speaker 8: or the faux indie right route where they signed with
Speaker 8: Caroline Caroline, Yeah, one of those low, smaller independent labels,
Speaker 8: and then they yeah yeah, and then there the plan
Speaker 8: for the big lad Yeah, the plan is to graduate
Speaker 8: to the big label for the second record. But we're like, no, this,
Speaker 8: we love these songs, we think this is going to
Speaker 8: be incredible album. Who knows, this may this may be it,
Speaker 8: you never know, So we want to go straight to
Speaker 8: a major. And so we made the demo tape. We
Speaker 8: shopped it around and everybody passed except Geffen came back
Speaker 8: at the very end.
Speaker 1: Who was the an R.
Speaker 8: Well it was a junior guy who didn't even have
Speaker 8: the power to sign us. His name is Todd Sullivan and.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, trust me, I know the entire staff there.
Speaker 7: Yeah, So Tony Bird kind of backed him up, I think.
Speaker 1: Right right.
Speaker 8: So he was like the last person in LA to
Speaker 8: actually hear the tape, and he's like, Wow, I like this,
Speaker 8: So he went out on a limb and signed us.
Speaker 1: What year did you record the demo tape?
Speaker 8: Some? Oh the demo tape? Yeah, at the end of
Speaker 8: ninety two.
Speaker 1: Why are you doing this at ninety two?
Speaker 3: Like how a where of you guys were of a Nirvana,
Speaker 3: of a pearl jam of what we now know is
Speaker 3: grunge culture, like coming around the corner because you guys
Speaker 3: don't fit in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's any of those boxes.
Speaker 8: Well, we were well aware. So because of working at
Speaker 8: Tower Records from nineteen ninety I was I was hipped
Speaker 8: in Nirvana and the Pixies and Sonic Youth and all
Speaker 8: these bands. I never would have heard any of that
Speaker 8: stuff if I wasn't working at Tower Records. So we
Speaker 8: actually before Weezer, Pat and I started a grunge band,
Speaker 8: and you know, we tried to sound like Dirvana. Yeah, ish,
Speaker 8: And so.
Speaker 3: Can you explain to me to an outsider sort of
Speaker 3: studying it from afar? If I hear it we're starting
Speaker 3: a grunge band, then of course, yeah, I might play
Speaker 3: the idiot role and just be like, okay, you guys
Speaker 3: were flannel. What do you distinguish the genres? Because for
Speaker 3: the longest, even when I worked at sam Goodies. In
Speaker 3: my mind the day that Appetite for Destruction came out
Speaker 3: and I'm working at sam Goodies when the original cover
Speaker 3: was If you remember, there's two covers for Guns and
Speaker 3: Roses Appetite for Destruction.
Speaker 1: The original one was like band. It was like a
Speaker 1: woman some robot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, And so immediately I would just
Speaker 3: been like heavy metal and then someone kind of a
Speaker 3: the Jack Black figure of that particular record stores like
Speaker 3: you know, well, actually that's you know, hard rock or
Speaker 3: glam rock, And I was like, well, what's the difference,
Speaker 3: Like it's loud guitars, how do you differentiate like the genres?
Speaker 1: Yeah, none at all.
Speaker 7: These guys are the ones that would strategize and be like,
Speaker 7: all right, you have to cut your hair, you have
Speaker 7: to you can't wear that, and I'm all like, but dad,
Speaker 7: let's just fucking jam, Like, let's go.
Speaker 8: Let'ssonically speaking, though, there is, I think there's some different
Speaker 8: meaningful differences that that anyone would pick up on. So
Speaker 8: grunge to me, if our band was called fuzz is much.
Speaker 7: More blues based, patonic.
Speaker 8: And a little more active riff wise, is pentatonic and
Speaker 8: blues based, and then vocally I was trying to sing
Speaker 8: more like with a scratchy type of voice, which I'm
Speaker 8: not at all suited to sing like, I guess more
Speaker 8: in the Black Sabbath tradition.
Speaker 6: Almost jane Zy though, what's the lyrical content different too?
Speaker 8: Because of yeah, there was. It was a little more,
Speaker 8: a little more swearing, a little more abstract and impressionistic,
Speaker 8: I think, yeah, very influenced by Jane's addiction. And then
Speaker 8: over that the course of the first year of working
Speaker 8: with Weezer and writing those songs, the big shift is, OK, Okay,
Speaker 8: let's write in a major key and let's use these
Speaker 8: common chords.
Speaker 3: You hear so risky though, yeah, because like major keys
Speaker 3: don't wreak of like yeah, yeah, it's not exclamation point,
Speaker 3: even though especially like for me, the most notable thing
Speaker 3: about uh, my name is Jonas is actually how you
Speaker 3: end the song, you know what I mean? Like it's
Speaker 3: it's book ended by the electric guitar is coming later,
Speaker 3: and so I see it as wow, there's I don't
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know if you would say if
Speaker 3: Brian Wilson had a super hard edge to his musical work.
Speaker 3: But for me, it was just nothing that I've ever
Speaker 3: heard before with someone embracing acoustic the sound like acoustic
Speaker 3: guitar and pretty melodies and whatnot and this angst thing,
Speaker 3: which I think.
Speaker 1: Is also effective.
Speaker 3: Like I felt like, I'm such a massive fan of
Speaker 3: Public Enemy and I really loved the way that their
Speaker 3: aggressive sound gave me release as a listener. I was
Speaker 3: a very non aggressive guy, but put these headphones on
Speaker 3: and suddenly walk is harder, you know that sort of thing,
Speaker 3: like like you feel that, And I felt like that's
Speaker 3: what you guys were sort of doing. But what was
Speaker 3: the Kasokh saying at the time when you're presenting these songs.
Speaker 7: Like, well, I mean he was a song guy all day,
Speaker 7: and that's what attracted him to us. I think as
Speaker 7: he heard River songs and he was like, these are
Speaker 7: great songs, and that's where.
Speaker 1: How'd you link up with him? Though?
Speaker 8: Who I was todt At at Geffen at DGC was
Speaker 8: really forced us to work with a producer we didn't
Speaker 8: want to because growing up making demos with different engineers
Speaker 8: and producers, they'd always start turning the knobs to where
Speaker 8: it doesn't sound like us, or it just sounds whack,
Speaker 8: and but he said, you got it. It's your first record,
Speaker 8: this is a major label. You need a producer. And
Speaker 8: then one day I was in the in the supermarket
Speaker 8: shopping for ramen noodles or whatever, and just what I
Speaker 8: needed by the Cars came on and d and immediately
Speaker 8: I recognized, like, whoa, that's kind of like what weez
Speaker 8: are supposed to be sounding, Like, let's work with that guy.
Speaker 8: So they sent our demo tape to Rick, and Rick
Speaker 8: responded immediately like I'm talking on the phone with ric
Speaker 8: Ocassik from the Cars and he gets us like nobody
Speaker 8: else in LA music industry had gotten us yet. So
Speaker 8: it's like, yeah, this is going to be exciting.
Speaker 1: What was he like in the studio?
Speaker 8: Man?
Speaker 1: Because I was I was a Cars fan, but like
Speaker 1: what was what was he like?
Speaker 7: Production was a sweet man, just a lovely man. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and musically he was you know, we looked up to
Speaker 7: him a lot, and when if he said something, we
Speaker 7: had to be like, all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, since the how do you decide we're the power falls?
Speaker 3: Because I'm still trying to determine if there's really such
Speaker 3: a thing as a democracy or just the idea of
Speaker 3: a democracy, like you guys meet ahead of time and
Speaker 3: communicate before you get with Rick, or you just say, okay,
Speaker 3: he's the leader. And because I've been in situations where
Speaker 3: people try to like buddy up to me and sort
Speaker 3: of you know, give their two cents and don't let
Speaker 3: the other guys here that sort of thing.
Speaker 1: Hmmm, Like how do you balance communication and.
Speaker 8: You mean especially between us and the and Rick or yeah.
Speaker 3: I'm in between you guys and Rick and just as
Speaker 3: the group, Like is it a thing where it's like
Speaker 3: all of you get an equal say or well, I.
Speaker 8: Think especially at the time working working on the Blue album,
Speaker 8: Rick he was just perfect for us. He's he knew
Speaker 8: when to push and most of the time he just
Speaker 8: let us do our thing. And when it came time
Speaker 8: to push, you know, he was he was insistent and
Speaker 8: he kept coming back and back again and again. Like,
Speaker 8: you know, you really should consider putting Buddy Holly on
Speaker 8: the record. No, no, no, no, that's for our second record.
Speaker 1: So yeah, like it always happens next.
Speaker 8: Day, Come on, man, you give it another listen. I
Speaker 8: think you guys should really finish this one up. No, no, no,
Speaker 8: that's for our second record, you know, but he just
Speaker 8: kept coming back, and he was so sweet that eventually
Speaker 8: it's like, oh, hey, let's try it. And then like dang,
Speaker 8: he's right. And he did the same thing with my
Speaker 8: guitar sound. I walked in like with a super muddy sound.
Speaker 8: I was using the the.
Speaker 7: In the neck position.
Speaker 8: When I was writing by myself in the garage. It
Speaker 8: sounded amazing. It was huge, fat sound, very bassy. It
Speaker 8: just didn't work in the sound in the context of
Speaker 8: a full band and a big studio. So he he
Speaker 8: kept saying, why don't you try this guitar, and he'd
Speaker 8: hand me his fifty eight Junior Gibson Junior and I
Speaker 8: tried it. I was like, no, that's too thin, but
Speaker 8: he just kept coming back and then eventually I hear
Speaker 8: it all in the mix. Is h He's right again.
Speaker 6: What was the process for finding guitar sounds? Was it
Speaker 6: like guitar pedals?
Speaker 1: Amp?
Speaker 6: And like where where was the finagling done the most? Like,
Speaker 6: because I mean the guitar sounds we are the most
Speaker 6: iconic guitars and rocking and rolling in my opinion, it's
Speaker 6: pretty straight in just like right, yeah, yeah, and.
Speaker 8: That's Rick's guitar. I use it to this day and
Speaker 8: no pedals. I was totally against petals.
Speaker 1: You are, yeah, Marshall Stackage.
Speaker 8: In fact, just the other day I sent a note
Speaker 8: to the Mixture about Tom Petty cover. We just didn't
Speaker 8: say can we hear it without the effect on that guitar? Yeah,
Speaker 8: we're still like that, like no reverb because I don't know,
Speaker 8: like engineers and producers, they could keep adding things like
Speaker 8: that because they feel like they got to do something,
Speaker 8: But I like just a straight up sound.
Speaker 6: And one more question about my name is Jonas, Like
Speaker 6: the arpeggiating acoustic guitar business, is that more.
Speaker 1: Of like a in they Shredded situation? Or like was
Speaker 1: there a classical music world?
Speaker 6: I mean it's not really, but like you know what
Speaker 6: I'm saying, Like it's it's more come from like Elliott
Speaker 6: Fiskey nylany business or like.
Speaker 1: Is it Hey, where did that come from?
Speaker 7: It came from Jason cropp Or who was in the
Speaker 7: band at the time, and I was his roommate and
Speaker 7: he was just walking around with an acoustic guitar doing that.
Speaker 7: I'm like, what is that? And he showed it to
Speaker 7: me and I kind of rained it into a four
Speaker 7: track demo and gave it to Rivers and he added
Speaker 7: the climbs at the end with the Yeah.
Speaker 8: So Jason Jason was like a little bit of the
Speaker 8: odd man out in the band because he was a
Speaker 8: little bit younger and he was from northern California. The
Speaker 8: restaurants are all East Coast guys, so in Walks Jason's
Speaker 8: it's like this big hippie guy, uh and like all
Speaker 8: kinds of fingerpicking on acoustic and in fact, for the
Speaker 8: first year of the band he only played acoustic.
Speaker 7: So it's like but he was so burly that every
Speaker 7: show one song in parent a string, so like we
Speaker 7: were like, maybe you should play ei drag, but he
Speaker 7: played it aggressively.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 7: You what a character.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I love that guy.
Speaker 7: He was from He was pretty hippie.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: How old were you when you made that first album.
Speaker 8: Twenty three, which was the age Brian Wilson was when
Speaker 8: they made Pet Saundy, just fifteen number one songs into their.
Speaker 1: Career, Go Fuckers. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Lyrically speaking, what was your mind state in terms of
Speaker 3: because you know it's it's some of the songs are
Speaker 3: confrontational somewhat and really a motive and expressive in a
Speaker 3: way that I felt resonated with a particular artist that
Speaker 3: you just didn't hear of before. And a lot has
Speaker 3: been made of your songwriting and your lyrics, like what
Speaker 3: is your process for your songwriting?
Speaker 8: Definitely influenced by the Pixies and Nirvana where you can't
Speaker 8: quite tell what they're singing about. It's not like a
Speaker 8: traditional song lyric, and so it never sounds corny. It's
Speaker 8: just always weird and intriguing. So I had that, Yeah,
Speaker 8: I had that side to me for sure, and like
Speaker 8: maybe you can hear that in the Sweater song or
Speaker 8: Buddy Holly. It's like, what the heck is he saying?
Speaker 8: My name is Jonas. But then I also liked really straightforward,
Speaker 8: plain language, just talking about my emotions, what I'm going through,
Speaker 8: and you know, is influenced by Brian Wilson. He he
Speaker 8: did that a lot.
Speaker 1: I can't.
Speaker 8: They have a song called in My Room, it's just
Speaker 8: singing about that safe place. And so what we did
Speaker 8: a song called in the Garage kind of same thing,
Speaker 8: talking about kiss posters and on the wall.
Speaker 3: For you, like you represent or at least as an
Speaker 3: example for like future creators, like in terms of using
Speaker 3: it's almost like a it feels like a release, at
Speaker 3: least I think so. And I don't know if any
Speaker 3: of the songs were personal in your life or not personal,
Speaker 3: but even like your vocal delivery, like the way that
Speaker 3: it's delivered for me, it just felt like a cathartic
Speaker 3: release that you really just don't hear. And you know
Speaker 3: it's not the a power lead singer that is singing
Speaker 3: as opposed to a mooting, which is hard to do.
Speaker 1: So for you, how personal is this record?
Speaker 8: It is extremely personal and cathartic and writing is just
Speaker 8: the best feeling to get my feelings out into a
Speaker 8: lyric and melody and feel like, yeah, that's that's it.
Speaker 8: That's exactly what I'm feeling right now. And I just
Speaker 8: really expressed it. I'm not good at that in normal
Speaker 8: life in a conversation or something, or my relationships, so
Speaker 8: to get it into a song, So you got to
Speaker 8: get into this song to be able to hear it
Speaker 8: back and rewind the tape, listen to it again, it's like, yes,
Speaker 8: that is it.
Speaker 3: Were you guys at all shocked at how it caught on,
Speaker 3: like no one goes in here and saying okay, it's
Speaker 3: going to be a multi platinum record, like or did
Speaker 3: you figure that this is going to catch onto?
Speaker 8: I had both voices in my head at the same time.
Speaker 8: Part of me is thinking, you know, we're gonna sell
Speaker 8: a hundred copies to our friends and family. That's gonna
Speaker 8: be it. I'm gonna go back and get my job
Speaker 8: guit our records. That was cool, but it's over. But
Speaker 8: part of me is thinking, this album is amazing and
Speaker 8: this band is amazing, and once the right audience picks
Speaker 8: up on it, this is gonna be huge and it's
Speaker 8: going to go on to be an important album for
Speaker 8: a long time. So I had both those voices.
Speaker 5: In my head.
Speaker 3: What were those early shows like promoting once the album
Speaker 3: came out, like how many? Well it was Also it
Speaker 3: was also you know the period of us as Americans
Speaker 3: getting to know the festival or this whole new way
Speaker 3: of presenting your music, Like what was the process of
Speaker 3: promoting it?
Speaker 1: Like who do they pair you with? And yeah, what
Speaker 1: was the circuit? Yeah?
Speaker 7: Yeah, the key was honestly K Rock and MTV. That
Speaker 7: was the two big levers that we we're fortunate enough
Speaker 7: to be involved in.
Speaker 8: Yeah, first bigger tour was with Lush. We were opening
Speaker 8: for Lush and that was just kind of cool. Was like, WHOA,
Speaker 8: that's a really cool band and it's great to be
Speaker 8: out with them. And then then we went out with
Speaker 8: Live for a couple months and that was great because
Speaker 8: they were had a much bigger audiences or bigger venues.
Speaker 7: And at this time undone over the summer had been
Speaker 7: a thing. And then were we at the Buddy Holly
Speaker 7: stage at that point?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And then the save ain't so after that, lots of
Speaker 7: radio shows too.
Speaker 1: I remember once having an argument with.
Speaker 3: One of our video directors because I didn't realize, well,
Speaker 3: obviously the Sweater song had to be tracked with the
Speaker 3: song was twice as fast, right, yeah, you guys are
Speaker 3: doing it on forty.
Speaker 1: Five because I couldn't.
Speaker 3: For me, the coolest part of the Sweater video was
Speaker 3: how I don't know if who's the one step?
Speaker 1: Is Scott snapping his fingers Matt right right, just right?
Speaker 3: I kept I kept micromanaging our director, like no, man,
Speaker 3: like we need to I want a cool moment.
Speaker 1: Look like I don't see the cool moment, Like we
Speaker 1: don't look cool, we don't look.
Speaker 8: At and comparing yourself to Weezer you were.
Speaker 3: To that you don't understand, Like I it's almost like
Speaker 3: I wish there was a tail or two cities or
Speaker 3: kind of a sliding doors kind of story of both
Speaker 3: the Roots and Weezer, because I feel like we were
Speaker 3: doing the exact opposite of what you guys were doing,
Speaker 3: even though I almost feel as though we were in
Speaker 3: sort of adjacent or or these these boxes of commonalty.
Speaker 3: But no, all the time at the label, like especially
Speaker 3: when it caught like right before Buddy Holly came out,
Speaker 3: like all the interns, all the uh just the everyday
Speaker 3: workers at DGC or whatever, like you guys were their hero.
Speaker 1: It's always like Weezer, and.
Speaker 3: Then they would you know, it's time to choose video
Speaker 3: directors or whatever. Okay, well we'll show you all the
Speaker 3: video directors that we are looked at, and da da
Speaker 3: da da, and we can't afford Spike Jones or whatever.
Speaker 3: And we didn't have a relationship with them at the time,
Speaker 3: so you know, I hated the video process.
Speaker 1: But how did you guys hook up with Spike?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean we felt the same way. I remember
Speaker 8: when we turned in the records, we just said, we're
Speaker 8: not We're not making a video forget it, and.
Speaker 7: Why we had a lot of requirements.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I just I thought videos were stupid. But and
Speaker 8: they sent us a whole bunch of treatments that these
Speaker 8: are like those yeah, treatments, and they and every single
Speaker 8: one had something to do with the sweater and it's like,
Speaker 8: come on. But then then we got one from Spike
Speaker 8: and it was like two sentences or something. You know,
Speaker 8: you guys are playing in front of a blue background,
Speaker 8: and halfway through a pack of dogs runs across the screen.
Speaker 8: It's like and it's all in one Okay, that sounds cool.
Speaker 3: How many how many takes did that take? I'm very
Speaker 3: obsessed with that video and especially when the dogs won't
Speaker 3: run by and damn it like something so simple being
Speaker 3: like super effective.
Speaker 1: How many How many takes was that for you guys?
Speaker 7: It was one day?
Speaker 8: Yeah, it was a lot of takes a different.
Speaker 3: Later because I figure, like your level of silly, like
Speaker 3: when you're dancing at the drum set or.
Speaker 7: Whatever, you can't look at it.
Speaker 1: Was there was there any editing trickery or was that
Speaker 1: actually like.
Speaker 7: No, it's all one take. It's one guy with a
Speaker 7: steady cam and he was it was a lot of work,
Speaker 7: like he was and exhausted by the yea, yeah, it
Speaker 7: was it.
Speaker 1: Choy graphed the same way each time.
Speaker 7: He sort of had a circuit that he would do.
Speaker 7: And I think they've the one we wound up using
Speaker 7: was you know, the one, Yeah.
Speaker 8: One of that was probably one of the last ones.
Speaker 9: I want to ask about. The Guitar Hero and my
Speaker 9: name is Jonas going in that. What made y'all decide
Speaker 9: to do that, man, because that opened up a whole
Speaker 9: new generation. Oh yeah, you guys music like my kids,
Speaker 9: me and my boys, like we would play that all
Speaker 9: the time.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 8: Sadly, I think I didn't know what Guitar Hero was
Speaker 8: or I don't. I wasn't part of that decision. It's like,
Speaker 8: uh sure if you guys think that would be cool,
Speaker 8: and it did turn out to be massive for us. Yeah,
Speaker 8: bringing in a whole new generation.
Speaker 7: I think. Also we haven't touched on is the Windows
Speaker 7: ninety five install CD had a folder called videos on
Speaker 7: it and this was back you remember, like nobody watched
Speaker 7: the video on their computer. That was a like what
Speaker 7: what is this? Sorcery?
Speaker 1: Like what is this.
Speaker 7: That so many people say, like, yeah, the Bunny Holly
Speaker 7: video on there is amazing. So just all kinds of
Speaker 7: stuff like that. We're huge for us.
Speaker 3: I used to work at uh An actual Big Ols.
Speaker 3: You know, at one point big Ows had his own
Speaker 3: restaurant chain.
Speaker 1: Really, why, why are you're shame of me?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 1: I mean I didn't know that. You didn't know that
Speaker 1: it's big Al from Days.
Speaker 5: I assume you're talking about what are you talking about
Speaker 5: from Happy Days?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, Big Ols?
Speaker 3: There there was an actual before what's the the actual
Speaker 3: for these restaurants like Johnny Rockets now, right, But before
Speaker 3: Johnny Rockets, there was I guess back in eighty eight
Speaker 3: or eighty nine, like well not several a few of
Speaker 3: these themed restaurants or whatever. Like at the time when
Speaker 3: that video came out, Like how convinced were you guys
Speaker 3: that this wasn't because that could have been a hit
Speaker 3: or miss situation, Like and I'm not thinking that he's
Speaker 3: going to nail the perfect you know, television filter and
Speaker 3: complete with the commercial and all that stuff.
Speaker 1: Like at the time, what were you guys.
Speaker 3: Thinking about the idea of recreating the Happy Days theme
Speaker 3: for Buddy Holly?
Speaker 8: Well, I certainly I think all of us felt that
Speaker 8: from the moment we heard the idea, this is going
Speaker 8: to be the greatest video of all time.
Speaker 1: That's so cool.
Speaker 7: You love happy days?
Speaker 1: Okay? Was he was Spike your first choice to the director?
Speaker 8: Did you see it was his idea?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean we yeah, we only want to work
Speaker 8: with Spike to this day, but he's making movies and
Speaker 8: all that. We actually knew him from before any of
Speaker 8: us had made it too. He was kind of part
Speaker 8: of the same circle of friends.
Speaker 7: Sort of like a skate thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you guys are skaters.
Speaker 8: No, but our older brother band they were called Wax.
Speaker 1: This is in La.
Speaker 8: He made their video. I think that may have been
Speaker 8: his first video. And when we saw that with a.
Speaker 7: Slow motion guy on fire No no, no, Philly also.
Speaker 8: Hush, it was like them in a kid's playground. Oh yes, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Actually thought the guy I initially thought that video of
Speaker 3: the guy on fire videos you guys as well, but
Speaker 3: I didn't what group was that wa Legends by then
Speaker 3: once it catches on. Because I kind of want to
Speaker 3: end the episode really obsessing with what made you guys go.
Speaker 3: Quasi left with Pinkerton because I do have a belief
Speaker 3: that maybe subconsciously, some acts might try to like, I mean,
Speaker 3: do you consider yourselves like, Okay, we actually became like
Speaker 3: a mainstream standard band instead of the underdogs or the
Speaker 3: nerds that you were supposed.
Speaker 7: To be, or like the dog caught the car.
Speaker 8: I mean like, yeah, no, I didn't feel like that.
Speaker 8: That that doesn't feel like why I took the turn
Speaker 8: I took. In fact, I felt like we never quite
Speaker 8: made it because the same year that Weezer came out,
Speaker 8: the Offspring came out and they were like, yeah, five
Speaker 8: times as big as us, Green Day came out five
Speaker 8: six times as big.
Speaker 1: As us, and there were you still felt like the underdog.
Speaker 8: Yeah, we felt like we didn't quite hit it over
Speaker 8: the fence, did we?
Speaker 7: So yeah?
Speaker 8: I mean to this day, so yes, even to this
Speaker 8: But I feel.
Speaker 6: Like now we're like, like we interviewed Adam Levine from
Speaker 6: Maroon five, who sighted you cited Weezer is one of
Speaker 6: his favorite bands of all time, Like what does it
Speaker 6: feel like now when you're out on the road and
Speaker 6: like you're still playing these songs and like you are
Speaker 6: influential to a generation of bands and sounds and whatever.
Speaker 6: I mean, does that does that affect you.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's amazing, azing, but again, he's like ten times
Speaker 8: as big as.
Speaker 1: My money.
Speaker 3: The first day record, the first thing he said without
Speaker 3: putting it out there, I guess I can see your
Speaker 3: point of view. I had a very brief, albeit kind
Speaker 3: of eye opening conversation with Tom Yorke about Coldplay.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yeah, that go. But that's the thing.
Speaker 3: His perception was like, you know, we're not as big
Speaker 3: as Coldplay. And the thing is is that I started
Speaker 3: to do what I hate for the fan base to
Speaker 3: do to me, because in my mind I was like, oh, well,
Speaker 3: you guys don't want to be cold Play. You guys
Speaker 3: are Radiohead, You've you've been it cool you and people
Speaker 3: will always come up to me like, oh man, y'all
Speaker 3: care about getting paid or making hits?
Speaker 1: Like you guys just make whatever type of record you
Speaker 1: want to. You don't give a fucking I'm like, I
Speaker 1: give a mortgage, right dude. And this is like this
Speaker 1: before it Hell did the Thief.
Speaker 3: This was like prime kid, a prime amnesiac, can't get
Speaker 3: no bigger like you guys have made it critically, couldn't
Speaker 3: get no yeah right. But they were also playing stadiums
Speaker 3: like it was it was unfurly, but.
Speaker 1: You know, in his mind didn't make it. Yeah, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, we're still the underdogs.
Speaker 9: And I was like, I don't think so, like I
Speaker 9: think it's I think it was something you said earlier
Speaker 9: about you know, you had those conversations with Kiss and
Speaker 9: maybe it was Jeane and he was saying basically how
Speaker 9: you should piss off your fan base, well your diehard fans,
Speaker 9: and for me getting into you guys.
Speaker 1: Music, Yeah, no problem, DoD Man, for you guys music.
Speaker 9: Like Blue Album came out. I was in high school
Speaker 9: and so I had a homie of mine. I played
Speaker 9: football where he was into like all of that stuff,
Speaker 9: like cause I came from mostly hip hop, R and
Speaker 9: B background, and.
Speaker 1: So he would always run.
Speaker 9: He would put me on like he was running like
Speaker 9: back and like uh wean and I used to get
Speaker 9: Ween and Weezer comfused. I was like, okay, which one is?
Speaker 9: Which you know what I'm saying, And so he would
Speaker 9: put me on you stuff, you got stuff, and so
Speaker 9: I knew just.
Speaker 1: Of course, buddy, Hollywood was everywhere.
Speaker 9: But I listened to Pinkerton for the first time last night,
Speaker 9: and so this is my first time ever hearing it,
Speaker 9: just you know whatever, that shit is amazing.
Speaker 7: Dog.
Speaker 9: So like just somebody from outside of I guess the
Speaker 9: core fan base to me that record that shit slapped,
Speaker 9: you know, so whatever that means.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh shit, So you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: What did you create it? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Were you trying to build and destroy?
Speaker 8: Or I thought it was gonna be huge? I know
Speaker 8: that sounds crazy really yeah.
Speaker 3: See so here's the thing, though, it wasn't used in
Speaker 3: the way that you thought it was going to be huge,
Speaker 3: But of your entire canon, and we're not even going
Speaker 3: through you know, there's what you guys are on your
Speaker 3: seventeenth including the EPs right now, I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: you're close to seventeen, I'm not certain. But what is
Speaker 3: your personal top of the Cannon album? And then what
Speaker 3: do you feel as though your piece of resistance is
Speaker 3: to your fan base?
Speaker 1: What to you?
Speaker 5: I'll give you time to think about it. Well, because
Speaker 5: I have this theory that every band tries to do
Speaker 5: their pet sounds. So as an aside to his question,
Speaker 5: did you try and do your pet sounds? And it's
Speaker 5: Pinkerton that I.
Speaker 7: Guess I'm curious, I'll ask you how different did Pinkerton
Speaker 7: turn out from what you thought it was going to
Speaker 7: turn out, because it feels.
Speaker 1: Like he's got three questions on it.
Speaker 7: Play it feels like the I mean, we weren't we
Speaker 7: were burnt from touring a lot and everything, and I
Speaker 7: hear a lot of like to me, that's like van
Speaker 7: Halen's fair warning, Like there's a lot there's a lot
Speaker 7: of angst and anger in the music itself, like in
Speaker 7: the playing of it. So I'm curious if it turned
Speaker 7: out the way you thought it was gonna be.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Absolutely, I was totally satisfied. I'm more than satisfied.
Speaker 1: I was in love with it.
Speaker 8: But I do remember on a mixing day, ric Ocassik
Speaker 8: came to LA and came came to the studio and
Speaker 8: we played him a few of the songs we'd already mixed,
Speaker 8: and he didn't show any reaction, and I that was
Speaker 8: the first moment I was like, oh, wait a minute,
Speaker 8: maybe this isn't going to go like how I think
Speaker 8: it's going to go.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, so did you I finally say something.
Speaker 8: No, he never gave an opinion on that. But what
Speaker 8: the way I took that was like this this just
Speaker 8: didn't turn out great and it could have been better,
Speaker 8: and it's hard.
Speaker 1: Did you take that the heart?
Speaker 8: I don't want to say like that was the big
Speaker 8: wound of the Pingerton era because there were so many,
Speaker 8: so many bigger ones actually, but that was the first moment.
Speaker 1: How long was it to realize?
Speaker 3: Like example, you know, like Prince rushed off stage in
Speaker 3: Purple Rine like absolutely feeling like he just blew it
Speaker 3: and had to stop for a moment and heard them
Speaker 3: cheering and was like, oh, they did get it, Like
Speaker 3: did you ever have that redemption moment of like, yeah,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, I think I'll have.
Speaker 2: It at now.
Speaker 1: It seems like.
Speaker 8: It took a while, and so the album came out
Speaker 8: in ninety six and bombed. So by the end of
Speaker 8: ninety seven, I totally lost my confidence and just kind
Speaker 8: of went off and lived by myself and was trying
Speaker 8: to write a third record. But years went by and
Speaker 8: I couldn't figure it out. I just didn't know what
Speaker 8: to do. And one of my friends was in another
Speaker 8: band and he had been touring around the States. So
Speaker 8: at the end of ninety nine he came back and
Speaker 8: he said, you know, Rivers, there's a new generation of
Speaker 8: kids out there. Who love Pinkerton, and that was like
Speaker 8: shocking to me. I had no idea, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 8: it's called Emo and that's their album. So then we
Speaker 8: got the band back together and we went out and
Speaker 8: we just jumped on a few shows of the two
Speaker 8: thousand Warped tour and like before we walked on the stage,
Speaker 8: there would be another band playing and like twenty thousand
Speaker 8: kids would be chanting Weezer, Weezer, you know. And we
Speaker 8: walked out there and at this point Pinkerton wasn't even
Speaker 8: in our set list because we're like, oh, well, nobody
Speaker 8: liked that one, but there were you know, chanting for
Speaker 8: those songs. So that's when we you know, it really
Speaker 8: hit us.
Speaker 7: But I remember playing like the Ranch Bowl, like was
Speaker 7: it at Oklahoma or something in the middle of the
Speaker 7: somewhere in the middle of the country on that tour
Speaker 7: on Pinkerton and kids being super pumped and knowing all
Speaker 7: the lyrics to the Deep Cuts, And that was my
Speaker 7: first clue was like, why, Wow, they know all these songs.
Speaker 7: I don't know if you were hip to that, no,
Speaker 7: I could have.
Speaker 1: Told you, yeah, you're right next week, right, you were
Speaker 1: like right there?
Speaker 2: Nah.
Speaker 9: It was for me, like hearing that work again. My
Speaker 9: first time ever hearing it was last night, I'm just
Speaker 9: you know, just running it. And so for me it
Speaker 9: was I could tell how I mean, of course there
Speaker 9: was a difference between the Blue Album to this, but
Speaker 9: it wasn't as stark a difference of like, it wasn't
Speaker 9: like the first album was like a Radiohead reck like
Speaker 9: a you know, Pablo Honey or whatever, and then the
Speaker 9: second album was kid a where it was just this
Speaker 9: complete one eighty where it's like, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 9: It felt, and to me it felt in many ways
Speaker 9: like an extension. It didn't I don't know, it just
Speaker 9: didn't feel like it was such a big jump. And
Speaker 9: listen to it now, I'm just like, what was.
Speaker 1: The big Why was everybody so pissed off? Like the
Speaker 1: ship go hard? What was the problem?
Speaker 7: But brilling Stone was mad?
Speaker 8: Yeah, they all the critics there rated it the second
Speaker 8: worst album of the year.
Speaker 1: Serious, Uh, what was the worst? I remember that?
Speaker 5: Yeah, So it sounds like it took like four five
Speaker 5: years to catch on to the next generation.
Speaker 3: Man, So if it weren't for you having knowledge that
Speaker 3: perhaps uh, there's someone out there that is latching to it.
Speaker 3: Did you guys think that it was over by the
Speaker 3: second album?
Speaker 7: Like I would go visit him in Massachusetts. He lived
Speaker 7: five five years correct, Yeah, living on the East Coast
Speaker 7: and I was in out West, and I would go
Speaker 7: visit and we would try and get stuff together. But
Speaker 7: it was a transitional period, you know.
Speaker 9: I want to ask what the record you guys did
Speaker 9: with Polo to Don and Lil Wayne? Oh yeah, how
Speaker 9: did that come together?
Speaker 8: So we had this song Can't Stop Partying, And originally
Speaker 8: it was like this very somber acoustic thing. The head
Speaker 8: of the record company, Jimmy Iovine, had like this star
Speaker 8: producer on his team, poloded on and he asked me
Speaker 8: if I would be up for giving it to Polo
Speaker 8: and seeing seeing what happened. And I remember being in
Speaker 8: the studio the first time I heard it and just
Speaker 8: like my head was blown off. It sounded amazing and
Speaker 8: I was a massive little Wayne fan. So yeah, when
Speaker 8: they suggested that, I was all in and course Weezer
Speaker 8: and Weezy, I had to hear.
Speaker 1: You Weezer baby.
Speaker 3: Alright, right, how do you guys, Because I know most
Speaker 3: rockers hate looking in the rear view mirror in terms
Speaker 3: of not want to be seen.
Speaker 1: As a legacy act or that sort of thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: our Vegas run. How are you guys planning the celebration
Speaker 1: of the thirtieth tour?
Speaker 8: Wise, we could have planned like a very retro nostalgia
Speaker 8: thing and do it very ninety four style, but that
Speaker 8: would be boring so for us, So we're going to
Speaker 8: come up with some kind of crazy production and theme
Speaker 8: and I think it's going to involve a space voyage
Speaker 8: where we're going to this blue planet.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, like with the teasers that
Speaker 1: you guys are putting on.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So musically it's going to be the Blue Album,
Speaker 8: the hits and some like nineties B sides, stuff those
Speaker 8: fans really want. But there's going to be an element
Speaker 8: of production that we never would have tried back then.
Speaker 8: And yeah, I think, yeah, that makes it fun and
Speaker 8: interesting for me.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I'm excited to hear that.
Speaker 3: Well, thank you guys for you know, sitting with us
Speaker 3: and sharing your experiences with the Blue Album. And you know, again,
Speaker 3: thank you guys for saving a nerd that you probably
Speaker 3: didn't realize that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, don't steal the mugs anyone, Thank you guys, and
Speaker 5: we appreciate you coming.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, and uh yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah we do our own sound effects, yeah, uh yeah
Speaker 3: when we have Sugar, Steve, Bill and Fan Segelo and
Speaker 3: like yeah, this is Quest Love and we will see
Speaker 3: you next week.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 7: Thank you guys, our pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
Speaker 6: is hosted by Mere Quest Love, Thompson, Saint Clair, Fante Coleman, Sugar,
Speaker 6: Steve Mandell, and myself unpaid Bill Scherm. The executive producers
Speaker 6: are Mere who just walked into the goddamn room, Thompson,
Speaker 6: Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney Benjamin, Jake
Speaker 6: Paine and Liiah Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I Know
Speaker 6: Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.
Speaker 1: West Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.