Weezer

Weezer's Rivers Cuomo and Patrick Wilson visit QLS in the studio. Ahead of its 30th anniversary Weezer reflects on its famed debut, the blue album. Patrick and Rivers describe their own upbringings, the earliest days of Weezer, and how The Cars' Ric Ocasek was the perfect producer. This conversation between peers shows some intersectional histories and creates a few laughs too.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Quest Love Supreme is a production of iHeartRadio. Just Fake
It Tea, make It Here we Go.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
Suprema Shuck Suh Supremo role called Suprema shut sut Supremo
role called Supremo shut sup Supremo.

Speaker 1 (00:23):
Role called Supremo shut Up.

Speaker 3 (00:26):
Supremo role calls Ryner Cuomo. Yeah, Wilson Bell Yeah, four
Heroes in ninety four. Yeah, save me from Hell.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Roll call Supremo Suh sut Supremo role called Suprema suck
suh Suprema role call.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
My name is Fante Yeah, not Deze's on me hero.

Speaker 4 (00:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Found out about Wheezer playing on guitar Hero.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Supprimo Sun Sun Supremo role called Supremo Sure Sun Supremo.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
Role call name is Sugar. Yeah, I'm such a Geezer.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:03):
My first concert, Yeah it was the actual Buddy Holly.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
So Prema roll call dream So Supremo.

Speaker 4 (01:15):
Roll call.

Speaker 6 (01:16):
I'm me yes me b Yeah, goddamn yeah, I am roll.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Sir So Suprema roll call Suprema so So Supremo.

Speaker 7 (01:31):
Roll call.

Speaker 8 (01:32):
My name is Patrick. Wilson's IM in New York City. Yeah,
I want to say ahead of my wife because she's
exceptionally pretty.

Speaker 4 (01:41):
From town Suprema roll call, Suprema So soun Suprema roll call.

Speaker 9 (01:48):
My name is Jonas, Actually it's not. Yeah, it's Rivers. Yeah,
busted rhymes on the spot.

Speaker 4 (01:58):
Prema roll call, Suprema Su Sun Suprema roll call, Suprema
su su Suprema roll Suprema Sun Sun supremea roll.

Speaker 6 (02:13):
That's the first time a guest has ever voluntarily raised
their hand to go next.

Speaker 1 (02:17):
Yes, well done. Every other guest is like, not me.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
I'm not doing Pladies and gentlemen, Welcome to quest Love Supreme.
I am quest Love your host team Supreme.

Speaker 1 (02:30):
Good people. Morning, good morning, morning, good morning, yes, good morning.

Speaker 5 (02:34):
Fucking cough, good morning. Nothing happened.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
Nothing happened today.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Speaking of ninety four, yo, whoa right, wow, okay, met as,
we kind of reflect on the significance of April ninety four,
which was probably significant for two X June.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Well no, no, well, April ninety four being the the
domino that also ends in June.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Wait, how do you know the date by heart?

Speaker 5 (03:06):
I'm talking about Ojson.

Speaker 3 (03:08):
Yeah, I know that you're talking about. Who commits that
to memory? Oh because of the basketball game.

Speaker 5 (03:15):
Now I watched the I was unemployed that summer, so
I watched the whole trial.

Speaker 1 (03:19):
You weren't working an electric lady then.

Speaker 5 (03:21):
Now it was right before I started.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Did you start there?

Speaker 5 (03:23):
Ninety six? Yeah, middle ninety so this is the.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Way after you guys. Okay, I see.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Basically, I will probably say that today's conversation is long overdue.
I think everyone thinks that they have a special relationship
with an entity or whatever, like theirs is unique alone.
But I think that my relationship to our guest today
is fairly unique than that of their fan bases connection

(03:50):
to them.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
Yeah, what did your role call mean?

Speaker 1 (03:52):
Well?

Speaker 3 (03:52):
Yeah, I was going to say that when I tell
the folklore of the roots time at DGC Records back
in ninety three to ninety four, when we first signed,
I would assume that both acts got their record deals
around the same time. I was made aware that they
were releasing their record in ninety four, and kind of

(04:13):
when we had that stalled beginning of which our album
was supposed to come out in June of ninety four,
and then the labels like not yet, we have to
get you a staff first, and all those things. Those
were really really lean years. So I can't believe I'm
telling this story so pretty much for quick survival money.

Speaker 8 (04:38):
Closet.

Speaker 1 (04:41):
Wait you two? Oh my god, wait the way And
I'm like that was too easy.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
I wonder I'm like under trepidation of like I don't
know if I was telling the story yo, But I
will say that as far as value was concerned, you guys, ecstasy.

Speaker 1 (05:05):
And back.

Speaker 3 (05:06):
No, seriously, like at any moment of like the moment
that we all had to like go see pault fiction.
All right, let's go get them real quick, grab some wheezers. Yes,
wait a minute, but how you guys who were the
people that provided, in some indirect way the finances for

(05:28):
my survival ninety four also doing the same.

Speaker 9 (05:31):
Thing we were ninety three. We were going there in
ninety three, and it was like guns and roses, use
your illusion.

Speaker 7 (05:36):
Yes, oh my god, thought dude, I literally thought that
showing them hockey, Yeah, yeah, that was Oh you're.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Just taking to listen to Okay, so this is a crime,
all right, Yes, yes, I.

Speaker 3 (05:53):
Using our guest today. But the thing was is that
I was always shocked the period that I was doing it.
In my mind, I'm like, okay, they'll want the spaghetti incident,
use your losing and it was like, no, all the
Neil Young Geffen era records, trans all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (06:12):
Nah, they wanted Weezer.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
And then one day, after like six months of hawking
you guys, I'm like, all right, let me listen to this.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
And then I became more obsessed.

Speaker 3 (06:25):
And then once I started reading about like your kiss
obsession and all that stuff, I was like, wow, like
there's some weird kinship here. And plus, you know, I
really credit you guys more than anything for at least
making me aware of Spike Jones as a video director. Anyway,
longest intro in history, Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Weezer
to the show. Yeah, welcome. I had a whole scroll

(06:52):
of fan letter to do the intro, but I decided
not to do that. Just a confession, that's all.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Yeah. Are you really that this was going down? No,
you gotta do what you gotta do. You never did that.

Speaker 5 (07:04):
I've stolen so much shit from you, from everybody, Are
you kidding me?

Speaker 1 (07:10):
I'm supposed to do it? So wait.

Speaker 3 (07:13):
First thing I'll ask is because of the I mean,
your entire canon now, and you know you're running out
of colors and and I'm holy jealous of the synesthesia
of it all, like the fact that you know each
album represents a mood or whatever. I'm so jealous that
you guys really got to explore that. Is it cringe

(07:35):
worthy to listen to your first record? Like do you
accept where you were as artists when you're making this
in ninety three or is it you listen to and
you're like, I could have that Stanza could have been better,
or this mix could have been better, or like, are
you overly critical?

Speaker 4 (07:54):
For me?

Speaker 9 (07:54):
I'm less critical now than I was then when we
finished it. I remember at the time and we made
some big mistakes, specifically like the I wish we had
gone bigger with the drum sound, and then we did
exactly that on our second record, Pinkerton. We just turned
up the room MIC's uhs more that. But now it's like, yeah,

(08:17):
that's that's what the album sounds. It sounds how it's
supposed to sound.

Speaker 1 (08:20):
I love it.

Speaker 3 (08:20):
How do you feel about the perception of Pinkerton and
the fact that, I mean, it's basically the standard of
I won't say postmodern and leftist center records. I mean,
there's a lot of it, but just the fact that
now it's used as like, well, I'm a real fan
because I have Pinkerton tattooed, or you know what I mean,
Like the amount of dissertations I've read about the album

(08:44):
and on the internet and your Weezer Palooza. Have you
guys been on your own Weezer Palooza page at all?

Speaker 1 (08:52):
No, it's very.

Speaker 9 (08:53):
Scary, yeah, weezer Pedia.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
Maybe.

Speaker 1 (08:55):
Oh I'm sorry, Yes, Weezer.

Speaker 9 (08:58):
That's a good idea though, well yeah, yes, you know,
fans are gonna fan and that's great, and I don't
I don't think it's I don't think I should be
like paying too much attention to that stuff. What I
care about is, like I just want when we play
a concert, I want as much harmony as possible in
the room, just like everyone to be united. I love
that feeling. So the only time that's the problem is

(09:21):
when like you have different segments of the crowd want
to hear different songs. But that's why it's great to
like play huge venues sometimes and then sometimes play really
little venues. You know, the super hardcore fans, they're gonna
want to hear Pinkerton some B sides that kind of thing.
That's super fun too.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
I assume that come twenty twenty six, you guys will if.

Speaker 9 (09:46):
We can get past the blue album thing, that will
be fun.

Speaker 4 (09:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
What is it like to return to it? Do you do?

Speaker 3 (09:54):
You have seminal memories of the making of the album.
And I'm also kind of else that you guys know
what Electric Lady was like when the dome was in
front of it?

Speaker 1 (10:05):
Oh yeah, yeah, yes, yeah. Wait were you there with
us the day we were going to protest.

Speaker 5 (10:10):
And yeah, yeah, we were trying to like tire ourselves.

Speaker 1 (10:13):
To Yeah, the last day, the last day of that
that the dome that was in front of Electric Lady.

Speaker 5 (10:19):
He's calling it a dome, but it's a rounded brick wall.
Well or no, a dome goes above you.

Speaker 3 (10:28):
But yes, okay, so it's at the time I thought
it was an igloo or whatever. I mean, I don't
know what to make of it. But rounded brick wall, yeah,
brick wall, circular brick wall because Jimmy Hendricks didn't believe
in corners. Yeah, oh really and yeah, so our first
week there of doing d' Angelo's Voodoo and we found
out they were going to knock the wall down and

(10:50):
we were going to go all vigilant and chain ourselves
to the front door, like in front of the breaker,
and then of course at six am, none of us
were now to stay up.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
In front of it. Oh well, we got to work
like it's going on. Actually, let me start you pet,
what was your like your first musical memory in life?

Speaker 8 (11:11):
Very man low? What that's the biggest ones for you?
His face on the cover is huge. I don't know
why I liked it, but I was like, it was
pretty small.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
Yeah, he was unavoidable.

Speaker 5 (11:26):
Also, yeah, you know you like the even Now album,
that's the one nineteen seventy eight.

Speaker 8 (11:31):
It all sounds like a seventies movie to me, but
I love it.

Speaker 3 (11:35):
Yeah, the same mellow intro in exactly. So you mean
purchasing that record or just.

Speaker 8 (11:42):
I don't know how I got it, but I got it.
My brother and sister are much older than me. They're
they're like in their early seventies now, so they would
leave records lying around people like, oh, here's weird Neil
Young record, here's you know, the Who, Quadraphinia and all
this stuff, and I just thought they were great to throw.

Speaker 1 (11:58):
You know, it's a little Casby.

Speaker 8 (12:00):
Yeah, yeah, this is whatever. But eventually I started listening
to it, stuff like Van Halen. Then I got into
it on my own or like Rush right, and that's
when I, you know, got into rock.

Speaker 1 (12:12):
Where were you born?

Speaker 8 (12:13):
Buffalo?

Speaker 1 (12:14):
Okay, okay, Buffalo, New York, up state? Nice? All right, Riverskay?
What was your first musical memory? It was all right right?

Speaker 9 (12:23):
First memory would be listening to my dad play the drums. Okay,
he is jazz drummer, so it would have been him
and his buddies jamming.

Speaker 8 (12:33):
Who do you play with?

Speaker 1 (12:34):
Uh wah?

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (12:36):
He made it onto a Wayne Shorter session in nineteen
seventy right here, I think in Manhattan or Brooklyn.

Speaker 1 (12:42):
And what was your dad's name?

Speaker 9 (12:44):
Frank Cuomo? So Francis actually legally it's Francis. Yeah did that?

Speaker 8 (12:50):
How did you know that?

Speaker 1 (12:50):
I just.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
I didn't know.

Speaker 3 (12:53):
We're in a band together. So your father playing drums
around the house. That was your first musical remember?

Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (13:01):
Okay, you know I've read this interview long ago we
described I guess the discovery of Kiss.

Speaker 1 (13:07):
Was your kind of come to Jesus moment? Yeah, all right,
can you describe that? Like, what was that feeling?

Speaker 3 (13:13):
I mean, you're one year older than I am, but
it's so weird that you actually listened to the music.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
I was obsessed with Kiss.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
But only as to whenever we would go to like
a department stores or whatever like sears, I would immediately
be lined for the record section and just stay there
for like the two hour derivation while they're shopping around.

Speaker 1 (13:36):
And I'm noticing that for a band that started.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
In seventy four, like they released a whole like a
whole collection by nineteen seventy six, where and I would
obsessed over these record covers but never listen to the music.
So like I think my first experience was Love Gun
and Christine sixteen, but for yours, like what was it about?

(14:00):
You actually listened to the music, Like I just got
as far as the cover and that was it. Tried
to imagine what they sounded like.

Speaker 9 (14:06):
So when I was five or so, my family moved
to an ashram and we were pretty cut off from
pop culture at that point. There was a lot of
like Sanskrit chanting that that was my main music experience
at that point. I listened to now, but there was
some hippie music too, I remember Kat Stevens, Joan Biaz,

(14:29):
Bob Dylan, that kind of stuf. I would hear those records.
But then there was this one girl who was my age.
She came and visited the Ashram. Her name was Shanty
and she had rock and rock and roll over by Kiss.
So it's probably seventy seven, and she poisoned the whole
that she accidentally left it, and we put it on

(14:52):
the record player and we had like a little cassette
player also, so we pressed record as the record was going.
So then I had a recording of this record, and
that's the only Kiss album I had at that point.
It's really the only kind of rock or intense music
I had, but we would listen to it over and over.
But it had the sound of my brother and I

(15:15):
running around the coffee table in circles over and over,
like spazzing out as we're listening to this rock. Like
I said, that's what I listened to for a couple
of years. And then then I started going to record
storees myself, exactly like you did, and I went straight
to the K section to find the Kiss albums and LEXI, yeah,
this is incredible.

Speaker 8 (15:35):
Now, cut to my mom in seventy seven saying, honey boy,
that's the Devil's music, that's kids in Satan's snare.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Well, I got to add to this story. I don't
know if you guys know this story. So you know,
I grew up my father was like a du wop
singer in the fifties. So by the seventies he's going
through his what I can call like the revival face
like whatever, fifties, yeah and so yeah, anything that have

(16:12):
remotely to do with du wap music or you know,
the revival of American Gaffiti, Happy Days, Laverne and Shirley Greece,
all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
My dad was a part of it.

Speaker 3 (16:21):
But somehow, like he got off that circuit and sort
of pivoted to just a regular nightclub act, of which
in the seventies, if you're looking for a good time
on you know, a weeknight or whatever, you go to
your local holiday inn and somewhere in the bar there's
you know, some legend of Yesteryear playing. So weird enough,

(16:45):
this is in Buffalo, New York, nineteen seventy eight, and
I guess the protocol of the day is that acts
would stay at the Airport Hotel always because it's right
next to the airport. And we did about three weeks.
I think of Sheridan in Buffalo, of which you know,

(17:07):
Boston came through the group Kansas, and I also came
through a.

Speaker 8 (17:12):
Lot of city and state names.

Speaker 1 (17:14):
Yeah exactly.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
But one particular night, it was on a Friday night,
and all I remember was, this might have been seventy nine.
I remember Dan Hartman was just did his second song
on Midnight Special. It was like the whatever. The follow
up song was the instant replay. I think a song
called this is It? So he does it and the
credits are going up, and I was thirsty. It's like,

(17:39):
I guess, like one thirty two in the morning, I
go to the dresser, grab fifty cent to get a soda,
and I walk in the hallway.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Now this is a circular hotel.

Speaker 3 (17:49):
I walk in the hallway to the soda machine, get
my soda, and then the elevator opens.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
Now I'm eight years old.

Speaker 3 (17:59):
In that entire Hire album cover artwork is now coming
to life, like it's it's fucking Chris and Ace and
Paul and Jean and their bodyguards in no kind of
post makeup. All I remember was I looked, and I screamed,

(18:21):
and I ran to the right and the thing was
I actually ran.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Literally, so they were performing there for three days, and.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
You know, instantly it was like elation, curiosity, but mostly
terror because also I saw kiss Me to the Phantom
O My God, which as an eight year old like
that totally fucked with me. I mean now it is
a total camp film. But the next day I remember
going to the game room in hotels all the arcade
games and bin ball games would they would have arcades

(18:54):
inside of those hotels, and I remember going down there
and it was just it's it's like something out of
almost famous, like all these women, like seeing Paul without
his makeup one and Gene and they signed autographs and whatnot,
and that was like and someone gave me a Christine
sixteen forty five, Oh dude, and that was kind of.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
My kiss induction.

Speaker 5 (19:18):
Wow, that's crazy.

Speaker 1 (19:20):
Yeah. But yeah, but for you, like what spoke of it?

Speaker 3 (19:24):
Because as I got older, I was taught that that's
not you know, I'm listening to older generator, that's not
real rocky, like you know, that's camp rock.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
But what was it that spoke to you?

Speaker 9 (19:33):
They're not supposed to be the most credible rock act
of all time, but they sure seemed to inspire a
lot of kids are our age at that time, and
a lot of us went on to start bands ourselves.
So I'm not sure what it was because in my case,
I didn't have the visual. It was just the music.

(19:54):
I mean, I had seen briefly the album cover, but
it's just this weird, kind of abstract thing of their
design of their faces. I didn't know what they looked like,
or what the costumes were, or about the pyro or
the production. I just had the music and that was
enough to completely get me excited. It was it was
the sound of the guitar, the intense riffage, and the

(20:18):
sound of their singing Paul Stanley going up into that falsetto.
I didn't I didn't understand what the lyrics were at all.

Speaker 5 (20:26):
Have you ever met them?

Speaker 1 (20:27):
I was going to say, have they broke your heart?

Speaker 8 (20:31):
Recently we met him?

Speaker 9 (20:32):
Yeah, I met him a couple of times, but recently
we just played We opened for them. They asked us
to open for them at their last show in Australia, so.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
He uh, we were.

Speaker 9 (20:46):
I was so excited.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
It was nice.

Speaker 9 (20:51):
They were in this uh they were doing this big
meet and greet with all these fans and and they
interrupted the line to bring Weezer in there and say hi,
And I was so excited, and they're they're so tall,
They're like seventy seven feet tall in these big heels.
And I went up so expectant, and and Jean saw me,
and what do you say? He was like, Rivers, you're

(21:14):
gonna be famous in.

Speaker 1 (21:15):
Jail, was like going for the ages.

Speaker 8 (21:20):
You'll be the most famous guy in jail.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
And you were like, what does that mean?

Speaker 8 (21:24):
He's like, it doesn't have to mean anything.

Speaker 9 (21:26):
And to this day, I'm still puzzling and over like
what does that mean? It sounds crypto significant, but I'm
not sure.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
It's kind of weird now because yeah, like when I've
seen him a few times and you know, he's been
to the Tonight Show whatever, and then he kind of
talks like who's the comedian Jackie uh Jacu Mason, It's it's.

Speaker 5 (21:51):
Yeah, yeah, he was trying to be funny and he
has a last.

Speaker 3 (21:53):
Stills level, Like I wasn't used to that, Like everything
was did it? Yeah, It's like is this Jean's Jean
Summons that I've heard it?

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Like that sort of thing.

Speaker 9 (22:02):
But yeah, but the other time I met him was
probably around two thousand. It was some private movie screening
and he sat next to me, and I remember the
one thing he said was just whatever you do, make
sure you screw over your hardcore fans.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
They're going to give you some notable quotables.

Speaker 9 (22:22):
Don't listen to them. They're going to lead you astray.
They want you to stay the same.

Speaker 8 (22:26):
And you're like, well, you know, I liked it when
you guys were makeup.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
I always wondered if the design of the Weezer logo
was that you're like brains out to come up with
something that will stick with the fan base in a
way that the Kiss logo, you know, like many of
us would just draw it.

Speaker 9 (22:52):
And yeah, and in the eighties and in high school,
you'd spend a lot of time drawing band logos in
your in your notebook as you're supposed to be listening
to the teacher right right. It wasn't his kiss there
as many of them.

Speaker 8 (23:04):
It's a standard gen X move, like van Halin, Like
I just drove vhs.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
All all day.

Speaker 9 (23:12):
Do kids do that? Still?

Speaker 5 (23:15):
No, Captain Kirk still does that.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
He does. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:19):
I have a question though, still with regards to Kiss,
But maybe this will segue. Was it Kiss? Were they
the reason wanted to go to Electric Lady or was
that a Rick Okasik decision.

Speaker 9 (23:31):
He pronounced it ocassick ocassick, But yeah, that was his call.
He he wanted us to come to New York and
he wanted us to work at that studio. But of
course I immediately made the connection because I remember staring
at the back of those LPs for hours on end,
just kind of reading them over, not knowing what anything meant.
But it's like Electric Lady, Electric Lady. It's like, yeah,

(23:54):
let's go there.

Speaker 5 (23:55):
Yeah, they did a bunch of records there.

Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, what period were you working? You Hat Tower Records
on Sunset.

Speaker 9 (24:02):
I worked there like all of ninety and half of
ninety one.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Even though I've worked at a record store once before.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Like to me, that was like one of my first
fantasies in life, Like everyone's playing House and Doctor and
I would play record store in the house during prime
record shopping season or the time period in which actually
going to the record store was, you know, a thing that.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Was an everyday occurrence.

Speaker 3 (24:29):
What was it like back then, like your experience in
like were you the cool taste maker guy that I
would ask like, Okay, so what are you into, like,
give me something?

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Were you that person?

Speaker 9 (24:41):
No, I was the opposite.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (24:44):
When I got there, I was pretty much straight from
the sticks in Connecticut, upstate Connecticut, and I'd just grown
up listening to like heavy metal music, and I came
to La to be a shredder and I got a
job there, and other peop people there were a few
years older, which meant a lot at the time, even
just a few years, and they had a much broader

(25:06):
knowledge of the history of music and especially rock music
and alternative music. I didn't know anything about that, So
working there was a real education and I got exposed
to all different kinds of music, and slowly my own
style evolved from being, you know, a Metallica cover band
type to what you hear on the Blue album.

Speaker 3 (25:28):
First of all, what was Sunset Boulevard like? Like, My
period of Sunset Boulevard was more akin to ninety four
ninety five, And if you ask any rapper of ninety
four ninety five, like this a different environment for us,
because I believe like that's the first time that mainstream
raps sort of had real estate on that particular street.

(25:54):
So my thing was more or less like, h this
looks like a death Row party, or hmmm, I'm good
on that. I'm gonna stay in the hotel like that
sort of thing. But for that period of which you
know from the books that I've read of Neil Strauss
and the Motley Cruse stuff like, were you thinking that
you would have to morph into what was then the

(26:17):
hair the glam hair rock scene.

Speaker 9 (26:19):
Or yeah, so I got I got to Sunset Boulevard
in nineteen eighty nine, and it was probably the last
year of that phase, and it was just a paradise
for metal heads. Is every Friday and Saturday night is
packed with hundreds thousands of kids and like guys with
long teased hair and wearing spandex and passing out flyers.

(26:42):
And I was coming from a more I don't know again,
like shreddy progressive metal type of thing.

Speaker 1 (26:51):
Who your heroes not at all glam.

Speaker 9 (26:53):
I mean, the best, best well known would be Metallica,
But I was also into less known bands like uh,
well maybe Ingvey, he's pretty pretty well like real more
like shreddy instrumental type music. Yeah, not no girls, yeah anywhere, Yeah,

(27:14):
I get so so yeah, we didn't fit in. When
we got to the Sunset Strip, we tried to make
it a little more poppy for sure.

Speaker 3 (27:21):
Was it easy to amalgamate in the scene at all
or or did you feel like an outcast.

Speaker 9 (27:26):
Or didn't quite work? The band broke up, then guys
moved back to Connecticut. Yeah, and that that's when I
got the job at Tower.

Speaker 1 (27:33):
But the plan was literally like let's go to let's
go to California.

Speaker 9 (27:36):
And yeah, like we're going to be huge. People are
gonna love the They're going to be.

Speaker 5 (27:43):
Able to resist that upstate Connecticut down.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
How do you feel about the perception of Weezer versus
what you really feel you are in your heart? Because
I think that if someone were to say, like, you know,
to try to power phrase what you guys are on surface,
I'm certain you've read or whatever, it's like, okay, like
this whole revenge of the Nerds thing, like finally geeks

(28:09):
get to see the table whatever.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
But you guys did it.

Speaker 3 (28:14):
At a time where that wasn't seeing as cool, like
it was still in us in them or kind of
a divided conflict of atmosphere, whereas now I see a
lot of non nerds claring.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
Oh, I'm always a nerd like dog, just because you
got glasses on or whatever.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
But because I know that at early Roots shows we
would have conflicts about it, because my perception was that
Treek was upset that I was too doweeby in interviews
and publicly. And then once like the internet started that
like I made my thing known, the sort of champagne

(28:55):
life that he was expecting that we were all going
to have as a rap group was passing the spy
and like all the nerds were coming here, and that's
always been like a silent Now of course, like we're
you know, we have an embracement of our audience, but
I think in the very beginning there was kind of
resentment that like, wait, why does our audience look like

(29:16):
a mirror?

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Like how did you feel? Because again, only having.

Speaker 3 (29:25):
Known you guys as a very convenient way for me
to have one hundred dollars in my pocket that weekend
for whatever I wanted. Hawk in the CDs, Oh yeah,
you know, once I listened to it, I'm still trying
to wrap my head around what you guys were because
the guitars are so aggressively loud. And then when I

(29:48):
looked at the cover, I was like, wait a minute,
these aren't like rock looking guys or whatever. And so,
but for you, how do you feel about like the
idea that you guys are the cat nip to sort
of nerd nation that never felt seen.

Speaker 9 (30:05):
Yeah, there's definitely a lot of conflict, especially when we
first broke through, and it's interesting to hear that you
guys went through the same thing, a similar thing.

Speaker 1 (30:14):
We're still going through it. I just accepted.

Speaker 9 (30:17):
Yeah, I feel way more accepting now too. I think
our core fans really know that there's a lot more
to us than the quirky image, and whether it's the
emotional catharsis of Pinkerton or the eight minute guitar shreddage
and only in Dreams on the first album, it's like

(30:38):
they know there's a ton of emotional depth there, and
as long as we have that connection with that audience,
I feel pretty satisfied. But early on, yeah, we were
you know, people just took us at face value, and
that's why, like on the album cover I was like,
I'm taking my glasses off, or on the Buddy Holly video,

(31:01):
I take the glasses off. I don't want to just
be a shtick, you know. When we put the record out,
they're like, Okay, we're going to send out this bio,
so give the press an introduction to who you are.
Like yeah, it's like, no, we're going to write our
own bio. So we wrote our bio. And it was
the worst decision we ever made. Ye were like, because

(31:22):
we had started to see what the press were latching
onto even as we're playing the clubs in LA and
every article said like, quirky geeks, fun all this stuff,
and so we said, okay, write whatever you want, but
do not use any of the following words quirky geek.
You know, we just went down this list.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
Do you try to give them a restriction?

Speaker 9 (31:42):
Yeah, we literally did that. Sin is the worst first move,
I know.

Speaker 1 (31:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:48):
My trick was, whoever wrote the worst review of your album,
you hire that person and write the bio of your
second record. That way, by conflict of interest, they can't
review this.

Speaker 1 (32:01):
Right, they can't review the record.

Speaker 3 (32:03):
So like the six critics that never liked the roots
or whatever, like, I've always made sure that they are brilliant.

Speaker 1 (32:10):
And then one of them caught on like wait a minute,
oh I know what you're doing. Yeah, exactly. I'm stopping
you from right exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:18):
Well, first of all, getting a deal at Geffen, Like
why did you why did you guys choose DGC at
the time.

Speaker 9 (32:24):
Well, a lot of the bands that came up with
us or right before us, they went the indie route
or the faux indie right route where they signed with
Caroline Caroline, Yeah, one of those low, smaller independent labels,
and then they yeah yeah, and then there the plan
for the big lad Yeah, the plan is to graduate

(32:46):
to the big label for the second record. But we're like, no, this,
we love these songs, we think this is going to
be incredible album. Who knows, this may this may be it,
you never know, So we want to go straight to
a major. And so we made the demo tape. We
shopped it around and everybody passed except Geffen came back

(33:09):
at the very end.

Speaker 1 (33:10):
Who was the an R.

Speaker 9 (33:11):
Well it was a junior guy who didn't even have
the power to sign us. His name is Todd Sullivan
and oh yeah, trust me, I know the entire staff there. Yeah,
so Tony Bird kind of backed him up, I think.

Speaker 1 (33:24):
Right right.

Speaker 9 (33:25):
So he was like the last person in LA to
actually hear the tape and he's like, wow, I like this,
So he went out on a limb and signed us.

Speaker 1 (33:33):
What year did you record the demo tape?

Speaker 9 (33:36):
Some? Oh the demo tape? Yeah, at the end of
ninety two.

Speaker 1 (33:40):
Why are you doing this at ninety two?

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Like how a where of you guys were of a Nirvana,
of a pearl jam of what we now know is
grunge culture, like coming around the corner because you guys
don't fit in.

Speaker 1 (33:52):
Yeah, it's any of those boxes.

Speaker 9 (33:54):
Well, we were well aware. So because of working at
Tower Records from nineteen ninety I was I was hipped
in Nirvana and the Pixies and Sonic Youth and all
these bands. I never would have heard any of that
stuff if I wasn't working at Tower Records. So we
actually before Weezer, Pat and I started a grunge band,
and you know, we tried to sound like Dirvana. Was

(34:17):
yeah ish and so.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
Can you explain to me to an outsider sort of
studying it from afar? If I hear it we're starting
a grunge band, then of course, yeah, I might play
the idiot role and just be like, Okay, you guys
were flannel, what do you distinguish the genres, because for
the longest, even when I worked at Sam Goodies, in

(34:42):
my mind the day that Appetite for Destruction came out
and I'm working at sam Goodies when the original cover
was if you remember there's two covers for Guns and
Roses Appetite for Destruction.

Speaker 1 (34:54):
The original one was like band. It was like a
woman some robot.

Speaker 3 (34:59):
Yeah, yeah, you know, And so immediately I would just
been like heavy metal. And then someone kind of a
the Jack Black figure of that particular record stores like
you know, well, actually that's you know, hard rock or
glam rock, and I was like, well, what's the difference,

(35:20):
Like it's loud guitars.

Speaker 1 (35:22):
How do you differentiate like the genres? Yeah, none at all.

Speaker 8 (35:29):
These guys are the ones that would strategize and be like,
all right, you have to cut your hair, you have
to you can't wear that, and I'm all like, but dad,
let's just fucking jam, Like, let's go.

Speaker 9 (35:39):
Let'ssonically speaking, though, there is, I think there's some different
meaningful differences that that anyone would pick up on. So
grunge to me, if our band was called fuzz is much.

Speaker 8 (35:52):
More blues based, patonic.

Speaker 9 (35:54):
And a little more active riff wise is pentatonic and
blues based. And then vocally, I was trying to sing
more like with a scratchy type of voice, which I'm
not at all suited to sing like, I guess more
in the Black Sabbath tradition, almost.

Speaker 8 (36:10):
Jane Zy though.

Speaker 6 (36:10):
What's the lyrical content different too?

Speaker 9 (36:12):
Because of yeah there was. It was a little more,
a little more swearing, a little more abstract and impressionistic,
I think, yeah, very influenced by Jane's addiction. And then
over that the course of the first year of working
with Weezer and writing those songs, the big shift is, OK, okay,

(36:34):
let's write in a major key and let's use these
common chords.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
You hear so risky though, yeah, because like major keys
don't wreak of like yeah, yeah, it's not exclamation point,
even though especially like for me, the most notable thing
about uh my name is Jonas is actually how you
end the song, you know what I mean, Like it's
it's book ended by the electric guitar is coming later,

(37:02):
and so I see it as wow, there's I don't
I mean, I don't know if you would say if
Brian Wilson had a super hard edge to his musical work.
But for me, it was just nothing that I've ever
heard before with someone embracing acoustic the sound like acoustic

(37:22):
guitar and pretty melodies and whatnot and this angst thing,
which I think is also effective. Like I felt like,
I'm such a massive fan of Public Enemy and I
really loved the way that their aggressive sound gave me
release as a listener. I was a very non aggressive guy,

(37:44):
but put these headphones on and suddenly walk is harder,
you know that sort of thing, like like you feel that,
And I felt like that's what you guys were sort
of doing. But what was the Kasokh saying at the
time when you're presenting these songs?

Speaker 8 (37:59):
Like, well, I mean he was a song guy all day,
and that's what attracted him to us. I think as
he heard River songs and he was like, these are
great songs, and that's where.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
How'd you link up with him? Though?

Speaker 9 (38:13):
Who I was todt At at Geffen at DGC was
really forced us to work with a producer we didn't
want to because growing up making demos with different engineers
and producers, they'd always start turning the knobs to where
it doesn't sound like us or it just sounds whack,
and but he said, you got it. It's your first record,

(38:33):
this is a major label. You need a producer. And
then one day I was in the in the supermarket
shopping for ramen noodles or whatever, and just what I
needed by the Cars came on and d and immediately
I recognized, like, whoa, that's kind of like what weez
are supposed to be sounding Like, let's work with that guy.

(38:54):
So they sent our demo tape to Rick, and Rick
responded immediately like I'm talking on the phone with ric
Ocassik from the Cars and he gets us like nobody
else in LA music industry had gotten us yet. So
it's like, yeah, this is going to be exciting.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
What was he like in the studio? Man? Because I
was I was a Cars fan, but like what was
what was like? Production?

Speaker 8 (39:16):
Was a sweet man, just a lovely man.

Speaker 1 (39:20):
Yeah, and musically.

Speaker 8 (39:23):
He was you know, we looked up to him a lot,
and when if he said something, we had to be like,
all right.

Speaker 1 (39:29):
Since how do you decide we'rey?

Speaker 3 (39:34):
Power falls because I'm still trying to determine if there's
really such a thing as a democracy or just the
idea of a democracy, like you guys meet ahead of
time and communicate before you get with Rick, or you
just say, okay, he's the leader. And because I've been
in situations where people try to like buddy up to
me and sort of you know, give their two cents

(39:57):
and don't let the other guys here that sort of thing.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Hmmm, like how do you balance communication?

Speaker 9 (40:04):
And you mean especially between us and the and Rick
or yeah.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
I'm in between you guys and Rick and just as
the group, Like is it a thing where it's like
all of you get an equal say or well, I.

Speaker 9 (40:17):
Think especially at the time working working on the Blue album,
Rick he was just perfect for us. He's he knew
when to push and most of the time he just
let us do our thing. And when it came time
to push, you know, he was he was insistent and
he kept coming back and back again and again, like,

(40:37):
you know, you really should consider putting Buddy Holly on
the record. No, no, no, no, that's for our second record.

Speaker 1 (40:44):
So yeah, like it always happens.

Speaker 9 (40:47):
Next day, Come on, man, you give it another listen.
I think you guys should really finish this one up.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
No, no, no, that's for our.

Speaker 9 (40:52):
Second record, you know. But he just kept coming back
and he was so sweet that eventually it's like, oh, hey,
let's try it. And then like dang, he's right. And
he did the same thing with my guitar sound. I
walked in like with a super muddy sound. I was
using the the in the neck position when I was
writing by myself in the garage. It sounded amazing. It

(41:14):
was huge, fat sound, very bassy. It just didn't work
in the sound in the context of a full band
and a big studio. So he he kept saying, why
don't you try this guitar, and he'd hand me his
fifty eight junior Gibson Junior and I tried. It was
like no, that's too thin, but he just kept coming
back and then eventually I hear it all in the mix.

(41:36):
Is h He's right again.

Speaker 6 (41:39):
What was the process for finding guitar sounds? Was it
like guitar pedals? Amp? And like where where was the
finagling done the most? Like, because I mean the guitar
sounds we are the most iconic guitars and rocking and
rolling in my opinion, it's pretty straight.

Speaker 9 (41:53):
In just like right, yeah, yeah, And that's Rick's guitar.
I use it to this day and no pedals. I
was totally against petals.

Speaker 1 (42:04):
You are, yeah, Marshall Stackage.

Speaker 9 (42:06):
In fact, just the other day I sent a note
to the Mixture about Tom Petty cover. We just didn't
say can we hear it without the effect on that guitar? Yeah,
we're still like that, like no reverb because I don't know,
like engineers and producers, they could keep adding things like
that because they feel like they got to do something.
But I like just a straight up sound.

Speaker 6 (42:27):
And one more question about my name is Jonas, Like
the arpeggiating acoustic guitar business, is that more of like
a in they Shredded situation? Or like was there a
classical music world? I mean it's not really, but like
you know what I'm saying, Like it's it's more come
from like Elliott Fiskey nylany business or like.

Speaker 1 (42:45):
Is it hey, where did that come from?

Speaker 8 (42:47):
It came from Jason cropp Or who was in the
band at the time, and I was his roommate and
he was just walking around with an acoustic guitar doing that.
I'm like, what is that? And he showed it to
me and I kind of rained it into a four
track demo and gave it to Rivers and he added
the climbs at the end with the Yeah.

Speaker 9 (43:07):
So Jason Jason was like a little bit of the
odd man out in the band because he was a
little bit younger and he was from northern California. The
restaurants are all East Coast guys, so in Walks Jason's
it's like this big hippie guy, uh and like all
kinds of fingerpicking on acoustic and in fact, for the

(43:27):
first year of the band he only played acoustic.

Speaker 8 (43:30):
So it's like, but he was so burly that every show,
one song in Parent was a string so like we
were like, maybe you should play ei drag, but he
played it aggressively.

Speaker 1 (43:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (43:44):
You what a character.

Speaker 9 (43:45):
Yeah, I love that guy.

Speaker 8 (43:47):
He was from He was pretty hippie.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:56):
How old were you when you made that first album.

Speaker 9 (44:00):
Twenty three, which was the age Brian Wilson was when
they made Pet saund Just to compare fifteen number one
songs into their.

Speaker 1 (44:10):
Career, go Fuckers. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
Lyrically speaking, what was your mind state in terms of
because you know it's it's some of the songs are
confrontational somewhat and really a motive and expressive in a
way that I felt resonated with a particular artist that
you just didn't hear of before. And a lot has
been made of your songwriting and your lyrics, like what

(44:34):
is your process for your songwriting?

Speaker 9 (44:38):
Definitely influenced by the Pixies and Nirvana where you can't
quite tell what they're singing about. It's not like a
traditional song lyric, and so it never sounds corny. It's
just always weird and intriguing. So I had that, Yeah,
I had that side to me for sure, and like
maybe you can hear that in the Sweater song or

(44:58):
Buddy Holly. It's like, what the heck is he saying?
My name is Jonas. But then I also liked really straightforward,
plain language, just talking about my emotions, what I'm going through,
and you know, is influenced by Brian Wilson. He he
did that a lot.

Speaker 1 (45:17):
I can't.

Speaker 9 (45:18):
They have a song called in My Room, it's just
singing about that safe place. And so what we did
a song called in the Garage kind of same thing,
talking about kiss posters and on.

Speaker 3 (45:31):
The wall for you like you represent or at least
as an example for like future creators, like in terms
of using it's almost like a it feels like a release,
at least I think so. And I don't know if
any of the songs were personal in your life or
not personal, but even like your vocal delivery, like the
way that it's delivered for me, it just felt like

(45:54):
a cathartic release that you really just don't hear. And
you know it's not the a power lead singer that
is singing as opposed to a mooting, which is hard
to do.

Speaker 1 (46:07):
So for you, how personal is this record?

Speaker 9 (46:11):
It is extremely personal and cathartic and writing is just
the best feeling to get my feelings out into a
lyric and melody and feel like, yeah, that's that's it.
That's exactly what I'm feeling right now. And I just
really expressed it. I'm not good at that in normal

(46:35):
life in a conversation or something, or my relationships, so
to get it into a song, So you got to
get into this song to be able to hear it
back and rewind the tape, listen to it again. It's like, yes,
that is it.

Speaker 1 (46:47):
Were you guys at all shocked at how it caught on?

Speaker 3 (46:52):
Like no one goes in here and saying, Okay, it's
going to be a multi platinum record, like or did
you figure that this is going to catch onto?

Speaker 9 (47:01):
I had both voices in my head at the same time.
Part of me is thinking, you know, we're gonna sell
a hundred copies to our friends and family. That's gonna
be it. I'm gonna go back and get my job
guit our records. That was cool, but it's over. But
part of me is thinking, this album is amazing and
this band is amazing, and once the right audience picks
up on it, this is gonna be huge and it's

(47:23):
going to go on to be an important album for
a long time.

Speaker 5 (47:26):
So I had both those voices in my head.

Speaker 3 (47:29):
What were those early shows like promoting once the album
came out, like how many? Well it was also it
was also you know the period of us as Americans
getting to know the festival or this whole new way
of presenting your music, Like what was the process of
promoting it?

Speaker 1 (47:46):
Like who do they pair you with? And yeah, what
was the circuit? Yeah?

Speaker 8 (47:49):
Yeah, the key was honestly K Rock and MTV. That
was the two big levers that we were fortunate enough
to be involved in.

Speaker 9 (48:02):
Yeah, first bigger tour was with Lush. We were opening
for Lush and that was just kind of cool. Was like, WHOA,
that's a really cool band and it's great to be
out with them. And then then we went out with
Live for a couple months and that was great because
they were had a much bigger audiences or bigger venues.

Speaker 8 (48:22):
And at this time Undone over the Summer had been
a thing. And then were we at the Buddy Holly
stage at that point?

Speaker 9 (48:31):
Yeah, and then the save ain't so after that, lots
of radio shows too.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I remember once having an argument with.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
One of our video directors because I didn't realize, well,
obviously the Sweater song had to be tracked with the
song was twice as fast, right, yeah, you guys are
doing it on forty.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
Five because I couldn't.

Speaker 3 (48:57):
For me, the coolest part of the Sweater video was
how I don't know if who's the one step?

Speaker 1 (49:04):
Is Scott snapping his fingers? Matt right right, just right?

Speaker 3 (49:12):
I kept I kept micromanaging our director, like no, man,
like we need to I want a cool moment.

Speaker 1 (49:18):
Look like I don't see the cool moment, Like we
don't look cool, we don't look.

Speaker 9 (49:22):
At and comparing yourself to Weezer, you were.

Speaker 3 (49:28):
To that you don't understand, Like I it's almost like
I wish there was a tail or two cities or
kind of a sliding doors kind of story of both
the Roots and Weezer, because I feel like we were
doing the exact opposite of what you guys were doing,
even though I almost feel as though we were in

(49:50):
sort of adjacent or or these these boxes of commonalty.
But no, all the time at the label, like especially
when it caught like right before Buddy Holly came out,
like all the interns, all the uh, just the everyday
workers at DGC or whatever, like you guys were their hero.

(50:12):
It's always like Weezer, And then they would you know,
it's time to choose video directors or whatever. Okay, well
we'll show you all the video directors that we are
looked at, and da da da da, and.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
We can't afford Spike Jones or whatever.

Speaker 3 (50:24):
And we didn't have a relationship with them at the time,
so you know, I hated the video process.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
But how did you guys hook up with Spike? Yeah?

Speaker 9 (50:32):
I mean we felt the same way. I remember when
we turned in the records, we just said we're not
we're not making a video forget it, and.

Speaker 8 (50:40):
Why we had a lot of requirements.

Speaker 9 (50:42):
Yeah, I just I thought videos were stupid. But and
they sent us a whole bunch of treatments that these.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Are like.

Speaker 9 (50:54):
Those yeah, treatments, and they and every single one had
something to do with the sweater and it's like, come on.
But then then we got one from Spike and it
was like two sentences or something. You know, you guys
are playing in front of a blue background, and halfway
through a pack of dogs runs across the screen. It's

(51:15):
like and it's all in one Okay, that sounds cool.

Speaker 3 (51:20):
How many how many takes did that take? I'm very
obsessed with that video and especially when the dogs won't
run by and damn it like something so simple being
like super effective.

Speaker 1 (51:34):
How many How many takes was that for you guys?

Speaker 8 (51:36):
It was one day?

Speaker 9 (51:37):
Yeah, it was a lot of takes, all different.

Speaker 3 (51:40):
Imagined it later because I figure, like your level of silly,
like when you're dancing at the drum set or.

Speaker 8 (51:46):
Whatever, you can't look at it.

Speaker 1 (51:50):
Was there was there any editing trickery or was that
actually like.

Speaker 8 (51:54):
No, it's all one take. It's one guy with a
steady cam and he was it was a lot of work,
like he was and exhausted by the yea, yeah, it
was it.

Speaker 1 (52:02):
Choy grabbed the same way each time.

Speaker 8 (52:05):
He sort of had a circuit that he would do.
And I think they've the one we wound up using
was you know the one, Yeah.

Speaker 9 (52:13):
One of that was probably one of the last ones.

Speaker 10 (52:16):
I want to ask about the Guitar Hero and my
name is Jonas going in that.

Speaker 1 (52:21):
What made y'all decide to do that?

Speaker 4 (52:23):
Man?

Speaker 10 (52:23):
Because that opened up a whole new generation. Oh yeah,
you guys music like my kids, me and my boys,
like we would play that all the time.

Speaker 1 (52:33):
Uh.

Speaker 9 (52:34):
Sadly, I think I didn't know what Guitar Hero was
or I don't. I wasn't part of that decision. It's like,
uh sure if you guys think that would be cool,
and it did turn out to be massive for us, Yeah,
bringing in a whole new generation.

Speaker 1 (52:48):
I think.

Speaker 8 (52:49):
Also we haven't touched on is the Windows ninety five
install CD had a folder called videos on it and
this was back you remember, like nobody watched the video
on their computer.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
That was a like what what is this?

Speaker 8 (53:05):
Sorcery?

Speaker 1 (53:06):
Like what is this.

Speaker 9 (53:08):
That?

Speaker 8 (53:09):
So many people say, like, yeah, the Bunny Holly video
on there is amazing, So just all kinds of stuff
like that. We're huge for us.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
I used to work at uh An actual Big Ols.
You know at one point big Ows had his own
restaurant chain. Really, why, why are you're shame of me? No?

Speaker 1 (53:26):
I mean I didn't know that. You didn't know that
it's big Al from Days.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
I assume you're talking about what are you talking about
from Happy Days?

Speaker 1 (53:33):
Yeah? Yeah, Big Ols?

Speaker 3 (53:36):
There there was an actual before what's the the actual
for these restaurants like Johnny Rockets now, right, but before
Johnny Rockets, there was I guess back in eighty eight
or eighty nine, like well not several a few of
these themed restaurants or whatever. Like at the time when

(53:57):
that video came out, Like, how convinced were you guys
that this wasn't because that could have been a hit
or miss situation, like and I'm not thinking that he's
going to nail the perfect you know, television filter and
complete with the commercial and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (54:14):
Like at the time, what were you guys.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
Thinking about the idea of recreating the Happy Days theme
for Buddy Holly?

Speaker 9 (54:24):
Well, I certainly I think all of us felt that
from the moment we heard the idea, this is going
to be the greatest video of all time.

Speaker 1 (54:34):
That's so cool. You love happy days? Okay? Was he
was Spike your first choice to the director?

Speaker 9 (54:39):
Did you see it was his idea?

Speaker 5 (54:41):
Yeah?

Speaker 9 (54:41):
Yeah, I mean we yeah, we only want to work
with Spike to this day. But he's making movies and
all that. We actually knew him from before any of
us had made it too. He was kind of part
of the same circle of friends.

Speaker 8 (54:56):
Sort of like a skate thing.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
Yeah, you guys are skaters.

Speaker 9 (55:00):
No, but our older brother band they were called Wax.

Speaker 1 (55:04):
This is in La.

Speaker 9 (55:06):
He made their video. I think that may have been
his first video. And when we saw that with a.

Speaker 8 (55:12):
Slow motion guy on fire No no, no, Philly also.

Speaker 9 (55:19):
Hush, it was like them in a kid's playground. Oh yes, yeah, and.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
Actually thought the guy I initially thought that video of
the guy on fire video with you guys as well,
but I didn't what group was that wa Legends by
then once it catches on. Because I kind of want
to end the episode really obsessing with what made you
guys go? Quasi left with Pinkerton because I do have

(55:47):
a belief that maybe subconsciously some acts might try to Like,
I mean, do you consider yourselves like, Okay, we actually
became like a mainstream standard band instead of the underdogs
or the nerds that you were supposed to.

Speaker 8 (56:03):
Be, or like the dog caught the car.

Speaker 9 (56:07):
I mean like, yeah, no, I didn't feel like that.
That that doesn't feel like why I took the turn
I took. In fact, I felt like we never quite
made it because the same year that Weezer came out,
the Offspring came out and they were like, yeah, five

(56:28):
times as big as us, Green Day came out five
six times as big.

Speaker 1 (56:33):
As us, and there were you still felt like the underdog.

Speaker 9 (56:36):
Yeah, we felt like we didn't quite hit it over
the fence, did we?

Speaker 8 (56:42):
So yeah?

Speaker 9 (56:43):
I mean to this day, so yes, even to this day.

Speaker 6 (56:47):
But I feel like now we're like, like we interviewed
Adam Levine from Maroon five, who sighted you cited Weezer
is one of his favorite bands of all time, Like
what does it feel like now when you're out on
the road and like you're still playing these songs and
like you are influential to a generation of bands and
sounds and whatever I mean, does that does that affect you?

Speaker 9 (57:05):
Yeah, that's amazing, amazing, But again, he's like ten times
as big.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
As My Money.

Speaker 3 (57:16):
The first day record, the first thing he said without
putting it out there, I guess I can see your
point of view. I had a very brief, albeit kind
of eye opening conversation with Tom Yorke about Coldplay.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Oh my god, yeah, that go. But that's the thing.

Speaker 3 (57:42):
His perception was like, you know, we're not as big
as Coldplay. And the thing is is that I started
to do what I hate for the fan base to
do to me, because in my mind I was like, oh, well,
you guys don't want to be cold Play. You guys
are Radiohead, You've you've been it cool you and people
will always come up to me like, oh man, y'all

(58:02):
care about getting paid or making hits?

Speaker 1 (58:04):
Like you guys just make whatever type of record you
want to. You don't give a fucking I'm like, I
give a mortgage, right dude. And this is like this
before it hell did the Thief.

Speaker 3 (58:19):
This was like prime kid, a prime amnesiac, can't get
no bigger like you guys have made it critically, couldn't
get no yeah right. But they were also playing stadiums
like it was. It was unfurly, but.

Speaker 1 (58:36):
You know, in his mind didn't make it. Yeah, it's like, well,
you know we're still the underdogs.

Speaker 10 (58:43):
And I was like, I don't think so, Like I
think it's I think it was something you said earlier
about you know, you had those conversations with Kiss and
maybe it was Jeane, and he was saying basically, how
you should piss off your fan base, love well, your
diehard fans and for me getting into you guys music, Yeah,
no problem, god man, for you guys music like Blue
Album came out. I was in high school and so

(59:04):
I had a homie of mine. I played football where
he was into like all of that stuff, like because
I came from mostly hip hop, R and B background, and.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
So he would always run.

Speaker 10 (59:13):
He would put me on like he was running like
back and like uh wean and I used to get
Ween and Weezer comfused.

Speaker 1 (59:20):
I was like, okay, which one is?

Speaker 10 (59:21):
Which you know what I'm saying, And so he would
put me on you stuff, you got stuff, and so
I knew just.

Speaker 1 (59:27):
Of course, buddy, Hollywood was everywhere.

Speaker 10 (59:29):
But I listened to Pinkerton for the first time last
night and so this is my first time.

Speaker 1 (59:34):
Ever hearing it.

Speaker 10 (59:35):
Just you know, whatever, that shit is amazing dog. So
like just somebody from outside of I guess the core
fan base to me that record that shit slapped, you know,
so whatever that means.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
I was like, oh shit, So you know what I mean?
What did you create it? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (59:55):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (59:55):
Were you trying to build and destroy?

Speaker 9 (59:57):
Or I thought it was gonna be huge? I know
that sounds crazy really yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:02):
See, so here's the thing though, it wasn't used in
the way that you thought it was going to be huge,
But of your entire canon, and we're not even going
through you know, there's what you guys are on your
seventeenth including the EPs right now, I don't know. Yeah,
you're close to seventeen, I'm not certain. But what is

(01:00:24):
your personal top of the Cannon album? And then what
do you feel as though your piece of resistance is
to your fan base?

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
What to you?

Speaker 5 (01:00:36):
I'll give you time to think about it. Well, because
I have this theory that every band tries to do
their pet sounds. So, as an aside to his question,
did you try and do your pet sounds? And it's
Pinkerton that I.

Speaker 8 (01:00:51):
Guess I'm curious. I'll ask you how different did Pinkerton
turn out from what you thought it was going to
turn out, because it feels.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
Like he's got three questions on it.

Speaker 8 (01:01:00):
Play it feels like the I mean, we weren't. We
were burnt from touring a lot and everything, and I
hear a lot of like to me, that's like van
Halen's fair warning, Like there's a lot there's a lot
of angst and anger in the music itself, like in
the playing of it. So I'm curious if it turned

(01:01:23):
out the way you thought it was gonna be.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (01:01:27):
Absolutely, I was totally satisfied. I'm more than satisfied. I
was in love with it. But I do remember on
a mixing day, ric Ocassik came to LA and came
came to the studio and we played him a few
of the songs we'd already mixed.

Speaker 2 (01:01:44):
And.

Speaker 9 (01:01:46):
He didn't show any reaction, and I that was the
first moment I was like, oh, wait a minute, maybe
this isn't going to go like how I think it's
going to go.

Speaker 10 (01:01:57):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (01:01:58):
Yeah, so did you I finally say something.

Speaker 9 (01:02:02):
No, he never gave an opinion on that, But what
the way I took that was like this, this just
didn't turn out great and it could have been better,
and it's hard.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
Did you take that the heart?

Speaker 9 (01:02:15):
I don't want to say like that was the big
wound of the Pingerton era because there were so many,
so many bigger ones actually, but that was the first moment.

Speaker 1 (01:02:27):
How long was it to realize?

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Like example, you know, like Prince rushed off stage in
Purple Rine like absolutely feeling like he just blew it
and had to stop for a moment and heard them
cheering and was like, oh, they did get it, Like
did you ever have that redemption moment of like, yeah,
wait a minute, I.

Speaker 8 (01:02:46):
Think I'll have it at now.

Speaker 1 (01:02:47):
It seems like.

Speaker 9 (01:02:49):
It took a while, and so the album came out
in ninety six and bombed. So by the end of
ninety seven, I totally lost my confidence and just kind
of went off and lived by myself and was trying
to write a third record. But years went by and
I couldn't figure it out. I just didn't know what
to do. And one of my friends was in another

(01:03:12):
band and he had been touring around the States. So
at the end of ninety nine he came back and
he said, you know, Rivers there's a new generation of
kids out there who love Pinkerton, and that was like
shocking to me. I had no idea, and he said, yeah,
it's called Emo and that's their album. So then we

(01:03:32):
got the band back together and we went out and
we just jumped on a few shows of the two
thousand Warped tour and like before we walked on the stage,
there would be another band playing and like twenty thousand
kids would be chanting Weezer, Weezer, you know. And we
walked out there and at this point Pinkerton wasn't even

(01:03:54):
in our set list because we're like, oh, well, nobody
liked that one, but there were you know, chanting for
those songs. So that's when we you know, it really
hit us.

Speaker 8 (01:04:03):
But I remember playing like the Ranch Bowl, like was
it at Oklahoma or something in the middle of the
somewhere in the middle of the country on that tour
on Pinkerton and kids being super pumped and knowing all
the lyrics to the deep Cuts, And that was my
first clue was like, why, Wow, they know all these songs.
I don't know if you were hip to that, no,

(01:04:26):
I could have.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Told you, yeah, you're right next to week, right, you
were like, right there.

Speaker 10 (01:04:34):
Nah, it was for me like hearing that work again.
My first time ever hearing it was last night. I'm
just you know, just running it. And so for me
it was I could tell how I mean, of course
there was a difference between the Blue Album to this,
but it wasn't as stark a difference of like it
wasn't like the first album was like a Radiohead reck
like a you know, Pablo Honey or whatever. And then

(01:04:54):
the second album was kid a where it was just
this complete one eighty where it's like, what the fuck
is this? It felt, and to me it felt in
many ways like an extension. It didn't I don't know,
it just didn't feel like it was such a big jump.
And listen to it now, I'm just like, what was.

Speaker 1 (01:05:10):
The big Why was everybody so pissed off? Like the
ship go hard? What was the problem?

Speaker 8 (01:05:15):
But brilling Stone was mad?

Speaker 9 (01:05:19):
Yeah, they all the critics there rated it the second
worst album of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:05:24):
Serious, Uh, what was the worst? I remember that?

Speaker 9 (01:05:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:05:34):
So it sounds like it took like four five years
to catch on to the next generation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:40):
Man, So if it weren't for you having knowledge that
perhaps uh there's someone out there that is latching to it.
Did you guys think that it was over by the
second album?

Speaker 8 (01:05:53):
Like I would go visit him in Massachusetts. He lived
five five years correct, Yeah, living on the East Coast
and I was in out West, and I would go
visit and we would try and get stuff together. But
it was a transitional period, you know.

Speaker 10 (01:06:10):
I want to ask y'all what the record you guys
did with Polo to Don and Lil Wayne?

Speaker 1 (01:06:14):
Oh?

Speaker 10 (01:06:15):
Yeah, how did that come together?

Speaker 9 (01:06:17):
So we had this song Can't Stop Partying, And originally
it was like this very somber acoustic thing. The head
of the record company, Jimmy Iovine, had like this star
producer on his team, poloded on and he asked me
if I would be up for giving it to Polo
and seeing seeing what happened. And I remember being in

(01:06:40):
the studio the first time I heard it and just
like my head was blown off. It sounded amazing and
I was a massive little Wayne fan. So yeah, when
they suggested that I was all in and course Weezer
and Weezy, I had to hear.

Speaker 1 (01:06:55):
You Weezer baby.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
Alright, right, how do you guys because I know most
rockers hate looking in the rear view mirror in terms
of not want to be seen as a legacy act
or that sort of thing. Okay, our Vegas run, how
are you guys planning the celebration of the thirtieth tour?

Speaker 9 (01:07:19):
Wise, we could have planned like a very retro nostalgia
thing and do it very ninety four style, but that
would be boring so for us, So we're going to
come up with some kind of crazy production and theme
and I think it's going to involve a space voyage
where you're going to this blue planet.

Speaker 1 (01:07:39):
Yeah, I was going to say with the teasers that
you guys are putting on.

Speaker 9 (01:07:44):
Yeah, So musically it's going to be the Blue Album,
the hits and some like nineties B sides, stuff those
fans really want. But there's going to be an element
of production that we never would have tried back then.
And yeah, I think, yeah, that makes it fun and
interesting for me.

Speaker 1 (01:08:02):
Okay, all right, I'm excited to hear that.

Speaker 3 (01:08:05):
Well, thank you guys for you know, sitting with us
and sharing your experiences with the Blue Album. And you know, again,
thank you guys for saving a nerd that you probably
didn't realize that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:20):
Yeah, don't steal the mugs anyone.

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
Thank you guys, and we appreciate you coming. Thank you
than thank you and uh yeah yeah we do our
own sound effects.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
Yeah uh yeah when we have Siga, Steve, Bill and
Fan Segelo and like, yeah, this is quest Love and
we will see you next week.

Speaker 1 (01:08:45):
All right, Thank you guys, our pleasure.

Speaker 6 (01:08:55):
Thank you for listening to Quest Love Supreme. This podcast
is hosted by Mere Quest Love, Thompson, Saint Clair Fante Coleman, Sugar,
Steve Mandell, and myself unpaid Bill Scherm. The executive producers
are Mere who just walked into the goddamn room, Thompson,
Sean g and Brian Calhoun. Produced by Britney Benjamin, Jake
Paine and Liiah Sinclair. Edited by Alex Conroy I know

(01:09:16):
Alex Conroy. Produced for iHeart by Noel Brown.

Speaker 1 (01:09:22):
West Love Supreme is a production of iHeart Radio. For
more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.