There is not a single band whose career flourished during the mid-90's alternative boom that is surrounded with as much mystique, wonder, and intrigue as Weezer. At the band's helm sits the brilliant and idiosyncratic Rivers Cuomo, whose on-stage demeanor, penchant for cardigans, and horn-rimmed glasses make him a likely candidate for the most unlikely rock star in history. He rules Weezer--one of the longest lasting and best-loved bands in alternative music--with an iron fist. The band plays his songs, releases records when he feels like it, and tours when he wants to tour.

He was raised on an ashram in Connecticut and, after spending the majority of his adult life making records with Weezer and attending Harvard when he wasn't, Cuomo finally returned to the world of spirituality and meditation after the whirlwinds of the early 2000s--which saw the return of Weezer after a five year dormancy--and settled down.

His spiritual resurgence has changed a few things. Drummer Pat Wilson told me Cuomo wants not to want. And that includes not wanting to do interviews; he's only agreed to ten worldwide in support of the record. As you've probably guessed, this isn't one of them.

Pat and guitarist Brian Bell are in New York City at mixing sessions for Weezer's fifth album, tentatively titled Make Believe if you ask Bell or 1,000,000 Communist Children Marching Into the Sunset if you hear it from Wilson. Bell is not as outgoing as his drummer, every bit as weird, and certainly the more photogenic of the two. He takes long pauses between sentences and chooses his words very carefully probably because he is an intelligent guy but mostly because he's scared to say something wrong. Cuomo has made no secret of hushing his bandmates up during interviews in the past, but Cuomo is not around today and his band actually seems thrilled about being given the opportunity to psychoanalyze him. Again.

That's correct, Metallica are not alone in hiring a therapist to guide them through troubled times. Weezer hired one as well at the recommendation of new producer, Rick Rubin.

"I can't lie--we actually did have communications discussions and a coach," admits Bell, a bit sorely. "I don't know if we actually needed them. We were able to do it without it, but at least it kind of presented a platform where you could say whatever was on your mind and what's been bothering you. I'm sure this happens in any job, if you have a problem with somebody, deal with it directly."

Wilson concurs. "No, I don't think we needed them, but I think it was smart to do it. I think we were very good at sweeping shit under the rug and getting down to business while there was also this weird shit in the background. In one sense I think it was healthy. In another, I think we could have just buried a bunch of bullshit and kept going," he laughs. "But I am glad we didn't."

Evidently, if it weren't for Rubin, the fifth Weezer album may very well have resided in Cuomo's head, notebooks, and demo cassettes eternally. "Rick Rubin, he is the guy who got the ball rolling," Wilson emphasizes. "He was the guy who said 'You guys can't continue like this. You gotta figure this out.' It was pretty effective. Rivers admitted things and I admitted things. But I still don't feel like we've really figured out how to maximize everybody in the band."

This has been an ongoing uphill battle for Wilson since he decided to found Weezer with Cuomo sometime in the early '90s in Los Angeles where the two east coasters (Wilson is a Buffalo native) had ended up and came across then-bassist Matt Sharp.

"I moved to Los Angeles when I was 21. I met him then, too. He was working--I think at Tower--and me, him, and Matt got an apartment together. Rivers didn't want to do it at all but we talked him into it," laughs Wilson. "Now that I think of it, that's kind of a metaphor for Weezer. Rivers is always like 'I don't want to do this' and we make him do it and then he's like, 'I'm okay. I'm glad we did that.'"

Wilson did have to do a bit of cajoling to get things started in the Weezer camp. He convinced Matt Sharp to move back to Los Angeles, insisting that the band he had going with Cuomo was destined for hugeness. They didn't rehearse until they had 50 songs ready for the chopping block. Most of Wilson's material got the cut.

"He wasn't even writing songs," says Wilson of the now unbelievably prolific Cuomo. "Then he bought an eight track cassette recorder--which at the time was ultra tech--so we were psyched. Rivers said 'We're not going to rehearse until we have 50 songs!' and it was amazing," he says nostalgically. "An amazing rehearsal. We recorded it and we were very excited. It kind of took off from there."

However, that excitement went down the drain for Wilson as things progressed and Weezer slowly became "Rivers' thing" which is how, of course, it's remained for the past 12 years. "What eventually wound up becoming Weezer was very unlike what those first batch of songs were," says the disappointed drummer. "I think, musically, it took a step down to be honest, but the songs went up in quality although I didn't particularly like the songs that were getting chosen at the time."

Wilson wasn't creatively psyched on the ten tracks that ultimately became the self-titled Blue Album. "When I first heard 'No One Else' I was like 'Man, I don't like this song. I really don't like it. Musically, it is whack.' I was really drawn to how expressive they were with their instruments and I know that sounds nerdy or whatever," he admits, "but Rivers can fucking shred."

Brian Bell, who Cuomo invited to join Weezer while the band was well into recording the album, had a much different sense of what the record was and what it was to become. He was more in tune with the possibility of it being a smash record that kids and rock fans alike would freak about. Bell was the first to hear it for what it actually was: a classic.

"I saw Weezer before they were signed and before I was even in the band and I thought 'This is really good,'" recollects Bell of catching the band at a local dive in Los Angeles. "I met Rivers and four months later he called me to join his band. They didn't think the record was that great and I was saying, 'Guys, you don't understand this is going to be big.'"

Although Green Day's Dookie and Nirvana's In Utero eclipsed the Blue Album in popularity, it was still one of the hugest records of 1994, providing a full year of sold-out, worldwide tours and over three million albums sold. Weezer were rock stars and they hated it.

"Well, I don't feel like a child actor," quips Bell. "I think at that time, at that age I know that I personally couldn't handle success very well..." he pauses. "I couldn't handle being recognized. I didn't feel real, I just felt like...it really didn't feel like it had anything to do with the music. These people only like us because we're on MTV. Things like that I just have issues with."

So much for the charmed life, huh? And although Bell later admits he couldn't be an "accountant or something" and would probably end up teaching if he weren't in Weezer, he was not alone in his distaste for the life of a world famous rock star.

As touring slowly winded down, Cuomo decided to enroll in Harvard. He grew a beard and walked through Cambridge with a cane--which he needed to support himself after undergoing surgery to lengthen his right leg, which was slightly shorter than the left. He was so far removed from the TV personality fostered in Spike Jonze videos like "Buddy Holly" and "The Sweater Song" that passers-by did not recognize him. He found himself amidst an eight-month writer's block and barely communicated with anyone in his band for nearly as long.

Eventually, he snapped out of it. Cuomo began laboring tirelessly on the album Pinkerton that, although not a commercial success, amassed a cult following while simultaneously ushering in a five-year hiatus for the band. Both Bell and Wilson recount that time much differently.

"Well, I think there were two ways to perceive it at the time," says Wilson of Pinkerton and the mood surrounding it. "Musically I thought it was great. It's a crazy bombastic record and you hear people going for it on every track. I responded to it big-time, but at the time...I just couldn't stand Rivers. I hated him. We couldn't get along. It was a bad situation."

Wilson felt slighted by Cuomo's arrogance and disinterest in working with the band on new music. "When the Blue record blew up he sort of made this decision: 'Look, I don't want to write music with you. I don't want to write music with anybody. I want to do my thing," which Wilson relays in a snide tone.

"I held on to that for a long time," he says. "I was really mad about that and I think basically from then to Maladroit I was waiting for the band to fail. But we kept being successful so I kept re-venting all kinds of shit and it was--not in a totally unhappy way--but the dream of this thing was never really what I wanted it to be." Wilson stuck it out, but the discriminatory attitude and isolated behavior that characterized Cuomo at the time was too much for Matt Sharp to handle. After Pinkerton touring concluded, he left the band.

"It was weird because Matt left and did his thing and it was strange," Wilson recalls. "A very strange period. And what was ironic was that Rivers was really unhappy after Pinkerton because it didn't do that well, and what's doubly ironic is that record seems to be like a touchstone for so many people."

Brian Bell seems to understand this sentiment more than the rest of his bandmates, as if his "outside looking in" vibe offers him a window into the band that Cuomo and Wilson--the conceited dudes that they are--appear blind to.

"Oh, I loved it. I loved it," says Bell of the songs on Pinkerton. (It's easy to tell--he is the only one smiling in the "El Scorcho" video.) "The album was actually supposed to be called something else and I'm not going to say the name because I don't know if I am supposed to, but a lot of good songs on there--that song 'Blast Off' which appeared on some Buddyhead compilation--that song, I thought, was incredible."

In stark contrast to Wilson, Bell's attitude towards playing in Weezer is, for the most part, sanguine. And he only looks at Cuomo with admiration and never discontent, in all likelihood turning a blind eye to the Weezer frontman's less than desirable characteristics that Wilson is so quick to point out.

"We never really recorded 'Blast Off' for real. It was just his demo and he had all these songs on this demo and a little concept for an album. I was like 'Oh my God.' I mean I already knew the guy was good, but to make your second record a concept record? I thought it was incredible. And I was always a little disappointed we didn't do that and that it turned into something else. I didn't--I mean I didn't have any say in it--but I loved it."

The mainstream culture that embraced Weezer and their first record did not like Pinkerton. It did not go gold until several years after its initial release and it waved the band into a five-year hiatus. Wilson and Bell worked on other projects while Cuomo isolated himself from his bandmates and music in general. He returned to Boston to continue his studies as slowly, surely, and curiously, Pinkerton sold a steady amount of records each passing week with no radio promotion or public appearances by the band. To their surprise, by 2001, Pinkerton had become a cult phenomenon.

It was then things in the Weezer camp started rolling. Mikey Welsh had signed on for Weezer bassist number two and appeared on the wildly successful Pinkerton followup, the Green Album. The band, which had not played a show in five years, sells out a Yahoo! sponsored U.S. tour in a matter of days. Welsh goes nuts on the road and Scott Shriner fills in as bassist number three, alienating Brian Bell as the only member of Weezer who doesn't wear big, nerdy glasses. To top it off, the band, much to their chagrin in publicly heralded as the progenitors of the underground phenomenon known as "emo." They record Maladroit, tour incessantly, and in true Weezer fashion, fall off the face of the earth by 2003.

"He wanted some isolation to figure out what he wanted," says Wilson of Cuomo's departure from Weezer and return to meditation. "That period would never have ended, but one day I was like, 'Look let's go make a record.' During that process he sort of realized we were making an album and he got behind it even though I don't think he wanted to," Wilson chuckles.

"This is all tied in with his Zen, uh, meditation thing that he is pretty committed to," Wilson explains. "Rivers would say 'I think what you guys are trying to do here is a bad idea and I think only bad things are going to come of it, but either way I'll be happy.' So if we could title the record Either Way, I'm Cool. That would really sum up what was going on."

Historically, Weezer have created a cycle of huge mainstream record followed by commercial disappointment. "Well it probably fits that pattern," says Bell, "but I think that what is different this time around is the spontaneity and personality. I can't say it will have the impact of the earlier records, but it is definitely just as good."

"I think the criticism of the Green and Maladroit records is that Rivers was phony," says Wilson. "I sort of agree with that, but now he is really going for it again. I think it is cool to hear a dude singing like that."

Of course, Wilson is talking about the emotional pouring that went into the Pinkerton album that Cuomo discarded for easier to listen to songs and bigger hooks on the band's later efforts. The Weezer boys still feel they've made some progress, but believe their band has a ways to go.

"Basically dude, our whole story is a bunch of guys who don't know what the fuck they're doing and they look back on it and say, 'What an asshole I was.' But I'll tell you exactly what I want to see happen..."

And that's when the tape ran out. I did manage to write down on the back of a business card some of the things that Pat Wilson wanted to see his band accomplish over the next few years, but then I realized it really didn't matter. Nobody in Weezer really gets what they want anyway.