 Weezer: Distraction Subtraction
DULUTH, Georgia — This interview was supposed to happen four months ago.
Through various forms of finagling, wrangling, ducking and dodging, Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo managed to avoid MTV News' requests for an interview back in May, when the band's fifth album, Make Believe, was released. Behind the scenes, reps for the band's label, Geffen Records, shook their heads in disbelief. After all, Make Believe was Weezer's first album in three years — their first since 2002's Maladroit, which was panned by both fans and critics alike — and to say there was a lot riding on its success would be an understatement. If ever there were a band that needed the exposure, needed publicity, needed to sit beneath the hot studio lights and answer stupid questions, it was Weezer.
Still, no interview happened.
But suddenly, strangely, everything changed. In early September, the Cuomo camp blinked, and the word was out that finally Weezer were ready to talk. Geffen publicists spoke of a new, improved Rivers Cuomo; a happier, friendlier gentleman who would absolutely love to sit beneath hot studio lights and who would be delighted to answer a boatload of stupid questions. They cited his much-publicized obsession with Vipassana meditation — a strict mix of physical purification and mental observation — as the reason for this change, and they said everything people had read or heard about Cuomo in the past was wrong.
"Whatever you need," they promised, "he'll do it."
"Just name a time and a place," they said, "and he'll be there."
Which is how we get to right now, to a luxury suite deep inside the well-tiled bowels of the Arena at Gwinnett Center, just off the Sugarloaf Parkway in suburban Duluth, Georgia. It's the eve of Weezer's much-hyped co-headlining tour with fellow alt-rock survivors the Foo Fighters, probably the band's biggest string of shows in almost five years, and soundchecks are running a bit late. And as such, our interview with Cuomo keeps getting pushed back, so much so that when he finally ambles into the suite — shoulders hunched, hair wild, wearing a sport coat and wool pants despite the scorching Georgia heat — everyone is a bit nervous and a bit rushed. Except for Cuomo, who straightens his shoulders, studies his digital watch and glances around the room.
"OK," he says, staring ahead blankly. "We've got 13 minutes, let's go."
And he's not kidding. What originally was supposed to be a 45-minute, in-depth interview has suddenly been chopped down to a brief, 13-minute chat. Weezer's tour manager laughs nervously, and Cuomo's personal assistant shuffles her feet, but nothing changes. We have exactly 780 seconds to speak with Cuomo, because at precisely 6 p.m. he must meditate for exactly one hour, in solitude, before he can sing a note of music. And after his hour of meditation, the other four members of Weezer — guitarist Brian Bell, bassist Scott Shriner and drummer Pat Wilson — will join Cuomo for even more meditation, a rock and roll band holding hands and chanting to achieve mental clarity, standing backstage in a modified hockey arena in suburban Georgia.
But when you consider the entire 13-year history of this band, a roller-coaster ride filled with breakups and meltdowns and triumphs and failures (and the odd semester at Harvard), a little meditation doesn't seem that strange at all.
"It's funny, I was just talking to the president of our record company, and he was concerned that our younger fans were going to be freaked out because I was meditating or whatever," he laughs. "Like, they might think I'm some kind of hippie or something. But honestly, it's all perfectly normal. People think I'm a freak or something, but I'm actually a really normal guy."
Of course, "normal" is a fairly relative term for a guy like Cuomo, who's sold more than 6 million albums and has a personal collection of somewhere in the neighborhood of 450 soul-crushing songs of self-doubt, though he's never included more than 13 of them on any Weezer album. He's the shrugging leader of a fiercely loyal army of fans, though he rarely, if ever, talks to them. He's a fret-shredding rock and roll star who once isolated himself for an entire year in an apartment in Culver City, California, with just his pet gecko to keep him company. And in the interest of staying true to the tenents of Vipassana, he has abstained from sex for more than two years — a fact trumpeted on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in its May 5 issue.
"Yeah, well, um ... that cover story was ... um ... I was really disappointed," he squirms. "The journalist pretended to really like me and understand me and I was really excited to talk to her, and tell her what I was up to. But then the article came out and she was just making fun of me and making me out to be a freak, which I'm really not."
The mere mention of the Rolling Stone cover story is the only time in our interview that Cuomo appears angry. It's also the only time he shows emotion of any sort, spending the majority of our chat looking at the floor, fielding each question with a vacant, plaintive smile. All of this could just be chalked up to Cuomo being some sort of slightly off-kilter, slightly strange outcast, the kind of guy you see in a laundromat or outside the post office. But it's actually the result of his dedication to Vipassana, the meditation he credits for "taking away the fear and sadness" in his life.
"There's no God or no worshipping, no chanting or incense, no beads or garlands. It's just observing what's going on inside your body at any moment and accepting that, not reacting to it," Cuomo explains. "Just accepting it and observing it as closely as you can. And it sounds like there's nothing to it, but man, it really has a powerful effect when you do it a lot.
"Everything I do is more spontaneous and instinctual. I don't worry about things as much," he continues. "And when it comes to writing songs, I'm happy to revise things and listen to other people's input. There's less ego involved in everything. It's just making music. And meditating helps me achieve all that."
But the road to happiness wasn't exactly an easy one. Vipassana is one of the strictest forms of meditation, requiring all participants to adhere to a list of precepts that includes abstaining from all sexual activity and all physical contact. Sleeping in beds is also forbidden, and all who undergo a 10-day Vipassana retreat are also required to fast after midday, taking only tea or fruit juice for nourishment. A vow of silence is observed, as one of Vipassana's main goals is a deep understanding of one's soul through close observation of one's own breathing patterns.
The average retreat is about as far from rock and roll as humanly possible, and Cuomo has been on nearly a dozen in the past two years. Through those retreats, plus his daily meditations, he's obtained an unparalleled level of mental clarity, though he says that one particular tenent of Vipassana, the awareness of the body's reaction to and rejection of emotional stimuli, has been particularly difficult to master. Which, given his occupation — rocking out in front of thousands of screaming fans — seems understandable.
"Well, that's difficult, but through practicing every day, and by going to the intensive courses where I practice all day long, my mind is just in the habit of staying detached and balanced with whatever I'm experiencing. I can't say I'm totally calm when I get up there, but it's a lot smoother experience for me," he says. "That goes for everything. When we first put out the album and started doing promotion, I hadn't done it for several years, so I was very cautious, and I didn't know what it was going to be like. Now I'm a meditator, and everything I do — music, interviews — is easier."
Things might be easier, but there's still the occasional hiccup along the way.
Cuomo was originally turned on to the idea of meditation (though not Vipassana) by producer Rick Rubin, who had been tapped to helm the Make Believe sessions in late 2003 and thought a little mental clarity would be a good thing for the tightly wound frontman. Cuomo responded by firing Rubin from the project — or so it was widely reported. This may or may not be true, given that his bandmates all back Cuomo's assertion that nothing bad happened with Rubin, despite the fact that his demotion was written about in a posting on Weezer.com. (Rubin declined requests to be interviewed for this article.)
"There are a lot of misconceptions and mistruths about what happened with Rick," Wilson sighs. "You'd go crazy trying to correct everything, but I can say that he wasn't fired."
"I definitely wouldn't say that Rick was ever demoted, we just had a whole batch of songs, and we did some sessions with Rick, then we did some sessions on our own," Shriner adds. "We never scrapped anything and Rick was almost always involved in making this record."
Whatever the case, the Rubin situation wasn't the only snarl in the Make Believe process. Songs were written then dumped. Cuomo decided midway through that he wanted to return to Harvard. There were several breaks in the recording process, and there were times when no one in Weezer seemed to know what would happen with their planned fifth album. The old Rivers Cuomo might've just walked away from the whole thing (or spent hours bouncing a tennis ball against the studio wall, as he reportedly did while working on a follow-up to 1996's Pinkerton ).
But this wasn't the Rivers of old. Far from it. In fact, he credits the completion of Make Believe to the resolve Vipassana gave him (even thanking the father of modern Vipassana, S.N. Goenka, in the album's liner notes) and stops just short of saying that meditation saved Weezer altogether.
"Meditation hasn't separated me from my life and my friends and my work. It's just made my fear go away so I can just be that much more engaged," he says. "As far as Weezer goes, it's pretty much a democracy now. We voted on the songs, the four of us and Rick, and it was amazing just how many songs we agreed on. What you hear is what we as a collective wanted to put out."
It's probably the first time Cuomo has used the words "democracy" and "Weezer" in the same sentence. For years, the band was seen as his personal vehicle, operating on his personal schedule and subject to his personal whims. And it flies in the face of everything you've ever read about Weezer, who are always portrayed as three studio musicians walking on eggshells around the bizarre and volatile frontman. And while that may or may not still be the case, it certainly sounds like they're a much happier band.
"His meditation has had an amazing effect on the band," Wilson says. "I see Rivers be happy now, I feel it. And that's cool."
"It's affected him in a positive way. He's still every bit as Rivers-esque as he's always been, but now he seems like he's able to deal with things that most people wouldn't get flustered by," Bell laughs. "I think all of us are forever changing as people, and I think it's good to not let everybody in on the inner workings of the band, but I do think that Rivers is a lot happier now, and he's a much better rock star now too."
And that's clearly on display during Weezer's set that evening in Duluth. Cuomo flails at his guitar, striking chords with epic windmill sweeps of his arms, climbing amplifiers and even smiling. And he lets each member of the band sing a song of their own — something the Rivers of old never would've done. In fact, the entire band appears revitalized, treating the older, more revered numbers ("El Scorcho," "Surfwax America") with reckless abandon and powering through current hits "Beverly Hills" and "We Are All on Drugs" with giddy glee.
It's heavily rumored that Make Believe will be Weezer's final album, and the guys would even hint at it themselves later in the interview. For what it's worth, on this night they certainly appeared to be playing with all the fast-and-loose energy of a band happy and content with its standing in rock's canon.
But then again, maybe this is just the beginning. Maybe the recharged Weezer will keep cranking out album after album of amped-up angst. No one seems to know for sure, especially not Cuomo. He's too busy enjoying life as a meditating New Age rock star, afraid of sensations but not afraid of what tomorrow will bring. And being that he now operates on an even mental plane, when you ask him about the future of his band, he just sort of shrugs, sort of sighs and thinks deeply for a minute.
"I honestly don't know what tomorrow will bring for this band — or for me. I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so," he says. "I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have like permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible."
|
