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Page 1
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Rivers' (lack of a) sex life is splashed across newsstands and magazine racks everywhere ...
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Page 2
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The Weezer frontman also gives up sleeping on a bed, eating after noon and speaking ...
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Page 3
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Rick Rubin comes and goes, Rivers returns to Harvard and everyone questions the future ...
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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."
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Photo Credit: Geffen
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