The Band Bio
[main]
[rivers]
[matt]
[pat]
[brian]
[jason]
[mikey]
[band]
THE BAND BIO--by jessie vallejo
-----Weezer was formed in the city of angels on Feb. 14, 1992 by Rivers Cuomo, Jason Cropper, Matt Sharp, and Pat Wilson. They started out by playing clubs, and even though they weren’t really successful in the beginning,they kept working, and after about 16 months together, DGC Geffen records signed them up.
-----They went to NY, and with Ric Ocasek (from the cars) and Chris Shaw at the Electric Lady Studios to record their debut album WEEZER (also known as the blue album). During the recording, Jason Cropper was kind of pushed out of Weezer, because the band thought it would be better that he stay with his pregnant girlfriend, than stay with the band and be a deadbeat dad. Jason was replaced with Brian Bell, who was previously a bassist in Carnival Art.
-----WEEZER was released on May 10th, 1994, the singles that followed were Undone-the sweater song, Say it ain’t so, and Buddy Holly. The video for Buddy Holly (which was done by Spike Jonze, who also directed the sweater song) won Weezer several grammies, and 4 MTV VMA’s (best alternative video, best direction, best editing, best breakthrough) for the 1995 award shows, and WEEZER went double-platinum.
-----You’d think that all that success would make the members in Weezer extremely proud, and happy. What it really caused was some creative differences, because Rivers didn’t want people to misinterpret his music and buy their albums just because of promotional ads and such. The other members understood his point of view, but didn’t exactly agree with him. This led to making videos that were less like Buddy Holly and kind of avoiding the spotlight, along with some disputes.
-----After a few tours around the US and the world, the members of Weezer settled down. Rivers studied at Harvard, Matt and Pat worked on a project ‘The Rentals,’ and Brian returned to a previous band ‘The Spacetwins.’
-----While touring, Weezer had a lot of time to burn on the road (like any band). Something they did to keep them from going brain-dead was learn French. They would use a series that was on tape, and study things like verb conjugations.
-----In the early parts of winter 1995 and during the summer of 1996, Weezer produced their second LP in the studios themselves. On September 24th, 1996 Pinkerton came out. Right from the start, you can sense that this album is different from their debut smash...the guitars sound more gruff, the lyrics go deeper, and their styles matured significantly. PINKERTON went gold in sales. The singles from this album were El Scorcho, The Good Life, and Pink Triangle. In addition, Tired of Sex is banned in Singapore. **On a personal note, this album is different from that of what people remember Weezer by (e.g. Buddy Holly), but is just as good, if not, even better because it gives you more of a raw feel to their music.**
-----Awhile back Matt Sharp left Weezer (ON A GOOD NOTE) to pursue in his career with his band The Rentals. Matt has said that Rivers is an awesome songwriter (one of his favorites) and that Brian, Pat, and Rivers are all good friends. The replacement bassist is Mikey Welsh, who was previously from Julianna Hatfield’s band.