House Music - Rivers Cuomo

We breach this subject because we’re interested to find out if Weezer will ever return to the days of ‘Pinkerton’ and self-produce an album once more. The answer; a definite no. “I really like having a fifth set of ears in the room so at this point I can’t say that we’d be completely interested in doing something on our own.” Divulging more he adds: “When you’re actually playing the music you have a different perspective to someone who is only listening to the music. I like to have that other perspective represented as we’re making decisions. Just the pure listeners point of view.” We hope that doesn’t disappoint too many of you.

Moving on we discuss the plans for the promotion of the album, in particularly the touring aspect and although Cuomo admits that nothing is set in stone as yet he definitely has an idea of the kind of shows he wants to play. He tells us: “We haven’t firmed any dates yet but we’re making plans for tours in the summer. Definitely the US and Japan, I’m not sure about Europe yet. In America I’m not interested in playing any festivals, just Weezer headline shows. In Europe we may play some festivals.” The last couple of sentences obviously surprise us and we ask Cuomo why he doesn’t see festivals as the way forward in America.

“We did that a lot in 2005 and I didn’t like it so much,” he explains. “I want to feel like we’re creating our own Weezer world at every show and you don’t get that feeling at a festival at all. In Europe I don’t feel like we can sell very many tickets on our own. If we want to play for a larger audience we’ll have to play for a festival I think. Actually, I‘ve always really enjoyed European festivals too.” He adds that the North American shows will probably take place in small Ice Hockey rink sized venues, and we're sure they could probably fill similar sized arenas in Europe too.

We then enter in complete fan boy territory by asking Cuomo how he is getting on with those aforementioned memoirs and it seems they’ve come on quite a bit in the last few months. He tells us: “I’ve quite a lot of material collected now, I’m still working on most every day and I really enjoy it. Right now I have eight volumes sketched out.” Eight volumes seems a lot of books to cover just the fifteen year period he has been in Weezer, but we’re informed that the books now go way beyond that time frame. “The first book to be released will be 92-94, which is the first few years of the band but I’m also working on an earlier volume dealing with my childhood and also my parent's childhood.” And while nothing has been signed Cuomo says that there is a deal on the table from a publishers to release the 92-94 book although he doesn’t know yet how long it will be before it hit’s the shelves.

At this point we’re told by a very nice if blunt employee of Geffen that we have one more minute of Cuomo’s time left so we move away from the music and talk to him about a subject very close to his heart, soccer. The Weezer man is a player and a big fan of the Los Angeles Galaxy so we ask him was he thinks of the whole David Beckham circus. He laughs before saying: “I think it’s just great, we’re so happy to have him here. There was one game in particular that was so exciting, the Galaxy versus New York game, and he just brought up that excitement level so much. He’s definitely going to help soccer in the US but we still have a long way to go.” Expect a song about a goldenballs free kick to appear of Weezer album seven then!