Weezer vs. the Record Industry

Guess who won. You can find out who won the epic battle for control over the shape of Weezer’s new album in the latest Glorious Noise Feature. Check it out now.

Well, I picked up the new Weezer album today. Even though I had the opportunity

for weeks to download the mp3s, for some inexplicable reason I decided to wait

for the official release. I didn’t even go to Vertigo Records yesterday to beg my man

Herm to sell me one a day early like I did five years ago when Pinkerton came out.

Back in 1996, it was embarrassing for a guy my age (25 then) to be excited about the new

Weezer album. But by that time I had already accepted the first Weezer album as a pop

masterpiece, and thanks to my man Colin,

I’d already totally gone crazy over the moog madness of the Rentals’ first album.

Since then my love of Weezer has not waned.

I’m a nut — ask any of my

friends or especially my wife. I get obsessed about bands and burn myself out.

I inherited this trait from my cousin Mike who first turned me on to the full

power of music in the form of those Knights In Satan’s Service, KISS. When the

King died, Mike and I went on a huge Elvis kick. His older Dazed and

Confused-era

brother got us into The River and then the Doors. AC/DC was in there

somewhere — probably when Bon Scott died. As we got older, Mike and I drifted

apart as he fully embraced the Metal side of things and I queered off

into Duran Duran, Tears for Fears and, heaven forbid, Wham! I eventually ended up

with the Beatles, the Smiths and the Dead Milkmen

as my high school soundtrack. The Stone Roses were coming up as I graduated.

And for each of these bands, I became totally obsessed and had to hear

everything they ever recorded and read every interview they ever gave. This

was a lot tougher back in the days before the Web and Napster. I had pen pals in the UK

who would record radio performances and send cassettes to me. I became a bootleg tape

trader. It’s ridiculous. College broadened my musical horizons but it didn’t

chill me out at all. Neither has marriage. I’ve gone crazy about britpop,

Parliament-Funkadelic, NWA-related hip hop, Frank Sinatra and Neil Young.

There are tons of other bands that I was into that are more embarrassing,

but you get the picture.

Which brings us back to Weezer. I started to get nervous about the new album

in October 2000 when I heard that Ric Ocasek was going to be the producer. He

produced the first album and this seemed like a real step backwards. But he’s

better than the guy who produces Blink-182 and the guy who produces Radiohead,

who were both being considered. Weezer fifth member and lousy speller, Karl, had

posted this frank

disclosure on his website a month before:

9/13/2000: The hammer comes down… today the band learned

from Interscope that they CANNOT start recording the new album unless they definately

have a producer! This flies in the face of the band’s insistence on starting on

October 23 "by any means necessary", and puts a serious damper on their

hopes for getting the new record off the ground on schedule…

So it was obvious that the Record Company was already messing with the sound of

Weezer. They were making it clear to the band the next Weezer record was going to

sound the way They wanted it to sound, regardless of what the band wanted.

This was the next alarming post

from Karl:

11/15/2000: …Well, today weezer was visited in their home

studio garage by the president

of Geffen records, whose views of what weezer was doing were fairly unknown to

date. We found out today, to the bands delight, that he is a very cool guy who

thinks the new songs are "awesome", and he had lots of good ideas and

suggestions for the band as they continue to write and record brand new songs

and refine the slightly "older" ones from the past few weeks.

I actually don’t even know who the president of Geffen Records is, but I can’t

honestly imagine a corporate executive having many good ideas about anything,

much less about how a great rock and roll album is supposed to sound. Was Karl

betraying us, or just being enthusiastic because the exec "gave his full

approval to the bands plan to get Ric out here and start album work in December!"?

I’m willing to give Karl the benefit of the doubt because he seems like a good

guy and not a professional spin master. Ten days into the actual recording of

the new album, Karl posted this:

01/06/2001:…recording day 10… In the midst of

finishing up Mikey’s bass "fixes", Weezer recieved a visit from the

record company, and were suprised to learn that they were unsatisfied with how

several tracks were turning out so far. Despite the fact that the songs are in a

very raw form and will be much farther along in just a few weeks, the comments

were still fairly critical, even while other songs got positive remarks. This of

course is not the best news we could have gotten, as dissention from "on

high" can lead to unwanted delays. And as we all are aware, there is very

little margin for error here. Extending the album sessions could adversly affect

the tour schedule, and conversely, sticking to the tour schedule in spite of not

finishing the album work could mean a delayed release. Both of these outcomes

are the last thing anyone wants, so the guys are continuing to work extra hard

to get all the tracks as top-notch as possible.

…Very lengthy debates and discussions of what should/shouldnt/could be done

with the tracks led to renewed attempts to nail down some songs. Later, after

intensive internal debate within the band, a few songs got "the boot",

their slots in the final running taken over by others that were "bubbling

under". Additionally, another song, "Gonna Make My Move" was

given a first time attempt.

The next day Karl posted

the following, I assume, to calm down fans who (like

me, I admit) were freaking out:

01/07/2001:…recording day 11…The hard work is really

paying off, and the guys are determined to make this album their own way.

Suggestions and criticisms come in all flavors, and some are helpful, some

useless. Ultimately, weezer is duty-bound to deliver exactly the album that they

want to hear, untainted by even the slightest of compromises, and they can only

hope that that’s the same album that everyone else wants to hear.

The rest of the album recording apparently went off without interference, but

you’ve got to wonder how the "advice" and "suggestions"

affected the way the band and crew performed. After the recording and mixing

were completed, Karl posted

this bit of bipolar corporate doublespeak:

02/17/2001:…Well, the moment of truth has come and

gone. A few hours ago, our meeting with the record company went down, about how

they feel about the (99 percent) finished weezer record…and we have recieved

the word, finally. I think it best for me to just present the facts and let you

guys mull it over, because were not exactly sure how to take this. First of all,

the record company told weezer that they LOVE the record, and had nothing but

supportive and excited things to say about it. All the comments and talk being

spoken tonight was positive and definately the kind of things we were hoping

they would say. And these were thoughtful and insightful comments, not just

empty enthusiasm. It seems that all the late night recording and mixing and

countless hours of detail work to the point of total exhaustion have paid off.

While it is of course YOUR opinions that matter most to weezer, getting the

record company on weezer’s side is simply essential to the process…so, right

on! However…at the same time, we were told that they no longer wish to release

the album on April 17th, as we were originally told. In fact, they would not

even supply us with a replacement date, which effectively throws the release

date into thin air. When will they let weezer release this album? From their

excited talk, we had figured that they would have wanted to put it out

"yesterday"…. But now, its become a total mystery…

I attended the concert in Chicago on March 9, and wrote about how

oddly unsatisfied

it had left me feeling. The new songs sounded

good. The old songs sounded just like the recorded versions. They didn’t play

for very long. But I think my biggest problem with the show was that I spent

most of the time up in the balcony where it was too quiet and comfortable

instead of being down on the floor where I belonged. My fault. I won’t make that

mistake again.

The final bit of Record Company flack that Karl

wrote about had to do with

release dates:

04/12/2001: …Speaking of release dates, some folks have

been writing me in a panic, having heard of further delays to the US release. I

can assure you direct from the band itself that this is NOT so, and that may

15th is the date! It is true that the record label had tried to further push

it back till June, but this did NOT go over well with the band…in a heated

behind the scenes debate with some label higher-ups, the exasperated guys got

their way, and May 15th stuck!

Since then the only troubling comments I have read have come from interviews

with the band. In an

interview with the LA Times, Rivers talks about the effect of Pinkerton

selling less than a fifth of the first album:

     "That was a devastating

disappointment," says Cuomo, 30. " ‘Cause at the time I felt we had

come up with something really new and fresh and exciting and important. It was

very personal to me also.

     "And we put it out and everyone said they

hated it, just across the board—our fans, all the critics. It was just the

worst stab in the heart. And that was definitely one of the factors that led to

me not being able to leave my room for a few years."

I didn’t hate it. My wife reminded me today that I didn’t love it at

first, but I’m sure I respected it as growth. I can understand why he was upset,

but I think the only people who really hated Pinkerton were the

simpleminded dopes at MTV. But Rivers’ predictions about the new album surprised

me:

     "I don’t expect it to succeed

commercially, unlike everyone at the record company," he says.

"They’re all gonna be incredibly disappointed in a few weeks.

     "The thing that I’m worried about, and this

is a real concern, is that I also think our fans are gonna hate it."

Uh oh. Maybe he’s preparing everybody for the worst. Trying to downplay

expectations. I can dig that. A little reverse telepsychokinesis (or something).

But here’s what scared me:

     "There were songs on the [first] album that

were pointing the way to a personal, confessional style, and that’s what I got

really excited about as I went to do ‘Pinkerton.’ But now I’m just totally

closed. I think they’re gonna miss the extreme emotionalism.

     "They’re gonna say, ‘He doesn’t sing with any

feeling anymore, he’s not letting his feelings out.’ And the truth is, I miss

that too. But all things considered, I think this is a stronger record. This

record stands on its own without having to manipulate people’s emotions."

And it’s true the new album seems to completely lack the extreme emotionalism

that I love about Pinkerton and parts of the first album. And it doesn’t

have any weird sounds. Nothing that makes you stop what you were doing and say,

"What the hell was that?" It’s a good record with some really nice

songs on it. But I can already tell that it won’t make it in my CD player past

the summer. There are no songs that I absolutely have to put on mix tapes for my

friends, like "No One Else" or "Across the Sea" or even

"The Good Life." I like the single, "Hash Pipe," but I don’t

really care about it. 

We’ll see.  Maybe I’ll change my mind. Lester Bangs hated Exile on Main

Street when it first came out. But I’m pretty sure that the new Weezer album

is no Exile. I mean, it’s less than 29 minutes long, and come on, they didn’t

even bother to give it a name. Has there

ever been a band to release two separate self-titled albums?

But I’m still a fan. And I’m anxious to download the b-sides and outtakes and new

live stuff. And even though I feel let down, I’m already excited about their

next album.

     "I would like to say one thing, and that’s

that I hope people stick with us. All these records are just phases I go

through, and when you’re younger and kind of inexperienced, you go through more

extreme phases, and ‘Pinkerton’ is maybe on the emotionally extreme side.

     "This record is on the anti-emotional extreme

side. And I hope people stick with us, because in the future I’ll be going back

and forth and probably finding some middle ground that makes us all happy."

Let’s hope this one sells millions of copies so they feel liberated enough to

follow it up with a little bit of forward evolution. Is that lame of me to even

think that way? Am I being suckered by a corporate marketing machine into

consuming goods I don’t even enjoy? I honestly don’t know. After all, I’m just a

fan.