After a five year hiatus following the release of their second album, “Pinkerton,” Weezer is making up for lost time. The band returned to the national spotlight with 2001’s self-titled album “Weezer,” also called “The Green Album,” and a year’s worth of sold-out tours didn’t slow the band down at all.
Within two months of the album’s May release, Rivers Cuomo (vocals and guitar), Brian Bell (guitar and vocals), Mikey Welsh (bass and vocals), and Pat Wilson (drums) spent a week in a Washington, D.C., recording studio, putting down 12 demos for a fourth album showing the band has no intentions of slowing down. The band posted eight of these demos on their official Web site, www.weezer.com.
Following a scorching performance of their smash hit single “Hash Pipe” at the MTV Movie Awards, the band spent June and July in Europe, where they recorded 8 new songs for the BBC Radio One show.
Upon returning to the United States, Weezer performed “Island In The Sun,” the second hit single from their third album, on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. This was the last time the band performed with Welsh.
In mid-August, the band was slated to film a second video for “Island In The Sun” with director Spike Jones because the band was unhappy with the results of the first video. Welsh never showed. The band was mum about his whereabouts, and in the coming weeks, announced that Welsh had checked into a psychiatric hospital for undisclosed reasons.
With a tour coming up, the band scrambled to find a backup for Welsh, should he be unable to rejoin the band for their tour. Los Angeles bassist Scott Shriner filled in as interim bassist while Welsh was gone. From late August to early September, the band went into Sound and Sage studios to record 24 more demos, many of which were released online as well.
With the future of Welsh’s status in the band uncertain, Weezer charged ahead in September and October with “The Midget Tour” of North America. During the tour, they stopped at several studios across the country to record more demos.
In late October, the band performed several shows in Los Angeles under the moniker “Goat Punishment” and performed mostly new songs.
Around late November, the band made public almost a dozen unreleased songs from the summer of 2000. During that summer, the band began touring again, playing a batch of new songs, most of which never made it to the recording sessions of “The Green Album” (only “Hash Pipe” survived and made it to the album).
The songs, known to fans as “The Summer Songs,” were released online at www.summersongs2k.com, which built a petition to have the songs released.
In December after the Goat Punishment shows, the band embarked on the highly anticipated and high profile “Extended Midget Tour,” featuring openers Tenacious D, and Jimmy Eat World. Although no official announcement was ever made, it became clear that Welsh was not coming back to the band. Shriner was asked to become a full-time member of Weezer, to which he happily agreed.
Upon completion of the tour, the band took their first real break of the year for the winter holidays. After their break, the band reconvened to officially begin work on their 4th album.
In January of this year, they released 14 full band demos in one day on their Web site. More new songs were released daily, as well as revised versions of the original 14 songs. They released several different versions of some 25 songs in a span of a week and a half.
Using the Internet, Weezer created a musician-listener relationship not seen before. The group posted the songs’ progress daily and received feedback from fans, often using their ideas.
Currently, Weezer is in a Miami Beach studio, mixing their fourth album, “Maladroit,” re-teaming with famed mixer Tom Lord-Alge. The album, scheduled for release in April, is taking a harder edge than their previous album, while still retaining the perfect song craftsmanship that Rivers Cuomo is famous for. And with the band planning to begin working on album number five by year’s end, Weezer is paying back their fans for the time they spent away.
Jonathan Pretus