The greatest riff of all time, according to Rivers Cuomo
The thing about guitarists is that they don’t just pick up the instrument and fall in love without any other context. They have to have heard something truly life-altering first. Just ask Rivers Cuomo.
Although his own eventual sonic exports ended up looking very different, the Weezer frontman started out on his journey of musical horizons under hugely contrasting pretences: he wanted to be a metal star. Having been a fan of bands like Kiss and then going on to form his own short-lived glam metal band named Avant Garde, his perceptions of rock and roll were of exuberance, excess, and hair-raising.
After a while, that specific element of the dream came to an end, but Cuomo’s passion for the music itself never died, hence his veering off-course somewhat from his original path and creating Weezer. Despite it being a completely valid form of rock and roll, the ghost of the metal image has always been one that the guitarist has always tried keenly not to haunt him.
All of this means that, although he undoubtedly made a success out of it, Cuomo’s musical education was one that was peppered and intruded upon by all sorts of different, clashing sounds. It takes a massive tune to hit you in the face and push you forward after that, but one riff somehow managed to cut through the noise.
When asked in an interview what this specific golden chalice would be, Cuomo helpfully replied: “The first one that pops into my mind is… derrn-der-der-unnn, der-der-unnn! What’s that riff?” Listen, we might all know a lot about music, but none of us are mind-readers, and trying to convey a purely auditory sensation merely through the written word is a bit of a challenge.
Thankfully for the rest of us, Cuomo’s mind managed to catch up with him. “Oh, yeah – ‘Killing In The Name’ by Rage Against the Machine. It’s just awesome.” In many ways, you could see his metal influences shining through the more he raved about the song, when he spoke about what made it so great in his mind.
“Distortion. It has to have distortion,” he stated, before adding, “The right combination of notes and syncopation. Heaviness. It’s gotta be in the low register of the guitar. And then it just has to hit you in the gut. ‘Killing In The Name’ has all those qualities.” Indeed, with its own metal fusion and protesting spirit, Cuomo was hardly doing a good job of masking his former roots.
This was ironic in the sense that he had tried so hard to hide it for so long, veering to alternative bands like Nirvana and Pixies to eschew his metal life of old, as he said, “there was so much anxiety about authenticity at the time”. But then again, when you come up against a song like ‘Killing In The Name’, there’s nothing you can do except give in to the rush.
That is, of course, the mark of a truly great guitar riff: that it forces you to let go of all your inhibitions, and just be completely free. Even Cuomo had to admit it – he would be nothing without metal, and his musical tastes will always be formatively shaped by that irresistible screech and scream.
