Rivers Cuomo explains the true story behind how Weezer got their name
The early sound of Weezer was defined by a slacker approach to rock music with lyrics that were openly vulnerable. The band was formed by frontman Rivers Cuomo in 1992, although he had desires to be a successful musician long before then.
Cuomo realised that he wanted to play music when he saw some of his school peers play metal covers in the eighth grade. In a conversation with Conan O’Brien, Cuomo told of the day that he knew he simply had to begin playing the guitar. “Last day of eighth grade, there was a performance by some other eighth-grade boys,” he said. “They went up and did ‘Metal Health’ by Quiet Riot in front of the whole school. These were kids I knew, and they were just regular kids, and they were playing these instruments, and it just sounded incredible. Just magic.”
Cuomo added: “I was like, ‘I should be able to do this’, and I got a guitar and started a cover band, did a bunch of metal songs and then moved out to LA with my metal band, and we thought we were going to make it like that, but it didn’t pan out.”
It was 1989 when Cuomo moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in the music industry with his metal band Avant Garde (later called Zoom). When they called it quits, Cuomo was without a group, but soon he met Patrick Wilson and Matt Sharp, with whom he would form Weezer.
Cuomo had worked at Tower Records when he arrived in LA, and as well as giving him an appreciation for different kinds of music, it was there that he met mutual friends of his future bandmates. “Getting the job at Tower really helped me,” Cuomo explained. “I got exposed to all different kinds of music. Not just the latest cool music, but also going back to the 1960s and hearing the Beach Boys and the Beatles and then talking to other employees there, just so knowledgeable. I met the Weezer guys through my co-workers there. And we formed the band.”
As for the name of the band, Cuomo revealed that it was borne from a nickname that his father had for him as a kid. “That’s what my dad called me when I was very young,” he said. “I don’t know why. I asked him, ‘Why’d you call me Weezer?’ And he said it was after the kid in The Little Rascals; there was a character named Weezer. So I said, ‘Why him?’ And he said, ‘He’s the cool one’.”
