by Mim Udovitch
"This," says Matt Sharp, bassist for Weezer, to
Pat Wilson, drummer for Weezer, "is my sassiest moment ever." Matt is speaking
with characteristic Weezer irony, which is not just any old irony but the
irony born of unexpected rock success and the many hours of forced togetherness
in vans, buses, airplanes and hotel rooms that such a success entails.
At this, his sassiest moment ever, Matt is lying face down on a drum riser
on the set of England's most ridiculous TV show ever, The Word. Weezer's
particular acre of the set - a garishly lit stage beneath a single prom-in-your-high-school-gym
cardboard arch - is currently deserted, although hordes of beautiful, albeit
nonsassy, teens are expected soon. In the meantime, there is not much to
do besides lie on a drum riser, as Matt is doing, sit on the floor next
to a drum riser, as Pat is doing, or, as guitarist Brian Bell is doing,
silently lounge against the stage in the graceful S-curve posture that
has made sculpture baroque and runway models super ever since both came
into being. (Brian, who joined the band after the departure of Jason Cropper
midway trough the recording of Weezer, the band's debut album, is a one-man
refutation of Weezer's geek-rock reputation.
"The best compliment I ever had," he says, "was when Eddie from Urge
Overkill came up to me and said, 'You've got good fashion sense, Brian,
and don't think that people don't notice.'" While being sassy, in Weezer
terms, is a state that can be roughly defined as looking as if you're in
Blur, it is actually better explained by example than by argument: Anna
Waronker, of That Dog, is the sassiest female alive; Veruca Salt have more
than adequate sass, they have major sass; and tragically, Courtney Love
has so much sass that she has none - she has blown out the sassometer and
can't be measured. Polly Harvey, on the other hand, is sass. Good Lord
is she sassy. Chris Acland, the drummer for Lush, is the sassiest male
alive; Beck, while sassy, doesn't even come close; and nobody in New Jersey
has any sass. If you reside in New Jersey, your sass card has been revoked,
and you get it back when you leave. "You're not gonna put hairspray, get
in your Camaro, listen to Extreme and have sass," says Matt. "There's gotta
be nonshowering happening." "Is that part of being sassy?" asks Pat doubtfully.
"Yeah," says Matt in pained but patient tones. "You have to not shower
and be aloof and not be aware of your own sass." "But I have all those
things," says Pat, "and I'm not sassy. Because I'm married, and that's
not sassy. I have no sass. I am sans sass, I am without sass, and I am
awash in a sea of nonsass. "There is a long pause, during which some British
stagehands hoist an enormous fuzzy blue couch into position on a nearby
area of the set, Matt rests his head on his arms and closes his eyes, we
all sink a little deeper into the dimensionless pit of nonspecific exhaustion,
the rain outside swoons softly, softly swooning as it falls on all the
living and dead, and, in a nutshell, seconds pass like hours. "Peter Jennings
has some sass," Pat offers at length. "And that same person in the Camaro
can turn around and have some sass," Matt says dolefully. "You know, you
may think that Arlington, Va., is the capital of style. You may think it,
but you'd be wrong." Although they met and became a band in Los Angeles,
the members of Weezer are distinctly Eastern suburban in outlook and background,
because they are, in fact, from the suburban East. Matt, coincidentally
enough, is from Arlington, Va., Pat from Buffalo, N.Y. ("which is like
Chicago, only worse"), Brian from Knoxville, Tenn., and lead singer, guitarist
and songwriter Rivers Cuomo (who looks sassy in the video for "Undone -
The Sweater Song” but does not aspire to sassiness in real life) is from
Connecticut. They are all in their mid-20s and members of the silent, non-whining
majority of their generation. What this means in practice is the common
belief in the coolness of Ace Frehley ("It has to be Ace. He had the best
of the four Kiss solo records," says Matt), a group wide inability to tuck
in a shirt and an intuitive feeling for the totemic force of Star Wars
action figures (when Brian got the call from Rivers inviting him to join
the band, Brian was asked to name his favorite. Hammerhead, if you care).
Like millions of their peers, they were raised on their parents' classic
rock and lowered on their friends' bad metal cover bands. "And you want
to know why I wasn't in Whitesnake cover bands?" asks Pat. "Because I couldn’t
grow my hair. I just never grew it right. I never had booming' hair like
everybody else did." "Everybody in Virginia listened to Black Sabbath all
the time," adds Matt with anguished glee. After drifting to L.A. via various
aimless routes and a couple of pre-Weezermutual associations (in one of
which Matt and Pat recorded "this ultra goofy Euromix with violins descending
in weird scales and the words to «Paranoid»"and composed an
ode to their experiences selling dog shampoo entitled "Get People
to Buy What They Don't Need").
Weezer achieved their final form in early '92 - except
that Jason Cropper was in the Brian Bell slot – and everything was in place
for the next step. This turned out, as it so often does, to be immediately
provoking absolutely no interest on the part of anyone.” We would just
play, and if we got a following, we did, and if we didn't, we didn't,"
says Matt. "And we didn't. It was pretty much no expectations for anything;
we just basically didn't have anything better to do. And we all sucked,
me especially. "It is perhaps because of this early training that Weezer,
having gone on to sign with Geffen and made a very fine record produced
by Ric Ocasek, are the most becomingly modest successful new band you could
hope to meet. If you push them hard, they will admit that they no longer
suck, but further than that, they're not willing to go. "It's so amazing
that suddenly we're, like, No.16 on Billboard," says Brian, in whom even
immodesty would be pretty becoming. "None of this was even imaginable,
ever." "We looked at it as a fatalist type of thing from the get-go," says
Pat. "It was like ‘I'm gonna fail because 99 percent of all records do,
and what makes me so special?’" In short, Weezer's success really was unexpected
(by them anyway; Geffen, presumably, was not entirely without hope) and,
you may think sudden. You may think it, but you would be wrong. The guys
in Weezer (which was Rivers’ nickname as a little boy) have worked hard
for their sudden success. They have been on tour, except for a six-week
break, for almost eight months and recently arrived in London to kick off
three months of European gigs, followed by two more months on the road
in the States, followed by another break, followed by another couple of
months in Europe and some more American shows in the late summer. After
that, Rivers is going to return to college, and everyone else is going
to get some rest, drink plenty of fluids and work on his side projects.
(Matt records with the Rentals, Brian records with the Space Twins, and
the multi-instrumental Pat will record probably by himself as an artist
to be named later.) After that they might make a second album.
1995.