Rivers Cuomo Quotes

I always like balance. If I'm playing rock music all the time, chances are I'll start craving some lighter, poppier stuff, both to listen to and to play. I compare music to massage. If someone's been working on your back for a long time, you really want them to move down to your legs or something.

- Rivers Cuomo

I think probably with any performer, but maybe with rock music especially, the audience wants to see the singer being real, and exploring, and not doing a rehearsed routine, so I'm just constantly looking for new things to try. I'm really curious out there, and my curiosity has led me into all kinds of bizarre situations.

- Rivers Cuomo

Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the USA' kills me with jealousy. The melodies are out-of-control beautiful.

- Rivers Cuomo

Growing up, I was a giant KISS fan, and the truth is the record I had was 'Rock and Roll Over,' and there wasn't even a clear picture of them in the packaging! So I really had no idea what they looked like; I just loved their music.

- Rivers Cuomo

Certainly, the Beach Boys and the early Beatles records were a huge influence on me lyrically.

- Rivers Cuomo

I just went to the hobby shop and got an electricity kit and a chemistry kit, and I'm really excited to do experiments like squeezing an egg into a bottle and growing crystals. I'm really getting into hobbies.

- Rivers Cuomo

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

- Rivers Cuomo

When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do.

- Rivers Cuomo

I didn't get as much attention as I wanted from girls as a teenager. I thought that if I became a rock star, I would finally get all that I wanted - but it didn't happen.

- Rivers Cuomo

I think if I wasn't a musician, I would be a high-school band director or orchestra director. I like working with large groups of musicians and bringing out the dynamics and accomplishing something as a team.

- Rivers Cuomo

I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important.

- Rivers Cuomo

Rock and Roll Over' was the first Kiss album I heard, but I was totally oblivious to their whole image and the makeup and all that. I was so out of touch with the wider world.

- Rivers Cuomo

In some ways, I feel like I was Nirvana's biggest fan in the Nineties. I'm sure there are a zillion people who would make that claim, but I was just so passionately in love with the music that it made me feel sick. It made my heart hurt.

- Rivers Cuomo

I was fixated on Prince's 'Black Album' for a long time.

- Rivers Cuomo

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

- Rivers Cuomo

I think I've been skeptical of violent passion for a long time. I think 'Pinkerton' is about that a lot - seeing how, every time I've felt really passionate for someone, as soon as I 'acquire' them or feel like I've acquired them, the passion goes away.

- Rivers Cuomo

I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure.

- Rivers Cuomo

I think audiences sometimes mistakenly assume a quality performance comes from some great emotional disturbance rather than really intense concentration. Concentration and flow is what it's all about.

- Rivers Cuomo

With no faith, purely as a scientific experiment, I started meditating and watched if it changed my music. It did, but it didn't make it more mellow. It made it easier to get into the flow of creativity.

- Rivers Cuomo

I signed up for eHarmony once, and it took three hours to fill out that online form - so many personal questions. Then I clicked on submit, and instantaneously they responded and said, 'We are sorry, but there is no one any where in the world that is appropriate for you.' So that was it - I gave up.

- Rivers Cuomo

It's great - that's the best part about being famous is that people want to get to know me. People come up to me and introduce themselves, and I make friends, and then I meet their friends. It seems like I have a very happy and comfortable social life, which is something I never had when I was younger.

- Rivers Cuomo

I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.

- Rivers Cuomo

The truth is, I hate to perform. I get such bad stage fright, it makes me physically ill.

- Rivers Cuomo

Rock guitar has been around for decades now, and there are so many strong traditions, and so much of it is just burned into my fingers. So, nine times out of 10, when I pick up the guitar to jam something, it sounds pretty cliche.

- Rivers Cuomo

I can't imagine Weezer stopping. We just love doing what we're doing, and I think we'll keep going until we fall down dead. Even if the audience is abandoning us, I can't imagine doing anything else!

- Rivers Cuomo

I've tried every which way for writing lyrics - everything from using really bizarre imagery and metaphors, sort of obscuring the facts of what I'm singing about, all the way over to a song like 'Losing My Mind,' where you're just reading my thoughts as they're occurring.

- Rivers Cuomo

I had rock-star dreams from 8 or 9 almost nonstop. I thought it was going to be like being a god on earth: having as many women as you want whenever you want them, having super powers, being incredibly wealthy, never doing laundry.

- Rivers Cuomo

I have some good books of Bach keyboard music transcribed for guitar, and there's always a nylon-string guitar hanging on the wall in my house and a bunch of classical guitar books to grab. I kind of do that just for fun.

- Rivers Cuomo

I really don't need to suffer. I can really become a happy person and still make good music - in fact, better music.

- Rivers Cuomo

When I was 15 and dreaming about being a rock star... I thought the whole point of it was to get chicks.

- Rivers Cuomo

I've done a few things on the side here and there, but there is not much reason to do so in a sustained way. I'm generally able to say what I want to say within the context of Weezer.

- Rivers Cuomo

I guess I'm just a born performer or artist or sharer. I find the intimate details of my life compelling and interesting. I guess that I'm assuming that everyone else does, too.

- Rivers Cuomo

I meditate an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Once a year I go away for a long retreat. And overall, I just feel more comfortable in my own skin and less anxious, less sad, less fearful.

- Rivers Cuomo

I like to get input from all different kinds of listeners, including the really conservative ones, and sometimes those listeners steer me in a direction that I haven't seen. But at the end of the day, my vote is always to go in the direction that makes me the most excited.

- Rivers Cuomo

Weezer isn't stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

- Rivers Cuomo

It seems like Weezer has gotten better and better at getting attention for everything besides our music. Part of that is just the nature of our culture now - you really have to scream to get some attention, so people even know you have a record out that they might want to listen to.

- Rivers Cuomo

I'm constantly fighting with my manager to reduce the amount of time I have to spend on promotional activities, so I can get back in the studio and work on new music.

- Rivers Cuomo

I always loved the 'L.A. Weekly.' I totally looked up to it when Weezer was starting out, and I always wanted to be in it, and they always totally ignored us!

- Rivers Cuomo

When you're starting out, you basically have all these assumptions about what it means to be an artist or how to be a rock star. It took me years, through trial and error, to figure out what does work for me. So much of it is counter to the myth of the rock-star life.

- Rivers Cuomo

I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties - whether they're songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.

- Rivers Cuomo

I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise.

- Rivers Cuomo

I'm often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that's going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don't know. Then this other voice says, 'That's not prudent. People will use what you've said to hurt you.'

- Rivers Cuomo

I have a natural instinct to feel guilty and that I've let people down. I've apologized in more songs than 'Back to the Shack.' Going back to our second record, the closing lines are 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' It's definitely part of my personality.

- Rivers Cuomo

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

- Rivers Cuomo

Most people don't really need to hear a six-minute guitar solo that modulates between five keys and time signatures. What they want is a good song.

- Rivers Cuomo

I felt frustrated by the limitations of rock and the lifestyle of touring around on a bus and playing the same songs over and over. So I went back to school to study music, and one of the things I got into was the Italian opera composer Puccini.

- Rivers Cuomo

New country music comprises about five percent of what I hear per year. I enjoy it, but I don't really take note of who's singing it or writing it.

- Rivers Cuomo

The most nerve-wracking experience is an oral presentation in class. And right under that would be doing 'Saturday Night Live' or 'David Letterman.' One of those shows.

- Rivers Cuomo

Meditation hasn't separated me from my life and my friends and my work. It's just made my fear go away, so I can just be that much more engaged.

- Rivers Cuomo

With each step I take, I see that my ability to perform gets a little better. So until it starts getting worse, I'm going to keep moving forward.

- Rivers Cuomo

I meditate two hours a day, and every year I do one big long meditation course. I love it, and I'm really into it.

- Rivers Cuomo

Probably the most reliable comfort music for me over the years has been Bach.

- Rivers Cuomo

'Easy' is not a word I would ever use to describe touring.

- Rivers Cuomo

Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own.

- Rivers Cuomo

Cat Stevens' music, voice, and energy made me feel so secure. He sounded different from some of the paternal figures in my life, so gentle and kind.

- Rivers Cuomo

Now that I'm a father, I've forgiven my parents.

- Rivers Cuomo

I decided to try celibacy because I heard it would help the meditation, and I tried meditation because I heard it would help with the music. So, it all really comes back to the music.

- Rivers Cuomo

I've always seen myself as a grown-up. Since I was a little kid.

- Rivers Cuomo

I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm being judgmental. I gotta do everything I can do to not be preachy.

- Rivers Cuomo

The bonds you make with those records when you're 14, 15 and 16, they'll never be broken, and nothing will ever be as strong as that.

- Rivers Cuomo

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

- Rivers Cuomo

People think I'm a freak or something, but I'm actually a really normal guy.

- Rivers Cuomo

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things.

- Rivers Cuomo

I really want to disappear, grow a beard, not talk to anyone, not make any friends... I just want to disappear and study.

- Rivers Cuomo

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

- Rivers Cuomo

Being in Weezer's just gotten so much more fun over the years. I love almost every part of my job. My very favorite part is working on new songs.

- Rivers Cuomo

I feel so much feedback in a very profound way from the 10,000 people who are listening to me, watching me. I just get this deep sense of what works and what doesn't work.

- Rivers Cuomo

I think I'm a good dad. It's hard. Ultimately, it's our kids that have the final word. So we'll have to ask them.

- Rivers Cuomo

I listen to music a lot on the treadmill - I would test 'Raditude' songs out on the treadmill.

- Rivers Cuomo