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Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo: ‘We Were Really Miserable’

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As Weezer gear up for their Memories Tour, the deluxe reissue of Pinkerton (Nov. 2), and set of rarities Death to False Metal (Nov. 2), Rivers Cuomo has been dropping new songs left and right. Today, the Weezer frontman posted two tracks from the releases, “Blowin’ My Stack” and “Getting Up and Leaving.” Head over here and here to stream the tracks.

SPIN.com asked Cuomo to talk about those two songs, which he admitted were written during two tumultuous periods of their career.

“Getting Up and Leaving” was written in 1993, around the time the band signed with major label Geffen and were heading to New York to cut their debut album. “We were really miserable through this whole period because we were not having much success at all and it was such hard work,” says Cuomo. “So it’s about realizing we were leaving and we’re never going to be in this space again. We were leaving our home, too. We had lived in this little guest house in West L.A. for that year-and-a-half and it was a very tough time – but a very sweet time, too.”

“Blowin’ My Stack” was penned during a similarly turbulent period in 2003, when Cuomo says he was going through an overbearing period with the band. “I was being kind of an aggressive power-manager type of person,” he says. “But in 2003, I made a 180 and renounced all of that. I think I go through weird phases now and then. I think I suddenly found myself without assistance and having to stand in line at the DMV, get my own groceries, and all this stuff. It stood up a lot of frustration in me.”

As for their upcoming Memories Tour – where the band will be performing the Blue Album and Pinkerton album, along with a set of greatest hits – Cuomo promises plenty of variety each night, with only one repeated song appearing in the setlist each night. “There won’t be any replication night ot night,” he says. “We can augment that with different production on stage and different ways of performing and different ways of carrying myself, or dressing, or grooming. There’s going to be a lot of variety.”

Once Cuomo wraps up the tour, he adds that he’ll be releasing a book collecting his diaries and lyrics and other ephemera from the Pinkerton era, which he’s dubbing The Pinkerton Diaries. “It’s a collection of all my journals and emails and letters and photos and school papers, everything from those years,” he says, adding that the focus will deal with his frustration to the response from the band’s debut and radical shift in tone to Pinkerton. “It’s an inside look into exactly what I was thinking.”