Tweezer/Weezer: Rivers Cuomo Discusses Past Phish Fandom

Weezer guitarist Rivers Cuomo appeared on the latest episode of Foo Fighters guitarist Chris Shiflett’s Shred With Shifty podcast to take a deep dive into the guitar solo on “Only In Dreams” from Weezer’s 1994 self-titled (Blue) album. During the conversation, Cuomo revealed he was a Phish fan and influenced by guitarist Trey Anastasio.

Cuomo was recounting his experience recording “Only In Dreams” with Rick Ocasek of The Cars who was chosen by Cuomo to produce their debut album. When the topic of improvisation came up, Cuomo talked about the band’s early days and how he was influenced by Phish and Anastasio.

Read a transcript of the initial exchange:

Chris Shiflett: When you’re putting together a guitar solo in the studio, do you work that stuff out beforehand? Do you know what you’re going to do before you get there? Or do you just kind of noodle around until you hit on something and then refine it?

Rivers Cuomo: Maybe 50/50. Sometimes I’ll have it totally, totally mapped out and then it’s just a matter of getting great performances. But sometimes I go in and I haven’t done that work yet, and I do have to do a lot of improvisation and figure out what’s going on.

Chris Shiflett: At what point did you figure out you were going to go into that more sort of traditional guitar solo bit at the end? I don’t know what year you were making that, 1993 or whatever it was …

Rivers Cuomo: Yeah.

Chris Shiflett: That was, in alt rock circles, becoming pretty illegal.

Rivers Cuomo: Yeah. The specific notes were created on that Sunday, but what happened, the basic idea of what happens there had been in the song during our live shows in the clubs for the last year and a half.

So this may be hard to believe, but when we started out, we were much more like a hippie band. I had long hair and I was very into Trey Anastasio from Phish.

Chris Shiflett: Oh, wow! I don’t hear that at all in Weezer. My friend, you shed that real quick.

Rivers Cuomo: All Weezer songs in those days ended like this, where we didn’t know how the song ended, so we’d just keep jamming, and I would solo like that.

I went to Phish shows and had the tapes, and it was like, man, this is just so transcendent, the way he plays – and that’s kind of what I wanted to do. Now, by the time we made the album with Ric Ocasek, most of those endings got turned into like a normal ending for a song. Cause as you were saying, like, the whole jamming thing wasn’t super cool at that time.

But this, this bit survived. And maybe that’s one reason why Rick was anxious about it. It’s like, “what’s gonna happen here?”

Chris Shiflett: Right. Why are you trying to ruin this record, man?

Rivers Cuomo: Yeah.

Phish came up again in the interview after Cuomo demonstrated how to play the “Only In Dreams” guitar solo. After breaking down his technique, the following exchange took place:

Rivers Cuomo: That to me is kind of Phish – Phishy.

Chris Shiflett: Really? I was hearing all that diatonic stuff. I mean, to be perfectly honest, I’m not super familiar with their music or their style exactly, but what I was hearing [was] a little Judas Priest or some Iron Maiden or something …

Rivers Cuomo: Yeah, that too. I bet Trey played some of that music probably.

While there’s no record of Weezer ever covering Phish’s “Tweezer,” given the skills Cuomo showed off to Shiflett — including pulling out a Yngwie Malmsteen riff, it’s likely he could pull it off. Watch the Shred With Shifty episode below and via JamBase partner Volume.com (Phish comes up around the 32:17 mark):