Rivers Cuomo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rivers Cuomo
|
|
|---|---|
Cuomo performing at the Tons of Rock festival in Oslo in 2025
|
|
| Background information | |
| Also known as | Peter Kitts (1985–1987) |
| Born | June 13, 1970 New York City, U.S. |
| Origin | Mansfield, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Genres |
|
| Occupation(s) |
|
| Instruments |
|
| Years active | 1985–present |
| Signature | |
 |
|
Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician. He is best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and main songwriter for the rock band Weezer. Rivers was born in New York City. He grew up in different spiritual communities in the northeastern U.S. until he was 10. His family then settled in Connecticut. He played in several bands in Connecticut and California. In 1992, he formed Weezer.
After Weezer's first album, the Blue Album (1994), became a big hit, Rivers went to Harvard University. He left college to record Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996). He later returned to Harvard and graduated in 2006. Even though Pinkerton is now seen as one of the best albums from the 1990s, it wasn't popular at first. This led Rivers to write more pop-style songs for Weezer's next album, the Green Album (2001). Weezer has released more than a dozen albums since then.
Rivers has also released several collections of his demo songs. These include Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007) and Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2008). He has also shared thousands of his home recordings on his website. He has worked with many other artists. These include Hayley Williams, B.O.B, AJR, and Panic! at the Disco. With American songwriter Scott Murphy, Rivers has released two Japanese-language albums. They perform together as Scott & Rivers.
Contents
Early Life and Music Beginnings
Rivers Cuomo was born on June 13, 1970, in New York City. His father, Frank Cuomo, was a musician. His mother, Beverly Shoenberger, named him Rivers. Some say it was because he was born between the East and Hudson rivers. Others say it was because she could hear a river from her hospital window. His father, however, said he was named after three famous soccer players.
Rivers grew up in Rochester, New York, at a Zen Center. His father left the family in 1975. His mother then moved the family to Yogaville, a spiritual center in Pomfret, Connecticut. Rivers went to Pomfret Community School. In 1980, Yogaville moved to Virginia. Rivers' family stayed in Connecticut and moved to the Storrs/Mansfield area. He attended Mansfield Middle School and E.O. Smith High School. He was in the high school choir and acted in a school play. Rivers also attended a summer music program. For a while, he changed his name to Peter Kitts, but later changed it back.
One of Rivers' first bands was a glam metal group called Avant Garde. In 1989, they moved to Los Angeles. They changed their name to Zoom but broke up in 1990. During this time, Rivers went to Santa Monica College. In 1990 and 1991, he worked at Tower Records. There, he met drummer Patrick Wilson. Rivers started to move away from metal music. He began to like alternative bands like Nirvana and the Pixies. He also deeply studied the Beach Boys and the Beatles. These bands greatly influenced his songwriting.
Weezer's Journey
Rivers Cuomo formed Weezer in 1992. He started the band with Patrick Wilson, bassist Matt Sharp, and guitarist Jason Cropper. "Weezer" was a nickname Rivers' father gave him when he was little. On June 25, 1993, Weezer signed with DGC Records. They released their first album, the Blue Album, in May 1994. Jason Cropper left the band during recording. Brian Bell replaced him.
The Blue Album sold over one million copies by January 1, 1995. Rivers found touring tiring and lonely. He felt his songs were too simple. He wanted to write more complex and beautiful music.
In March 1995, Rivers had surgery to make his left leg longer. His left leg was about 1.7 inches shorter than his right. The surgery involved breaking the leg bone. He then had to wear a steel brace for months and do painful physical therapy. This experience affected his songwriting. He spent a lot of time in the hospital taking pain medication.
In late 1995, Rivers went to Harvard University to study classical music. He said he could only write songs when his dinner was in the microwave. He tried out for the Harvard chorus but wasn't chosen. He became very quiet and grew a beard. He even wrote to the Weezer fan club that students wearing Weezer T-shirts didn't recognize him.
Rivers had planned Weezer's second album to be a rock opera. But he changed his mind as his songs became "darker." He realized he didn't enjoy classical music. He missed Weezer and left Harvard before graduating. He put his feelings of loneliness and frustration from Harvard into Weezer's second album, Pinkerton. It was released in September 1996. Pinkerton had a darker sound than their first album. It was not popular at first, but later became highly praised.
After Pinkerton, Weezer took a three-year break. Rivers went back to Harvard two more times. He studied there in 1997 and 2004. In 1997, he played with a new band called Homie in Boston. In 1998, Rivers ended Homie. He moved to Los Angeles to work on new Weezer songs. But these sessions didn't go well. In 1998 and 1999, he lived alone in an apartment. He wrote that he became very isolated. He painted his bedroom walls black and covered the windows.
Rivers was disappointed by how Pinkerton was received. He decided to write simpler songs with less personal lyrics. He said Weezer's next albums, the Green Album (2001) and Maladroit (2002), were not about his life. He also started to appreciate pop music more. He felt pop music was important and connected with people.
In June 2006, Rivers graduated from Harvard with a degree in English. He was also chosen for a special academic honor society. On December 6, 2009, Rivers was hurt when his tour bus crashed. He had cracked ribs and internal bleeding. Weezer had to cancel their shows until 2010.
Other Music Projects
During Weezer's break after Pinkerton, Rivers formed Homie. He played what he called "goofball songs" with this band. They planned an album, but only one song, "American Girls," was released. Rivers has also worked on songs for other musicians. He managed the band AM Radio in 2002 and 2003.
In early 2004, Rivers played with former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp. They worked on music together, but it was never released. In March 2008, Rivers started a YouTube video series. He wrote a song with help from YouTube viewers. The finished song, "Turning Up the Radio," was released in 2010.
In December 2007, Rivers released Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. This album was a collection of his demo songs recorded from 1992 to 2007. He released Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo in November 2008. In November 2010, he released Alone III: The Pinkerton Years. This album was sold with a book called The Pinkerton Diaries. The book contained Rivers' writings from the time he made Pinkerton.
Rivers has appeared in music videos for other artists. He was also featured on the song "Boardwalk" by Sugar Ray. In April 2010, he was on the song "Magic" from B.o.B's first album.
In 2011, Rivers worked with Japanese singer Hitomi. He co-wrote and sang on her song "Rollin' with da Homies." He was also featured on songs by Simple Plan and Miranda Cosgrove. In 2013, Rivers released a Japanese-language album with Scott Murphy. Their group is called Scott & Rivers. The album was number one on the iTunes Japan alternative charts. In 2015, Rivers appeared on Big Data's song "Snowed In." He also produced a TV show pilot based on his life, but it wasn't picked up. In 2016, he wrote the song "She Makes Me Laugh" for the Monkees.
In 2017, Rivers was featured in songs by RAC and Vic Mensa. The same year, he helped write and appeared on AJR's "Sober Up". "Sober Up" reached number one on the Billboard Alternative Charts. This was Rivers' first solo song to reach number one on that chart. Rivers also helped write songs for 5 Seconds of Summer and Asian Kung-Fu Generation. In 2018, he released a song called "Medicine for Melancholy." In 2019, he wrote and performed "Backflip," the theme song for the Netflix series Green Eggs and Ham. In 2020, Rivers released over 2,000 demo songs and home recordings on his website.
In November 2022, Rivers released an Indonesian-language song called "Anak Sekolah." He later performed it live with Weezer in Jakarta. The idea to cover the song came from his online community. He had asked fans for Indonesian songs he could perform for Weezer's show there.
Rivers' Musical Style
Rivers Cuomo has a special way of writing songs. He sometimes uses a piano to create vocal melodies. This helps him make new sounds he wouldn't normally sing. He also sings melodies for guitar solos. This helps him create solos that people can sing along to. He keeps playlists of music with interesting chord progressions to get ideas.
Rivers has a tenor singing voice. When he writes lyrics, he often writes down his thoughts in a journal. He then picks out interesting lines. He organizes them by how many syllables they have. He finds lines that fit the song's melody. Then he puts them together to tell a story. Rivers rarely uses bad words in his lyrics. He said Weezer wanted to be different from other bands at the time. They looked back to cleaner rock and roll from earlier days. Rivers has tried different ways to help him focus on songwriting, like fasting.
Musical Inspirations
Rivers Cuomo has said that the Beach Boys were a big influence on his early songwriting. He bought their album Pet Sounds when he was young. He loved the melodies, chords, and feelings in that album. He said it was one of the biggest influences when Weezer was starting.
Before Weezer, Rivers liked heavy metal and catchy punk-pop music. While touring after the Blue Album, Rivers listened a lot to operas. These included Aida and Madama Butterfly. He also listened to the rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar and the musical Les Misérables. These influenced his writing for Pinkerton.
Rivers' other influences include the Beatles, Kiss, Nirvana, Green Day, and Sonic Youth. Many of these are mentioned in Weezer's 2008 song "Heart Songs." In the late 1990s, Rivers created his own "Encyclopedia of Pop." It was a binder where he studied pop and rock songs. He looked at songs by artists like Nirvana, Green Day, and Oasis.
Rivers' Guitars and Gear
Rivers recorded the Blue Album using a Gibson Les Paul Special and a Gibson Les Paul Junior. He also used a Fender Jaguar borrowed from the producer. His amplifier was a vintage Mesa/Boogie Mark I. For touring, he first used a blue Fender Stratocaster copy. He also used Marshall amps. That guitar was damaged in 1997 and stopped being used in 2000. In recent years, he has used other Stratocaster copies in different colors. He also uses a white Gibson SG guitar. His guitars are plugged into a special amplifier called a Kemper Profiler.
Personal Life
Rivers Cuomo chose not to be in romantic relationships from 2003 until his marriage in 2006. He felt this choice helped Weezer's album Make Believe (2005). On June 18, 2006, Rivers married Kyoko Ito. He met her in 1997 at one of his concerts. He asked her to marry him in Tokyo in 2005. Their wedding was on a beach in Malibu. All of Weezer's past and present members attended. They have two children, Mia (born 2007) and Leo (born 2012).
Rivers was born with legs of equal length. But as he grew, his right leg became almost two inches longer than his left. After the Blue Album became successful, he had surgery to fix this. The surgery involved breaking the bone in his leg. He then had to wear a steel brace for several months. He had to stretch his leg four times a day. Rivers said it was a very difficult experience.
Rivers has been a vegetarian since he was a child.
Rivers practices a type of meditation called Vipassanā. He was a student of a teacher named S. N. Goenka. As of 2009, he also teaches meditation to children. Rivers helped with a 2007 documentary called The Dhamma Brothers. It was about Vipassanā meditation being taught in a prison.
Rivers was a big fan of soccer from a young age. He wrote the 2006 song "My Day Is Coming" to support the U.S. men's soccer team. In 2010, he wrote "Represent," an unofficial song for the U.S. team. It was released as a Weezer song. In 2008, Rivers played in a celebrity soccer game and scored a goal. The music video for "Lover in the Snow" is about this game and his love for soccer. In 2009, Rivers played in a charity soccer tournament.
Rivers' hobbies include computer programming. He has taken computer science courses. He also has a GitHub profile and an online community server.
Discography
With Weezer
- Weezer (Blue Album) (1994)
- Pinkerton (1996)
- Weezer (Green Album) (2001)
- Maladroit (2002)
- Make Believe (2005)
- Weezer (Red Album) (2008)
- Raditude (2009)
- Hurley (2010)
- Death to False Metal (2010)
- Everything Will Be Alright in the End (2014)
- Weezer (White Album) (2016)
- Pacific Daydream (2017)
- Weezer (Teal Album) (2019)
- Weezer (Black Album) (2019)
- OK Human (2021)
- Van Weezer (2021)
- SZNZ: Spring (2022)
- SZNZ: Summer (2022)
- SZNZ: Autumn (2022)
- SZNZ: Winter (2022)
With Scott and Rivers
- スコット と リバース ("Scott & Rivers") (2013)
- ニマイメ ("The Second One") (2017)
Homie
- "American Girls" (Meet the Deedles soundtrack) (1998)
Solo
- Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007)
- Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2008)
- Not Alone – Rivers Cuomo and Friends: Live at Fingerprints (2009)
- Alone III: The Pinkerton Years (2011)
Singles
- Medicine For Melancholy (2018)
- Anak Sekolah (2022)
Weezify demo bundles
- Alone IV: Before Weezer (2020)
- Alone V: The Blue-Pinkerton Years (2020)
- Alone VI: The Black Room (2020)
- Alone VII: The Green Years (2020)
- Alone VIII: The Maladroit Years (2020)
- Alone IX: The Make Believe Years (2020)
- Alone X: The Red-Raditude-Hurley Years (2020)
- Alone XI: The EWBAITE Years (2020)
- Alone XII: The White Year (2020)
- Alone XIII: The Pacific Daydream Black Years (2021)
Images for kids
-
Cuomo playing a Fender Stratocaster in 2022
See also
In Spanish: Rivers Cuomo para niños
