Rivers Cuomo facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Rivers Cuomo
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Cuomo performing at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2022
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| Background information | |
| Also known as | Peter Kitts (1985–1987) |
| Born | June 13, 1970 New York City, U.S. |
| Origin | Mansfield, Connecticut, U.S. |
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| Years active | 1985–present |
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Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician. He is best known as the lead singer, guitarist, and songwriter for the rock band Weezer.
Cuomo was born in New York City. He grew up in different Buddhist communities in the northeastern U.S. until he was 10. His family then settled in Connecticut. He played in several bands before starting Weezer in 1992.
After Weezer's first album, the Blue Album (1994), became very popular, Cuomo went to Harvard University. He left college to record Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996). He later went back to Harvard and finished his degree in 2006. Even though Pinkerton was not popular at first, it is now seen as one of the best albums from the 1990s. Weezer has released many more albums since then.
Cuomo has also released his own music. These include collections of his early song ideas, called Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007). He has also shared thousands of his home recordings online. He has worked with many other artists, like AJR, Todd Rundgren, and Panic! at the Disco. With Japanese-American songwriter Scott Murphy, he has released two albums in Japanese as Scott & Rivers.
Contents
Early Life
Rivers Cuomo was born on June 13, 1970, in New York City. His father was of Italian background, and his mother was of German-English background. There are different stories about how he got his name. Some say his mother named him Rivers because he was born between the East and Hudson rivers in Manhattan. Others say she could hear a river outside her hospital window.
His father, Frank Cuomo, was a musician. He said Rivers was named after three famous soccer players: Rivellino, Luigi Riva, and Gianni Rivera. These players were all in the 1970 World Cup.
Rivers lived in Rochester, New York, at the Rochester Zen Center, until he was five. His mother then moved the family to Yogaville, a special community in Pomfret, Connecticut. In 1980, Yogaville moved to Virginia. Rivers' family decided to stay in Connecticut. They moved to the Storrs/Mansfield area.
During this time, Rivers went to Mansfield Middle School and E.O. Smith High School. He was in the high school choir and acted in a school play called Grease. For a while, he changed his name to Peter Kitts, but he went back to Rivers Cuomo after high school.
One of Rivers' first bands was a glam metal group called Avant Garde. In 1989, they moved to Los Angeles and changed their name to Zoom. The band broke up in 1990. Rivers also went to Santa Monica College. In 1990 and 1991, he worked at Tower Records. He listened to "basically everything that was released at that time." This helped him discover a lot of music.
Weezer
Rivers Cuomo started Weezer in 1992. The other members were Wilson, Matt Sharp, and Jason Cropper. "Weezer" was a nickname Rivers' father gave him when he was a little boy. In 1993, Weezer signed with DGC Records. They released their first album, the Blue Album, in May 1994. During the recording, Jason Cropper left and Brian Bell joined the band.
The Blue Album sold over one million copies by 1995. Rivers found touring tiring and 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. It was shorter than his right leg. This involved breaking the bone and wearing a steel brace for months. He also had painful physical therapy. This time in the hospital influenced his songwriting.
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 because he was so busy with homework. He tried out for the Harvard chorus but was not chosen. He became very quiet and grew a beard. He even wrote to the Weezer fan club that students wearing Weezer T-shirts did not recognize him.
Rivers had planned Weezer's second album to be a rock opera called Songs from the Black Hole. But his songs became "darker" and more personal. He realized he did not enjoy classical music and missed Weezer. So, he left Harvard before finishing his degree. He wrote about feeling alone at Harvard on Weezer's second album, Pinkerton, released in September 1996. Pinkerton sounded different from their first album and was not popular at first. However, it later became very well-liked by critics.
After Pinkerton, Weezer took a break for three years. Rivers went back to Harvard two more times and studied there in 1997 and 2004. In 1997, he played with a new band called Homie in Boston. In 1998 and 1999, he lived in a small apartment in Culver City, California. He wrote that he became "more and more isolated."
Because Pinkerton was not popular at first, Rivers 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 me." He also started to like pop music more. He felt pop music could move people and was important to culture.
In June 2006, Rivers graduated from Harvard with a degree in English. In December 2009, he was hurt when his tour bus crashed on an icy road. Weezer had to cancel their shows until 2010.
Other Projects
During Weezer's break after Pinkerton, Rivers formed the band Homie. They played what he called "goofball songs." They planned an album, but only one song, "American Girls," was released. Rivers has also worked on songs for other musicians like Crazy Town and Cold. He also helped manage the band AM Radio in 2002 and 2003.
In early 2004, Rivers played with former Weezer bassist Matt Sharp on stage. 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 song ideas 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 was sold with a book called The Pinkerton Diaries, which had Rivers' writings from that time.
Rivers has appeared in music videos for other artists. He was also featured on songs like "Boardwalk" by Sugar Ray and "Magic" by B.o.B. In 2011, he worked with Japanese singer Hitomi on her album Spirit. He also sang on the Simple Plan song "Can't Keep My Hands Off You" and Miranda Cosgrove's song "High Maintenance."
In 2013, Rivers released a Japanese-language album with Scott Murphy. They called themselves 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 wrote the song "She Makes Me Laugh" for the Monkees in 2016.
In 2017, Rivers was featured in RAC's "I Still Wanna Know" and Vic Mensa's "Homewrecker." He also helped write and sang on AJR's "Sober Up." "Sober Up" became a number one hit on the Billboard Alternative Charts. 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 sang "Backflip," the theme song for the Netflix show Green Eggs and Ham. In 2020, Rivers released over 2,000 of his old song ideas online.
In November 2022, Rivers released a song in Indonesian called "Anak Sekolah." He later sang it live with Weezer in Jakarta. He got the idea to cover the song from his Discord server, where he asked fans for Indonesian songs he could perform.
Artistry
Rivers Cuomo has a special way of writing songs. He sometimes uses the piano to create new melodies for his voice. He also sings melodies for guitar solos. This helps him create solos that people can sing along to. He listens to music with different chord progressions on Spotify to get ideas.
Rivers has a tenor singing voice. When he writes lyrics, he writes down his thoughts in a journal. He then picks out interesting lines and organizes them by how many syllables they have. He finds lines that fit the song's melody and puts them together to tell a story. He has tried different ways to help him focus on songwriting, like fasting.
Influences
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 starting Weezer. He loved the melodies and feelings in that album.
When touring after the Blue Album, Rivers listened a lot to operas like Aida and Madama Butterfly. He also listened to rock operas like Jesus Christ Superstar and musicals like Les Misérables. These influenced his album Pinkerton.
Other artists who influenced Rivers include the Beatles, Kiss, Nirvana, Green Day, the Who, and Pixies. In the late 1990s, he studied pop and rock songs by artists like Nirvana and Oasis. In 2008, he said rapper Eminem was a big inspiration because of his "creativity" and "playfulness."
Equipment
For the Blue Album, Rivers used a Gibson Les Paul Special guitar and a Fender Jaguar guitar. He also used a Mesa Boogie Mark I amplifier. For touring, he first used a blue Warmoth Fender Stratocaster-style guitar and Marshall amps.
In recent years, he has used other Warmoth Strat-style guitars in different colors. He also uses a white Gibson SG guitar. During the Hella Mega Tour in 2021, Rivers played a Jackson Rhoads guitar. This might be a nod to guitarist Randy Rhoads. His guitars are connected to a Kemper Profiler amp.
Personal Life
On June 18, 2006, Rivers Cuomo married Kyoko Ito. He met her in 1997 at one of his concerts in Cambridge. 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.
Rivers was born with legs that were the same length. But as he grew, his right leg became almost two inches longer than his left. After the Blue Album became popular, he had surgery to fix this. This involved breaking the bone in his leg and wearing a steel brace for several months. He had to stretch his leg four times a day.
Rivers has been a vegetarian since he was a child.
Rivers practices a type of meditation called Vipassanā. He also teaches meditation to children. He helped support a 2007 movie called The Dhamma Brothers. This movie was about Vipassanā meditation being taught in a prison.
Rivers has loved soccer since he was young. He wrote the song "My Day Is Coming" in 2006 to support the U.S. men's soccer team. In 2010, he wrote "Represent," an unofficial song for the U.S. team for the World Cup. Rivers has also played in charity soccer games.
Rivers' hobbies include computer programming. He has a GitHub profile and a Discord 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
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Cuomo performing at Rock am Ring and Rock im Park in 2022
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Rivers Cuomo's signature
See also
In Spanish: Rivers Cuomo para niños
