Weezer's Weird World

A couple of days ago, Rivers Cuomo was helping his parents out with an epic spring cleaning at their house in suburban Connecticut -- "I was the motivational coach," he says. "My role was to ask, 'Do you really need this third can of hair spray?' " -- when it was decided that it would be better not to do the European promotional tour for Weezer's new album, Make Believe, the band's first record in three years. That meant two weeks free before they started rehearsals for the Make Believe tour. That meant Cuomo could do some more vipassana, a strict style of meditation developed by the Buddha and passed down by Burmese monks.

"There was nothing else for me to do," explains Cuomo.

Nothing is exactly what one does on a vipassana retreat: ten days of twelve hours of silent meditation beginning at 4 a.m., with small breaks for food but none for conversing. Most people wouldn't enjoy this, but Cuomo, 34, is not most people. Life to him seems to be a gigantic behavorial experiment, a large part of why Weezer have put out only five albums in thirteen years, despite their Prince-like vault of hundreds of songs. Cuomo had been to ten retreats in less than two years -- following precepts like sleeping on the floor and fasting after noon -- and he was ready for another. In fact, he completed one in northern Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago. That one was twenty days long, and he spent it in a closet. "It was great!" he says.

So instead of asking the band to head to the East Coast for the Rolling Stone photo shoot and interview before leaving for Europe, Cuomo decided to fly to California for a retreat in Yosemite, and if it was possible to accommodate the magazine in Los Angeles, great, but if not, he wasn't missing his retreat. "How many people would love to be on the cover, and then you've got Rivers saying, 'I can only do it on this one day, and if you can't fit it in, it won't work'?" says Weezer guitarist Brian Bell, 36. "On one hand, I'm like, 'Jesus, how could you do that to us? We've worked hard for twelve years and we finally make the cover, and you screw it up with one sentence.' Then there's another part of me that's like, 'That guy has balls!' Even if it is really selfish."

These are the kinds of things that happen, though, when you're living the moment, which is Cuomo's new mantra -- untethered from miserable thoughts about the past and future and free at last from the greedy ego, Cuomo is currently in communion with his deep, true self. This self needs to be free, and, accordingly, Cuomo has been careful not to make any pacts about future Weezer recordings; he has also only agreed to support this album until the end of this year. "We were going to call this record Either Way I'm Fine," says drummer Pat Wilson, 36. " 'Cause Rivers kept saying that when we had to decide about things." Serenity is important to Cuomo. The shoot at the Playboy Mansion for the video for their first single, "Beverly Hills," posed a threat. "There were 150 fans around, and when we played we heard that sound, that deafening sound that you get onstage," says Wilson. "I could see Dude telling himself, 'Hold on, hold on, don't get too excited!' "