MAKING OF THE ALBUM: Weezer – Weezer (The Blue Album)

Due to their recent commercial success with the albums Raditude and Hurley, many fans forget the cult appeal that geek group Weezer had when they first appeared sixteen years ago. The band were first discovered in 1993 by Todd Sullivan, an A&R representative from Geffen Records, who was invited to a gig after hearing a crudely recorded demo tape. At the time, the band lived in a small guest house in West Los Angeles, where twenty-two year old singer and guitarist Rivers Cuomo had begun writing material that the group would record for their demo, which would include I Swear It’s True and Lullaby for Wayne (the latter being co-written by drummer Patrick Wilson). Having been refused by several labels, Weezer were signed by Sullivan to Geffen in June 1993, around the same time that the band had begun taking vocal lessons after Cuomo expressed interest in his earlier singing with barbershop quartets.

With Cuomo as the principal songwriter, the band assembled around a dozen tracks, including one entitled Jamie that was in tribute to their attorney, who had supported the group as they had struggled to land a record deal. Another song, Susanne (later featured on the soundtrack to Kevin Smith’s teen comedy Mallrats), was a show of appreciation to an assistant at Geffen who had also championed the group. Much of the material that Cuomo and his bandmates would consider for their debut album had first been laid out in demo format in August 1992, long before they had attracted interest from any labels. Dubbed The Kitchen Tapes, the recordings would include earlier versions of five songs that would be included on their debut album. Whilst Geffen saw potential in the band they felt that they needed a producer instead of allowing them to record the album themselves and suggested Ric Ocasek, who had first risen to fame during the 1980s as the frontman for The Cars (best known for their 1984 hit Drive) and had since worked in a production capacity on several of their albums.

In order to gain a better understanding of what the band’s intensions were with their material, Ocasek took Weezer to S.I.R. Studios in New York City to run through the songs that they intended to record for the album. It would be during this process that they would abandon a handful of songs that would remain unreleased for several years, whilst crowd favourites like Undone (The Sweater Song) and My Name is Jonas would be refined. The actual recording sessions for the album would take place between August and September 1993 at Electric Lady Studios in New York, where Kiss had recorded their classics Destroyer and Dressed to Kill almost twenty years earlier. The tracks would later be mastered at Sterling Sound by George Marino, whose résumé included Guns N’ Roses acclaimed debut Appetite for Destruction and Mötley Crüe‘s best selling album Dr. Feelgood.

Weezer‘s eponymous debut album (their first of three self-titled records, dubbed by fans as The Blue Album) was released by Geffen on May 10th 1994 and failed to perform as well as the label had hoped until Susie Tenant, a promo rep from Seattle, managed to convince DJs to play their single Undone (The Sweater Song), which was accompanied by a video directed by up-and-coming filmmaker Spike Jonze, who would also direct their acclaimed breakthrough Buddy Holly soon afterwards. The latter would be nominated the following year for MTV’s Video of the Year alongside Green Day‘s Basket Case, although both would lose to TLC‘s hit Waterfalls. The regular airplay that both of Weezer‘s songs would receive would eventually result in the album selling over three million copies and reaching #16 on the US Billboard 200.