DISGRACELAND - Weezer: How a "Dorky" Rock Band Found Their Dark Side

Episode Date: May 26, 2026

A frontman obsessed with Kurt Cobain. A band trying to outrun its own dorky image. A bass player who burned hot, disappeared, and later seemed to predict his own death. Harvard isolation, hotel-room debauchery, algorithmic songwriting, and a Weezer T-shirt at the center of an LAPD shooting. Listen to find out how Rivers Cuomo’s perfectly controlled rock band found its dark side. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to exclusive bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Elvis. What happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that. A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. I scream. Get down. Get down. Those are shots. A tragedy that's now forgotten.

End of mystery. That may or may not have been political. That may have been about sex. Listen to Roershack. Murder at City Hall on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get. your podcasts. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world.

Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world. I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The Justice Department through, we counted four presidential administrations, failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers, and guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, next? Huge news. We created our own podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with a name, Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. and then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast.

But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Weezer are not supposed to be this in singing.

They involve a bass player who predicted his own death. Another bass player whose wife got into a gunfight with the LAPD. A frontman who is obsessed with Kurt Cobain and who maybe was Kirk Cobain. Wait a minute, what? You'll see. This was a front man who wasn't your typical rock and roll archetype, not a burnout or an outlaw or some doomed rock and roll savage. Now, Rivers Cuomo was more of an analyst

than an anarchist. The type of rock and roller who studied songs like they were calculus and surprisingly, as a result, made great music. Unlike that music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Kurt Cuomo MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Luther by Kendrick Lamar and Siza. And why would I play you that specific slice of velvet voice adjacent cheese, could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on April 8, 2025. And that was the day that Weezer got dragged closer to a true crime scandal than they ever had been in their 30-plus year history. On this episode, a death prediction, a gunfight, burnouts, outlaws, savannah. The Anti-Rock Rockstar, Rockstar Rivers Cuomo, and Weiser. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Earlier this year, 2006, a so-called peer-reviewed report by a team of private forensic scientists attempted to disrupt the official narrative that Kurt Cobain's death was the result of suicide. The report argued that the evidence supports not a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head,

but instead a staged homicide. The report questioned whether Kurt's body had been positioned or posed. It raised the skeptical eyebrow at a receipt for bullets found in his pocket, and it noted the tidy condition of his works, the stuff he used to shoot heroin, most notably the cap needles that contained the heroin

that he'd shot moments before he died. But despite all of this, the report is flimsy at best. Not to mention far from revelatory. No, Kirk Cobain was not murdered. But this new report, in the coverage it received in the media, did cause another old internet theory to resurface. And that theory is that Kurt Cobain did not die at all.

That's right. The theory is that Kurt Cobain faked his own death. Later on, the frontman would laugh about how the clues had been there all along, Like how he dressed in the music video for Nirvana's In Bloom, the horn-rimmed glasses, the button-down dress shirt. That video foreshadowed what came next. Kurt cut his long hair short, and he shaved his face until it was smooth, as the bare bottom of that baby that was on the cover of Nevermind, and as smooth as the voice he was now using to sing, it was a different voice.

Gone was his trademark punk rock howl. In its place was a clearer, purer. voice. It was the voice behind his next hit song, a catchy tune inspired by that all of drab cardigan he'd famously worn during Nirvana's appearance on MTV Unplugged. And the song was called Undone, The Sweater Song. And it was the lead single off the debut album by Kurt's new band, a band that like Nirvana had a one-word name. That's right. Kirk Cobain did not die in 1994. Kirk Cobain secretly became Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer. As music conspiracy theories go, I got to say this one is both pretty ridiculous and pretty hysterical.

Rivers Cuomo himself thought that it was funny enough to actually entertain the concept a few years back on Rick Rubin's podcast, even playing along as if it were true and as if he were Kurt Cobain for real. But still, though it's good for a laugh and all, imagine that your Kurt. Cobbing, a bona fide rock star, badass to your core. And then further imagine that you are beset on all sides by rubberneckers who want everything from you, your blood, your sweat, your tears. Would it not be in line with your badass rock star character? Would it not be the ultimate fuck you to all of these culture vultures if you were to fake your own death and then live in secrecy as a nerd. Now, imagine the reverse. Imagine the tame nerd becoming the feral rock star.

Imagine Rivers Cuomo becoming Kurt Cobain? That seems like a more unbelievable proposition. But that's exactly what Rivers Cuomo wanted to do. Rivers Cuomo wanted it so badly to become Kurt Cobain that he kept a three-ring binder full of mathematical deconstructions of every Nirvana song. He studied them. He needed to understand how they were made. And by doing so, he could then write his own songs that would be just as impactful and beloved. But Rivers Cuomo wanted much more than to simply crack Kurt Cobain's code. I seriously thought we were the next Nirvana, Rivers told Rolling Stone in 2019 on the 25th anniversary of Weezer's debut. And I thought the world was going to perceive us that way, like a super important, super powerful, heartbreaking heavy rock band and a serious, artists. In May of 1994, one month after Kurt Covain's death, when Weezer released their self-titled debut album, or the Blue album, as it's now known, the quartet of Rivers Cuomo on guitar and vocals and Matt Sharp on bass, Brian Bell on guitar, and Patrick Wilson on drums were not seen as a super important, super powerful, heartbreaking, heavy rock band, nor were they seen as serious

artists. Instead, they were seen as four lovable dork. with a couple catchy songs. Not that there's anything wrong with that. And this isn't to say that they weren't commercially successful either because they absolutely were. After a slow burn on the charts, nine months to be exact, their debut album reached number 16 on the Billboard 200, and its three excellent singles, Undone, the sweater song,

Buddy Holly, and Say It Ain't So, all cracked the top ten on the modern rock chart. It wasn't the charts that didn't take Weiser seriously, though. It was the world. That same world had now turned and left Rivers right here with his bull cut and his thick black glasses, looking far younger than his 23 years, strumming a powder-blue Stratocaster and a goofy Spike Jones directed video that recreated the set of the, let's be honest, pretty lame TV show, Happy Days.

Rivers saw how the world saw him and it hurt him deeply. He had thought he'd been betrayed by his own arm and it wouldn't. be the first time. Rivers thought of meditation to take his mind off of things. He closed his eyes and hoped the process would come back to him like riding a bicycle, the breathing, the focus. Years earlier, in the mid-70s, he was made to perform meditation daily at Yogaville, a Hindu ashram in Connecticut where he lived with his family. But silence and stillness were not for Rivers Cuomo. He knew this as young as a seven-year-old when he heard real, rock and roll for the first time.

The girl was a stranger, a fleeting visitor to the otherwise insulated Yogaville community. Under her arm, she carried an album, rock and roll over by a band called Kiss. She passed the album to Rivers Cuomo as though it was a secret, and he gazed shyly at the cover art, lost in the dizzying cartoon collage of Paul, Jean, Peter, and Ace. The face paint, the curled devil's tongue, the x-ray eyes. It all felt forbidden and dangerous, primal, and animalistic. One of the guys in the band even looked like a cat. It was the coolest thing young Rivers Cuomo had ever seen.

And when they put the record on the turntable and the needle hit the groove, all Rivers wanted to do was run around the room in circles. The music took possession of his mind and body. It consumed him. By high school, he was fronting his own metal band and had to be. At age 19, Rivers Cuomo and his band made the move from Connecticut to Los Angeles to hit the big time. But even though Rivers had long ago been switched on by Kiss, he was no face paint-wearing-tong-wagging showman. Instead, he remained the shy, wallflower ashrum kid at heart. The LA scene, on the other hand,

was run by rock-and-roll animals, the deviance, the savages. There was no place for the meek and mild when Rivers Cuomo's high school band was quickly chewed up and spit up. Still, Rivers remained determined. He would follow the path of the true artists. The path forged by the Beach Boys, Brian Wilson, who Rivers learned about while working at Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard. The same path later trampled by Kirk Cobain, whose songs Rivers Cuomo studied like they were fourth period algebra.

With Weezer, Rivers played a ton of shows. He gigged hard. he worked harder than most to plant his own mild-mannered flag in a scene full of unruly animals. Now, finally, it looked as though success had come. But it was success on someone else's terms. Spring, 1995. Rivers Cuomo reclined in his seat as Weezer's tour bus rumbled down the highway. A mischievous grin crept across his face as he thought about the previous night.

Not about the show itself, but the after-party. His hotel room, 10, maybe 15 women, attractive, excitable. All of them, they're not so much because he was Rivers Cuomo, but just because he was a rock star. For months, Rivers hadn't been able to work up the courage to do what he thought a true rock star would do to engage in some wild and debauched orgy. Hammer the gods type stuff, which left these female fans milling around, raiding the minibar and talking about how much they loved Green Day or whatever, because, you know, normally Rivers wasn't all about that.

But last night was different. Last night, Rivers even surprised himself when he boldly made the announcement. Any woman who wanted to stay had to get naked in the room cleared out. Almost. Four women stayed behind. Four women who proceeded to remove every article of their clothing, just as Rivers had instructed them. But anything goes encounters with fans of the opposite sex,

wasn't enough to keep Rivers Cormall on the hamster wheel. He'd been out on the road with Weezer for a year straight, and already the monotony was crushing his soul, playing the same ten songs from your one record every single night, giving the same dumb responses to a different dumb journalist every single day. He wondered if Kurt Cobain had felt this way, like he was slowly watching his own life waste away. Actually, he didn't have to wonder because he knew the answer. So, like Kurt, Rivers decided to do something about it. But unlike Kurt, Rivers didn't turn a shotgun on himself and pulled the trigger, because Rivers Cuomo was a different type of rock star. He was the opposite of Kurt Cobain. So, Rivers Cuomo quit his own band and went to college.

It is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate, love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride Canada. Stream us on your phone or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Your husband is not who you think he is.

Your body is not what you saw it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships,

and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car

and drove off and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Chris Fairbanks. And I'm Karen Kilgariff. We host you, need a ride, the mobile comedy podcast that answers the question, what does it sound like when

we drive our comedian friends around the wild streets of Los Angeles? Yes, every week, we pick up a hilarious guest, maybe run some errands, share some laughs, and our dreams. Like when Martha Kelly shared her career pivot. I want to become a influencer of divorced moms whose kids have gone off to college who have decided they're going to start living life for themselves. Or the time Baron Vaughn got distracted by the majestic scenery. There's a freaking deer right there on this side of the road. Oh, that's great. Holy shit.

Eating freaking road grass. Road grass. I wish you said glass. New episodes drop every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts? Thank you. You're welcome. The Elisarav Technique, developed in the 1950s by a professor in the former Soviet Union,

is a surgical procedure that uses an external. device to help reconstruct, reshape, or lengthen bones, usually in the limbs. Following surgery, the Elyzerov apparatus or fixator, as it's also known, is attached to the exterior of the body with a series of rings, rods, adjustable nuts, and wires. It basically looks like metal scaffolding around your body. The thing works via distraction osteogenesis, which is a fancy way of saying that this gnarly looking apparatus, gradually separates a surgically cut segment of the bone in order to allow new bone to grow and fill the gap. Though it may seem like an archaic process, the Elisorov

technique is still used to this day in orthopedic surgery when someone has, for instance, legs that are two different lengths, which is exactly the problem that Rivers Cuomo faced when he put his rock star career on hold to enroll at Harvard University in the fall of 1990. A jolt of pain shot up Rivers' leg as he twisted the screw of the metal cage apparatus that enveloped his right leg. He winced, alone in his small dorm room, and then prepared to do the same with the next screw. Four screws in total every day. He was excruciating. Rivers' right leg was almost two inches shorter than his left.

Almost two inches! And after doctors cut his femur in half, they set him up with a number. the Lizarov fixator. Over time, the painful daily ritual of turning the screws would pull the two halves of his femur apart and allow for new bone to develop until both of his legs were roughly the same length. The whole thing was conspicuous and embarrassing. Rivers limped across Harvard Yard from one class to the next, his apparatus rattling, a cane in his hand to keep him upright. He looked like an old man, and the beard he was growing only added to the picture of frailty. But it also made him unseen in a different way.

The kid in the weezer shirt sitting next to him on the tee had no idea who Rivers was. Neither did his classmates, or the girl, the one he pined for from afar. She had no idea he existed, not as a musician or a celebrity or even as another student, a pitiful one at that, popped up on pain meds with this janky pey. piece of medieval steel protruding from his leg. The unknown, unrequited love, the isolation, the pain. It all dovetailed with his swift disillusionment in academia, or at least when it came to his chosen major, classical music composition.

What was he trying to prove? That a quote-unquote serious artists belong not on the road but in a classroom? He didn't have to be here at Harvard. he could be in the studio doing what he'd always wanted to do since he held that kiss record in his hands. This time, there was an opportunity to seize. It was staring him in the face. Put Harvard on hold, get Weezer back together, and record a batch of new songs, transformative songs, songs that were nothing like the songs on the Blue album,

songs that would prove once and for all that he was a serious artist, that he was deep and tortured, that he really wasn't all that different from. Kirk Cobain after all. It was this line of thinking that led to a decision that Rivers Cuomo would later see as one of the greatest mistakes of his professional life. Weezer's sophomore studio album, Pinkerton, was released in September of 1996. Musically and lyrically, the record came as a shock. The Blue album's Sonic Templet was in part defined by their producer, Rico Kasich, of the

cars, who turned the gain on their amplifiers all the way up but turned the voluically. all the way down, thus capturing a crunching guitar sound that wasn't noisy and didn't feed back. But on the self-produced Pinkerton, the guitars routinely squelched out of control. The bass and the drums were pushed into the red. Rivers still in his Elisorov apparatus, still in physical and emotional pain, delivered raw, physical and emotional vocal performances of lyrics that were extremely personal and nakedly documented this current state of alienation. It was an abrasive about face for Weezer.

And honestly, Pinkerton is fucking awesome. This record is great. It's so much better than the so-called blue album. I don't care what anybody says. However, the intention for Rivers was to prove Weezer's biggest critics wrong. The critics hated Pinker. So did many of the fans.

It was voted the third worst album of 1996 in a Rolling Stone Reader's poll right behind Bush's Razorblade suitcase and DJ Spooky's Songs of a Dead Dreamer. And while Pinkerton did have its cohort of diehard fans, Rivers started to believe what the detractors were saying about Pinkerton. He'd bared it all, ripped his heart out and put it on his sleeve, beating and bloody, and no one cared at all, it seemed. The Rivers Cuomo needed a distraction, something deeper than meditation. He needed to get back to the good life, the life of the road, shaking booty and making sweet love every night. You know how the song goes. The life that once boredom to tears would now dull the heartache that he was feeling

as he tried to escape that life. Make that make sense. The Pinkerton tour of 1996 and 1997 was happening just as the internet was evolving at move fast and break shit speed. Soon, word of the Weezer frontman's sexual conquest spread to a Geocity's website with the unfortunate title, Rivers L. Pervo. Now, on the website Rivers El Pervo, fans or former fans, I don't know, they detailed both Rivers' alleged methods to select and lure women backstage like he was David Lee Roth or

something, and also his, again, alleged interactions with girls who were barely of legal age. Rivers freaked out when he came face to face with Rivers L. Pervo. He no doubt immediately thought of the lyrics to the Pinkerton song across the sea. It's a song he wrote in response to an actual letter that he received from an 18-year-old female Japanese fan. The lyrics to the song lay out his moral quandary in how or if he should respond. respond to this barely legal fan, and he even wondered aloud in the song, quote, I wonder how you touch yourself, unquote. Not that he'd done anything wrong, not legally anyways.

Certainly every word out of his mouth now with this Rivers L. Pervo website was going to be scrutinized and worse, documented, online. So, Rivers Cuomo stopped with the naked hotel room shenanigans. he stopped having assistance scour the audience for women who were, you know, looking like they wanted to hang out with a rock star. Yet, Rivers Cuomo's libido raged on, which is how Rivers Cuomo began visiting massage parlors. Every show and every city. Now with a guaranteed happy and hush-hush ending. The massage parlors offered a discrete location, offered a discrete solution.

The encounters were, um, anonymous, and these were his secrets, the secrets of a rock star, which, despite what the world thought of him, was still what Rivers Cuomo yearned to be. That is, until a real rock star entered his life. Boston, the south end, Mikey Welsh walked confidently into the deluxe. The collection of lights glowing from behind the bar made it look like it was Christmas time, even though it was spring. Mikey pushed past the collection of off-duty bike messengers who went by the name the Boston blackouts. There were nursing bottles of high life

over by the kitsy Elvis lamb. Mikey caught the bartender's attention in ordered as usual, a glass of red wine. At 27 years old, Mikey Welsh was already a legend in the Boston rock scene, a real, if you know, you know, kind of dude,

not to mention a hell of a bass player for bands like Heretics and Jaco Bono and Left Nut. But Mikey's notoriety was just regional. Again, if you know you know, that kind of thing. So, when Mikey Welsh saw the diminutive bespectical dude making his way through the deluxe headed in his general direction and then immediately clocked him as Rivers Cuomo of Weezer,

one of the most badass rock dudes in Boston felt something that he didn't feel every day. Starstruck. Hey man, are you Mikey? Mikey the bass player? Rivers asked when he was close enough. The Boston's guy said that I should talk to you. The Boston's, as in the mighty. mighty boston's. Later, Mikey Welsh wouldn't remember exactly what he said. The words just sort of

nervously tumbled from his mouth. But whatever it was, it must have been good enough because Rivers Cuomo of Weezer wasted no time and asked Mikey Welsh to jam with him. Mikey didn't know it at the time. Many didn't, but by the end of the Pinkerton tour, Matt Sharp, Weezer's bass player, would be out of the band. It wasn't the first time that Weezer had experienced turnover. During the making of the Blue album, founding guitarist Jason Cropper was fired and replaced with Brian Bell. Matt Sharp later revealed that he was also fired, like Jason, before him, although Rivers says that the real reason Matt left was to focus on his other band, the so-called Friends of Pea, the Rentals. Whatever the case, by 1998, Matt Sharp was out and Mikey Welsh was in.

Mikey left Boston for L.A., moving into an apartment with Rivers on Sepulveda Boulevard. in Culver City. In doing so, Rivers got a front row seat to a true rock and roll animal. Because Mikey Welsh was the one. Mikey was the one mixing Clonopin, Speed, and Red Wine. Mikey was the one dropping LSD right before Weezer's first secret show, playing Nirvana covers under the name Goat Punishment. Mikey was the one tripping his balls off on No Effects' tour bus,

eating mushrooms while watching a porno with Fat Mike and the show. the gang on a large screen TV. Mikey was the one hanging around the kinds of people your mother warned you about. Fuck, Mikey was the type of person that your mother warned you about. But Mikey hung around with them because these were the types of people who had drugs. And for a guy like Mikey Welsh, not only did you play rock and roll, you got high. And yeah, it was dark. But to a guy like Mikey Welsh, that's what rock and roll was.

And Mikey brought that darkness and the danger that went along with it. to Weezer in a way that Rivers Cuomo never could. And pretty soon all that darkness in danger became too much, even for a rock and roll animal like Mikey Welsh to handle. Because in just a few years' time, as Weezer hit the biggest peak of their career to date, Mikey Welsh would go missing. We'll be right back after this word, word, word.

Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR Radio. Canada's number one streaming app for radio podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere.

Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Or listen now at iHartRadio.ca. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you saw it was. Your identity is formed by a. Secret History. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air, so much so

that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive headfirst into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Will Ferrell's big money players and IHeart podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet.

Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school. Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks.

Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they had a bogo. Well, then you got it. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio. app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. New Year's Eve, 1998. Beck was talking, but Mikey Welsh could only make out every other word. Something about Tommy Lee of Motley Crew falling sideways into the bushes outside.

Mikey just smiled and nodded. He was only half paying attention anyways. His mind was likely squarely fixated on the baggie of cocaine stuck inside of his pocket. The shit weighed a ton. standing next to him, having better luck in the conversation department, was Rivers Cuomo, who was chatting up their host, Gwen Stefani, who had invited the guys to her New Year's Eve party after Weezer opened a few dates for no doubt. Rivers was obviously having a good time, and Mikey loved to see it. Over the last few months, Rivers had become something of a recluse, depressed, not writing.

The muse had packed her things and flown the coup. Mikey couldn't help but wonder if that Mews had been the guy he replaced, Matt Sharp. Anyway, Mikey had been spending lots of time with the 72-hour party people up in the Hollywood Hills. The benders were so insane that they bordered on lethal. It was a miracle that Mikey stumbled home alive every night. One time, he found his way back to the apartment that he shared with rivers, only to find that his roommate had painted the walls in the ceilings of his bedroom black. He'd also covered up his windows and disconnected.

the phone. It was just fucking weird, and it worried Mikey. But tonight, near his Eve, he told himself that he wasn't going to worry about all that, not with Beck mumbling in his general direction, and no doubt boring the shit out of him. The cocaine was calling. Mikey asked Gwen Stefani where the bathroom was, and then he excused himself, leaving Rivers Cuomo to handle the small talk. Mikey hit the bathroom, locked the door, dumped the contents of the baggie onto the sink. rolled up a dollar bill and snorted it all. Hours later, morning came. The first day of 1999.

Mikey's head was pounding. He went looking for some hair of the dog and instead found Rivers Cuomo, not hiding away in his blacked-out bedroom and not nursing a hangover like Mikey as bass player, but typing furiously on his computer. Rivers was beginning to catalog all of his songs in a spreadsheet,

organizing them, analyzing them, not unlike his three-ring binder of old in which he did the same thing with the songs of Kurt Cobain. This labor-intensive process was so not rock and roll, but it somehow had creatively recharged Rivers. Perhaps it was the call-to-action

of a New Year's resolution. Years later, this academic fascination with the mechanics of the perfect pop song would inspire Rivers Cuomo to use, algorithms in his own songwriting, even to write an entire album with the help of a computer formula he had developed. Mikey didn't get it. His version of rock and roll was about losing yourself, not making sense of yourself

with ones and zeros. But then, pretty soon, nothing much was making sense to Mikey anymore. 2001 was the year everything changed. For Weezer, it was the year that they released their third studio album, which became their highest charting record to date. The green album, as it's known, went all the way to number four on the Billboard 200. And just to be clear, it's called the green album because, like their self-titled debut, it was self-titled and also featured a cover photo of the band against the solid color background,

this time green instead of blue. The album was led by the rousing single, Hash Pipe, which Rivers called a totally insane song about a homosexual transvestite prostitute. Rivers wrote Hash Pipe while using a short-lived. creative technique, no doubt inspired by the antics of Mikey Welsh. This technique involved chasing a Ritalin pill with three shots of tequila. It proved to be unsustainable, just as Mikey Welsh's lifestyle was unsustainable, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Hashpipe combined the witty, power-poppy charm of the Blue album with the sonic intensity of Pinkerton, but it did so with

Rivers' very public rejection of Pinkerton. Speaking with the press, he called the called Pinkerton a sick album, sick in a diseased way, as he put it. He didn't care if Pinkerton was amassing its own cult of fans who loved it more than anything, who loved it more than his other records. He never wanted to play or even hear those songs ever again. It was too painful. Besides, he was living out his rock and roll fantasy, playing his Ritalin and Tequila song Hash Pashpipe at the MTV Movie Awards in front of a full-on pyrotechnics display

that would make Jean Simmons from Kiss happy. But 2001 was not all pyrotechnics and rock and roll dreams. For Mikey Welsh, 2001 became a nightmare. The MTV Movie Awards were part of an insane stretch for Weezer. They toured the States, played Coachella, played Saturday Night Live, played late night with Conan O'Brien, toured Europe, taped top of the pops, and then returned back home to appear on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

As they stepped onto the NBC studio stage in Burbank on July 27th, Mikey Welsh was hanging on by a single tattered thread. His drug use had spiraled out of control. He'd lost 70 pounds. You wouldn't know that something was wrong if you watched the Leno clip now because Mikey Welsh is super engaged. As always, the most animated one in the group, repeatedly interacting with the crowd as the band performs the Green album's second single,

Island in the Sun. But by the time that performance aired on the Tonight Show later that evening, Mikey Welsh had disappeared. It would be days before Rivers, Brian, and Pat even knew that anything was wrong. They found it strange when Mikey didn't show up to rehearsal. Stranger still, when no one in the band could reach him on the phone. It's unclear exactly how they found out, but before too long, word reached the Weezer camp

that Mikey had suffered a mental breakdown shortly after taping on Jayline. him. He had tried to commit suicide by overdosing. His heart nearly quit on him. He slipped into a coma, and when he regained consciousness, he discovered that he was locked up in a psychiatric hospital. Mikey Welsh suffered from bipolar disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and borderline personality disorder. He'd gone undiagnosed his entire life and had been fueling the psychological fire with copious drug use. It was a near fatal combination, but by getting the help he needed, by leaving Weezer and the music industry, and by refocusing his creative life as a painter, Mikey Welsh was now safe, for a moment at least.

After he left Weiser, Rivers Cuomo had lost his rock star avatar, not to mention Weezer's rock star street cred. So, Rivers immediately made a call to an L.A. Music Scout with a deep rolodex of the rock star. professional musicians. Rivers knew and no uncertain terms what he was looking for. Send me the baddest, meanest, most evil guy you got, he said. So in other words, the exact opposite of Rivers Cuomo. And with that, Weezer got their new bass player and retained their rock star street credit. But most surprising of all, they also, unknowingly set in motion the most true crimey chapter in their 30-plus year career. And when the smoke cleared, some would be shot and wounded by the LAPD, and Weezer would never be looked at the same again.

Scott Shriner certainly looks like Rivers Cuomo's vision of the baddest, meanest, most evil guy. He's the one member of Weezer who has tattoos, visible at least. He's got a gold tooth. And when he was hired to replace Mikey Welsh on base, he showed up with that authentic rock and roll stench, unwashed, dirty, leather, smoldering Marlboro Red hanging from his lip. In fact, his appearance was so gnarly that Rivers Cuomo actually mistook Scott Shriner for Scott Shrinner's bass tech when he first auditioned. But by 2010, when Weiser released their eighth studio album, Hurley, their fifth album with Scott,

some fans of the band were no longer finding Weezer anywhere near as gnarly as Scott's appearance at that first audition. The hardcore lesion of fans who were ride or die for Pinkerton, the album that Rivers had bitterly turned his back on years prior, was only growing in size. Emo bands that had since gone on to mainstream success were shouting out Pinkerton as a record that meant as much to them as Kisses Rock and Roll Over once meant to Rivers. And that same Legion of Fans also believed that Rivers' algorithmic songwriting methodology had cranked out the same sounding record over and over and over. again, whether it was Maladroit, make-believe, the red album, Rattitude, or Hurley, the complaint was the same. These songs about pork and beans and Beverly Hills, they suck in comparison to any song

off of Weezer's stripped, bare, cathartic, 1996 masterpiece, Pinkerton. So, when Hurley came out, one fan started a Kickstarter campaign online with a goal to raise $10 million in order to convince Weezer to break up. The campaign fell far short of its wafty goal, but not before Weezer's drummer Patrick Wilson tweeted, Make a 20 million and we'll do the deluxe breakup. One year later, in September of 2011, Patrick's former bandmate, Mikey Welsh, was the one posting on Twitter. Though unlike Patrick, Mikey wasn't joking around. On September 26th, he tweeted,

Drempt I died in Chicago next weekend. Heart attack in my sleep. Need to write my will today. hours later, he tweeted again, Correction, the weekend after next. And then, two weeks later, on October 8th, Mikey Welsh's body was found in his room by employees at the Rafaelo Hotel in Chicago. Prescription narcotics and a zip-block bag containing white powder presumed to be heroin,

both of which were found at the scene, are thought to have contributed to Mikey's death. But the official toxicology report came back inconclusive. Mikey Welsh was just 40 years old. The way in which Mikey seemingly predicted his own demise on Twitter caused the Internet to question if the whole thing was an eerie coincidence or if it was intentional. It's a similar rabbit hole now to the one the Internet fell down

to find out if Rivers Cuomo was actually Kirk Cobain or vice versa. But when it comes to Weezer, predictability is baked into the cake, so to speak. Or should I say it's mathematically determined by Rivers' very unrock and roll, very scholarly process of cataloging, writing, and arranging songs. And I don't mean that as a pejorative fully, I guess. I mean, I like some Weezer as much as the next guy, but not as much as I like Pinkerton Weezer.

This is a band that released an album of covers in 2019, mostly songs from the 1980s, performing them note for note with zero hints of irony. And with that, it's not a lot of creative risks. which is what makes the events of April 8th, 2025, not just unpredictable, but shocking. This morning, a true poloble crime with all the twists and turns of a blockbuster. And she wasn't just pointed it. Not only does, but she just lifted it up.

Jillian Shriner, the life of bass guitarist Scott Shriner, shot by police and arrested for attempted murder. multiple commands given to drop the gun, drop the weapon. She says there were three men and one of them shot her and the cops were used for him right now. Police say they then shot China. There is not a clear view of what she did with that firearm, and it's not clear at this time if she fired at the officers or not. She's seen in this body camera footage lying face down in the middle of the street.

Arms stretched out wild. He's injured but alive. The whole thing was surreal, like a white-knuckle standoff in a Sergio Leone film. On one side of a weathered wooden fence, members of the LAPD and the California Highway Patrol, their service weapons drawn, safeties off, standing their ground. On the other side, Gillian Lauren, aka Jillian Shriner, aka the wife of Weezer's bass player Scott Shriner, pacing barefoot in the backyard of her Eagle Rock home with a Glock 9mm in her right hand.

Just moments earlier, the cops had been in pursuit on foot of a suspect from a hit-and-run incident. But the chase was interrupted when Gillian Shriner unexpectedly emerged from her house, holding a loaded gun. The cops identified themselves, repeatedly shouting at Gillian to drop her weapon. She did not comply. Instead, she raised the Glock, pulled the trigger, and fired. The cops returned fire immediately, unloading 12 rounds in the base player of Weezer's wife's direction. One of the bullets caught her in the arm. She turned, retreating inside her house until about an hour later, when she at last surrendered, was arrested and was subsequently charged with the attempted murder of a peace officer.

All while, and I shit you not, wearing a Weezer t-shirt. Nearly six months later, a judge determined that Gillian's treasoned. Shriner was eligible for her mental health diversion, meaning no jail time. If she complied with the court's demand to attend therapy, to swear off firearms, and to avoid the use of drugs and alcohol for two years, all charges would be dropped. There are questions over what Jillian was able to hear during the altercation, and exactly who or what she thought was on the other side of that fence. A police helicopter was reportedly circling overhead the whole time, making it hard to hear anything clearly. One neighbor said that a stranger, possibly the hit-and-run suspect,

had jumped the fence into Gillian's yard, and that Gillian had seen this happen while still inside her house, and she was home alone with her two children at the time, so she grabbed her gun and sprung into protector mode. Details like these matter, of course, but for Weezer, and for Weezer's fans, the bigger shock is more simple. Weezer were not supposed to be a band that got within 10 miles of a violent confrontation of guns drawn, cops shouting, and blood spilled. Rivers wasn't built that way. Rivers Cuomo went from a massage parlor enthusiast in the 1990s to a guy who took a self-imposed vow of celibacy for years in the 2000s. He wasn't the hard-living Mikey Welsh. He wasn't the hard-looking Scott Shriner, and he certainly wasn't Kurt Cobain no matter

what they tell you. Instead, he was the spreadsheet. guy, the analyst. Rock and roll was something he could examine, catalog, and control. But the feral lifeblood that is rock and roll, it kept showing up anyways. It was there in some of the men that he called his bandmates, and then again in the wildlife surrounding one of them. And so in the end, the world looked at Weezer a little differently than they had in the beginning, which is to say the band had a dark side after all, a serious side. a side that could veer off to the margins and flirt with disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

All right, guys, thanks for checking on another episode of Disgraceland, this episode on Weezer. Listen, before we get into the question of the week, if you do not have automatic downloads turned on in Apple Podcast, please make sure that you do that. So you get every single Disgraceland episode automatically on your phone as it's released. Now for the question of the week, we talked about my favorite wheezer album in this episode, that being Pinkerton, which is their weirdest

album? And it just begs the question, I think, which record by which band is your favorite that is also their weirdest, their biggest outlier? The album that doesn't necessarily sound like the band sounds on their other albums, but is still great. Okay, let me know, 617-90666-638 voicemail and text at Disgracelampot on the socials. Disgracelampot at gmail.com. If you want to email me, here comes some credits. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network, and IHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member

right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelandPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rockerola.

What happened in City Hall? Somebody tell me that. A shocking public murder. This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics. I scream. Get down. Get down. Those are shots.

A tragedy that's now forgotten. End of mystery that may or may not have been political. That may have been about sex. Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Anna Navarro, and on my new podcast, Bleep with Anna Navarro. I'm talking to the people closest to the biggest issues happening in your community and around the world. Because I know deep down inside right now, we are all cursing and asking what the bleep is going on. Every week I'm breaking down the biggest issues happening in our communities and around the world.

I'm talking to people like Julie K. Brown, who broke the explosive story on Jeffrey Epstein in 2018. The Justice Department threw. We counted four presidential administrations failed these victims. Listen to Bleep with Anna Navarro on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, it's us to Jonas Brothers. And guess what? We have some big news. What's the news, next? Huge news. We created our own podcast. podcast called Hey Jonas. How do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys?

I honestly don't remember. We were talking about a bit for the podcast where people could call in and say, Hey Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title for the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Just listen. We don't care where you hear it.