Pod Insights DISGRACELAND Weezer: How a "Dorky" Rock Band Found Their Dark Side About this episode 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.
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:51 Jake Brennan? Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.
2:06 Jake Brennan? The stories about Weezer are not supposed to be this insane. 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 Kurt Cobain. Wait a minute, what? You'll see. This was a frontman 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.
2:50 Jake Brennan? 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 Mellotron called Kurt Cuomo MK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA. 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,
3:35 Jake Brennan? burnouts, outlaws, savages, the anti-rock star-rock star Rivers Cuomo, and Weezer. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is DisgraceLand.
4:10 Jake Brennan? Earlier this year, 2026, 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 a 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 capped needles that contained the heroin that he'd shot moments before he died.
4:55 Jake Brennan? But despite all of this, the report is flimsy at best, not to mention far from revelatory. No, Kurt Cobain was not murdered. But this new report, and 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.
5:27 Jake Brennan? 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 olive drab cardigan he famously worn during Nirvana's
6:10 Jake Brennan? 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. Kurt Cobain did not die in 1994. Kurt Cobain secretly became Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer. As music conspiracy theories go, I gotta 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
6:53 Jake Brennan? as if he were Kurt Cobain for real. But still, though it's good for a laugh and all, imagine that you're Kurt Cobain, 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.
7:36 Jake Brennan? Imagine Rivers Cuomo becoming Kurt Cobain? That seems like a more unbelievable proposition, but that's exactly what Rivers Cuomo wanted to do.
7:50 Jake Brennan? 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 as serious artists." In May of 1994, one month after Kurt Cobain's death, when Weezer released their self-titled
8:35 Jake Brennan? 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 dorks 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
9:19 Jake Brennan? Holly," and "Say It Ain't So," all cracked the top 10 on the modern rock chart. It wasn't the charts that didn't take Weezer seriously, though. It was the world. That same world had now turned and left Rivers, right here with his bowl cut and his thick black glasses, looking far younger than his 23 years, strumming a powder-blue Stratocaster in a goofy Spike Jonze-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 art, and it wouldn't be the first time.
10:02 Jake Brennan? 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-seventies, 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 arms, she carried an album, "Rock and Roll Over" by a band called Kiss.
10:47 Jake Brennan? 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, Gene, 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.
11:19 Jake Brennan? 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. And by high school, he was fronting his own metal band, and at age nineteen, 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, tongue-wagging showman. Instead, he remained the shy, wallflower, ashram kid at heart. The L.A. scene, on the other hand, was run by rock and roll animals: the deviants, the savages.
12:01 Jake Brennan? It was no place for the meek and mild, where 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 Kurt 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.
12:45 Jake Brennan? 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. Ten, maybe fifteen women. Attractive, excitable. All of them there 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,
13:30 Jake Brennan? 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." And 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.
13:59 Jake Brennan? But anything goes encounters with fans of the opposite sex wasn't enough to keep Rivers Cuomo 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 10 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 pull the trigger. Because Rivers Cuomo was a different type of rock star.
14:42 Jake Brennan? He was the opposite of Kurt Cobain. So, Rivers Cuomo quit his own band and went to college.
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15:39 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
16:10 Speaker 07 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems: cloud platforms, data pipelines,
16:55 Speaker 07 AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Ana Paula Assis Anaxas CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day. Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.
17:43 Jake Brennan? The Elizarov 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 Elizarov 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
18:25 Jake Brennan? bone in order to allow new bone to grow and fill the gap. Though it may seem like an archaic process, the Elizorov 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 1995.
18:54 Jake Brennan? A jolt of pain shot up Rivers's 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. It was excruciating.
19:13 Jake Brennan? Rivers's 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 an Elizorov 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.
19:41 Jake Brennan? 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, hopped up on pain meds, with this janky piece of medieval steel protruding from his leg.
20:27 Jake Brennan? 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 "serious artist" belonged 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.
21:12 Jake Brennan? 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 Kurt 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.
21:37 Jake Brennan? 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 template was in part defined by their producer, Rico Kasek of The Cars, who turned the gain on their amplifiers all the way up but turned the volume all the way down, thus capturing a crunchy 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 Elizorov apparatus, still in physical and emotional pain, delivered
22:19 Jake Brennan? raw, physical, and emotional vocal performances of lyrics that were extremely personal and nakedly documented his current state of alienation.
22:30 Jake Brennan? It was an abrasive about-face for Weezer. And honestly, Pinkerton is fucking awesome. His 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. But the critics hated Pinkerton. So did many of the fans. It was voted the third worst album of 1996 in a Rolling Stone readers poll, right behind Bush's "Razor Glade Suitcase" and DJ Spooky's "Songs of a Dead Dreamer." And while Pinkerton did have his cohort of diehard fans, Rivers started to believe what the detractors were saying about Pinkerton.
23:14 Jake Brennan? He bared it all, ripped his heart out and put it on his sleeve, beating and bloody, and no one cared at all, it seemed.
23:23 Jake Brennan? 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 bored him to tears would now dull the heartache that he was feeling as he tried to escape that life. Make that make sense.
23:49 Jake Brennan? 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 GeoCities website with the unfortunate title "Rivers el Pervo." Now, on the website "Rivers el Pervo," fans, or former fans, I don't know, they detailed both Rivers's 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 El Purvo.
24:34 Jake Brennan? 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 to this barely legal fan, and he even wondered aloud in the song, "I wonder how you touch yourself." Not that he'd done anything wrong, not legally anyways. Certainly every word out of his mouth now with this Rivers El Purvo website was going to be scrutinized and worse, documented online.
25:16 Jake Brennan? So Rivers Cuomo stopped with the naked hotel room shenanigans. He stopped having assistants 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 in every city, now with a guaranteed happy and hush-hush ending. The massage parlors offered a discreet location, offered a discreet solution. The encounters were 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.
26:00 Jake Brennan? 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 kitschy Elvis Land. Mikey caught the bartender's attention and 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.
26:43 Jake Brennan? 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, bespectacled 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 Bostones guys said that I should talk to you." The Bostones, as in the mighty, mighty Bostones.
27:27 Jake Brennan? Later, Mikey Welsh wouldn't remember exactly what he said. The words just sort of nervously tumbled from his mouth. But whatever it was, that 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
28:10 Jake Brennan? of P, The Rentals. Whatever the case, by 1998, Matt Sharp was out and Mikey Welsh was in. Mikey left Boston for LA, 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 Klonopin, 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's tour bus,
28:52 Jake Brennan? eating mushrooms while watching a porno with Fat Mike and 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 and danger became too much, even for a rock and roll animal like Mikey Welsh to handle.
29:36 Jake Brennan? Because in just a few years' time, as Weezer hit the biggest peak of their career to date, Mikey Welsh would go missing.
29:50 Speaker 04 We'll be right back after this word, word, word.
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30:27 Jake Brennan? I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
30:58 Speaker 07 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. Imagine your business depends on a system you didn't build and don't fully control. For years, it works perfectly. It's fast, reliable, affordable. So over time, more and more of your operations rely on it. Then one day, the terms change. What once felt flexible now feels difficult to leave. Moving to another provider or bringing those capabilities back under your own control could take years, cost millions, and disrupt the business in the process. That's the challenge of digital sovereignty. Businesses today rely on all sorts of third-party systems:
31:41 Speaker 07 cloud platforms, data pipelines, AI models, software tools. Most days, these systems operate quietly in the background. But when something changes, like costs go up or rules shift, organizations are forced to confront how much control and flexibility they actually have. So to understand the challenge up close, I traveled to Paris to speak with IBM's Anupala Assis and acts as CIO, Giovanni Daniele, two people who think about these questions every day.
32:15 Speaker 07 Hear the full conversation at ibm.com/smarttalks or wherever you get your podcasts.
32:31 Jake Brennan? New Year's Eve, 1998. Beck was talking, but Mikey Welsh could only make out every other word. Something about Tommy Lee of Motley Crue 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.
33:10 Jake Brennan? 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 coop. Mikey couldn't help but wonder if that muse 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 and the ceilings of his bedroom black.
33:54 Jake Brennan? He'd also covered up his windows and disconnected the phone. It was just fucking weird, and it worried Mikey. But tonight, New Year's Eve, he told himself that he wasn't gonna 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.
34:37 Jake Brennan? 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.
35:21 Jake Brennan? 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.
35:57 Jake Brennan? 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 a solid color background, this time green instead of blue.
36:26 Jake Brennan? 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. "Hash Pipe" combined the witty, power-poppy charm of the "Blue" album with the sonic intensity of "Pinkerton", but it did so with Rivers's very public rejection of "Pinkerton." Speaking with the press, he called "Pinkerton"
37:07 Jake Brennan? "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 Pipe" at the MTV Movie Awards in front of a full-on pyrotechnics display that would make Gene Simmons from Kiss happy. But 2001 was not all pyrotechnics and rock and roll dreams. For Mikey Welsh, 2001 became a nightmare.
37:50 Jake Brennan? 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 Studios stage in Burbank on July 27, 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."
38:35 Jake Brennan? But by the time that performance aired on "The Tonight Show" later that evening, Mikey Welsh had disappeared.
38:42 Jake Brennan? 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 Jay Leno. 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.
39:26 Jake Brennan? 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 Weezer, 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 professional musicians. Rivers knew in no uncertain terms what he was looking for.
40:07 Jake Brennan? "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 cred. But most surprising of all, they also unknowingly set in motion the most true crime-y chapter in their 30-plus-year career. And when the smoke cleared, someone would be shot and wounded by the LAPD, and Weezer would never be looked at the same again.
41:04 Jake Brennan? Scott Schreiner 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 bass, 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 Schreiner for Scott Schreiner's bass tech when he first auditioned. But by 2010, when Weezer 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
41:49 Jake Brennan? as Scott's appearance at that first audition. The hardcore legion 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 Kiss's 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.
42:29 Jake Brennan? These songs about pork and beans and Beverly Hills, they suck in comparison to any song off of Weezer's stripped, bare, and 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 lofty goal, but not before Weezer's drummer Patrick Wilson tweeted, "Make it 20 million and we'll do the deluxe breakup."
43:05 Jake Brennan? 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, "Dreamt 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 Raffaello Hotel in Chicago. Prescription narcotics and a Ziploc bag containing white powder presumed to be heroin, both of which were found at the scene,
43:49 Jake Brennan? 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 Kurt 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's very un-rock and roll, very scholarly process of cataloging, writing, and arranging songs.
44:33 Jake Brennan? And I don't mean that as a pejorative folly, 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 risk, which is what makes the events of April 8th, 2025, not just unpredictable, but shocking.
45:15 Speaker 02 Pointed it. None of us, but she just looked it up. Jillian Schreiner, the wife of bass guitarist Scott Schreiner, shot by police and arrested for attempted murder. Multiple commands given to drop the gun, to drop the weapon. She says there were three men and one of them shot her and the cops are looking for him right now. Police say they then shot Schreiner. 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. He's seen in this body camera footage, lying face down in the middle of the street, arms stretched out wide. He's injured but alive.
46:00 Jake Brennan? 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, Jillian Lauren, aka Jillian Schreiner, aka the wife of Weezer's bass player Scott Schreiner, 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 Jillian Schreiner unexpectedly emerged from her house,
46:44 Jake Brennan? holding a loaded gun. The cops identified themselves, repeatedly shouting at Jillian 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 bass 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.
47:25 Jake Brennan? Nearly six months later, a judge determined that Jillian Schreiner was eligible for a 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.
47:46 Jake Brennan? 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 Jillian's yard, and that Jillian 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.
48:28 Jake Brennan? 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 Schreiner. 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.
49:08 Jake Brennan? 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.
50:07 Jake Brennan? All right, guys. Thanks for checking out 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 Podcasts, 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 Weezer album in this episode, that being Pinker Ten, 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, 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text, @disgracelandpod
50:49 Jake Brennan? on the socials, [email protected] . If you want to email me, here comes some credits.
50:57 Jake Brennan? 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-Access 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/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 @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com-at-disgracelandpod. Rock-a-rola.
51:40 Speaker 00 He's a bad, bad man.
51:44 Jake Brennan? Hey, guys. Time to dust off your detective skills while unwinding in the Caribbean on Virgin Voyages' second true crime voyage. It's back by popular demand. This five-night, adults-only escape sets sail March 20, 2027, to Grand Turk in the Beach Club at Bimini. The difference between this year and last Will be that I will be on the cruise this year along with Zeph and he and I will be taping a live version of Disgrace Land along with podcast hosts from Exactly Right's Buried Bones, Podcast of the Year Award winners, Wise Crack and other fan favorites. Get on this cruise with us, guys, and enjoy live podcast recordings, behind the scenes storytelling, exclusive meet and greets, and immersive true crime programming throughout this one
52:28 Jake Brennan? of a kind voyage. Head over to www.virginvoyages.com/trucrim to secure your spot. I like a story with a twist as much as anyone, but some of the best traditions don't have one. They just started and kept going. That's something that's great about Chateau St. Michelle. They've been leading Washington wine since 1967 with wines that are balanced, expressive, and easy to enjoy. Choosing the right bottle shouldn't feel complicated. It should be something you open with confidence every time. So for once, here's a story with no twist, just a good bottle. Redefine your rituals with Chateau St. Michelle.
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Previous Bonus Episode: Punk Albums By Artists Who Weren’t Punk, and Rolling Stone Rage Baits All Punk Rockers Everywhere, and Weezer is coming to Disgraceland Next Bonus Episode: 1994. We Didn’t Know How Good We Had It Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated