Rivers Cuomo

Rivers Cuomo (born June 13, 1970) is an American musician.

He is best known as the lead vocalist, guitarist, and songwriter of the rock band Weezer.

Cuomo was born in New York City and raised in a number of Buddhist communities in the Northeastern U.S. until the age of 10, when his family settled in Connecticut.

Rivers Cuomo was born on June 13, 1970, in New York City to Frank Cuomo, of Italian descent, and Beverly Shoenberger, of German-English descent.

However, his father said Rivers was named after three prominent soccer players: Rivellino, Luigi Riva, and Gianni Rivera, all of whom were playing in the 1970 World Cup.

Frank was a musician who played drums on the 1971 album Odyssey of Iska by the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

According to one account, Cuomo's mother named him Rivers either because he was born between the East and Hudson rivers in Manhattan or because she could hear a river outside her hospital window.

Cuomo was raised in Rochester, New York, at the Rochester Zen Center, until his father left the family in 1975.

His mother relocated the family to Yogaville, an ashram in Pomfret, Connecticut.

Cuomo attended the Pomfret Community School, and his mother married Stephen Kitts.

In 1980, Yogaville relocated to Virginia.

The Kitts family opted to stay in Connecticut and moved to the Storrs/Mansfield area.

During this time, Cuomo attended Mansfield Middle School and E.O. Smith High School.

Rivers was a member of the high school choir and he performed in a school production of Grease as Johnny Casino.

He also changed his name to Peter Kitts; after graduating, Cuomo reverted to his original name.

One of Cuomo's earliest music projects was the glam metal band Avant Garde.

In 1989, after playing several shows in Connecticut, Avant Garde moved to Los Angeles and changed their name to Zoom, but broke up in 1990.

During this time, Cuomo attended Santa Monica College.

Though Pinkerton is now frequently cited among the best albums of the 1990s and has been certified platinum, it was initially a commercial and critical failure, pushing Cuomo's songwriting toward pop music for their next album, the Green Album (2001).

Weezer have released several albums since.

In 1990 and 1991, while Cuomo was writing material for what became Weezer's debut album, he was a roadie for the band King Size and worked at Tower Records, where he listened to "basically everything that was released at that time ... I was exposed to a ton of music I otherwise never would have heard."

He played in several bands in Connecticut and California before forming Weezer in 1992.

Cuomo formed Weezer in 1992 with the drummer Patrick Wilson, the bassist Matt Sharp and the guitarist Jason Cropper.

"Weezer" was the nickname given to Cuomo by his father when he was a toddler.

Weezer signed with DGC, a subsidiary of Geffen Records, on June 25, 1993, and released their self-titled debut album, commonly known as the Blue Album, in May 1994.

Cropper was asked to leave the band by Cuomo during the recording, and was replaced by Brian Bell.

Following the success of Weezer's debut, the Blue Album (1994), Cuomo enrolled at Harvard University, but dropped out after recording Weezer's second album, Pinkerton (1996).

The album was certified platinum on January 1, 1995, with sales of over one million.

Despite his success, Cuomo became tired of the monotony and loneliness of touring and developed a "huge inferiority complex" about rock music, saying: "I thought my songs were really simplistic and silly, and I wanted to write complex, intense, beautiful music."

In March 1995, Cuomo had extensive surgery to extend his left leg, which was 44mm shorter than the right.

This involved the surgical breaking of the leg bone, followed by months of wearing a steel brace and painful physical therapy sessions.

The procedure affected his songwriting, as he would spend long periods hospitalized under the influence of painkillers.

In late 1995, Cuomo enrolled in Harvard University to study classical composition.

He told The New York Times: "The only time I could write songs was when my frozen dinner was in the microwave. The rest of the time I was doing homework."

He auditioned for the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum chorus, but was not selected.

He became introverted and grew a beard, and wrote in his diaries how students wearing Weezer T-shirts did not recognize him.

He later re-enrolled and graduated in 2006.

Cuomo has released several compilations of demos, including Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2007), Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo (2008) and Alone III: The Pinkerton Years (2011), and has released thousands of home recordings on his website.

He has collaborated with artists including Todd Rundgren and Panic! at the Disco.

With the American songwriter Scott Murphy, Cuomo has released two Japanese-language albums under the name Scott & Rivers.