HE GATE TO BOB DYLAN’S COMPOUND is wide open. Peering in, we can see an RV and a rusted ’70s-vintage Volvo or maybe a Volkswagen. There’s no telling how far back this dirt road goes or how much of this hilly Malibu coastline the hallowed property inhabits. We contemplate parlaying our leisurely scooter ride on this clear, mild April afternoon into a little leisurely trespassing. Or one of us does, anyway.

“There’s security cameras everywhere,” Rivers Cuomo cautions warily. The 38-year-old Weezer frontman is wearing a blue zip-up hoodie, plaid shorts, and white tube socks pulled up to his knees. And, naturally, a helmet.

“What’s the worst that can happen?” I ask.

“Your career would be over,” he replies, grinning, then revs up his Vespa and veers around the block, deciding—wisely, I now realize—that this intrusion would be no way to treat a neighbor. I crane my neck for a last prying look and follow him back to his house.

Much attention has been paid to Cuomo’s peculiarly minimalist domestic needs—after ditching his material possessions in the summer of 2003, he lived in a converted garage in Hollywood with the windows blackened out, and at the peak of his stardom, he took up residence in a Harvard dorm to finish his bachelor’s degree in English lit. When I last talked to him in late 2005, he was two and a half years into a two-year vow of celibacy, wondering aloud whether being in a rock band was conducive to achieving his real dream of having a family. Now he owns sweet scooters and a house in a tony Point Dume enclave somewhere between Dylan’s and Mel Gibson’s, while the surest proof that his celibacy has ended, 11-month-old daughter Mia, is off visiting Grandma with Kyoko, Cuomo’s wife of two years. And, although it was in doubt for a while there, Cuomo is still very much in a rock band.

In fact, Weezer’s eponymous sixth full-length—helpfully dubbed the “Red Album” to distinguish it from 1994’s beloved debut “Blue Album” and 2001’s beliked “Green Album,” but consciously suggesting those records’ breeziness—is virtually a concept album about how fuckin’ rad it is to be in a rock band. Weezer formed at the height of grunge, appropriating its woe-is-me lyrics and big guitars and indie’s understated geek-chic, adding a winking sense of humor too often lacking in both genres. A generation later, a lot has changed. A lot has not.

With two modest bedrooms and a pool surrounded by childproof fencing, Cuomo’s ranch house, enviable as it is, does not necessarily look like it belongs to a man who’s sold more than ten million albums. Which is to say, it does look like it belongs to Rivers Cuomo. That’s his Subaru Legacy in the driveway. Even at his most indulgent, he will not allow himself any more than he needs.

“This neighborhood feels like magic to me. We saw something like 30 houses; this was our favorite,” he says. As much as people have tried to fit Cuomo into the eccentric pop genius/Brian Wilson role—and certainly his disposition toward oversharing details about his sex life (or lack thereof) has fed into that—he’s merely a proud suburban dad showing off his backyard. “It’s not too big; modern houses are really big. We don’t want to clean that much.”

The first thought is that Cuomo must be joking—surely it’s occurred to him that he has the means to get a little help with the dusting and mopping. But, colossal ham that he may be, Cuomo is never exactly joking. His recent You Tube clips inviting fans to help him write a song aren’t a goof, but rather evidence of the former autocrat’s newfound openness to collaboration. Atop his lip rests a bushy mustache that men under 40 generally cultivate either to win a bet or after losing one. But he grew it when Mia was born as a tribute to his own father, who sports one in all of Cuomo’s old baby photos.

Malibu was not the Cuomos’ only option; they were also checking out homes in Connecticut, just down the street from where his parents lived. In the wake of

the bad vibes surrounding the last Weezer effort, 2005’s Make Believe, Cuomo’s ambivalence about continuing the band nearly drove him back East for good. But he downplays that ambivalence now, shrugging it off as if the fate of one of the most enduring and commercially steady acts in rock wasn’t hanging in the balance.

“I don’t remember what I was thinking,” he says. “Maybe I didn’t know if I was going to get back into music and just wanted to settle down.” He nods his head and squints a bit, as if trying to conjure a hazy memory from decades ago. “That must have been what I was thinking.”

To a man, the members of Weezer acknowledge that the period surrounding the relatively maudlin, navel-gazing Make Believe was a tough one and that the album suffered as a result, albeit not commercially—it still sold 1. 2 million copies in the U.S. and spawned their most successful single, “Beverly Hills.” Cuomo was back at Harvard, while the other three were left to interpret his demos on their own, and beyond that, his recent immersion in stringent vipassana meditation didn’t necessarily lend itself to the rigors of recording and promoting a rock album. But each is quick to dismiss the idea that the band, which earlier had