endured a tenuous hiatus between 1996’s Pinkerton and the Green Album, was truly in danger of breaking up. On this point they are insistent and vigorously on-message, if perhaps selectively amnesiac.
“The biggest misconception is that we don’t get along,” says bassist Scott Shriner, a tea-scented toothpick nestled next to a gold-capped front tooth. “Horrible misconception.”
Strolling through the Autry Museum of the American West in Griffith Park, Shriner stops at a glass case displaying guns from the 19th century and recalls that when he moved to Los Angeles from Toledo in 1990 not long after a two-year stint in the Marines, he packed his bass amp, his coffee maker, and a shotgun. (“I was from Ohio; I thought L.A. was gonna be dangerous.”) Although he’s still technically the new guy, Shriner has been in Weezer for three of their six albums and seven of their 14 years. He is just over the hump now, a unique vantage point from which to observe the band’s dynamic, even as his role within it solidifies and grows. At 42, he’s the oldest member, and given that the closest Shriner had come to success previously was playing bass for Vanilla Ice during the erstwhile
ON BELL: THOM BROWNE JACKE T; BAND OF OU TSIDERS SHIR T AND TIE; JUIC Y COU TURE FOR MEN SHOR TS AND SUNGLASSES, JUIC YCOU TURE. COM; PUMA BELT, PUMA.COM; CONVERSE SHOES, CON-VERSE.COM. ON WILSON: JUICY COUTURE FOR MEN JACKET AND SHORTS, WHITEHORSE COUTURE T-SHIR T, CONVERSE SHOES. ON CUOMO: THOM BROWNE JACKE T; BAND OF OU TSIDERS SHIR T AND BOW TIE; STEVEN ALAN SHOR TS; ANITA HOPKINS HAT; RAY-BAN WAYFARERS, RAYBAN.COM; ORIGINAL PENGUIN BELT; NIXON WATCH, NIXONNOW.COM; CONVERSE SHOES. ON SHRINER: BAND OF OU TSIDERS SUIT, CONVERSE BY JOHN VARVATOS SHIR T, CONVERSE SHOES, ROCK & REPUBLIC SUNGLASSES, MARIA MARS KE Y NECKLACE, HAN CHOLO NECKLACE AND SKULL RING, ROSEARK RING.
rapper’s nü-metal phase, he may have the most at stake in the group’s well-being. Which is why he greets with a wince the mere mention of a magazine article from three years ago that spelled out in no uncertain terms (and in his own words) how the band did not, in fact, get along.
“Yeah, I was having a bad day,” he says, smiling, eager to change the subject. “I feel like saying anything about all that is just giving it power, you know? It just seems so irrelevant now, like a different lifetime.”
Instead, Shriner accentuates the positive, recounting the feel-good listening parties—with cupcakes!—in late 2006 where Cuomo first presented his new demos to the band and explaining how their four wildly disparate personalities and musical tastes actually serve to improve the group’s chemistry. And how
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