"After a short search, a man with enough sass to replace departed bassist Matt Sharp was found...Enter one Mikey Welsh, who formerly played bass in Juliana Hatfield's touring band...with a new bassist firmly in tow, Weezer could finally begin working on the much anticipated third album."
Replacing Weezer's much loved original bassist Matt Sharp was going to be tough for anyone, even Mikey. Mikey had the experience and the guts to take on this task...but the big question was this; was the world of Weezer ready for Mikey Welsh? The following is lovingly borrowed from Status Magazine.
How did you get hooked up with Weezer? Mikey: "Uh, well I grew up in Boston and Rivers was going to Harvard which was about 3 or 4 years ago and one of my best friends Nate who I grew up with in Boston and was the guitarist for the Bosstones...uh, me and the Bosstones guys used to play a lot when we were younger so Rivers met Nate and Rivers was looking for a bass player so that's how we met. We started playing shows in Boston together about 3 or 4 years ago."
Rad. So what bands on The Warped Tour are you looking forward to playing with? Mikey: "The Bosstones because they're old friends of mine, Green Day cause they're friends of ours, I love The Lunachicks, I've liked them for a long time..."
So do you know what everyone in the band's been doing these past few years individually? Mikey: "Uh, well I've been in the band for like 2 and a half years so we worked for about six months on Weezer stuff and we decided to take a break. Rivers and I lived together for a long time, not in a romantic way but you know...and Pat and I have a band called The Special Goodness and we've done 2 big tours with that and we do that all the time so for almost the last year when we don't do Weezer stuff we do Special Goodness tours and we've toured the whole country like twice."
Did you ever know Matt Sharp? Mikey: "yeah..."
How did...(stared fumbling on my words) Mikey: "Do we get along? Is that your next question?"
It's not that you get along cause I heard everyone had a peaceful parting with Matt leaving the band...It's more so how did that all come together? Mikey: "Matt and I get along. A really good friend of mine from Boston named Josh has been in The Rentals for like a year and a half now so, and that happened cause Josh and I were friends and I recommended him to Matt and Matt and I get along really well. I mean he comes to Special Goodness shows in LA so, you know."
Mikey joined Weezer in a time of unrest, there was a five year period between the release of Pinkerton and the long-overdue third album and many questions were raised over the future of the band. The following is from Weezer's official site; "...filling Matt's place is Mikey Welsh of Boston, and formerly of Juliana Hatfield's band. During 1998 Rivers and Mikey played a few shows together in Boston (dubbed "The Rivers Cuomo Band"). The following spring Rivers and Mikey joined Brian and Pat in Los Angeles and had on/off rehearsal sessions over the next couple of years. Rivers devoted some time to "Homie" which released one song, Brian released a couple of records with his "Spacetwins" and Pat and Mikey toured with "The Special Goodness". Fast forward to spring 2000. After playing unannounced shows under secret names, in addition to more frequent rehearsals, Weezer booked dates on that summer's Warped Tour and subsequently a nationwide club tour. Much to the band's surprise the dates sold out instantly. Juiced by an overwhelming fan response and a wealth of new material Weezer was back. Following another sold-out tour in the fall the band continued writing and practicing new material in Los Angeles into 2001. A christmas song e.p. was distributed to fans and radio stations and shortly before the new year Weezer began recording their 3rd effort, dubbed "The Green Album" in Los Angeles, again with producer Ric Ocasek. With the album finished the band will being touring in support of it and their existing material for the foreseeable future."
Early summer to November 1998: Weezer rehersals and sporadic demo recording, with Mikey: Los Angeles. After a lengthy process of trying out new bass players, Mikey was finally installed by summertime. While master tapes of lots of demos recorded during this period do exist after all, none have been mixed down to a listenable format to date. This section should get a lot bigger when that happens, as there are many hours of tapes to go through. The bulk of these recordings were done at TK Rehearsals on L.A.'s west side. There also exists a rather rambling tape of just Rivers at TK brainstorming on a bunch of song ideas. However this is not listed here as the tape is very confusing and there are few complete ideas on it. According to coversations with band members, I estimate as many as 50 or more practiced, demo'd songs to exist. However, at this writing, only a small amount is known. Some of the songs were 100% Rivers's writing, some were jam session collaborations, some were Pat's (later pulled back for The Special Goodness) and some were Brian's.
Late Summer 1998: Demo of Brian's songs (not really Weezer nor Space Twins). Brian had 4 songs that everyone enjoyed playing at rehersal. When it was suggested that they could record these as a demo, Rivers decided that he didnt want to do them for Weezer. So Pat and Mikey played on it and it became a kind of Space Twins demo that sounds like Weezer playing the songs.
Fall 1998 : more Weezer demos. Pat Wilson packed up and went back to Portland, unsatisfied with how rehersals were going. Mikey's friend Todd Phillips (also an alumnus of Juliana Hatfield's band) filled in on drums from then until early 1999 (when rehersals were finally put on hold) and also played in the 2 Goat Punishment* shows. *Goat Punishment being the assumed name of Weezer for many secret shows.
Spring 1999. By this point, for whatever reason(s), not much was happening in rehersals, and they werent happening with much frequency. Management, concerned at spiralling costs of production without a known product (very little music was leaked out of the rehersals, leading people in various offices to worry that there was no music to justify the expenses) suggested that the band simply take a break until things started to move again. Pat, already excited to work on The Special Goodness, welcomed this. Brian used his time to write Space Twins songs and play shows with both the Space Twins and Mephisto, while Mikey was a bit confused as to what to do, having dropped everything to join the band a year earlier. Mikey had been writing bass lines during the months of spring 1999, originally offering these to Rivers for new song ideas, but Rivers didnt make use of them. When it became clear that rehersals were to be suspended indefinately, Mikey offered them to his then-freind and ex-bandmate Juliana Hatfield, and they ended up recording her new cd together in Boston in summer 1999. This new album is out on Island records and is a serious rocker of an album, and a cool showcase of Mikey's writing talents.
1/1/00 - March 2000: RIVERS DEMOS. Rivers just kept going into 2000, cranking out another pile of demos, this time at his new house in L.A. Again, there were a good deal of more song attempts that didnt get far enough to warrant getting made into a demo, and for each of the ones that did make it to this level, there exists multiple versions of on tape, as they were refined.
April 2000 - June 2000: NEW Weezer rehersals, group demos recorded. Various DA-88 recordings were made by the band in this period, for purposes of self-review. They were multitracked with some overdubs added (extra guitar and vocals).
Summer 2000: Tour Demos. Recorded live with a mobile unit during soundchecks and sometimes the shows themselves. These demos were compiled from hundreds of hours of recordings. Most of the post-warped tour US shows in summer/fall 2000 were fully recorded on the mobile 8 track unit, including the soundchecks, which is when the new somgs were demo'd.
12/14/00 Rehersal at Swing House Studios: After months of making demos in River's home studio. Under Ric Ocasek's supervision, various songs were demo'd repeatedly, trying out variations in structure and feel. Numerous DAT tapes were recorded over the course of about a week, these songs in particular were copied over to review.
The Green Album Sessions : 12/27/00 - 2/19/01. The Green Album was recorded At Cello Studios in Los Angeles, which used to be a part of Western Studios, where many albums were cut for artists in the 60's such as Frank Sinatra(1969's "Cycles"), The Mamas & The Papas and the Beach Boys, who recorded their masterpiece Pet Sounds there. The basic tracks were recorded to 2" 24 track analog tape, which was a challenge in today's day and age. the drums alone were miked up with over 10 microphones, each of which required a separate track. When one factors in the tracks required for bass guitar, rhythm guitar (often doubled in stereo or even tripled with a "center" track as well, lead guitar (also often doubled), guitar solos, and vocals, which generally required at least 3 tracks, it got pretty tight when it came time to add a spontaneous alternate guitar idea, or alternate vocal melody. Anyway, over 20 master 2" reels were filled with various "takes" through out late December through the first 2 weeks of January. In some cases as many as 5 or 6 "master takes" were saved of a song, each representing a run through by the whole band of a song, that was deemed good enough to save. These run throughs were primarily for getting a perfect take of the drums, and where possible the bass guitar as well. Lead and rhythm guitars were in there as well, and Rivers's vocals as well, but these parts were generally regarded as "scratch" takes - just there to fill out the sound as the band played the song as a whole. Later the guitars and vocals (and depending on the song, the bass) would be re-taped, using up free tracks until there wasnt enough to spare. Then, assuming they had gotten better takes of the bass and guitars, the orignal "scratch tracks" would be considered "fair game" for taping over with other things like vocals and such. Over the course of the recording, the assistant engineer would make DAT tapes of whatever was done that day, as safety back-ups and reference. From these i started a "daily CD", which was burned in whatever running order was popular that day, and each rough cd would range (as the recording went on) from songs that were in a very rough state to songs that had had a lot more work dont to them. The effect of listening to the CDs could be rather funny, as a polished sounding song would often lead into a rough instrumental of the next track. While recording was going on, Rivers was still writing, so in-studio demos would also be recorded, such as for "I Do". Also, I was sometimes instructed to do a rough edit of an in-process song on my computer, to help the guys see what it would sound like with or without a certain verse or solo or whatever. So these versions started to pile up as well. As the process went on this way, various "early" or rejected versions of the songs in progress would thus be preserved on the daily CDs. At the end of the recording process, I made a "best of the early versions" set of CDs, and destroyed the original "Daily CDs" (this wasnt ruining anything, as the masters were also on DATs and the 24 track tape. We were just concerned over the large amount of extra rough mix cds that started to pile up). The list below is drawn from this info, and represents every song that was worked on in this period, regardless of whether it actually got finished or made the cd or whatever. While mixing the album in Miami Beach, additional recording work was done by "dumping" all 24 analog tracks of a song from L.A. into the Pro Tools computer based recording system, and with the unlimited additional space available in the digital realm, various last minute additional tracks were added as needed to try out small guitar touches, additional tries at getting the vocals better, or whatever was deemed necessary. When the song was truly finished in the recording phase, the digital tracks were all "flown" back down the hall via some really thick cables, back into Tom Lord-Alge's mixing land, where he'd break it down and get to work. Often a song was completed late one night in the recording room, and a few hours later in the morning, Tom would show up and start work on the mix. It was a hectic pace to say the least! The end result of the work in Miami was a pile of 1/2" digital mixdown tapes on reels. Compounding the sense of urgency was the upcoming Outloud Tour, which was starting by hell or high water on Feb 23rd 2001. After that the tapes went back to L.A. for mastering, the final process wherein the songs are put in order and given an overall "E.Q." and such, so they sound cohesive as an album. However, during the short period between Miami and the start of the Outloud Tour, Rivers made a number of last minute changes and decisions, prompting work in some other L.A. studios to add touches here and there, and edit some songs, as well as do some B-side work. The mastering was re-done several times, even during the Outloud Tour. All during that tour and right up to the start of the following Japan tour, Rivers was listening to fed-exed in mixes, masterings and album sequences. In the end it wasnt over until well after the Outloud Tour was over, almost at the point when the band boarded the plane to Japan for the April tour. In the short period in L.A. before the Japan Tour started, Several more B-sides were polished up, and the running order and song choices of the album were finally made final. During the process of mastering, somewhere in April 2001, (when some songs were in fact still being edited and having last second mix fixes done), someone at a mastering studio thought he had the new weezer album and stole unfinished, incorrectly mastered copies of many of the soon to be released tracks, plus some tracks that were slated for b-side status. These tracks made it out as mp3s and were announced as "the new album", when in fact the order was wrong, the mixes were wrong, the mastering was wrong, and even what tracks that were included was wrong. It was a classic example of how difficult it was to keep an album under wraps in todays age of digital propagation and outright piracy, and led to a lot of unnecessary confusion. (the actual sessions were confusing enough as it was! The wrong edit of "Always" even ended up on the UK single months later, due to some mislabelled masters.)
Once work was finished on the album the band headed out on The Yahoo! Outloud Tour. "Yahoo!'s own 20 city music tour." The band, as always, continued to write and make demos whilst on the road. Then it was time for the release of The Green Album...
...and the rest of that particular Weezer chapter, as they say, is history!
I included the recording history excerpts to help understand what Mikey was letting himself in for. People complained about Mikey just coming along and replacing Matt without giving a thought as to what had been happening within Weezer during their absence from the public eye and what Mikey had given up to play in Weezer!