Rivers Cuomo life and biography

Rivers Cuomo is an American musician, best known as the lead singer, lead guitarist, and principal songwriter of the alternative rock band Weezer.
Raised in an Ashram in Connecticut, Cuomo became interested in music at a young age. He moved to Los Angeles at age 19, where he participated in a number of rock bands before founding Weezer in 1992. With Weezer, he has released eight studio albums.

In addition to fronting Weezer, Cuomo has also worked as a solo artist. In December 2007, he released his debut album, Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, which featured home demos that Cuomo recorded from 1992 to 2007.
He released his second solo artist album, Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo, in November 2008. Alone III: The Pinkerton Years is scheduled for release in 2011.

Rivers mother, Beverly, was inspired to name her son "Rivers" because he was born between the East and Hudson rivers in Manhattan. Her appreciation of the sound of running water further reinforced her desire for this name. His father, Frank Cuomo, was a musician who played drums on the album Odyssey of Iska by jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

During his early childhood Cuomo attended a private school on an ashram farm where his parents raised him and his brother Leaves. Cuomo's parents moved to nearby Storrs, Connecticut when the ashram (known as Yogaville) was relocated to a plot of land along the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. Cuomo attended E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut under the name Peter Kitts, but reverted back to his original name once he began attending Santa Monica College.
Cuomo went on to attend the Berklee College of Music and Harvard University, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English, after attending classes on and off from 1995 to 2006. In high school, Cuomo played the role of Johnny Casino in the stage production of Grease.

After a series of musical projects in Los Angeles, Cuomo formed Weezer on February 14, 1992, with members from Sixty Wrong Sausages, including drummer Patrick Wilson. The original Weezer line-up included Cuomo on vocals and guitar, Wilson on drums, Matt Sharp on bass, and Jason Cropper who at first played exclusively on acoustic guitar. Weezer signed with DGC, a subsidiary of Geffen Records, on June 25, 1993. They began recording Weezer (also known as The Blue Album) in August 1993 at Electric Lady Studios in New York with producer Ric Ocasek. "Weezer" was Rivers' childhood nickname, given to him by his father when he was a toddler, although it wasn't because he had asthma.

Throughout 2002 Cuomo frequently posted on Weezer message boards as 'Ace' to discuss music with fans. He once had a website called the 'Catalog of Riffs' ('COR') in which he shared old demos of songs as well as scans of many personal items (letters, schedules, records).
Since 2003 he has kept a MySpace page in which he has posted many blog entries including his original admission essay and two subsequent readmission essays to Harvard. Additionally he uses his MySpace blog as a clearinghouse for clarifications, corrections, and addenda to interviews and press reports about him. (This has included responding to misinformation on his Wikipedia entry.)

Starting on the Foozer tour in late 2005, Cuomo would invite fans onto the stage to play "Undone – The Sweater Song" on acoustic guitar. After the performance, fans were allowed to keep the guitars they played. In 2008, coinciding with the release of Weezer's new album, The Red Album, Weezer announced a "Hootenanny Tour" in which radio stations would audition fans to play songs live with Weezer. This "hootenanny" style performance was replicated for the band's "Troublemaker" video and on their 2008 Troublemaker Tour. On November 25, 2008, Cuomo invited a small group of guests to a jam session at Fingerprints Records in Long Beach, CA. This marked the release of Alone II: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo. Fans chose the songs and played the instruments while Cuomo sang.

One of Cuomo's earliest music projects was a progressive metal band known as Avant Garde.[19] Cuomo played under the name Peter Kitts, Kitts being the surname of his stepfather. The band played several shows in Connecticut. He moved with the band to Los Angeles in March 1989.[20] In late 1989 Avant Garde changed its name to Zoom though the band dissolved in the late spring of 1990.[21][22] Before Weezer, Cuomo worked as a roadie for King Size on their Guatemala tour.[15] During a Weezer hiatus, Cuomo formed a musical project called Homie, consisting of what he called "goofball songs" or his "country band". An album was planned, but only one studio recording, a song titled "American Girls", has been released. Cuomo has contributed to recordings by various other musicians (Crazy Town, Cold, Mark Ronson). He also briefly managed the band AM Radio in 2002 and 2003.

In early 2004 he made a surprise appearance onstage with ex-Weezer bassist Matt Sharp at his California State University, Fullerton show to play two old Weezer favorites ("Say It Ain't So" and "Undone"), a rare Weezer demo that they worked on together ("Mrs. Young"), and a new song they wrote together, "Time Song." Also, Sharp announced that they might work on a collaborative record together. But later that year, Sharp announced on his website that although they had come up with "15 or 16 new song ideas, some good, some not so good" for their new album, their "special brand of dysfunctionality" may keep them from finishing the project.

Cuomo is a big fan of soccer. He can be seen playing in the "Photograph" video, and even planned his band's 2002 "World Cup Tour" around World Cup games. In 2006 he wrote a song titled "My Day Is Coming" in tribute to the U.S. men's soccer team, and followed it up for 2010 by writing "Represent", which he considers to be an "unofficial" anthem for the U.S. team. The latter song was released as a Weezer single on June 11, the day before Team USA's World Cup opener against England.

In March 2008, Cuomo started a video series on YouTube called "Let's Write a Sawng."Cuomo plans to write a song in collaboration with YouTube users' suggestions.
Additionally, Cuomo has had cameos in a number of music videos. These include Crystal Method's "Murder" and the video for The Warlocks' "Cocaine Blues." Cuomo also makes a guest appearance on Sugar Ray's "Boardwalk", the first single on their latest album, Music for Cougars. Cuomo featured on the song "Magic", on B.o.B's debut album B.o.B Presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray which was released in April 2010. In a May interview with HitQuarters, producer-songwriter Lucas Secon confirmed that he had recently worked with Cuomo on both a Steve Aoki single and "some Weezer stuff."

Cuomo is currently in the process of recording a Japanese album with Scott Murphy of Allister.He also collaborated with Japanese singer Hitomi for her first indie album Spirit, even making a duet with her. Cuomo is featured on the new Simple Plan song "Can't Keep My Hands Off You" and Miranda Cosgrove's song, "High Maintenance".

On June 18, 2006, Cuomo married Kyoko Ito, whom he had known since March 1997. He proposed to her in Tokyo shortly before Christmas of 2005. The wedding was held at a secluded beach on Paradise Cove in Malibu and was attended by over a hundred people, including six of the seven members who played in Weezer (Mikey Welsh being the only no show) as well as notables Justin Fisher, Kevin Ridel and Rick Rubin. The couple have a daughter, Mia, who was born in May 2007.

Cuomo was born with his left leg 44 mm (13⁄4 in) shorter than his right leg. After the success of The Blue Album, Cuomo underwent a procedure to correct the condition. This involved the surgical breaking of the bone in his leg, followed by several months of wearing a steel brace which required self-administered "stretching" of the leg four times daily; Cuomo likened the ordeal to "crucifying [his] leg." An x-ray of the leg is part of the album art for "The Good Life" single, and the experience inspired him to write the song. Cuomo can be seen wearing the brace on an episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, which can be found on their DVD Video Capture Device.

On December 6, 2009, Cuomo was in his tour bus driving to Boston from Toronto with his family and assistants when the bus hit an icy road in Glen, New York and crashed. He suffered cracked ribs and internal bleeding. Due to this accident, Weezer canceled the rest of the 2009 tour dates, planning to reschedule them the following year.The band made their return to the stage on January 20, 2010, performing at Florida State University in Tallahassee, Florida.

Some of Cuomo's fashion trademarks include his horn-rimmed glasses and his lightning bolt guitar strap. He has sported a bowl cut, most notably in the music video for "Undone - The Sweater Song". Other notable fashion trends include sporting a life preserver-styled vest in early 2001, growing a thick beard in mid-2002 and a brief suit-and-tie phase in summer 2002. Cuomo has also been seen with a short moustache in the video for "Pork and Beans" and on the Red Album cover.
Cuomo has said that he grew the moustache in honor of his daughter and that his father wore one just like his when Cuomo was born. During Weezer's hiatus between the albums Pinkerton and Weezer (Green Album), Cuomo had braces on his teeth. They were evidently removed before the release of the Green Album.

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