Rivers Cuomo

I can't imagine Weezer stopping. We just love doing what we're doing, and I think we'll keep going until we fall down dead. Even if the audience is abandoning us, I can't imagine doing anything else!

The most nerve-wracking experience is an oral presentation in class. And right under that would be doing 'Saturday Night Live' or 'David Letterman.' One of those shows.

I guess I'm just a born performer or artist or sharer. I find the intimate details of my life compelling and interesting. I guess that I'm assuming that everyone else does, too.

Cat Stevens' music, voice, and energy made me feel so secure. He sounded different from some of the paternal figures in my life, so gentle and kind.

Certainly, the Beach Boys and the early Beatles records were a huge influence on me lyrically.

I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties - whether they're songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.

Rock guitar has been around for decades now, and there are so many strong traditions, and so much of it is just burned into my fingers. So, nine times out of 10, when I pick up the guitar to jam something, it sounds pretty cliche.

I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.

When you're starting out, you basically have all these assumptions about what it means to be an artist or how to be a rock star. It took me years, through trial and error, to figure out what does work for me. So much of it is counter to the myth of the rock-star life.

Meditation hasn't separated me from my life and my friends and my work. It's just made my fear go away, so I can just be that much more engaged.

I've done a few things on the side here and there, but there is not much reason to do so in a sustained way. I'm generally able to say what I want to say within the context of Weezer.

It's great - that's the best part about being famous is that people want to get to know me. People come up to me and introduce themselves, and I make friends, and then I meet their friends. It seems like I have a very happy and comfortable social life, which is something I never had when I was younger.