Weezer‘s Rivers Cuomo has responded to Liam Gallagher once calling him his “favourite rock star”.
Back in 2005, the Oasis legend remarked in an interview (originally published via Chart Communications) that the rock frontman was a “very strange man” and “my new favourite rock star”.
The musician went on: “He freaked me out. He’s just the total opposite of me, man… He’s like Yoda… He’s like the Andy Warhol of fucking music.”
Speaking to NME for the latest edition of Does Rock N’ Roll Kill Braincells, Rivers recalled how Oasis offered something “opposite” to what Weezer was doing in the late ’90s.
“We did a whole set of Oasis covers under the pseudonym Goat Punishment [in 1998],” he shared.
“It was a real education because it was on the heels of [1996’s] ‘Pinkerton’, which is a very tortured, personal, confessional and musically-progressive album, and then I got interested in Oasis because they’re the opposite of that – they’re very broad, universal lyrics, and simple songs with chords that anyone could play, and I wanted to really get inside their way of doing things, so we learned a bunch of their songs and played a show.”
Oasis isn’t the only band Cuomo has drawn inspiration from over the years. They also performed another Goat Punishment show comprising solely of Nirvana songs, and Courtney Love has since gone on to approve of the band’s covers.
“Courtney is a real icon to our generation, and feels like our big sister,” said Cuomo. “You really want somebody like that to approve of what you’re doing and Kurt didn’t live long enough to hear us – he died a month before [in April 1994] our ‘Blue’ album came out, but I’m assuming he would not have approved of us. But that Courtney does is pretty great.”
Elsewhere in his NME interview, the musician opened up about the time he worked with Taylor Swift on a commercial and she hailed him as one of her “musical heroes”.
Back in May, Weezer reflected on the 30th anniversary of ‘The Blue Album’ and shared some original home demos.
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