Weezer covered Metallica's "Enter Sandman" for last year's The Metallica Blacklist compilation album, so we know they're fans. But as it turns out, that was hardly Rivers Cuomo and Co.'s first tribute to thrash's Four Horsemen. During a recent appearance on the Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast, the Weezer frontman revealed that his band's 1992 hit "Undone (The Sweater Song)" pretty much rips off a classic Metallica tune, a fact that he didn't even realize until years later.
"I remember the moment I came up with that riff," Cuomo recalled, as transcribed by Loudwire. "I was about 20, 21-years-old and I had been exposed to cool music finally after moving to L.A. from Connecticut. I got a job at Tower Records and started listening to Sonic Youth and Pixies and Velvet Underground and I was like, 'I'm going to try to write a Velvet Underground song.' And I sat down and came up with 'The Sweater Song' riff and I was like, 'Yes, this is so cool.'"
"A couple of years went by, we got signed, put out a record, it blew up, very happy," he continued. "Then in 1995, we end up playing a big festival in New York City and Lars Ulrich was there from Metallica and I saw him backstage. The truth is, I was a huge metalhead in high school and that's how I learned to play my instrument. And then suddenly it occurred to me, 'The Sweater Song,' the riff, it's actually very similar to 'Sanitarium.'"
Cuomo pointed out, "If you play them right next to each other, they're pretty much identical. 'The Sweater Song' is in a major key. So I had to tell him that right then and there."
Fortunately, Ulrich was "so cool" about it, according to the Weezer singer, and the two bands have enjoyed a friendly relationship ever since.
Watch the interview clip below, and side-by-side "Undone (The Sweater Song)" and "Welcome Home (Sanitarium)" — which both also notably feature parentheses in their titles. Coincidence? We think not.
