Weezer Admit To Stealing From Metallica

If you want to seek and destroy my sweater….

If you want to seek and destroy my sweater….

You’ve got love it when songwriters speak candidly about where they got their inspiration from, even if that information is less than flattering.

That’s what Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo does while talking to Rolling Stone about the band’s memorable debut single, “Undone (The Sweater Song”), which he now admits is greatly indebted to Metallica’s 1986 Master of Puppets track “Welcome Home (Sanitarium).”

“‘The Sweater Song’ was the first Weezer song I ever wrote, back in 1991,” says Cuomo. “I was trying to write a Velvet Underground-type song because I was super into them, and I came up with that guitar riff. I just picked up that acoustic guitar and the first thing I played was that riff. And it just feels so classic to me, even now when the band starts to play it, it just takes over the energy in the room and you’re just transported into the world of Weezer. It wasn’t until years after I wrote it that I realized it’s almost a complete rip-off of ‘Sanitarium’ by Metallica. It just perfectly encapsulates Weezer to me — you’re trying to be cool like Velvet Underground but your metal roots just pump through unconsciously.”

Weezer release their latest album, Ratitude, on October 27. Read the full Rolling Stone article here.