Ween frontman Aaron Freeman: We've broken up; Co-founder Mickey Melchiondo ... - New York Daily News

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Ween members (l. to r.) Aaron Freeman, Dave Dreiwitz, and Mickey Melchiondo perform last year at Hangout Music Festival in Gulf Shores, Ala.

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Ween is officially pushing th’ daisies.

Frontman Aaron Freeman, aka Gene Ween, says the influential alternative band is calling it quits after 25 years.

“It’s time to move on,” Freeman told Rolling Stone. “I’m retiring Gene Ween.

“It’s been a long time, 25 years. It was a good run.”

Speculation about the future of the band has been swirling since Freeman had a drug and alcohol-fueled meltdown on stage in Vancouver last year.

Freeman says he’s been mulling the decision for eight years â€" but it came as a shock to his cohort Mickey Melchiondo, better known to fans as Dean Ween, who had to read about it like everyone else.

“This is news to me, all I can say for now I guess,” Melchiondo posted on his Facebook page.

Freeman and Melchiondo, buddies since eighth grade, formed Ween in the mid ‘80s, but didn’t break through until 1992 with their major-label debut, Pure Guava, which spawned a hit video on MTV for “Pushing th’ Little Daisies.”

Over the years and through their last album, 2007’s “La Cucaracha,” Ween built a sound that mashed together disparate music styles from prog rock to country.

Freeman seems to have already moved on from Ween: His solo album “Marvelous Clouds” was released earlier this month.

“For me it’s a closed book. In life sometimes, in the universe, you have to close some doors to have others open,” Freeman told the magazine. “There’s no, ‘Goddamn that such and such!’ For me, I’d like to think it’s a door I can close finally.”