articles

Spin - August 2001

From "Athletic Supporters: The Pearl Jam-Sports Connection" by Eric Weisbard:

Stone Gossard has his own fan: tennis star Pete Sampras, who has rallied with the band's preppiest member. "For as much tennis as Stone plays, which he probably doesn't have a lot of time, he hits the ball pretty good," says Sampras diplomatically. "Very grounded guys. They don't have any of the attitude that I see a lot when I watch these Behind the Music shows."

Gossard and Ament also take regular snowboarding trips to Alaska. "Landing the helicopter on insane stuff," says Ament. "Honestly, it's the only thing I've done that touches on the rush of having 20,000 people screaming to your music. Snowboarding is skateboarding for old people." Not that Ament has completely abandoned that pursuit: "We actually hooked up a few times recently and skated," says Mudhoney's Steve Turner. "But then my friend broke his arm, I hurt my knee, and Jeff broke his finger. So we stopped."

Miscellaneous Stoney quotes from the online article:

On Mike:
I saw Mike at a party when he was really drunk playing blues guitar and he was totally amazing. I had known Mike for a long time, since I was in 7th Grade, and he went through a transformation; found his own voice.

On Eddie:
I don't think I appreciated Eddie like I do now back then-his words and where he was coming from. Writing songs like "Release" or "Even Flow" in that basement together, I knew immediately when he was singing it felt good. But it took Ed and me a long time to get to know each other. We were very different kinds of people.

Garage Band
For a long period of time, me and Jeff would have loved to be in Get Your Wings-era Aerosmith, or Iggy Pop, or David Bowie. But there was something going on in Seattle that added a different element, a kind of garage approach.

Temple of the Dog
We made a record with Chris Cornell called Temple of the Dog. I still listen to it and think that it's the best thing I've ever been involved with. Whatever that combination of people was, I'd never been in a situation where it was that easy. I've almost been looking for that ever since. The very first thing we did was a very high water mark, the way that our two bands complemented each other. And it was a bunch of songs that Chris wrote totally from the heart. He wrote these songs without any preconceived notions of where they might end up or what they were going to be. That's where the real gold is. In terms of writing music, being self-conscious is the worst place to be.

MTV
We thought metal was pretty much a joke at that point, but we also knew that it was an area where we could get some fans. Headbangers Ball and Rip magazine, all that stuff. You're going to do whatever you can to get it going. We made an "Even Flow" video that never came out that I'm sensitive about, because it was my idea. It ended up being totally rawk: lots of big lights, out on a cliff, definitely comic to look back on now. Hopefully at some point, we'll be able to laugh at ourselves enough to show that one.

On Kurt Cobain:
When me and Jeff were at Sub Pop, we left in our wake a rift. That rift was what Kurt attached himself to, and it was perceived in the media as this huge line in the sand. I remember feeling blindsided by that, particularly because when I heard his record, it sounded so good and so immediate, I wanted him to like our band. That stressed everybody out. He crystallized a negative viewpoint of the band. I think all of us didn't know if we deserved the hype aspect of what was going on. Why me? I know fucking a hundred great guitar players. What am I doing that's different? There's a lot of that mindplay that starts to come into existence once we do well. And then, on the other side, some real beginnings of some overblown sense of yourself. I remember looking back on myself and how I felt destined to do something. I'd achieved my dream, so I felt like I was on some mission. It was a real mix of those two kinds of extremes: feeling blessed on one hand, and on the other hand hating myself for pulling something off that my friends hadn't been able to do.

On fame:
Ed was trying to break up our formula from early on; he immediately realized that getting bigger wasn't necessarily going to make any of us any happier. The song that you thought was going to be really great for the record wouldn't necessarily be the one he'd attach himself to. It would be some sort of third riff or silly little song: All of a sudden that would be the one he'd want to work on. Looking back on it, I can appreciate it, and I sort of resent it. I came into this band writing the majority of the songs, and being in control of the music. But my flavor would have gotten really tired by this point, had it just been my lead all the time.

Success
It was the most stressful and unnerving time. I was going out of my mind. The band has never been more successful, but we can't all be in a room together. Everything's dramatic and big.

Letting go
Vitalogy was the first record where Ed was the guy making the final decisions. It was a real difficult record for me to make, because I was having to give up a lot of control.

Mirrorball
That came at a time when we needed it, that Neil thought we were a band that would be good to make a record with. He probably felt sorry for us. He made it all right for us to be who we were. He's not taking his career so seriously that he can't take chances. Suddenly, our band seemed too serious.

Popularity
No matter what, you're going to have a time when some people are going to lose interest in you. We could still sell out live, which took some of the ego sting. But there was definitely a sense of us not delivering the goods in the way that the masses expected from us. It's only in hindsight that it seems all right. Then, I was straining at it. We didn't talk about it. Talk about what? How do we get people to like us again?

Biggest Hit
"Last Kiss" was one of my favorite moments in this band's history...Brett recorded it later, we spent $1,500 mixing the single at home, and it was our biggest song ever. The same performance that was at soundcheck. Just us trying to sound like a '50s song and sounding half-assed. Ed's interpretation is sentimental and beautiful, and it's not ironic, or clever, or sarcastic.

Binaural
Right now, Binaural is a little bit of a black sheep in my mind. People like it, but it doesn't necessarily carry them. We can make a better record than that. I'd like to go back and write some more spontaneous songs.

Roskilde
Well, this particular show, the barrier was 30 meters away; it was dark and raining. They'd been serving beer all day long. People fell down; the band had no idea.

We were part of an event that was disorganized on every level. Mostly I feel like we witnessed a car wreck. But on another level, we were involved. We played this show, and it happened. You can't be there and not have some sense of being responsible. It's just impossible. All of us spent two days in the hotel in Denmark crying and trying to understand what was going on.

On being compared to the Dead:
If we're at all like the Grateful Dead, that's the ultimate-a band believing in their own weird little world and people loving it because it is in a little bit of a vacuum.

The future
Individually, each person in this band has a lot of music in them and what we decide on as a band, as far as what out next record will be. I just never know what's going to happen. I'm sort of hoping for a renaissance. I want to just get in a room together and jam a little bit. See where Ed takes us.

Eddie's cute Stone comment (end of article):
...But I have a feeling that recording again is going to be a very similar thing. It's going to be the same kind of practice place, and the same kind of walking around, plugging in. And Stone's gonna plug in first and play really loud while the rest of us are trying to talk and say hello. We're gonna yell out, "Does anybody have a tape recorder?" And then they're gonna find a ghetto blaster from the back room, and then we'll play some songs, and we're gonna learn a couple of them, and then I'm gonna go home and drink beer.

[Stoney Highlights as transcribed by Amy McNamara]