hi there, here's a cool interview published in brazil a while ago, before the release of binaural... they actually talk about music and being in a successful band.... ana PJ interview for Brazilian magazine Revistarock - May '00 issue the []s are my comments... =) sorry for any English mistakes, some words may sound strange due to the English/Portuguese/English re-translation... ;) The Shade and the Darkness [kinda exaggerated i think ;) ] Pearl Jam releases a "dark" album and concedes the only interview for South America; exclusive to REVISTAROCK, of course! By Ricardo Calil The rock world is on the alert. Pearl Jam, who is considered by many the best active band in the world, releases on May 16th its new album (the seventh!) BINAURAL. The album, which stamps [?] a ten year career of this Seattle band comes out with some news: the drummer Matt Cameron (ex-Soundgarden) substitutes Jack Irons; producer Tchad Blake (Los Lobos, Sheryl Crow) replaces old collaborator Brendan O'Brien; tickets for the North American tour will be sold by their great rival Ticketmaster; the first single off the album is a sinister [(?)] ballad written by bassist Jeff Ament, Nothing As It Seems; and the group sounds darker than ever. The good news is that Pearl Jam members, always against the press decided to concede to 89 - REVISTAROCK one of their rare interviews - and the only one to the South American press - about their new album. The talk took place at The Mercer Hotel in New York and had guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Matt Cameron. The only absence was singer Eddie Vedder, the rock'n'roll's most known hermit [(?)]. In spite of their "reserved" fame, the band guys seemed pretty relaxed during the interview. And, even with millions of records sold, they keep up not behaving affectedly. REVISTAROCK - Did you know that Pearl Jam fans in Brazil made a petition [woo-hoo!!! =)] asking for the band to play there? After all, when are you going? Stone - We have planned to play shows in Brazil several times, but it always didn't work out either because of date or financial problems. But we'll be playing there for sure. Who knows maybe after the North American tour? Jeff - If we still can stand each other at the tour end, maybe in January or February of next year. Matt - I've heard that Brazilian audience goes crazy with North American bands, that Brazilian fans really love them. Mike - Please, don't hate us, we're coming! Stone - Yeah, we have a great setlist to play there. It's been already seven records! Besides the shows, what would you like to do in Brazil? Matt - I'd like to find a nice beach for surfing. Jeff - I'd like to visit art museums and good restaurants, eat typical food. And meet Brazilians who could show me the good and bad things in the cities. Mike - I'd like to walk on the streets, see what culturally happens, know the architecture. I love visiting historical places. Do you know anything of Brazilian music? Matt - Charles Gavin from Titas [Brazilian pop/rock band], who i met at a Seattle studio, has sent me the complete Mutantes [Brazilian band of the 60's] collection. I had read about them on Mojo magazine and i have a lot of friends who are fans of this band but i didn't imagine that their music was so creative. I went mad in their sound especially because I love the 60's psychodelic music. What should the fans expect about the new album: the good and old Pearl Jam or a lot of news? Mike - The good and new Pearl Jam. With Matt on drums we got to another level of musicality [?]. I hope the fans enjoy listen it as much as we enjoyed making it. Wasn't the choice of Nothing As It Seems as a single a little bit risky since it is one of the darkest songs on the album? Stone - It proves that we don't take it so seriously. When the idea of releasing it as a single came out, the whole band found great. Instead of thinking whether the radio would play it, we wanted to release a song that would let the person feel like buying the album. Maybe it becomes or not a hit. There are people who will think that we're having loss on sales and other ones will think we're just disclosing new faces of the band. Mike - I love this song... It's a song that bothers me and at the same time pleases me. Stone - There's nothing on the radio that sounds like it. People will find interesting that Pearl Jam can sound like Pink Floyd... [!!!] So Pink Floyd was a reference for this song, because for me it reminded me a lot their sound... Jeff - Someone had already mentioned this before. The vocal melody really has something to do with Pink Floyd. This is almost the first time Brendan O'Brien isn't responsible for the production of a Pearl Jam record. Why did you decide to work with producer Tchad Blake this time? Mike - For me it's a difficult question, because i admit i'd prefer to work with Brendan. Tchad had some good ideas, he did a nice job in the slower songs, especially in Nothing As It Seems. But the other songs were difficult for him so we called Brendan to remix them, to make them heavier. I feel more comfortable with Brendan. He has a musical mind. Matt - There are a lot of producers who are engineers. Brendan is not. He's a musician, a complete producer - which is a really rare fact nowadays. How did it end the fight with Tickmaster? Who will sell tickets for this tour? Jeff - Ticketmaster will sell half of the tickets for the tour. They have exclusivity contract with 90% of the big arenas. Stone - We lost the fight. Do you feel defeated? No, we decided that it would become a secondary matter and we'd come back to be just a band, we'd just worry about our music. But we at least we acquired one thing: it will be printed on the tickets how much will be charged for Ticketmaster and how much it is for Pearl Jam. What cool bands came up after your generation? What have you been listening to lately? Jeff - There's a lot of good stuff happening out there. Radiohead has great songs, Supergrass is awesome. Stone - I've been listening to Chris Cornell a lot. And Fiona Apple released my favorite album in this year so far. Matt - The Melvins. And PJ Harvey. Mike - I've been listening the older stuff: Clash, Simon & Garfunkel, Rolling Stones. What do you think about bands like Creed, Nixons and Days Of The New, that sound really like Pearl Jam? Matt - I think they're kinda weak. There's an audience for them but they don't excite me. They sound kinda like fake. You've been playing with some of your idols like Neil Young, Pete Townshend, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Who do you dream about playing with? Stone - We'll play with Joe Strummer (ex-Clash) on the European Tour and Supergrass on the North American tour. Frank Black, Iggy Pop and Ben Harper have played with us recently. We can't demand more than that. We're pretty lucky we could play with these people. You don't usually give a lot of interviews. Why did you accept to make promotion for this album? Mike - A while ago we didn't want to promote our albums because there was all this crazy stuff around us. Now it's more calm. We're pretty excited about this album. Stone - We've reserved two days for the press and four months for touring. This is a fair proportion. Doesn't that mean you're dealing better with the pressures, that you're more comfortable with the fact you're "rock stars"? Stone - We're more selective, open to do one thing or another, but not everything people expect us to do. Two days with the press seems pretty reasonable to me. Jeff - The interviews give us the chance of talking about our music, trying to understand what we do... It has nothing to do with assuming as rock stars. We don't make videos, we're not on MTV often... Stone - We don't have mansions or sport cars, we didn't move to Hollywood, neither bought leather pants. Sometimes we feel the smell of the mansions but then we think: "No, we still can't do it". Matt - But it's still not a bad job. Mike - It's much better than my former job as a waiter. A lot of reviewers [?] consider Pearl Jam today's best band. What do you think about this title? Stone - Anyone who had heard our rehearsals last year would disagree (laughs)... Jeff - I think we're a great live band, maybe one of the five best, but there are days we make mistakes. We're human, not virtuoso. Matt - But there's a lot of music out there for you to say one is the best. But for me the best are the Mutantes. Mike - Stones are - or were - the greatest band in the world. Stone - All you gotta do is take a look at Beatles or Led Zeppelin... But you're comparing yourselves with rock legends... Stone - But you can compare with new bands like Supergrass, they're incredible musicians. But I feel satisfied with Pearl Jam, there's a lot of energy in our band live. How's it going with your personal relationship after ten years together? Do you still hang out together or only meet each other to make music? Jeff - We hang out nowadays as much as we did in the beginning. Of course there was a honeymoon period in the first year. Then each one wanted his own room in the hotels... But this is natural in every relationship. Even with my best friends I have disturbing periods, but these are the most rewarded relationships - when you go through everything and get to keep together. Mike - We have separate lives and parallel projects. And we meet for records and tours. We keep it up together this way. Matt - When you're recording or touring, the relationships get tense. It's healthy to go out and come back renewed. Is it the importance of the parallel projects? Keep up the sanity? Mike - Yeah, run away from the madness and learn with other people, learn to play, to relax. For Pearl Jam it's always been important to keep the honesty and integrity. Ten years after do you think you could make it? Mike - The integraty comes from honesty. It's not something planned, it's something that just happens. If you make music for yourself, you're being honest. If you make music for others, like for a certain age group, then you're being dishonest. Matt - Pearl Jam is one the few bands that has been on the road for so long and that has some integrity because they control every step. Do you think you're better? Mike - I feel much more confident about how we're playing. And we wanna keep up improving. If we keep playing like we did in our last tour, this one will be really exciting. Jeff - We're playing even better now that we have a great drummer. And how's Jack Irons? Is he coming back to the band? Stone - Jack decided that he couldn't tour at least not the way we'd like to. So we came to terms that we'd separate with no resentment. He's a guy with a family, doesn't like to fly by airplane... Can Matt be officially considered as the drummer for Pearl Jam? Jeff - Right now he is. I don't know if he'll make a long term decision, but while he agrees to make records with us, he's the drummer for Pearl Jam. So, Matt, how long do you intend to be in the band? Matt - At least till the end of the tour. But I have another band and a family. My priorities have changed ten years from now. But Pearl Jam has been quite comprehensive with the fact that I can't compromise definitely. Mike - He's in the family. We feel like he's already a member. Matt, do you think you're lucky by playing with two great bands of the 90's, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam? Matt - Of course. I always thank my lucky star [?!?] for the fact of have played with two great bands. What are the differences between playing with Pearl Jam and Soundgarden? Matt - In Soundgarden I had to play the loudest and harder possible. In Pearl Jam things are more flexible. I end a PJ show less tired than with Soundgarden. But there are similarities too. One of them is that both bands have singers with a very strong sense of rhythm. Does the word "grunge" still mean something to you? Stone - For me, "grunge" is a comic word, it's always been. A word which was released to create a "hype". Mike - It's a label. But it's also something that came out from the music. Since it rains a lot in Seattle, we spent all day long in the garage playing. Jeff - I think Mudhoney was the band that fit better to this word, maybe Nirvana too. I've never seen PJ as a grunge band. We didn't came out from there, but we've been influenced by them. Coincidently we were at the same scene people identified as grunge - and you end up being attached to it. Matt - "Grunge" for me is a mark in history, it represents a musical revolution that happened and that is over. So if it's necessary to have a label for that, it's OK. translated by ana