PEARL JAM ON LIFE

1. Pearl Jam on interviews
2. Pearl Jam on issues within the band
3. Pearl Jam on living in the public eye
4. Pearl Jam on the music business














Pearl Jam on interviews.

"We want it to be about the music. We don't really care about any of this stuff." (interview - Spin Magazine - 2/97)
~Ed
"Nah, it's a piece of cake when you don't do interviews for years." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Ed
"We're kind of like Sting with his sex life. We've been abstaining for four years, just so we can give you the maximum pleasure as an interviewer!" (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Stone
"It's not like we don't want to talk to anyone. It's just that we don't want to talk to everyone all day long. We've defined what's reasonable for us." (interview - Revolver - 8/00)
~Stone
"It's scary when you start to perceive your press - an interview, or what somebody says about your record - as something real. Or doing press because you feel the need to project your personality out into the media. You can start to believe that you really deserve this. You have a dance with your ego, where you have to figure out where reality is, where your ego stops. For me, that was weird." (interview - Revolver - 8/00)
~Stone
"I don't mind talking to people. I don't mind giving interviews so much, but the way it's all organized and regulated. That's almost like being in the army. I don't like rules and regulations." (interview - NYRock - 8/00)
~Ed

Pearl Jam on issues within the band.

"When we first started, I think we went through a year's worth of touring, and it drove everybody crazy. You're sitting around, asking yourself if you deserve to be in the band, whether the success wasn't just some kind of fluke. As we got bigger and bigger, it was a great excuse for me to party more--to forget the worries. It got so bad that I thought they were going to kick me out." (interview - LA Times - 12/22/96)
~Mike
"All the success happened so fast that it took awhile for us to get our balance, to get past all the bickering and the infighting, and we are still learning." (interview - LA Times - 12/22/96)
~Stone
"I think we've learned something about long-term relationships and pulling together, and I feel good about it... There was a time around 'Vitalogy' when I didn't know if Pearl Jam had a future. It feels like a band now. We realize what a great opportunity we have to make music together, and we don't want to throw that away." (interview - LA Times - 12/22/96)
~Stone
"I think the only way we could get to the place where we could all go home and then not do anything for a little while and then have a little bit of excitement about getting together and writing songs, was to say, 'We can't tour anymore; we can't do any interviews; we can't make five videos for this record.' That's all the stuff that just tries you." (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Jeff
"I guess we're constantly trying to find a balance. There are very obviously times with this band when everything's been thrown out of whack, where things have felt crazy, where you're just going with the clip and there's no way you can go back and land. So consequently, there are times when we need to isolate, to figure out what we are doing with our lives." (interview - Spin Magazine - 2/97)
~Jeff
"I think our only way of getting through those times was to control it." (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Jeff
"But I feel like we went through the fire -- especially after we stopped doing press and stopped doing videos -- and things started to settle down. Everyone [started] feeling like, 'God, we're not doing that stuff, and everything's still fine. We can still make records, and we might not be selling as many records, but everything seems fine.'" (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Stone
"There was a period when we didn't know if we wanted to carry on. But I think we've all felt pretty good as a band and as individuals for the last three years. There's still a few issues here and there, but..." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Ed
"Our strategy has always been, 'Let's cut out everything extraneous except playing music and see where that leaves us'. What it did leave us with was playing with each other, and still having to work through some of the same issues that were plaguing us before. But at least it got the focus onto them. And as a result, a lot of the hype and other stuff died down." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Stone
"That's what gives this band a certain amount of sanity - you can escape from it, You can go off and spend a month or two doing something totally different. But we always make plans to meet up again when we leave. And when we all get back together again, it always feels so good. If we were all palling around all the time, that probably wouldn't happen." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Stone
"You know, it's still kind of exciting the first time that all five of us get together in a room for the first time in a month or something. It's like Mount Rushmore is complete!" (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Ed
"On my first tour with Pearl Jam, we went to Australia, Southeast Asia, Japan, and New Zealand. Before we left, I think I was running on this excitement and adrenaline of going to these great places and playing for a lot of people. We did fine musically and I think I played well, but the internal problems I'd experienced before, this inner life, still existed. It didn't go away; it doesn't go away with success. And when we came back from the tour, I was at my old point again, just mentally collapsed and exhausted." (interview - Modern Drummer - 6/98)
~Jack
"It's definitely more democratic now. If Ed wanted us to make an album of just his songs, we'd probably do it. But it makes it better for the band if he's giving us respect back." (interview - Boston Globe - 5/14/00)
~Jeff
"We're having a good time and we'll probably do up to eight of these new songs on the road. This feels like a rebirth for us. I know that sounds like Spinal Tap, but I'm really excited. It's always good to push boundaries." (interview - Boston Globe - 5/14/00)
~Mike
"You learn to pick your battles, and not to over-react before you know what the situation is. I remember there was one song we were working on--one that I wrote--and I was in the basement typing the lyrics and I had asked Jeff to just play really straight, just really straight, just kind of really thump your way through and keep it straight because that's what the bass needs to do. So I went down to the basement to type something and I could hear the bass and it was just crazy, like eight notes in two bars...I was thinking, 'What the fuck is he doing? Goddamn it, if I didn't look him in the eye and ask him to keep it simple.' I was just pissed and it was building up and building up, and I walked upstairs and they're playing back the track, and it was just this one little tag, this one little tag that he kept replaying. And I'm just so glad that I didn't run up there going, 'What the fuck?!' because the part was beautiful, you know, it was great." (interview - CMJ - 7/00)
~Ed
"I don't think we consciously set out to pull back, it was more about survival. Seven, eight years ago, we were having a hard time communicating with each other -- or even wanting to communicate. It was like being in the circus. Somebody you didn't know would come up to you at a meal and confront you with why they didn't like you, or somebody in the band, or the band itself, or the whole Seattle thing, or whatever. It was natural to want to pull away from that. Now we're concentrating more on making music and playing music." (interview - Revolver - 8/00)
~Mike
"After the initial popularity of the band, we didn't have to base decisions on making money, or, certainly, staying as commercially viable as we'd been. I'm sure some people wish we could sell more than a million records, but that's a huge success to us. To be able to make the music we want to and not feel that the songwriting and recording process is at all contaminated by thinking about commercial viability, we feel incredibly fortunate. We don't have to play the marketing game, so we're just taking advantage of that opportunity. It feels like it would be a shame to waste it. I don't think we'll ever go back into the ring on that scale. I'd rather just let it get smaller. I don't want to be in people's faces all the time, because I don't like the people who are in my face, so when I hear someone come down on us for being so big or taking attention away from the independent music that's better than ours - and I would agree - at least I can say, 'Fuck you - we could be everywhere.' We just choose not to be." (interview - Revolver - 8/00)
~Ed

Pearl Jam on living in the public eye.

"The music is art. That's what I'm married to. I'm not married to the thought of any kind of stardom or mass popularity...that almost is something that makes me uneasy. It's not as much losing control over your art, 'cause even if you have control like we do, it's all a matter of how people interpret it. Now all of a sudden they interpret it as something that's supposed to be popular. So I worry about that. I'm more apprehensive about any of the success than happy about it. So you get excited for about 5 minutes and then you get back to your own thing, and go on to the next deal. If you get so excited and that was the end of your tunnel, that's pretty ridiculous. You should never think, 'Ah, I made it.' Ultimately, you should be able to create for your whole life." (interview - Downtown Edition - 8/22/92)
~Ed
"I have some friends that call me up and say they heard a song on the radio, and the one good thing I think about is like, 'cool.' Because I think of them at certain times when I travel around and I see something that reminds me of them. If the song's on the radio and they hear my voice and it makes them think of me, then it's cool, we're thinking about each other. That's a total personal thing. It's nothing about, 'Yeah, they're playing me on the radio. I'm gonna be a big star.'" (interview - Downtown Edition - 8/22/92)
~Ed
"The whole success thing, I feel like everybody else in the band is a lot happier with it than me. Happy-go-lucky. They kind of roll with it. They enjoy it, even. I can't seem to do that. It's not that I think I'm better than it. I don't know. I'm just not that happy a person. I'm just not. What I enjoy is seeing music, getting to watch. Watching Neil Young. Or I get to watch Sonic Youth from the side of the stage. That's what's been nice for me. Music is an incredibly powerful medium to deliver a story by. But the best thing is, you have to have volume. You're supposed to play it loud. I would do anything to be around music. You don't even have to pay me." (interview - Rolling Stone - 10/28/93)
~Ed
"People think you are this grand person who has all their shit together because you are able to put your feelings into some songs. They write letters and come to the show and even to the house, hoping we can fix everything for them. But we can't... because we don't have all our shit together either. What they don't understand is that you can't save somebody from drowning if you're treading water yourself." (interview - LA Times - 5/1/94)
~Ed
"It bothers you. You try your hardest not to be affected by that stuff, but when people say shit about you without knowing you, it stings. A lot has changed, and for us to deny that would be ridiculous. But at the same time, I think we've dealt with it really well." (interview - Rolling Stone - 5/5/94)
~Jeff
"Good days, bad days. Sometimes I think of how far I've come from the teenager sitting on the bed in San Diego writing 'Better Man' and wondering if anyone would ever even hear it. But then there are times when it just all seems too much." (interview - LA Times - 12/22/96)
~Ed
"I like my job. I'm very glad I've got it. A lot of the fame and all that is kinda silly at times, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. This is what I've always wanted to do, so I guess I got pretty lucky." (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Mike
"It was about being burned, too. About somebody saying, 'Oh yeah, I'm your friend, and I'm gonna do all this,' and then a year later, finding out that they're collecting stories to write a book about you." (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Jeff
"And then there's aspects of it that there's no way you could be ready for. There's no way that you could be ready for being in a grocery store at 10 in the morning and having a bunch of people run up to you and ask you for your autograph. Especially if you've been in this neighborhood for 10 years, and to have that happen all of a sudden one morning. You're just like, 'What was that? What happened over the last two months that changed? Was it all the magazine covers or videos or what?'" (interview - Addicted to Noise - 2/97)
~Jeff
"We don't feel we need to justify anything. We know where we're coming from, and then it gets misconstrued, or people don't understand certain things, like why you couldn't play in San Francisco, or why you don't participate with the music channel. You definitely feel like responding to a lot of this stuff, but then you realize that it just kind of goes away. As long as you focus on the music, all that stuff doesn't matter." (interview - Spin Magazine - 2/97)
~Ed
"When you start trying to live up to what you imagine people are thinking about you - which is a very vicious circle in itself - you can definitely get into a lot of trouble and end up doing some not very functional things." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Stone
"It's always hard to believe, but the height of popularity can at the same time be the lowest point for you personally." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Ed
"As a normal human in this business, it's difficult if you want to retain your soul. And there's just no way to feel worthy of all the adulation you get. Certainly I don't, anyway." (interview - Kerrang! - 1/24/98)
~Ed
"Being a musician feels natural, I always knew I wanted to do it. The hard part was the rock star thing. I didn't understand it, I didn't understand the attention. It's like -- there's nothing you can do with it. You lose your privacy. You lose your ability to observe situations without changing them simply by entering." (interview - New York Daily News - 8/10/99)
~Ed
"I gave up trying to control my image a long time ago." (interview - New York Daily News - 8/10/99)
~Ed
"I don't mind that the fact that we're perceived as humorless pricks allows me to go into a bar, sit in the corner, and not have everyone come say hello. There's a nice force field that goes along with that." (interview - George - 6/00)
~Ed
"At that time, I was just incredibly unhappy in my personal life. Having the band the only thing I was doing, and then coming home and being incredibly lonely - all I wanted to do was get back out there again. That freaked me out." (interview - Revolver - 8/00)
~Mike

Pearl Jam on the music business.

"We'd just played this amazing show, and it was real. Then to go into this, like, disco with Pearl Jam posters everywhere and people shaking your hand -- 'Hey, this is Barney; every time you see your record, Barney put it there.' That lasted for hours. I had friends who were laughing at me from the corner, and I was like 'Dude, fuck you, this isn't funny.' To me, it wasn't funny. It wasn't what the music was about. That was unlike anything I've ever experienced in my life, and I never want to experience it again." (interview - Rolling Stone - 10/31/91)
~Ed








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