Article pre-concert avec interview de Matt:
PEARL JAM - As The Circle Turns
Pearl Jam return to Perth for a show at Subiaco Oval this Saturday, November 25, with support from Kings Of Leon. CHRISTIE ELIEZER reports.
Pearl Jam were firing on all six cylinders on their recent European tour. The set list changed every night, with only 10 songs returning for each of the two and a half hour shows.
Most of the songs were from the current self-titled album, interspersed with classics as Rats, Spin The Black Circle, Alive, Daughter, Last Kiss and Animal or b-sides such as Wish. As always, they ended on a high with a tribute to Jimi Hendrix, the most famous music idol to emerge from their hometown of Seattle.
Much of the media see Pearl Jam as intense, paranoid, petty and painful. That’s changed somewhat, after a couple of their albums stiffed. They’ve made a comeback with the Pearl Jam album, and they seem more comfortable not to be in the super-superstar league. It allows them to remain a band that has the heart of a garage band but can play huge arenas to maximum impact.
They give a lot of money away, from Apache Native American environmental rights to struggling independent record stores or minor league baseball teams, to groups concerned about the madman in the White House.
Pearl Jam’s musical strength is the Vedder- Gossard-McCready three-prong guitar attack and the tough rhythm section of Matt Cameron and Jeff Ament. At Barcelona’s Pavellio Olimpicdo Badalona, Vedder loosened up with constant swills from a bottle of wine, charmed the locals with Spanish phrases, threw tambourines into the crowd during their version of The Who’s Baba O’Riley and howled ‘It’s my bl-o-o-o-d!’ to dramatic effect.
Mike McCready’s solo during Even Flow had a sense of the surreal, more so when Cameron contributed a drum solo. Footage of that song from the Barcelona show is up on YouTube.
“I’m not trying to make some statement on my solo,” Cameron said in his hotel room before the show. “I don’t think about it too much. I’ve been doing it (the solo) consistently each show, I’ve got a few motifs I’m trying to hit, but I don’t think about it, I’m just reacting.
“I’m not the sort of guy who goes back and plays tapes of the shows. But someone emailed me footage of the show in San Francisco. I checked it out and it was pretty cool.”
Cameron had been for a walk around Barcelona, and marvelled at its architecture. He turns 44 on November 28 and is married to April. They have two kids aged seven and four. “When the band get home to Seattle from a tour, the other guys are talking about where to go on their vacations. But I’m a hands-on dad, and my work starts when I get home. It’s an active household but I love it.”
Home is a nondescript suburban house, in the nicer part of town. Do his neighbours know what he does for a day gig? “Oh yeah, one owns a music store, we talk a lot, another plays in a band.”
Cameron also plays guitar, bass and keyboards, and writes songs. In the liner notes of the Lost Dogs compilation, Vedder wrote “Matt Cameron writes songs and we run to find step stools in order to reach his level. What comes naturally to him leaves us with our heads cocked like the confused dogs that we are...eventually getting it. Did we mention he’s the greatest drummer on the planet?”
What’s the biggest buzz Matt gets from playing with Pearl Jam? “We have a great camaraderie, we play to each other’s strengths. When we write music together, we know what the other person will be playing. We’ve been around each other for so long, it’s what every band strives to be. I’ve been playing with different bands and different situations, you learn to adapt. I’ve got those skills, so do they.”
Which 1970s band do Pearl Jam most relate to? “If you asked Mike and myself, we’d say Kiss or Queen. Eddie would say the Ramones. He was very close to Johnny Ramone, and was deeply affected by his death (of cancer in 2004).
He wrote Life Wasted from the current album about Johnny.”
In Pearl Jam ranks, it’s Vedder who makes the gossip columns, whether it’s for his painful divorce or for his dating model Jill McCormick or going paranoid as every stalker and attention-getter drew to him. These days it is known that McCready suffers from the inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s. Once he had to run offstage during a show when they opened for the Rolling Stones, to find a toilet.
Cameron is amiable and laidback, yet he’s been in two of ’90s rock’s biggest acts (the other being Soundgarden), almost three (he was rumoured to join The Smashing Pumpkins in 1998). That year, Vedder rang and said, ‘Hey, whaddya doing this summer?’ Eight summers later, the drummer is still with Pearl Jam.
Pearl Jam songs struck a chord with kids who felt themselves on the outer. But Cameron, the son of a lawyer father and schoolteacher mother, was the opposite.
“I grew up in San Diego in a normal, happy house,” he recalls. “I went to the beach a lot, had many friends, and rode motorcross. My parents had a strong work ethic, and we all had to have summer jobs. When I got to high school, I dug in and played music a lot. I didn’t fit in with the jocks, but I never saw myself as an outsider.”
At 13, he and some buddies formed a cover band called Kiss, with the word “imitation” under the name. A threatening letter came from Kiss’ management and the band split up.
Album covers were important in turning Cameron into a rock obsessive. “What blew my mind was Aladdin Sane by David Bowie, it was frightening but interesting. The first record I bought was Jimi Hendrix’s Smash Hits which had a psychedelic cover. The Beatles’ Revolver was fantastic art, and I remember starring at the cover of Kiss Alive for hours on end.”
What would that 15-year old think of Matt Cameron today? “At that time, I’d seen Queen, Kiss and David Bowie. I would have looked up in awe. I became came what I secretly wanted to be at that age. And you can’t knock that. Life’s good, I got no complaints.”
Does he believe in fate and destiny? “I believe in hard work. When I first arrived in Seattle, I had no plan but to play music. There was no Plan B if things didn’t work out. I just kept open to every situation that came my way, and didn’t say no to any offer from a musician. Because you learn from every experience.”
