Interview de Mike

MM: Hello, how are you Chris?

CG: Great. Thanks for taking a minute before the show.

MM: You got it man, thank you for the help.

CG: So how does it feel to get back to work after a month off?

MM: It feels great. I was kind of busy on our time off, I was doing some charity work for a Crohn’s organization, which is what I have. I have this thing called Crohn’s disease. So I was working for this group called the CCFA, if I can plug them. I did a benefit speaking engagement out in Seattle.

CG: Since you brought that up, you had said that it was going to be kind of strange speaking publicly on your own without the name ‘Pearl Jam’ behind you. What was that experience like?

MM: It was kind of nerve-wracking a little bit but it was exciting. It was one of the greatest things I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of, now that I look at it in hindsight. And the guys did show up, which was cool, I was blown away by that. Jeff flew in that morning and flew out and surprised me. I tell you Chris, it was another level of giving back to the community and learning things, getting to meet other kids with Crohn’s. It’s been a really exciting thing for me, even more so than playing sometimes. Very, very emotionally charged and exciting thing to be a part of.

CG: So the break was good for you?

MM: Yeah, it was very busy, it wasn’t even really like a break. I was thinking that, I did a benefit, gave a speech, blah, blah, blah and then it’s like ‘Whoa, we’re in the middle of the tour again.’ Usually when I’m on break I’m like ‘Man, let’s get back on tour.’ This time the time just flew.

CG: Is it good to get back on the stage, are you enjoying it?

MM: I’m am loving it. I am really glad to be back. We played this show in Montana the other night that, wow, was really exciting. The crowd was just phenomenal, screaming. I haven’t heard that loud of screaming for, I don’t know. It was like ‘Is this us on the stage or the Stones?’ It really was exciting.

CG: That’s great, because I think that’s the smallest venue of the tour. Great to hear there was some good fans.

MM: Yeah, I believe so. It was only like 7,000 or so.

CG: I do want to talk to you about your live shows, because that’s really what seems to separate you from other bands. How much is the band, right now, enjoying playing live?

MM: I think more so than ever. We’ve all grown up together, we know how to play off each other, intuitively. I’ve never seen Ed sing better in my life, and I’ve been saying that consistently through a bunch of interviews. He was singing so phenomenally the other night. Like at the end of ‘Daughter’ he’ll go off on a tangent and sing whatever’s on his mind, and he’s just belting it out. That, and with Boom, our new keyboard player, that guy’s been phenomenal. He’s added a whole new element to the situation, playing on older songs like ‘Black’ and ‘Betterman’ and Boom plays on a lot of the newer tunes as well. The keyboards just add a lot and it’s something I’ve wanted to have in the band for many, many years.

CG: He’s taken ‘Crazy Mary’ to places I’ve never heard before.

MM: Exactly! There you go, thank you for noticing that. It got all heavy, and it’s never been heavy before.

CG: I’ve been following you since the beginning, and I’ve been to a bunch of shows, including four so far this tour. I think you guys look, I don’t know if happier is the right word, but it seems you’re looser and having more fun this tour than in recent tours. Would you agree with that?

MM: Yeah, I think we are having some fun. I think we know where we are in our lives, personally. It’s definitely not as crazy (Eds note -- Mike paused at this point to say ‘Come in’ to someone at the dressing room door. Ed maybe? icon_smile.gif ) as it was back in the early days. We’re more about the music now than all the craziness and the hype that was going on before. We’re not getting buried under all that. I think now we’re going out there and playing our music and people are responding to that, still. Which to us, I’m totally grateful for that, Chris. It’s like man, people still come out to see us. What is better than that? And we get to play pretty well, so that’s the neat thing. I’m glad you noticed that. We’re less angst-ridden, I guess.

CG: Nobody likes that word anymore.

MM: Laughs

CG: Talking about people still coming out, I brought my girlfriend to her first Pearl Jam show this tour, and she was blown away.

MM: Which show?

CG: Oklahoma City was her first one. She also came to Nashville.

MM: Oh great! Cool. (eds note -- Mike wasn’t being sarcastic here, it was an enthusiastic ‘great’)

CG: I don’t know if you’ve heard the talk, but people are pointing to this tour as one of the strongest of your career. Does it give you a satisfying feeling that after more than a decade you’re still putting out relevant music and earning new fans?

MM: Yeah, if we’re earning new fans I’m just jumping for joy. I’m totally psyched about that. I’m psyched about the fact that we have our fan base that has been very strong and very passionate for many years, but to actually attract new people to it, younger people or whoever just wants to come out and have a good time at a show or are into our music, that to me is the greatest thing in the world. It’s exciting. It blows me away. I do have to pinch myself, if you’ll pardon the cliché. It’s weird. I’m just grateful that people are still coming out, and we have new people coming to check us out.

CG: You mentioned being happy, and I don’t need specifics because it’s none of my business, but is the band in a good place, personally? I’ve heard Ed make several references at the concerts to girlfriends supporting you guys on tour, and there’s been modified lyrics by him talking about love a lot. Love seems to be a recurring theme on this tour. Does that seem to be that case?

MM: Sure. All of those things are the case. I think Ed is in a very good space right now. Actually I know he is, I know by being around him, how he’s playing, how he’s changing lyrics, and how he interacts with the band and how we’re hanging out, playing Ping-Pong or whatever we do. All the things that don’t seem important but are important to our world. Yeah, I just think we’re getting more comfortable with who we are.

CG: It seems like you’re having fun on stage, too. How about Jeff throwing some birthday cake in your face?

MM: Oh, yeah! He threw that thing pretty hard, too. It took me two days to get it all out of my ear. I was like ‘Oh my God, I still have this crap in my ear’. (Eds note -- while that sounds very Valley Girl-ish, it didn’t come out that way) Yeah, we do do this birthday thing, and generally Jeff has been hit with that over the years. I was thinking that I was going to get away with that, but oh no, they got me. It kind of hurt.

CG: I can imagine. Without the weight of Roskilde so fresh in your mind, has this tour been a little bit easier, or had a different feel to it than 2000?

MM: For sure, yeah. The weight of that is still there. It’s something that will be with us forever. I think we categorize it, no we don’t, we just live with it now. It’s part of us, if I can speak for everybody and I don’t know if I can, but I do. I live with it and I think about it almost everyday. It’s something that’s there. It’s not as fresh as it was, obviously, right after the tragedy, but it’s still there in songs like ‘Love Boat Captain’ so every time we play that I definitely think about it.

CG: You said one time the band sounds better live than in studio, that live is a better forum for you. Not that the studio sound needs help, but what is different about playing live?

MM: I think there’s something to us live that’s spiritually, between the five of us, that’s enlightening. We learn from each other, we play off each other. It’s more exciting. There’s something more. Ed gets a little more into it. Matt pushes us to another level. I can just kind of get lost in the whole live feeling. I think I play better live than in a studio. I feel lucky about that. It’s something about our band. I think we are better live than in a studio. What the reasons are behind that, I don’t know. Obviously it’s feeding off the crowd, that’s exciting. You get that high, that energy from the crowd that makes you want to perform all the better. And I’m never satisfied. I want to be better and better and better.

CG: That’s going to be tough. (Mike laughs) One of things people are pointing to as the strength of this tour is the extremely varied setlists. I’ve been to four shows and I’ve heard 63 different songs. What makes you think ‘Hmmm, tonight let’s play ‘Deep’ for the first time in 8 years’ or play ‘Glorified G’?

MM: Wow, you did the math on that? That’s cool.

CG: Well yeah, I heard 4 different openers, 4 different closers. I knew I heard a lot of different songs and I was curious. I heard ‘Deep’ in Oklahoma City, the first time you’ve played it since 94 or something. Is that a spur of the moment thing you decide?

MM: No, it’s something we do about 30 minutes, 40 minutes to an hour before the show. We go over the songs the night before. Ed has a master list. Sometimes Stone will write out the setlist, sometimes Jeff will and I’ll help a little bit, too, but mostly it’s Ed. We do it off the cuff, every night. That’s kind of why it happens that way.

CG: Is that the same reason the band decided to shelve certain songs that haven’t been played in a long time?

MM: If we play them crappy, we shelve it (laughing). I think ‘Deep’ was kinda good, but I don’t know if we did it justice. That may be the reason we didn’t play it for a while. That’s a good question though.

CG: Same with ‘Why Go’ or ‘Leash’ or some No Code stuff that hasn’t been played much?

MM: Exactly! I think ‘Leash’, ‘Leash’ is something people really want to hear but we haven’t gotten our shit together to play it. I think we need to rehearse it a couple times to see where we can go with that.

CG: Is there a favorite song for you, or something you haven’t played that you would like to?

MM: Me? Ah, wow. We haven’t even talked about doing ‘Why Go’. For me personally, maybe ‘Garden of Stone’. But that’s tough. No, no, erase that. ‘WMA’. I’d love to play that.

CG: Ed’s tagged that a few times on ‘Daughter’, I think you could pull it off.

MM: I think we could now.

CG: Is it true you’re tired of playing ‘Corduroy’ night after night?

MM: Oh boy! (laughing) You have done your homework, haven’t you?

CG: That’s one of my favorite songs, when I heard you don’t like it, it crushed me.

MM: I wasn’t on that tour, now I’m digging it again. Honestly. We played it last night.

CG: I’ve heard you add some new solos to it, so you’ve kind of added some new life to it.

MM: That’s true. I had a different feeling about it before. I think when I originally said that, the guy was like ‘Are there any songs you really, really don’t like playing?’ I can’t remember exactly how he worded it but it came out like I really hated it, and I didn’t really hate it. I was tired at the time of playing, but now I’m psyched about it.

CG: Pearl Jam fans are pretty lucky in that this is a time when ‘smart’ music isn’t very popular -- it seems to be all hooky, mindless stuff on the radio -- but you guys still make ‘smart’ music. Does it feel good to be able to make the kind of music you want without selling out to radio?

MM: Yeah, I think so. There’s some things by us I’d love to have played on the radio more, but if it doesn’t happen, that’s something I don’t have any control over.

CG: You certainly don’t compromise anything.

MM: No, we don’t. We don’t sit down and think ‘We’re going to write a hip song right now’ and put a turntable in it. For us that would be wrong. For the bands that are using it, it’s right. But for us it wouldn’t make any sense. I’m exaggerating right now, but it’s nice to just be able to make music. And getting back to when we were writing songs, Ed wrote like 10 songs just on ukulele. That’s totally uncompromising. And out of that came the song ‘Can’t Keep’.

CG: You talked about the band feeding off the crowd. Does it impress you when the crowd knows every word to a song that maybe hasn’t gotten a lot of radio play? I was in Nashville and Ed forgot the last verse to ‘Love Boat Captain’ and the crowd sang the whole thing back to him, loudly.

MM: It totally impresses me. It’s like, wow. The crowd is obviously into it and passionate about singing the songs. That impresses me, and makes me want to play better. I’m getting off from that. I’m going ‘Oh my God, they’re totally singing all the lyrics. They know more than I do, and I’m in the goddamn band!’ And it’s true!

CG: Does that band get a kick out of Ed flubbing his lyrics?

MM: Oh yeah. Sure.

CG: Because I know the fans do.

MM: I do, but I also look at it from this side -- how does he remember like 99 percent of them?

CG: Yeah, I think you’re drawing from a catalog of 70 songs.

MM: One line out of one song. Out of 70 songs I’m definitely going to forget some guitar parts. We were going over ‘Even Flow’ today, me and Stone!

CG: Really?!?!

MM: (laughing) We forgot how to play one part of ‘Even Flow’. I’m going to sell us out right now, but we had to go over the ‘Did-di-did-di-did-di-did-a-daaaaa’ today. (Eds note -- I wish you guys could here Mike saying this -- hilarious!!!)

CG: Are those solos still fun for you?

MM: Oh, I love them. Yeah. I get to play as hard as I can. Those are the ones that I told you I’m never kind of satisfied with. There’s nights when I am, but then I want to do it better than I am.

CG: Always reaching for more?

MM: Yeah, I think so.

CG: Is freedom of speech still going to be alive from the stage in leg two?

MM: Yeah, for sure.

CG: You talked about being impressed with the fans, but some of the fans kind of disappointment me with some behavior during Bushleaguer. Did that disappoint the band?

MM: No, that’s part of the thing. They have their freedom of speech to, to do that. It’s all part of being an American.

CG: Can you discuss your decision to shelve that song? This band has always held fast in your beliefs, and I know you believed in that song. Was this situation different to make you come out publicly and say you’re not going to play it anymore?

MM: We may still play it. It’s not that we’re not going to play it. Like I said we do our sets 30 minutes to an hour before each night and that’s when it’s decided whether we’re going to play certain songs or not, and that’s one of them.

CG: I was pretty sure I heard a Bushleaguer snippet in ‘Ledbetter’ at State College.

MM: You are correct on that.

CG: By the way, State College, holy cow. 36 songs, your longest show ever. And nice effort at ‘Satan’s Bed’.

MM: Oh God, that sucked! (laughing) We were so bad at that.

CG: Then the Missoula show was 31 songs. Do you guys know ahead of time when you’re going to play shows like that?

MM: No. They just happen. They generally will happen, but we don’t go ‘OK, we’re going to play this many songs tonight.’ It just happens. If we’re all in a good mood, and digging it, and the crowd is still there with us, we’re going to keep doing it.

CG: So I’m writing a preview of your show in Little Rock, and you guys haven’t been here since 1993.

MM: Wow.

CG: Well, it’s understandable. For some reason Pearl Jam doesn’t draw as well in the South. When that happens, do smaller crowds effect your performance?

MM: Ah, no. I think we play better in those situations, occasionally, where in my mind I’m going ‘Oh, we didn’t sell many tickets here’ or something like that. But I think we still play pretty great that way, sometimes better. It’s all something I learned from Neil Young a long time ago -- We will have fans come out, then we won’t have fans, then you have fans again. Hopefully that’s the way you’ll have a career. And we’re still doing pretty well. There’s apparently still pretty good demand out there.

CG: Not being here since 93 you know you’re going to have some fans that have never seen you before.

MM: Oh, I know, and I hope they come out. It’s going to be an exciting show. We may give them 3 hours. You never know.

CG: Your live performance is so pure, just 5 guys, well 6 now, without elaborate stage shows and lighting. Do you think this down-to-earth approach has sustained the band?

MM: I think so, because we’re focusing mostly on the music, rather than a lot of flash pots and me trying to blow fire. I think it’s sustained us. We do have a little bit of a light show with Keely doing our lights.

CG: ‘You Are’ is awesome.

MM: Yeah, that’s a neat one. I’m glad you picked that out, because that’s one the fans have picked out, too.

CG: Are you guys getting stronger. Do you see 5 years, 10 years from now a good future?

MM: I certainly hope that we’re around 5 years from now, or 10. I have no idea, I take it one day at a time. I have no idea. There’s many factors as to why you can be a band or not a band. Trying to be excited, keep our lines of communication open with everyone in the band. If people are still wanting to hear us in 5 years, I guess we’ll be around. I think it’d be great.

CG: It’s been 12 years with the five of you. You’re more than five guys that make music together. Is it more like a relationship a sports team has, or more like family relationship at this point?

MM: I’d say it’s more like brothers. Brothers that have grown out of a sports team, if that makes sense. That’s kind of the vibe, since we do do a lot of sports things together. We have a mutual love for each other.

CG: I have a personal question for you -- for all the wanna-be Pearl Jam guitarists out there do you think you guys are going to publish any music, like you did with the Ten songbook?

MM: Um, I don’t know if we will or not. A lot of those songbooks out there are incorrectly written, too.

CG: I think Ten is the only official one.

MM: I think Ten is the official one came out, and I don’t know if we had anything to do with that. Well, we must have had something to do with that coming out. It’s doubtful ... well, I don’t know. We might do some other songbooks but it’s not anything we think about because, a.) none of us know how to read music, and b.) I learned how to play guitar off records, listening to AC/DC records.

CG: I know we have to wrap this up, there’s one last thing I have to know.

MM: OK.

CG: Someone once asked you for your top 10 list of 2002 albums and you put Avril Lavigne’s “Let Go” in there.

MM: Right! (laughing)

CG: I’m wondering, if that wasn’t a joke can you explain that?

MM: I actually liked it at the time! I think I’m tired of it now, I’ve heard it so much. I didn’t mind it. I listened to it for a little bit, then I kind of got out of it. So I think at the time I was serious, I was into it.

CG: So since you’re in Avril’s home country are we going to hear some Sk8er Boi riffs tonight?

MM: I don’t know any of her riffs! I might give you some Rush riffs.

CG: A much better Canadian band.

MM: Yeah! (laughing)

CG: Mike, I really appreciate this.

MM: No problem.

CG: Now that we’re done I feel safe in telling you, and I know you get this all the time, but you are the person that inspired me to pick up a guitar the first time and start playing.

MM: Well thank you very much!

CG: You music has been important to me from the very beginning.

MM: Cool! Will I see you in Arkansas?

CG: Dallas, Arkansas, all over. I’ll be the guy screaming for a pick in the front row, hopefully.

MM: Then I’ll be the guy throwing one to you.

CG: Look forward to it. Have a great show tonight.

MM: Thanks Chris, bye.