Q&A with Pearl Jam's Mike McCready
Press writer Troy Reimink recently interviewed Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready about the band's rekindled success, its self-titled new album, its history and its politics. Pearl Jam performs Friday night at Van Andel Arena. Here is a transcript of their phone conversation:
Press: How'd the first couple of shows go?
McCready: They've been really exciting. The one we played last night was in Connecticut and about 22,000 people were there. It was a really exciting crowd. We've been working some of the new numbers into the set, and some old surprises, and we have a brand new light show. We're stoked. We're getting out of first gear. We're getting into second, and we're rolling.
What do you guys do to prepare for a tour?
This one, we've rehearsed more than we ever have in the past. We rehearsed for about six weeks when generally we just go for about a week. We're really working hard trying to get our new songs to sound as good as they can, if not better than on the record.
How do you guys pick a set list? This'll be my 10th time seeing you guys, and every show I've seen has been absolutely different from any other one ... What, you've got eight albums now, and a million b-sides a bunch of covers ... How do you get a set list together for the night?
We really look at the set list from the night before. Ed (Vedder, lead singer) will spend most of the day ... thinking about a set, peaks and valleys and what songs should go where, what we should open with, what we opened with last night. If we opened up with "Go," really heavy the last night, maybe we'll open with "Release" the next night, just to have a different tenor to the set, a different feel. It's very thought-out. I think Ed actually loses sleep over it sometimes. He said was up at 2 o'clock in the morning working on one the other night.
I know a lot of fans lose sleep over it, too.
Well, we want our fans to be well-rested.
Congratulations on the new album. ...
The single's doing good, the sales have been doing good. How's it feel?
Yeah, it's just really exciting. It's something that we hadn't expected. We thought the record was really good because we worked on it for about a year and a half. We got a new record label, and they seem to be excited about the record. We're both mutually working toward that goal of selling records, going on tour, promoting it. We feel very happy to be doing it for this one. Actually, grateful, because we're still around. Sixteen years, it's like, who knew?
J Records seems to be doing a good job of promoting it, at least compared to how the last couple of records were promoted.
I agree. They've definitely taken the ball and, you know, slam dunk.
The phrase "return to form" is what a lot of critics have been using. Do you think there's any merit to that?
Well, I think there's maybe a little bit. The energy of the record, maybe like back in the early days, we harnessed a lot of that energy, and we've re-harnessed it on this record. A lot of hard songs, melody, things like that. But the last two records, I really liked, too. So you never know, I guess. You go where your band is musically at the time. For (2000's) "Binaural," we were at a certain level in our life, and I think there were some cool songs on that record. Whether we returned to form, I'm not sure. It may be an energy thing. We worked really hard on this record, longer than we did on those other records, so that may have something to do with it, too.
Longer in the writing process, or longer in the recording process?
All of it. ... The writing process probably started two years ago, and then we started recording a year and a half ago. We go in for a three weeks and do a couple of tunes, and then listen to those, and maybe re-record one, and do a new one, and Ed will put lyrics on it. It's not ... scientific ... but we wanted to work on this record really hard.
Why is the record self-titled? I know that's a really obvious question, but eight albums into your career, it's probably symbolic of something ...
I was wondering about that. What's that mean?
That symbolizes just kind of ... Ed's at the end of the process and said, for all I care right now, we've done such a good job on this record, and we're kind of tired from it. Let's throw an avocado on the cover. I think that's what happened, and our art director goes, hey, that's not a bad idea. I think we were watching the Super Bowl, and we had some guacamole or something.
Now this picture in the back of the CD tray here, is that a sculpture of all your severed heads?
(Laughs) That's great, there you go. I hadn't even thought about that.
I know there's six heads in the photo, including Ed at the bottom. Is that you guys all surrounding him?
Yeah, that's all of us, and those are these masks that we used, and we shot some photos with these crazy masks on. Those were the masks taken off of our face.
Is that Jeff on either side there when the thing folds out?
I think it's Jeff (Ament, bassist). It looks like Jeff to me.
It sounds like the music that you've been writing for the band has gotten more complex over the course of the past couple of albums. ... The one I keep going back to is "Marker in the Sand." Something about the guitar in the chorus, the sound of that really jumps out. How did that song come together?
"Marker" was interesting. We were on tour with Mudhoney, and (Mudhoney's singer/guitarist) Mark Arm had these strange tunings that he plays in. I happened to go over to where their guitars were and copied one of them down, and that was the tuning for Marker. Something strange, I don't remember if it was C-sharp or C.
Like an open tuning?
Yeah, an open tuning. Then I put a capo on it. When you do that, it forces you to play a different way, and I just started messing around. I came up with the chorus first, I believe, the part you were talking about. I was like, wow, that's a pretty melody ... I played it a bunch of times over and over again. I came back the next day in a different state of mind and started playing another riff in that tuning (starts humming the riff in question). I said, well maybe those two could work together. I went to Stone (Gossard, guitarist), and Stone's a really good arranger. I hummed it to him over the phone, and he said it could work. ... It was more of a layered thing. It didn't all happen at one time, but it was out of a strange tuning. And it's got those crazy layered vocals to it, so that's what makes it kind of catchy, too.
It's always cool to play with open-chord tunings, because it's like learning how to play the instrument again, like finding places you've never put your fingers before.
Totally. You play yourself?
I do.
Awesome, what kind of guitar do you have?
I play an Ibanez Talman and a Seagull acoustic/electric. One of the first songs I ever learned how to play was "Alive."
Oh, right on. I still don't know how to play the riff of that, because Stone does that. Maybe you can show it to me. (laughter)
"Inside Job" was the first song you've done lyrics for, right?
Yeah. "Inside Job" to me, it was about searching for a spiritual answer to a daily issue, if you have something to get through in life that's a tough thing. I have this thing called Crohn's disease, which is kind of a nasty disease. Just chronic illness. I have to look for something inside first to be open to outside solutions, whether they be spiritual or medical. It's all about searching. The music, I wrote that in Hawaii, where Boom (Gaspar), our keyboard player lives, so it kind of has a spiritual feeling. Toward the end of the album process, Ed didn't have any lyrics to it. I said, well ... I want this song to happen, and I'm gonna try to write some lyrics, and I'm gonna go up and try to sing it to him. Which was very intimidating to me. We're friends and all that, but it was so intimidating. He told me that he didn't have his plate full, and I offered him a full dinner. He was really into it, and that made me very happy and proud. And then when he started singing it, I almost started crying.
You said that a lot of the songs on this one are more aggressive, but I find myself really enjoying the quieter ones that don't sound like anything you've done before. "Come Back" was a total surprise. Same with "Parachutes."
"Parachutes" is fun. I like that one, too. "Come Back" is one we worked real hard on, trying to make that song build. I remember when that song was being written, Eddie and I came up with this bluesy little pattern, and we were trying not to do it in that one-four-five (chord progression) kind of way, different chordally. He had a friend of his that he lost. You could beam that to anybody who's lost someone, because we all have. We worked hard on that, man, probably harder than any other song, as a live song.
About 10 years ago, the band started to deliberately reduce the size of the audience. Why do you think it became necessary to do that?
As in pulling back and not doing press and all that?
Yeah.
We want big crowds ... but we did lose some fans. We did alienate ourselves and get lost in the music landscape a little bit. The intention of it was to kind of spell out a career. We got so big, so quickly, that it was kind of a mind game for all of us. We were trying to figure out who we really are, and we were young guys. We were all having fun, but we were also kind of straining about it. People thought, oh, those guys are just whining and complaining. We weren't, really. We were just trying to maintain a real life, you know, aside from all that crazy stuff. Like go home and be with our families, or whatever. We didn't play the game. That's allowed us to last. Had we not pulled back at that time, I think we would have imploded somehow.
There were many times that we'd gotten close to that over the years, but toward the end of the first record and the beginning of the second, there was a lot of communication problems and stuff like that in the band. We needed to not be in the spotlight, and that's why we did it, to try to have some longevity. It seems counter-intuitive. You'd think that wouldn't work, but somehow it did. We're lucky the fans came out and saw us, too.
It was very hard to see a Pearl Jam show for a while (the band boycotted Ticketmaster venues in the mid-'90s after a failed anti-trust suit against the company).
Yeah, which could be annoying. I would be irritated as a fan if it was hard for me to see the band, I would give up on them. But a lot of people haven't, and we appreciate that. We're trying to make it as easy as possible this time. So come on down!
Was there are specific point when you knew things had gotten out of control in those early years?
Certain memories, like being on the cover of Time magazine, Ed was on that. He really didn't want to be on there. In his gut, he thought we hadn't achieved enough. We only had one record out, and people wanted to write books about us, and stuff like that, and honestly, we had only been together for under a year. We didn't prove ourselves.
It seems like that Rolling Stone cover story was kind of a low point. I think it was '96.
Yeah.
It was like the first cover story they had ever done without actually interviewing the subject.
Right, right, that was a big issue with Ed at the time. And surely enough, we're (being interviewed by Rolling Stone) again tomorrow. We're grateful to be back on there but certainly that caused some consternation with Ed a long time ago. All that's in the past. We've all grown through those experiences. We want to react positively. We want to do Rolling Stone. I want to talk to you right now. We want to tour this record and make it successful, because we feel happy with it. We want to put a good show on, most of all. We've got a brand new light show, and like you said, multitudes of b-sides and other (stuff) that we can pull out on shows.
What do you think of this touring cult that's built up around the band? How do you think that developed?
I don't know how that happened. I remember seeing it starting to happen around '94, '95, '96. People are like, I've seen 30 shows! I just ran into a couple of guys the other night who had seen 50 or 60 shows, and I know a couple of people who've seen a hundred shows. And I'm like, whoa. What the hell? I'm grateful that people want to take their time off from work and come out and see us. If the music speaks something to them, and if they're getting something positive about that, and it's adding something to their life, I think it's pretty cool.
We did a Canadian tour, and people followed us all the way across Canada. Literally, all the way across Canada, which is an incredibly long drive. Just people's tenacity in how they can do that ... these guys traveled across in a van, and I remember I signed the van at the end of the tour.
Entertainment Weekly called you the new Grateful Dead.
I'd never heard the term "Jamily" before.
That's it right there. I don't know who exactly coined that first, but I think they themselves (the magazine) did.
This is the second record that was recorded during the Bush administration...
Yeah.
I'm interested in how you think the approach to politics, how it differs between the two records. There's political content on both records, but it seems like different approaches were taken.
Yeah. On our last one (2002's "Riot Act") we had "Bushleaguer," and that was certainly an overt kind of song about him. On this one, it was more kind of a human take on it, like I'm going to read the newspaper, oh, there's a guy that I know that died in a war that our president started for mixed reasons, or for whatever reason. We all went on the Vote For Change tour (2004) and are certainly disillusioned with how this country is run, which I think a lot of people are.
We just want somebody that has a little more wisdom or a little more foresight, that has that great leader quality, like FDR was with the New Deal, getting people jobs. I guess more insight, more global awareness, more wisdom. We all feel that we're going to approach those subjects in an artistic sense, maybe not in an overt finger-pointing sense. Trying to find a balance between those two is hard. You don't want to be preachy, but you don't want to not say anything at the same time. You want to be able to make your point. That's my take on it.
It seems like it's more character-focused this time, like the guy in "Unemployable," looking at photos of dead soldiers in "World Wide Suicide," so it seems like it's on a more personal level.
Exactly, that's a good point. I've heard that. I think Ed, while writing the lyrics, was taking it very, very slowly, and wanted to have a personal take on these ideas -- a guy that's lost his job and is jumping trains to survive and has a family, and he paints a beautifully sad picture of the human state at a certain level. I think that's finding that balance, and I think he really found that balance lyrically on this record.
It seems like a lot of people who spoke out against Bush before the last election have been vindicated since then ... is there sort of an 'I told you so' feeling?
I don't have a we-told-you-so feeling at all. I have just more of a feeling of dread, and a hopefulness that in two years we'll have new opportunities to maybe take our country to the greatest heights it can achieve. Not in a sense of it turning into a totalitarian state, not in the sense of eavesdropping on phone lines ...
Be careful, they're listening right now.
(Laughs) I'm sure they are. It's just interesting to me. Hopefully people will start seeing through that. It seems like they are. But I expect more from America. I live here and I'll always live here. I have the right to speak my mind, and I'm excited about that.
What did you guys learn from the Vote For Change experience? The band has always been pretty politically active, but that was the first direct campaigning you'd done, right?
Yeah. We will speak our minds, but we also learned we need to focus locally on how our lives are, then act globally out of your local actions. Like, what are the problems in my direct vicinity, and how can I have a positive effect on them? One example is I work for this thing called the Crohn's &Colitis Foundation of America. ... So I work with the local chapter of the CCFA in Seattle. I try to put my efforts into that in a positive way. I get to meet people that have it.
That's just one thing. Jeff does stuff where he helps build skate parks around Montana. And Ed has many benefits. So act locally, if you can't influence a nationwide kind of thing. Maybe we can a little bit, but it didn't turn out the way we wanted. Just try to find positive solutions to the negative things out there.
That's why I think it's cool you guys are doing this charity thing with the tour ($1 from each ticket sold is donated to a local organization of the band's choosing). Tell me how that developed.
We decided we wanted to put $1 from every ticket sale into the city that we're going to, into a foundation or local organization that we thought was pretty cool. Our publicity people did some research on that, and for Grand Rapids, it's called Mixed Greens, where kids can grow their own food, and it goes to elementary schools. We thought that was a super-cool thing, to have kids learn how to do things organically. To have that kind of awareness, and to have fresh food, we thought that was a cool organization. We started that at the beginning of the tour, looking for different organizations throughout the United States to do that with.
How's My Morning Jacket working out as your opening band?
I've just seen them a few times, and they're a really, really cool band. I have their record, and I thought it was pretty rad, but live they just get into it. They've got this Allman Brothers vibe. You've probably seen them...
I haven't. This'll be my first time.
I think you're gonna have a good time because the interplay between the two guitar players is really cool, and of course that's what I look for a lot of the time, being a guitar player. There's some really cool guitar work going on. Great songs, beautiful harmonies. The crowd seems to be really receptive to them so far, and that's what you want. You want somebody to put on a good show and maybe kick your own band in the (butt) a little bit. I think they're doing that to us.
Thanks so much for the interview ... I don't think I've seen enough shows to qualify for membership in the Jamily, but...
If you wanna be in it, you're in it. Look at it that way.
Ok, I'm in it.
I'm gonna say you're in it, and I'm in the band.
Send e-mail to the author: treimink@grpress.com
je rigole......super...
sacré travail.....
