“Smell Out”! But along those same lines, there also used to be so much more ambivalence about fame. This is good news! This means that the fragrance that I’m about to put out won’t be looked down upon! Now the concept has basically disappeared. I have a question about not chasing things: When you got started in music, the idea of not selling out was central. I don’t know if that’s been for better or worse. If there’s been ebbs and flows in the amount of people that care, we’ve had enough people that cared and continued to care that we haven’t noticed. At the risk of sounding whatever, we haven’t had an issue selling tickets over the years. So I guess I don’t think about what you’re asking. There’s nothing in any other type of music that can ever eclipse that. As good as the Who in 1980 at the San Diego Sports Arena as good as Fugazi shows where everyone paid $5 and it was at a V.F.W. Just going back to what Bono said: Was he overlooking the fact that time moves on and the race becomes unwinnable? Doesn’t rock’s place in the culture affect how you understand the parameters of your job? One thing I’ll say: I would go see Dead Moon, these three people with the candle on the drum set and the ritual and the sweat and the love - those were some of the most glorious shows of my life. But the dream was to be in a group that toured and recorded, and we were OK with things being scaled down if that allowed the dream to survive.Įddie Vedder performing at Madison Square Garden in 2008. I said we race the horse and then we let the horse run free. He said that when U2 makes a record, it’s like they’ve got a racehorse and they don’t just want the horse in the race, they want to win the race. He was suggesting that we needed to work harder and that you didn’t want rock ’n’ roll to become a niche. I’ve had conversations with Bono back in the day. They’ll say that a song helped them, but, ultimately, I’m like: “ You did it.” Really all I can do is hope that other people appreciate the music that I like. When people tell me that stuff, I don’t feel like I should get credit. People tell me powerful stories about what the music means to them, so, in that way, I know what they get out of it. I get chills thinking about it.īut to stick closer to the initial question: Who do you think your audience is now? And what might those people be getting out of your new music? I don’t know. At one point it was almost like he disappeared as a person and became a musical entity, a vessel. Stevie, it was incredible to watch him work. Stevie was also working with Andrew on that record, so then we had a relationship. Andrew was working with Elton to finish his record, and I’d been called in to scribble out some lyrics. It’s funny because all the people that you mentioned, working with them just kind of happened. The honest answer is that I should think about that stuff, but I don’t. That’s what could be scary about this interview, and I like that. I wouldn’t want anything to be not honest. The fact that you reached both forward and backward generationally for your collaborators made me wonder: Have you been thinking about how to attract listeners beyond Pearl Jam fans? And I know the humble answer would be, “I’m happy if anybody listens,” but I’d rather hear the honest answer than the humble one. You’ve also got these older legends on it. You made your new album with a young producer who has had pop success. Hopefully people trust us to come up with new paint colors that they care about too.” It’s like I need a paint color that I’ve never seen, so I mix it myself. “When the songs are coming out,” says Vedder, who is 57, “it’s usually because they’re songs that I would like to hear myself. As such, it’s likely that the album will contain some surprises for those listeners who mainly know the singer as an avatar of ’90s-era rock-star angst, as well as for the army of die-hards who have continued to ride Pearl Jam’s various waves. The album features guest appearances by Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Ringo Starr and was produced by Andrew Watt, a hitmaker known for his work with such contemporary pop musicians as Justin Bieber, Post Malone and Miley Cyrus. 11, is an altogether different, more ambitious effort. Eddie Vedder, the lead singer of Pearl Jam, sidestepped those problems on his 2011 solo album, the quaintly charming and musically humble “Ukulele Songs.” His new one, “Earthling,” out Feb. A solo effort from a member of a long-running rock band can be an iffy proposition, the music in danger of being scuttled by either self-indulgence or transparent bids for greater individual stardom (or both).
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