Off the Dial

PEARL JAM
Backspacer
www.pearljam.com
Dist: Universal Music Canada

* IN STORES SUNDAY SEPTEMBER 20, 2009

Pearl Jam reunite with producer Brendan O’Brian to release their eagerly anticipated 9th studio album Backspacer. The first single “The Fixer” already topping the Canadian Rock Radio Charts. Here the band discusses Backspacer track-by-track:

“Gonna See My Friend”
words/music: Vedder

Eddie: “It was written in a little tiny room, with people sleeping above me and people sleeping below me, so I didn’t want to make a whole lot of noise, taping it on my small tape-recorder. I had a tiny little drum machine, and an electric guitar plugged through an FX box about the size of an iPhone, and somehow I got this real loud, garage-rock Kinks sound. I got into my car at three o’clock that morning and listened to it on the car stereo, and it was just hugely loud, and I thought it was intriguing that you could write a song so quietly, without disturbing anybody, but actually it was loud and rumbling. And then when the band played it, and it got louder.” Matt: “The demo was pretty rough, in a cool Stooges/Captain Beefheart kind of way. So we wanted to retain that wild factor that he had on his demo, and he encouraged us to go as wild as possible with that song. It’s our garage-rock number on this record, it’s got that Sonics type of feel to it.” Mike: “It reminds me of the New York Dolls, and that’s how I wanted my guitar part to sound. It’s fun, it’s exciting, it’s raw.” Jeff: “In some ways, it feels like it’s our first grunge song [laughs].” Stone: “I thought it was like a Mudhoney song, and I wanted to treat it like a tribute to Mudhoney; it has some of the elements of their energy and how they structure songs. I remember encouraging Matt to think like [Mudhoney drummer] Dan Peters on that song, because Dan is a whirlwind of activity. The drums are pretty wild, pretty over-the-top. Ed sounds like he’s singing through a frickin’ cheese grater.” Eddie: “It has a twist to it. Like ‘Waiting For My Man’ by the Velvet Underground, the lyric – ‘Gonna see my friend / Gonna make it go away’ – sounds like it’s about a drug deal, but actually it’s the opposite: he’s going to see his friend to take his need for that drug away. It’s actually like an ‘Outreach’ song.”

“Got Some”

words: Vedder, music: Ament

Matt: “That’s a Jeff tune… That came in the first stage of our song-writing process, it was real hooky and we knew it would work with vocals; I don’t think that the arrangement changed much from the demo.”
Mike: “To me, it’s a New Wave song, and the staccato guitar notes I played had kind of a New Wave feel. I love it, it’s fun to play.”
Stone: “I saw Matt’s initial beat was kind of a ‘Police’ beat, a four on the floor groove, so I was excited by that: up-tempo but with a really solid pulse. We haven’t really done a lot of that. I took my cue from what Mike was saying about the New Wave, Devo sensibility it has. It’s definitely ‘Eighties’.”
Jeff: “Out of all the songs that I wrote for the album, that one was the one I didn’t think would make it. Because it kind of had an early 80s New Wave groove to it; but once we all got hold of it, we made it sound a little tougher, a little harder. As soon as Ed started singing, the lyric was so incredible, really uplifting. That kind of sealed it.”
Eddie: “‘Got Some’ is about a drug deal [laughs], but the drug is a good rock’n’roll song, you know? Basically, its saying, if you want one of those rock’n’roll songs that makes you feel good and that’s loud, we got a couple of those; here’s one. It seems like a real simple song, but then we sneak in lines like ‘Have you heard of diplomatic resolve?’… That’s the stuff that makes me excited. Apparently I’m easily excitable.”

“The Fixer”
words: Vedder, music: Cameron, Gossard/McCready

Jeff: “It became very apparent there was a big ‘pop’ hook in the verse, and once we straightened it out it became the chorus. The basis of that song is one riff, such an incredible riff.” Matt: “When I write songs, I sit in my little garage, trying to come up with guitar parts. Everyone dug into it right away, it came out really good. There’s a certain rhythmic guitar part – I like riffs, so I guess my stuff is riff-based.” Stone: “I think that song is a little bit about Ed working with the whole band, and trying to figure out how to make everyone’s songs work. We came in without Ed and worked up this arrangement of a new Matt Cameron song; all those parts were in there, but they were differently arranged. We left, and Ed said he’d stay and work on it, and he asked Matt if he could tweak it a little bit.” Eddie: “The guys were playing it, and I ran upstairs to grab a beer, and somehow, between the bottom step and the top step, the verse melody came to me. I wrote it on the way up, and I sang it on the way down. After that, it was just easy. This bunch of guys, they really write some challenging stuff, and they’re not satisfied with normal approaches to music. That’s rubbed off on my writing, for sure.” Stone: “We came back the next day, and Ed had used tape machines to edit a completely different version of the song, and he had this incredible, hooky, optimistic lyric about someone who loves to make things better, who looks for opportunities to fix something that’s not quite right. At that point, the record found its heart, because everything fell into place after that.” Jeff: “The lyrics are really a departure for Ed, and they’re incredible, they make me feel proud to be up there, providing background for the lyric, because that’s an appropriately-timed lyric at this point.”

“Johnny Guitar”

words: Vedder, music: Cameron, Gossard

Matt: “We had a song-writing session in Montana last November, and this was a little three-part song I had, and these guys dug right into it and made it cool. It’s got kind of this weird New Wave, Beefheart, angular vibe to it, which I really like.”
Stone: “I was struck by the juxtaposition of Matt’s rhythm with Ed’s vocal pattern: to get all those words in there, it’s a tongue-twister, a mouthful. He sounds a little like Elvis Costello, and I’ve never heard Ed sing like that before. You can tell that it’s not about the big issues or politics, that its kind of a side-bar to all that, and I think that’s cool. You can tell there’s some irony in there, some humour and some history and some human storytelling.”
Eddie: “The guys were playing the tune, and I was in the restroom in the back there which has old record covers plastered on the piece of plywood next to the piss receptacles. Just about head-high is the sleeve to an album by a guy named Johnny Guitar Watson; he’s kind of like Barry White crossed with Buddy Guy, and he had all these evocative album covers featuring not necessarily scantily clad women, but interesting women… I had this idea of a kid drawn to the girl on the cover, and wondering why she’s with Johnny Guitar, because obviously he’s got women everywhere. Why would you want to be one of Johnny Guitar’s women, one of hundreds, when you can be my one and only?”
Jeff: “We all spend a lot of time in front of that urinal…”
Matt: “Sometimes you have your best ideas in the bathroom…”
Eddie: “Is ‘Johnny Guitar’ our ‘Pictures Of Lily’? It’s similar to that, about a similar kind of obsession…”

“Just Breathe”
words/music: Vedder

Eddie: “I was sitting in a little room, all the windows were open and I had a tape-recorder, and something came to me, some kind of emotion. And I didn’t want to write anything complex, I just wanted to get to whatever the emotion was. The beginning riff is the same as one I used on one of the songs from the Into The Wild soundtrack. Ten minutes later, this song was complete, and I didn’t really think about it again. And then I showed it to the guys and Brendan, and they started building the structure around it, and wrote a bridge that turned into the chorus, and we had a nice piece to work with. Matt: “To me, it sounds like a wonderful carry-over from Into The Wild; a very orchestral, huge arrangement done in a way that’s still intimate, that the listener can relate to. Brendan did all the arranging, the strings, French horns and whatnot, in a way that is not heavy-handed at all, but adds so much.” Jeff: “Seeing three French horn players playing together was really cool. I always heard it as kind of a Beach Boys type of song, and for my part, I thought it would be a Carol Kaye kind of bass-line.” Mike: “You can hear some Jeff Ament bass coming through on this song, which makes me think about the Beach Boys, especially with Ed’s high back-up vocals.” Eddie: “It’s about how some of our happiest times happen, and we don’t even realize because we’re always moving so quickly. It’s about just wanting everything to stop, to not even talk: let’s just breathe … I think even in the best relationships, its not like you have a hard time saying ‘I love you’ – you might say it twice or three times a day to each other on the phone – but sometimes we don’t say ‘thanks’, for the bond we might share. Obviously, there’s a lot of differences between men and women – and maybe even two males in a relationship, there’s probably two different roles – but I think sometimes, men are likely to take this dedication that their women offer them for granted. Even if that’s not me, I wanted to remind myself.”

“Amongst The Waves”

words: Vedder, music: Gossard

Matt: “Stone wrote that one, it’s got some classic Pearl Jam elements: a slow build until you get to the very end, and then it explodes, and it’s over. It’s a great example of how we play dynamically, It’s got a kick-ass guitar solo… It’s got everything people expect from us.”
Stone: “It couldn’t have turned out better. I’m super-proud of it.”
Mike: “Lyrically, it reminds me of being on a paddleboard, and paddling around and surfing. I’ve been doing that for about two and a half years, and I love it; I understand being literally amongst the waves, being out there and seeing dolphins, and catching a wave and wiping out, the power of the sea. Every time I go under a wave, I feel like I’ve been reborn, that I’m living in a different way. I get out of the water after about an hour, and my day is completely changed. That’s what that song means to me. Plus, I get to play a bluesy Mick Taylor lead.”
Eddie: “That’s one where you sit and listen to the original instrumental and realize that it won’t be hard to be inspired by this track… But you’re wondering, what does it mean? That lift in the chorus, what does it feel like? And it felt like what I ended up writing: ‘Riding high among the waves’… So then I had to figure out, what does that mean? And I think it means love, when it’s good. Then again, nothing will always feel good: the only constant is change, right? It’s appreciating those moments. I talked to a songwriter friend recently, and he said, ‘When it’s good, I never write songs during that period’ [laughs]. He’s actually appreciating life and love when it’s good, so much so that he’s not going to bother writing songs about it. So usually when he writes songs, it’s because it’s turned bad. There’s a line in there that says something like, ‘If not for love I would be drowning / I’ve seen it work both ways’. So it ain’t all good, but when it is, celebrate.”

“Unthought Known”
words/music: Vedder

Matt: “Eddie had a pretty specific crescendo concept for that song, on the original demo. It was just a matter of us wrapping our heads over his arrangement, and I don’t think the arrangement really changed much. Eddie had real specific drum ideas. He plays drums at the very end, the tom-tom fadeout.” Mike: “It builds, and it has crescendos, and then it breaks down, and then it rebuilds. I love how that happens on that song, it has peaks and valleys.” Stone: “I fell in love with the last section, where Ed sings, ‘Dream the dreams of other men, and you’ll be no-one’s rival’, which is a way of us believing in each other, in not being so struck by your own singular ideas of what it is that you want to do, but getting into and finding joy in other people’s ideas. You learn that when making records with other people; you can be like, I’ve got this great song and I really wanna bring it out. Then you listen to someone else’s song and think, how can I make that thing exciting, so I feel like I’m part of it? It can inspire you to write for someone else in a way that’s as satisfying as writing for yourself.” Eddie: “There’s certain things you do that you might end up feeling guilty about, like staying up far too late, drinking way too much… But the people you’re around you don’t get to be around too often, and you’re in New York City, so you stay up. The song was inspired by a really evocative conversation about the brain, about human beings and our relationship to different environments, and our kids’ relationships to all those environments. One way to absolve any guilt about staying up until four or five in the morning is, when you actually go home, try to write a song and figure out, try to capture some of this stuff that you’ve thought about and talked about. Then you can wake up four hours later, turn on a little tape machine, and hear it and think, that was a good night, I made something out of it.”

“Supersonic”

words: Vedder, music: Gossard

Stone: “That was one that I wrote maybe two years ago, at the beginning of trying to write songs for this record. It blasted through all the process, I’m happy this one made it. I remember the verse didn’t even come until the last minute, something simple and straight-ahead. I think it has an element of New York City about it.”
Eddie: “I think it’s about loving music, the power of music and what it can do for you. Living life with the volume on full… Needing loud music… Just absolutely needing it… The lyrics don’t have to be ‘interesting’, look at ‘Louie Louie’. And you can listen to meaningful songs and not know what they’re about for years – I never knew who ‘Cortez The Killer’ was until I was in my twenties, but I know something was going on there.”
Matt: “It’s classic Stone, with the typical emphasis on the groove, along with a really bad-ass guitar melody, and a chord progression that’s kinda strange, but great.”
Jeff: “They always say that a bridge should be like a song-within-a-song, and it really is. When we started playing that bridge, I started thinking, man, we should just write a song out of this bridge!”
Mike: “It’s a little Ramones-y, a little Led Zeppelin, with a Black Sabbath riff in the middle. It’s a fun song to play, people will get to rock out to it when we do it live. And I’ve wanted to play a backwards lead for a while; it kind of felt like it deserved something backwards and kinda weird on that part.”
Matt: “I love the backwards-guitar solo…”

“Speed Of Sound”
words/music: Vedder

Jeff: “That was the last song we recorded. We were actually in Atlanta, a couple of days into the overdub/mix process, and Ed brought in a tape of this song that he’d written maybe a week prior, and Brendan said, we need you to lay that song down, and see if we can get something out of it. It happened really super-fast… I think because it’s the newest song, its one of my favourites on the record. It’s just a beautiful love song.” Eddie: “I wrote a few songs with Ronnie Wood, for the album he was working on. I was with him a couple of days, so I stayed up late one night, trying to write this Tom Waits, Keith Richards-vibe type thing like, the last guy in the bar after everyone’s left, a song with kind of a sad feeling… I wanted to write a song with this vibe for Ronnie, because he’s got this incredible voice: between Dylan and Keith Richards, he completes the triangle. It wasn’t fully realized in three hours that night, and I played it a little the next day, but it wasn’t really like anything else on his record. I came back to Atlanta and I finished it on my own, and Brendan liked the chord changes, the melodic happenstances that were occurring, but he heard it in a different way. He immediately had everyone play on top, and we built it up, and there’s some sonic experimenting going on, but there’s also a throwback to old production methods. If there’s anything interesting about it all, it’s that it started out as an acoustic guitar and a guy singing like he’s incredibly morose, then all of a sudden it turns into this uplifting sonic landscape.” Matt: “We built the song from the ground up… Mike had a really beautiful melody, I think it’s got a nice Beach Boys vibe to it, with the jingle bells on there.” Mike: “The song sways; it’s got a different feel to anything I’ve heard us do before.”

“Force Of Nature”

words: Vedder, music: McCready

Matt: “That was originally called ‘Mike’s A-Side’, and then ‘Distant Planet’… We came up with that in Montana, Mike had pretty much written the whole song. Brendan said, I only want A-sides from you guys… So this became Mike’s A-side. It’s a pretty classic Pearl Jam tempo and vibe, with a big chorus, with a really ripping guitar solo at the end.”
Mike: “It’s a song I wrote a while ago and we played it for the first time in Montana, and Brendan liked it, and the band was receptive to it. Stone added a guitar hook, which leads into the chorus, which I totally love. I’ve been listening to a lot of New Wave and pop for the past three or so years, and it’s a culmination of that.”
Jeff: “Brendan brought a lot to that song. He was playing that song along with us, so he had some very specific ideas about how he was going to record some keyboard sounds. Again, once Ed brought in the lyric, that’s when it really made sense to me. Ed had the melody there, but he really switched gears on the lyric at the last minute –he stayed up all night, came in the next morning and knocked out this new lyric, and you knew this song was going to be on the record, because the lyric was so strong. The groove’s a real Pearl Jam groove to me, it really sounds like us.”
Eddie: “There’s a love song in there somewhere… I think it might have something to do with… Yeah, that one I can’t talk about.”
Stone: “It was called ‘Distant Planet’ at one point, for all you Pearl Jam trivia buffs out there…”

“The End”
words/music: Vedder

Matt: “Eddie brought it in as a completed demo, with acoustic guitar and his vocal. We thought, let’s just put that out, because it sounded so good. But Brendan was hearing arrangements in his head, so Eddie re-tracked it.”
Stone: “I never thought he’d be able to recapture the emotion of it, but he totally did. That song stands alone, it doesn’t need anything. He can do something that powerful, by himself, with the lyric, the melody, and his guitar playing. It’s just incredible.”
Jeff: “It sounds like a more realized type of song, the type of writing he got into on Into The Wild. I think with what Brendan added to that, it turned into a Nick Drake kind of a song, where there’s this really subtle, melancholic orchestration behind the words, and it laid this incredible, sad foundation for a really super-heavy lyric. It’s really, really simple, and that lends itself to really hearing the importance of the words and the poetry. It really made sense, from the very beginning, that this song would end the album. Not just the song title, but the feel of it.”
Mike: “It’s haunting – we’re here, but not for much longer, trying to hold onto what’s real, knowing it will all be gone one day. That’s scary, and poignant, and sad – it’s a range of emotions, and it’s a great way to end the record.”
Eddie: “It wasn’t something I thought the band would even want to record or consider. I wrote it on a Saturday night, and played it for ‘em on Monday, and they wanted it to be part of this collection of songs, so that was nice. Some songs just happen real quick. I actually sat down to write lyrics for one of the other guy’s songs, and as I was tuning up the guitar something just kinda happened, and I played it. I wrote it and recorded it in about a half-hour, and I got a call from a good friend in Spain, and I was recording so I couldn’t pick up the phone, and I stopped the take, and had a smoke, and listened to his message, and his words helped me write the second verse. I was originally going to do one verse and then stop, go home – it was getting late. But then I got this phone message, and he said something absolutely perfect, so I didn’t call him back, I just got back to writing, and that helped propel the song.”

Jeff Ament – bass guitar
Matt Cameron – drums, percussion
Stone Gossard – guitar
Mike McCready – guitar
Eddie Vedder – guitar, vocals

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