Red Mosquito

I don't think they have a plan though. Or if they did the whole re-releases and PJ20 threw it off.

super nintendo chalmers wrote:

That's one of the helicopter shots, I'm sure.

Anders wrote:Stone convinced him to include Betterman though.

It was Brendan who convinced Ed to include Better Man, wasn't it?

Stone pushed for Small Town's inclusion on Vs.

Birds in Hell wrote:

Anders wrote:Stone convinced him to include Betterman though.

It was Brendan who convinced Ed to include Better Man, wasn't it?

Stone pushed for Small Town's inclusion on Vs.

Spenno is right again.

I know Brendan pushed for it as well, but I'm pretty sure it was Stone that made it happen.

LetMeSleep wrote:

Anders wrote:I think the 'Ed power grab' happened around the absolute end of Vitalogy. I think there are a lot of nuances to this, but in general Vs. was team work with some classic Stone Ten-era like songs, Vitalogy was team work on the road with Ed having a bigger say in the shaping of the album than before, while No Code was the Ed record with somewhat more limited band and Jack Irons influence (although the band wrote some of the best songs on both albums). By Yield, Ed was in a better place, and the band communicated better, and so the album went back to the team work of old.

Yep.

It started on Vs. I presume they came up with the riffs on the road and Ed turned them into songs. The interesting part of the Mark Richards interview is that after Jeff implies Vitalogy and No Code are the 2 records he's the least satisfied with because they were playing what Ed told them to. Richards then says he really likes No Code after which Jeff goes into damage control mode and says he likes it because of Present Tense and IMT i believe. The point of this is they're likely to adjust their memories depending on the context at least this is the impression i got from that interview and i wonder if this is why they seem to contradict themselves when it comes to this things.

LetMeSleep wrote:It seems to me to be about application. It's hard to get 5 guys to apply themselves to a single cause at the same time. And it appears that if the other 4 guys are into it but Ed isn't, then nothing happens. But when Ed is up for it, they all have to fall in line. I'm not saying this negatively, just realistically.

Yeah I Got Shit was written during Mirrorball sessions but where were Mike, Stone and Jeff to record it.

LetMeSleep wrote:The second and more important moment is I Got Shit. Ed, Jack, BoB and Neil. Stone, Jeff and Mike must have been WTF. I need to read PJ20 so I can get more info here but that is a massive power-dime shift (sic).

I still maintain my theory that I Got Shit and Long Road were most likely rerecorded with the entire band during the summer of 1995 sessions when they thought they'd have album #4 out in time for Christmas 1995. Both of them were included in the list of songs that news outlets were circulating at the time for the album. When it became obvious that the album wouldn't be out by Christmas, Sony pressured them to release something, and they chose these two recordings of these two songs (most likely because in their attempts to rerecord it as a band, they realized they couldn't recapture what happened in the MB sessions).

Mine wrote:

LetMeSleep wrote:

Anders wrote:I think the 'Ed power grab' happened around the absolute end of Vitalogy. I think there are a lot of nuances to this, but in general Vs. was team work with some classic Stone Ten-era like songs, Vitalogy was team work on the road with Ed having a bigger say in the shaping of the album than before, while No Code was the Ed record with somewhat more limited band and Jack Irons influence (although the band wrote some of the best songs on both albums). By Yield, Ed was in a better place, and the band communicated better, and so the album went back to the team work of old.

Yep.

It started on Vs. I presume they came up with the riffs on the road and Ed turned them into songs. The interesting part of the Mark Richards interview is that after Jeff implies Vitalogy and No Code are the 2 records he's the least satisfied with because they were playing what Ed told them to. Richards then says he really likes No Code after which Jeff goes into damage control mode and says he likes it because of Present Tense and IMT i believe. The point of this is they're likely to adjust their memories depending on the context at least this is the impression i got from that interview and i wonder if this is why they seem to contradict themselves when it comes to this things.

Most of what I've read suggests that Stone still wrote most and had the main creative say on Vs, although it was more of a band effort than Ten, with many songs being written on tour.

As for Vitalogy, you have quotes like this one which shows various members coming up with and executing songs:

GOSSARD: "Tremor Christ" seemed to write itself. It was just a riff-and-a-half, basically. On a muggy, beautiful New Orleans afternoon we came into a very cool studio and it poured out. That and "Nothingman," which Jeff wrote, were recorded a day apart. They were very spontaneous, but with a simple yet indescribably beautiful vibe to them.

Anders wrote:As for Vitalogy, you have quotes like this one which shows various members coming up with and executing songs:

GOSSARD: "Tremor Christ" seemed to write itself. It was just a riff-and-a-half, basically. On a muggy, beautiful New Orleans afternoon we came into a very cool studio and it poured out. That and "Nothingman," which Jeff wrote, were recorded a day apart. They were very spontaneous, but with a simple yet indescribably beautiful vibe to them.

When was the Nothingman demo rec'd with Richard S?

October 14. 1993. The studio version was recorded the day after Tremor Christ, also in 1993 in New Orleans.

hlniv wrote:

digster wrote:I think they're way more 'Ed's' band now than they were 15 years ago, around Yield and Binaural. But I think that overall it's not as big a part of their life. More importantly, I think bands in general have a limited amount of time that they're on top. There are bands that go 20 or 30 years writing top-shelf material, but they're in the minority. PJ, like tons of long-running bands before them, have probably lost a step once they stopped making consistently great work. There's not even necessarily anything they're doing wrong; more often than not, I think it just happens.

They've followed and/or been around enough groups over the years to know how and to have been able to prevent it from "just happening", as long as they didn't want it to happen.

I think they are fully aware that it started happening about ten years ago, and just let it keep going. While it may be more "Ed's band" now than 15 years ago (I think you are right), the fact that they have let it "just happen" proves that there was not adequate leadership to prevent it from happening.

Unless, of course, they just don't give a shit all together. Which very well may be true.

What was the band's deal on "Rearviewmirror" the greatest hits album? I remember at some point back when PJ had a soul that wasn't manufactured in a slave labor camp in north korea and for sale on 10C.com in three different colors for $189.95 that the band didn't want to release a greatest hits album because "they didn't want to be known as a nostalgia act" ... i think this quote came out some time around yield/binaural ... but then we have the post-riot act money grab and a greatest hits album.

Was that album just rolled out by Sony with no say from the band or did PJ OK it?

LetMeSleep wrote:

super nintendo chalmers wrote:

That's one of the helicopter shots, I'm sure.

"sliding, out of my butt, on your car now, the poop will be turning right, then straight, on to hershey highway, you'll, ride"

96583UP wrote:Was that album just rolled out by Sony with no say from the band or did PJ OK it?

It was the last album as part of PJ's contractual agreement with Sony. I'm sure that PJ agreed to it, and had some amount of control and say over things - considering there were the 3 B'OB remix tracks included. I think this was preferential for PJ to release it, rather than doing another original studio album.

Sgt. Crackpot wrote:

96583UP wrote:Was that album just rolled out by Sony with no say from the band or did PJ OK it?

It was the last album as part of PJ's contractual agreement with Sony. I'm sure that PJ agreed to it, and had some amount of control and say over things - considering there were the 3 B'OB remix tracks included. I think this was preferential for PJ to release it, rather than doing another original studio album.

so that is kind of "letting it happen" ...

I don't think they had a choice on the RVM hits album. They were contractually bound to release it if Sony wanted to, thus completing their long term deal. I don't really blame them for this.

At that point, they were probably like "well, shit, we have a greatest hits album now. Fuck it. Let's make some cash and toss away our steadfast determination to make a difference".

I actually could see how that could contribute to the change we all see around that time - they realized what they were - a 13 year old rock band with a corporate Greatest hits album, and there was nothing they could do to change that.

I contend that they money-grab happened during or after the hits album, but it did not have anything to do with it.

lecherouslittlestump wrote:The thing about Eddie cosying up to Bruce is interesting. Bruce was washed up in the 90s. Released shitty adult contemporary albums (apart from Tom Joad) and was irrelevant.

Come the 00s, Bruce has a massive comeback with The Rising and seals his position as some sort of elder statesman of rock. This is also the time where Vedders love of Bruce suddenly becomes apparent.

Yeah its cynical and to be honest I don't really buy into it...but Vedder has a talent for making friends with the 'right' rock stars.

nothing more trendy that pete townsend and the ramones in the early 90s. And clearly the quickest path into the hearts and minds of kids today is with Bruce Springsteen...




Eddie clearly looks to his musical heroes for guidance. If Springsteen is a bigger influence on him now than he once was it is probably because where Springsteen is with his life, or what he's done, or the kinds of music he writes speaks to where Eddie is right now. at some point there will be someone else.

LetMeSleep wrote:

digster wrote:To be honest, I think a lot of the arrangement issues could be cured if Ed didn't necessarily play on the songs he writes. It'd free up more space for arrangements, and though he's a good guitar player, his tone live has been shitty for years now. There's plenty of guys (Bono, Springsteen at times) who write songs that they don't necessarily play on live. That idea wouldn't be without exception; some songs, Corduroy or Insignificance for example, I think can benefit from three guitars onstage.

I agree here.

So do I

digster wrote:It never made much sense, all the focus on who's in control. They made their two best records (Vitalogy and Yield) on completely different sides of the spectrum. I don't think this band would be better now if Ed was more in control or less (although it seems like it's pretty much his ship to steer). It's more likely that they suck more now because they've been a band for almost 25 years and are running out of gas.

obviously I love the music they are writing right now, but I agree that all this stuff about who is in control, etc. is hugely overblown. They've been a band for 25 years. I'm not sure they're running out of gas (I think l-bolt is great and there are a few songs on there that actually feel genuinely new but of course new and good aren't necessarily the same thing), but I do think they will start to feel like they have less to say, which means they'll record less. And they also(as stone comments have indicated) seem to be locked into at least some vision of what pearl jam is supposed to sound like. This may be because of the live experience more than anything else.

No matter what, it seems pretty hard to argue that these guys don't really love playing live (they may not like touring, but that's not the same thing. The experience of the show is one thing, the upending of your life to make them happen is another), and so it's not surprising that the music has one eye on this at all times