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Interview/article w/ Mike in Victoria Times-Colonist
Fifthelement
Lotusland Posts: 6,908
Interview with Mike as well as Cameron Crowe regarding the PJ Twenty Doc
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... story.html
Pearl Jam goes big for 20th
First tour in 1991 brought them to Harpo's cabaret in Victoria; they returned later in the year after release of debut album
By Mike Devlin, timescolonist.com September 15, 2011
Pearl Jam: Still together and making relevant new music while most of the band's Seattle contemporaries have long since disbanded.
Photograph by: DANNY CLINCH, Monkeywrench Records
ON SCREEN
Pearl Jam Twenty
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: SilverCity, 3130 Tillicum Rd.
To honour their 20th anniversary as a band, Seattle quintet Pearl Jam wanted to take one last look in the rearview mirror before returning their gaze to the forward position. And, befitting a group considered among the best of this or any other generation, that process included a 12-date tour, 29-song double album, 109-minute documentary and 384-page book rolled out over a seven-week period.
Encapsulating the career of Pearl Jam — a band that once proclaimed its stance against the world as "five against one" — was never going to be easy. But according to guitarist Mike McCready, the process of making Pearl Jam Twenty — both the book by Jonathan Cohen (in stores now) and documentary by Cameron Crowe (in theatres Tuesday) — was a valuable form of therapy for the group.
The process of thumbing through boxes of photos and hundreds of hours of archival footage forced McCready and bandmates Eddie Vedder (vocals), Jeff Ament (bass), Stone Gossard (guitar) and Matt Cameron (drums) to revisit both the good and not-so-good moments from their past.
McCready, 45, says he was struck anew after seeing Crowe's revealing film, which will also air Oct. 21 on PBS. Looking back on the period that saw the group adopt a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster, while fighting its growing reputation as rock royalty, McCready is amazed the band didn't break up.
"We were on tour around '95 and we weren't really talking a lot. We were flying in a jet and Ed was doing his radio show out of a van, and there wasn't a lot of communication going on at the time. It wasn't a healthy time for the band."
Pearl Jam has been a rock-solid unit since the addition of Soundgarden drummer Cameron in 1998, and has spent the past decade-plus working its strange magic on a new generation of fans. The key nowadays is communication, McCready says.
"You learn that you have to have open lines of communication in a band. This is something you have to constantly work at because things will get convoluted and crazy. You have to say what's on your mind."
The early days of Pearl Jam weren't nearly as stressful — but they were memorable. In 1991, back when they were called Mookie Blaylock, the band's very first tour brought them to Harpo's Cabaret in Victoria (the group returned to Harpo's later that year, as Pearl Jam, six months after the release of its debut, Ten).
During its inaugural visit, as the opening act for Alice in Chains, the group sped through its 25-minute set, McCready says, somewhat unsure of itself. It was the band's fourth performance ever, and the its first show outside of Seattle. They were raw, he recalls.
"We were just learning, as a young band, how to play shows. We didn't know how to [do that] yet, but we knew we were good."
The band had driven in a van from Seattle to Victoria for the show, which was followed by a well-established road ritual: the post-gig party. "I remember we all stayed in a house together, both bands, and had a big party. The next day all of our tires were slashed on the van. We must have pissed somebody off, but it was still fun. Those were very integral parts to our early being as a band."
That particular date was immortalized in a Rolling Stone magazine cover story from 1993 — one that was written by none other than Cameron Crowe. It was during the show at Harpo's, Crowe wrote in the magazine, that Vedder turned the corner as a singer, throwing his microphone stand at the wall to show his contempt with the Victoria audience.
Vedder grew even more agitated the following night in Vancouver, during a show at the now-defunct Town Pump, which resulted "in a very exciting, edgy and dangerous show," McCready said. Remarkably, Crowe included footage of the Town Pump performance in Pearl Jam Twenty.
"You can see how Eddie is transforming as a singer, specifically at that show," McCready said. "He's becoming less introverted. You can see that he's watching the audience, because there's some kind of issue with the security and somebody's getting kicked out. Knowing Eddie, of course he's focusing on that and you can see he's getting madder and madder and madder as it goes on."
The director's long history with members of the band, which dates back to the late 1980s, along with his experience as a rock journalist, made him the perfect Pearl Jam documentarian, according to McCready. "He was the obvious guy to film it and compile all the footage we had. Knowing him as an individual, and how he wrote, he's very musically oriented. We knew he was the guy to do it."
It couldn't have been an easy task. Members of Pearl Jam have kept reams of material from throughout their career, McCready says. There's so much stuff, in fact — from books of posters to authorized bootlegs — that even the band itself loses track of its own creations.
Prior to the launch of the band's tour, on Sept. 3 in Madison, Wisconsin, McCready spent days woodshedding with Pearl Jam's catalogue, "trying to re-learn stuff that I should know but don't," he said with a laugh. The group's tour, which stops Sept. 25 in Vancouver, was designed to be a career-spanning affair, rather than a greatest-hits tour, which meant songs from any point in their career might see action.
"We said, 'Let's pull really deep from the catalogue, and pull some stuff out that we have never played.' There's not a lot left out there but there's a few little gems if we really searched."
Pearl Jam's performance in Vancouver is the band's final date before a six-week break. McCready says the group will continue to work on its forthcoming 10th record during this time. That the group is still together, and making relevant new music, while most of its Seattle contemporaries (Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana) have long since disbanded, is one of the many magical facets of Pearl Jam.
"We really want to keep creating as a unit," McCready said of his band's relationship. "We like doing it."
<!-- e --><a href="mailto:mdevlin@timescolonist.com">mdevlin@timescolonist.com</a><!-- e -->
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... z1Y3fV31nH
Cameron Crowe Article:
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... story.html
Film follows Seattle band's wild ride
A key sequence in doc is L.A. party that marked 'the birth of the no'
By Steve Pond, Reuters September 15, 2011
Director Cameron Crowe
Photograph by: ., Reuters
If it wasn't for a disastrous, drunken show they performed as a favour to their friend Cameron Crowe, Pearl Jam mght not be the band they are today.
That was one of the lessons learned at this week's Toronto International Film Festival - where "the hottest ticket at the festival," according to doc programmer Thom Powers, was to the première Saturday of a documentary about a rock 'n' roll band whose name does not include the letter U or the number 2 (the show plays Tuesday in Victoria).
Powers said the distinction belonged to Pearl Jam Twenty, the Cameron Crowe-directed film that takes a 20-year emotional journey with the seminal Seattle band and its fans.
And an hour or so after the film premièred in front of a raucous audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Crowe and the members of Pearl Jam sat for a press conference in a nearby hotel - where the band members, who rarely speak to the media, said that PJ20 showed them moments they'd forgotten about and provided a moving look at a band that has somehow managed to stay together and on track for two decades.
"Just trying to order pizza with five guys is hard to do," singer Eddie Vedder said, to big laughs. "To get five guys together and make music for this long is a miracle."
At a panel following the screening, Crowe explained what he found fascinating about the band, with whom he's been friends since the mid-1980s.
"The story of Pearl Jam takes the usual rock story and turns it on its head," said Crowe. "Usually it starts out with a spark of brilliance, and then you have success, and tragedy cuts it short. Pearl Jam is tragedy surmounted, joy through survival."
Crowe and his three editors assembled the doc from hundreds of hours of concert film, home movies, backstage footage and interview segments - the Holy Grail of which, he said, was a widely rumoured but seldom-seen glimpse of Vedder and the late Kurt Cobain doing a brief but joyous slow dance together beneath the stage at the MTV Video Awards.
"The first time I saw that footage it was incredibly emotional," said Vedder, who explained that Cobain put his finger to his lips at the end of the dance, as if to shush Vedder, because they were beneath the stage where Eric Clapton was performing his ballad Tears in Heaven.
"If he just could have pulled through," said Vedder wistfully of the Seattle icon with whom Pearl Jam had an occasionally contentious and occasionally friendly relationship.
One of the key sequences in the movie, and one of the funniest of the press conference, had to do with a promotional party the band played for the 1991 release of Crowe's movie Singles, in which the band appeared and which came out around the time that the Seattle music scene was having its commercial breakthrough.
Crowe begged the band to play the private release party in Los Angeles, which was to be filmed by MTV to give the film a commercial boost on its release. The request, he said, made him more uncomfortable than anything he'd ever asked the band to do - and Pearl Jam responded by agreeing to play the show, but then by getting drunk before going onstage.
The resulting show included Vedder repeatedly screaming "F- MTV!" as he staggered about the stage, ripping down draperies and berating the assembled movie executives and guests. It was, the film says, "the birth of the no" - the point when Pearl Jam decided it was OK to stop doing everything that businesspeople wanted them to do.
"Over the years, we talked about everything," Crowe said at the press conference. "But we never talked about the Singles party. I'm sure the band was thrilled when I asked them about it when we were doing interviews for this movie: 'Oh, now you finally bring it up, with the cameras rolling.' "
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... z1Y3gXrvbq
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... story.html
Pearl Jam goes big for 20th
First tour in 1991 brought them to Harpo's cabaret in Victoria; they returned later in the year after release of debut album
By Mike Devlin, timescolonist.com September 15, 2011
Pearl Jam: Still together and making relevant new music while most of the band's Seattle contemporaries have long since disbanded.
Photograph by: DANNY CLINCH, Monkeywrench Records
ON SCREEN
Pearl Jam Twenty
When: Tuesday, 7 p.m.
Where: SilverCity, 3130 Tillicum Rd.
To honour their 20th anniversary as a band, Seattle quintet Pearl Jam wanted to take one last look in the rearview mirror before returning their gaze to the forward position. And, befitting a group considered among the best of this or any other generation, that process included a 12-date tour, 29-song double album, 109-minute documentary and 384-page book rolled out over a seven-week period.
Encapsulating the career of Pearl Jam — a band that once proclaimed its stance against the world as "five against one" — was never going to be easy. But according to guitarist Mike McCready, the process of making Pearl Jam Twenty — both the book by Jonathan Cohen (in stores now) and documentary by Cameron Crowe (in theatres Tuesday) — was a valuable form of therapy for the group.
The process of thumbing through boxes of photos and hundreds of hours of archival footage forced McCready and bandmates Eddie Vedder (vocals), Jeff Ament (bass), Stone Gossard (guitar) and Matt Cameron (drums) to revisit both the good and not-so-good moments from their past.
McCready, 45, says he was struck anew after seeing Crowe's revealing film, which will also air Oct. 21 on PBS. Looking back on the period that saw the group adopt a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster, while fighting its growing reputation as rock royalty, McCready is amazed the band didn't break up.
"We were on tour around '95 and we weren't really talking a lot. We were flying in a jet and Ed was doing his radio show out of a van, and there wasn't a lot of communication going on at the time. It wasn't a healthy time for the band."
Pearl Jam has been a rock-solid unit since the addition of Soundgarden drummer Cameron in 1998, and has spent the past decade-plus working its strange magic on a new generation of fans. The key nowadays is communication, McCready says.
"You learn that you have to have open lines of communication in a band. This is something you have to constantly work at because things will get convoluted and crazy. You have to say what's on your mind."
The early days of Pearl Jam weren't nearly as stressful — but they were memorable. In 1991, back when they were called Mookie Blaylock, the band's very first tour brought them to Harpo's Cabaret in Victoria (the group returned to Harpo's later that year, as Pearl Jam, six months after the release of its debut, Ten).
During its inaugural visit, as the opening act for Alice in Chains, the group sped through its 25-minute set, McCready says, somewhat unsure of itself. It was the band's fourth performance ever, and the its first show outside of Seattle. They were raw, he recalls.
"We were just learning, as a young band, how to play shows. We didn't know how to [do that] yet, but we knew we were good."
The band had driven in a van from Seattle to Victoria for the show, which was followed by a well-established road ritual: the post-gig party. "I remember we all stayed in a house together, both bands, and had a big party. The next day all of our tires were slashed on the van. We must have pissed somebody off, but it was still fun. Those were very integral parts to our early being as a band."
That particular date was immortalized in a Rolling Stone magazine cover story from 1993 — one that was written by none other than Cameron Crowe. It was during the show at Harpo's, Crowe wrote in the magazine, that Vedder turned the corner as a singer, throwing his microphone stand at the wall to show his contempt with the Victoria audience.
Vedder grew even more agitated the following night in Vancouver, during a show at the now-defunct Town Pump, which resulted "in a very exciting, edgy and dangerous show," McCready said. Remarkably, Crowe included footage of the Town Pump performance in Pearl Jam Twenty.
"You can see how Eddie is transforming as a singer, specifically at that show," McCready said. "He's becoming less introverted. You can see that he's watching the audience, because there's some kind of issue with the security and somebody's getting kicked out. Knowing Eddie, of course he's focusing on that and you can see he's getting madder and madder and madder as it goes on."
The director's long history with members of the band, which dates back to the late 1980s, along with his experience as a rock journalist, made him the perfect Pearl Jam documentarian, according to McCready. "He was the obvious guy to film it and compile all the footage we had. Knowing him as an individual, and how he wrote, he's very musically oriented. We knew he was the guy to do it."
It couldn't have been an easy task. Members of Pearl Jam have kept reams of material from throughout their career, McCready says. There's so much stuff, in fact — from books of posters to authorized bootlegs — that even the band itself loses track of its own creations.
Prior to the launch of the band's tour, on Sept. 3 in Madison, Wisconsin, McCready spent days woodshedding with Pearl Jam's catalogue, "trying to re-learn stuff that I should know but don't," he said with a laugh. The group's tour, which stops Sept. 25 in Vancouver, was designed to be a career-spanning affair, rather than a greatest-hits tour, which meant songs from any point in their career might see action.
"We said, 'Let's pull really deep from the catalogue, and pull some stuff out that we have never played.' There's not a lot left out there but there's a few little gems if we really searched."
Pearl Jam's performance in Vancouver is the band's final date before a six-week break. McCready says the group will continue to work on its forthcoming 10th record during this time. That the group is still together, and making relevant new music, while most of its Seattle contemporaries (Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees, Nirvana) have long since disbanded, is one of the many magical facets of Pearl Jam.
"We really want to keep creating as a unit," McCready said of his band's relationship. "We like doing it."
<!-- e --><a href="mailto:mdevlin@timescolonist.com">mdevlin@timescolonist.com</a><!-- e -->
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... z1Y3fV31nH
Cameron Crowe Article:
http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... story.html
Film follows Seattle band's wild ride
A key sequence in doc is L.A. party that marked 'the birth of the no'
By Steve Pond, Reuters September 15, 2011
Director Cameron Crowe
Photograph by: ., Reuters
If it wasn't for a disastrous, drunken show they performed as a favour to their friend Cameron Crowe, Pearl Jam mght not be the band they are today.
That was one of the lessons learned at this week's Toronto International Film Festival - where "the hottest ticket at the festival," according to doc programmer Thom Powers, was to the première Saturday of a documentary about a rock 'n' roll band whose name does not include the letter U or the number 2 (the show plays Tuesday in Victoria).
Powers said the distinction belonged to Pearl Jam Twenty, the Cameron Crowe-directed film that takes a 20-year emotional journey with the seminal Seattle band and its fans.
And an hour or so after the film premièred in front of a raucous audience at the Princess of Wales Theatre, Crowe and the members of Pearl Jam sat for a press conference in a nearby hotel - where the band members, who rarely speak to the media, said that PJ20 showed them moments they'd forgotten about and provided a moving look at a band that has somehow managed to stay together and on track for two decades.
"Just trying to order pizza with five guys is hard to do," singer Eddie Vedder said, to big laughs. "To get five guys together and make music for this long is a miracle."
At a panel following the screening, Crowe explained what he found fascinating about the band, with whom he's been friends since the mid-1980s.
"The story of Pearl Jam takes the usual rock story and turns it on its head," said Crowe. "Usually it starts out with a spark of brilliance, and then you have success, and tragedy cuts it short. Pearl Jam is tragedy surmounted, joy through survival."
Crowe and his three editors assembled the doc from hundreds of hours of concert film, home movies, backstage footage and interview segments - the Holy Grail of which, he said, was a widely rumoured but seldom-seen glimpse of Vedder and the late Kurt Cobain doing a brief but joyous slow dance together beneath the stage at the MTV Video Awards.
"The first time I saw that footage it was incredibly emotional," said Vedder, who explained that Cobain put his finger to his lips at the end of the dance, as if to shush Vedder, because they were beneath the stage where Eric Clapton was performing his ballad Tears in Heaven.
"If he just could have pulled through," said Vedder wistfully of the Seattle icon with whom Pearl Jam had an occasionally contentious and occasionally friendly relationship.
One of the key sequences in the movie, and one of the funniest of the press conference, had to do with a promotional party the band played for the 1991 release of Crowe's movie Singles, in which the band appeared and which came out around the time that the Seattle music scene was having its commercial breakthrough.
Crowe begged the band to play the private release party in Los Angeles, which was to be filmed by MTV to give the film a commercial boost on its release. The request, he said, made him more uncomfortable than anything he'd ever asked the band to do - and Pearl Jam responded by agreeing to play the show, but then by getting drunk before going onstage.
The resulting show included Vedder repeatedly screaming "F- MTV!" as he staggered about the stage, ripping down draperies and berating the assembled movie executives and guests. It was, the film says, "the birth of the no" - the point when Pearl Jam decided it was OK to stop doing everything that businesspeople wanted them to do.
"Over the years, we talked about everything," Crowe said at the press conference. "But we never talked about the Singles party. I'm sure the band was thrilled when I asked them about it when we were doing interviews for this movie: 'Oh, now you finally bring it up, with the cameras rolling.' "
© Copyright (c) The Victoria Times Colonist
Read more: http://www.timescolonist.com/entertainm ... z1Y3gXrvbq
"What the CANUCK happened?!? - Esquimalt Barber Shop
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