Huge article in Polish magazine: complete

halszka123

Great translation. I hope You will find time to finish this. Especially the end about Linkin Park and new generation;)
BTW. In the same magazine You have an article about Pearl Jam' s show in Berlin.

hardhardhead

thanks for doing this. Great read so far!

i shit and i stink

Part Three, sorry for mistakes, I haven't proofread this yet:

We can hear a lot of space on the new album, not present on the raw Pearl Jam. It’s funny, bearing in mind that you got rid of the spatiality of Ten in its' remix.
MC: The whole spatiality on Ten is really just a reverb. On this new record we gained it in completely different way. It's a matter of instrumentation.
MM: I agree. There are strings, French horns, other types of percussion and interesting keyboards sounds. Brendan played the keyboard parts, he dubbed them and added pieces to a few songs… he’s good at it so we let him do that kind of thing. It’s a totally different quality in comparison to just turning up the reverb, as we did it on Ten.

You can hear a lot of piano on ‘Speed of Sound’ and ‘Unthought Known’. Can you tell us about the process by which that came about?
MM: Speed of Sound was mine, I thought up the melody solohere, in the style of the 70 - I wanted it to become an important part of the piece. Ed composed it California. Matt, Tell them how it was, you did it with him…
MC: Yeah, Ed played guitar and sang and then the rest of us began to add our parts. It was the last song that we put on the record and it came together pretty quickly. Mike’s solo part is great, it gives the song a whole other dimension. It reminds me if the Beach Boys, it’s a sunny Californian sound that just falls into your ears…
MM: Thanks. That was just what I was hoping to create. I usually just come in and play. That time I carefully planned exactly what I wanted to do and it paid off.
MC: ’ Unthought Known’ was also written by Ed. He thought about the song’s crescendo really precisely, he worked out exactly what he wanted us all to play and we followed the map he had drawn up to the note. Mike came up with a nice percussion part and Brendan added the piano which has a key meaning. It didn’t come out too bad at all in the end.

My favourite song on the album is ‘The Fixer’, it’s got a lot of different vocal harmonies which are littered throughout the album…
MM: Matt wrote that one…
MC: I didn’t write the lyrics! (laughs). I did the melody. Ed brought in a lot of pop aspects to the song. Brendan encouraged him to add so many vocal harmonies as he could and still feel comfortable with it. I think that the songs profited from the pop aspect because it didn’t sound like that when we played it here in the Warehouse. We didn’t do the whole disc that way though.

There are a fair few hard rock songs on the new album. That must be your influence, Mike…
MM: Of course, I love hard rock. But I’m sure that some of the songs you are thinking about, like ‘Gonna See My Friend’ were written by Ed.

I was thinking about ‘Force Of Nature’
MM: That’s definitely mine. It’s interesting that I set out to create something poppy if I only could. I’d never thought like that before, I normally just compose… Mind you, it didn’t turn out particularly poppy. It’s more like the Stones. When the whole band gets into a song you lose certain elements and gain others and it takes on a new quality. So it turned out differently to how I’d imagined it and that’s good because maybe my vision was a little limited. I’m glad that it made it onto the record and that you spotted it.

Are the lyrics outlining the bands ecological manifesto?
MM: I have to listen closely to the lyrics. I got more of a feeling that it was about a woman as a force of nature. I didn’t recognize it but maybe it’s there in the depths.
MC: Exactly, maybe there is something more to it, something we haven’t read between the lines yet.

i shit and i stink

And part 4, again, I'll tidy it up later. I don't know when I'll have the chance to finish it but I'll bump it whe I do!:

You’re known for more than music, your active politically, socially, environmentally, in healthcare – I’m thinking of you there Mike…
MM: About Crohn’s. Oh yeah, that's my contribution. My pain.

…how much meaning does the fact that you come from Seattle, a town that is known as being more aware than the rest of America, have?
MC: There is a lot of money here in Seattle, in the North-West. A lot of affluent people become philanthropists, like Bill and Melinda Gates who run the biggest charity fund on Earth. There has always been a heightened awareness here about a lot of different things Let’s take care of the environment, remembering that tropical forests are here, real rainforests and we also have incredible mountains... it’s a wonderful place that nature has shaped for us to live in around here. We can’t ignore that. Our band has tried to open people’s eyes to a lot of things over the years, one of those has been taking care of the environment. At the moment we are concerned about the advancement of global warming and so on.

Do you personally have very green lifestyles? Do you drive hybrid cars, for example?
MM: Yes, I’ve got two hybrids and an old petrol BMW, so I can say I do.
MC: And I’ve got a hybrid and a 425HP V8. Two extremes…

‘Just Breathe’ differs from the rest of the album in that it has strings. Was that your idea?
MC: Me? No, that was Brendan. Ed wrote the song. We were learning it and trying it with the whole band and some kind of country style came through the song. We intended to bite into it when we go to LA but Brendan said to just do the guitar and voice. I think he already had it in mind at that time and was thinking of a string arrangement. It sounded great from the moment we laid it down. It’s great that we got two pop numbers with an orchestra on the record, they fit alongside the rock songs. We got an interesting mix of different styles.

A little of the country element remains in the song though, particularly in the vocals…
MC: Ed used his amazing baritone. He’s good at low registers, like you often hear good country singers use, like Merle Haggard or George Jones. It’s very American, it’s gives an American value to our music. Ed uses it freely.

You probably won’t bring in the country listeners though, at least because of you ideological opposition to one another.
MM: Well, I dunno. We’ve got a big fan from the world of country music. Dierks Bentley, my friend, it’s going up in his estimation. I got to know him some years ago… we’ve definitely got a number of fans among the country listeners. I don’t think they are all against us.
MC: I reckon a lot of Nashville musicians value rock. We label them all as conservatives and to a certain extent that may be true. However, I think that a lot of them like our rock group.

MrMerkinball

well done - thank you

i shit and i stink

MrMerkinball wrote:

well done - thank you

It's not done yet! There are still 2 pages to go and they are full of text.

facepollution

i shit and i stink wrote:

MrMerkinball wrote:

well done - thank you

It's not done yet! There are still 2 pages to go and they are full of text.

You're doing an awesome job, it's a really good read! Looking forward to the next installment.....

Plankton

This is great, thank you so much.

So much better than the trash that was in the UK magazines.

pdalowsky

An article that is a joy to read

the wank Uk press could really learn from this

so far we've not heard about Kurt or Ticketmaster!! Wow

jecica

Thank you for your time and effort. This is a great article, so much detail.

Rossum20

great job..thanks a lot...definitely the best interview thus far, wouldn't you say?

JaneNY

Thanks for that - great read!

Ledbetterman10

i shit and i stink wrote:

My favourite song on the album is ‘The Fixer’, it’s got a lot of different vocal harmonies which are littered throughout the album…
MM: Matt wrote that one…
MC: I didn’t write the lyrics! (laughs). I did the melody. Ed brought in a lot of pop aspects to the song.

lol

cippociappo

AMAZING job, a GREAT read!!!!!!

Thank you so much!

Soulfire42

Just another thanks! I appreciate you taking time to translate this for all of us.

wolfbear

Thank you again.

pearljgirl2010

this is fantastic....thanks for doing this so we can all enjoy the article :-)

Blind3

Incredible article ! THANK YOU for taking the time to share this gift with all of us .

finnannie

thank you for translating this!! great read.

coachchris

I look forward to the remainder of this interview! Great read, and thank you so much for taking the time to translate all of it to us crazies!