Pearl Jam's Gigaton

STONE 👇👇

"This song started out with a Matt Cameron electronic drum beat. Matt had been working with some drum machines and stuff and I came down and was messing around with bass so I was messing around and think I started busy and trying to do to much and both of us were sitting around saying 'well this is less than great' at some point I just started giving up and saying ah crap whatever, and then I just started hammering on the bass and we both looked at each and said that sounds better than anything so far we just started kinda throwing it down and we came up with this a and b section for the song. A few weeks later, unbeknownst to me, Jeff Ament came in and uh threw on that arpeggiating keyboard line and I was like "oh my god thats great" and I think even a few weeks after that Mike McCready came in and put that guitar part over the top of it which was completely ...its an unbelievable guitar part in terms of the variety and melody he gets out of 3 notes and it was really at that point striking us as something that was exciting and really ... it wasnt much later than that that Ed put on the first rough vocal that had almost all of the elements that the final vocal...some of the words changed...but all the phrasing and alot of the energy was all there. I guess thats the last element that kinda went down was in the end Matt uh decided and I think with the band's approval that he was gonna play his drum machine part so the drums that you hear on the track are real drums. I think theres an electronic high hat still mixed in there, but all the beat thats a live Matt Cameron track with very dry drums so the fact that he was able to go back in and play that beat that was you know completely created in a drum machine and play it so convincingly to almost sound like a drum machine was really a tribute to how great he is. Matt sort of inspired and wrote the initial part of the song and then we all individually came in and put an element on there and those elements lasted and survived um intact is a little bit of why I think we're so excited about the song and sort of the magic of how that song couldnt have really been written by any individual in any other band and I think the words theyre just so compelling to me I listen to them and I have a different reaction to them each time. So its a real exciting time for the band and Im really proud of it."