Matt Cameron News

Merkin Baller said:

bootlegger10 said:

Gern Blansten said:

I remember thinking that the 2025 dates were odd....why just tour for a month?

probably overthinking it, lol

They did the same thing in 2023.  Not too far out of the norm.  But was a little odd after the big 2024 year they had.  Maybe they wanted his last run to be in the States.  

2023 & 2025 make sense when compared to say, the 2014 US leg, but the 2 nights in ea city with a night off in between was a new thing. I always assumed that scheduling was to accommodate Ed's voice more than anything else, but for all we know, that could have been to accommodate Matt specifically.. not to mention the shortened setlists we've been getting post covid. 

Matt was also said in at least one interview earlier this year that he doesn't know how much touring he had left in him (paraphrased)... that was in public. For all we know, he could have been saying this in private to the band for the last 2 or 3 years. 

I wouldn't be at all surprised if they knew before DM was released hat it would be their last go around w/ Matt. 

pjl44 said:

bluesuedeitzrad said:

Without zero insight from the band, here are things I am starting to believe are true:

• The band has known for quite some time—probably years—that this was Matt Cameron's final album/tour
• Matt Cameron is retiring, not quitting
• The band will go the R.E.M. route, and have a touring drummer but no official new member
• Setting Sun is their goodbye to Matt.
• We will never know why, so all we can do is enjoy the memories and keep listening

Given that we all assume it was amicable, I think it would be completely bizarre if we haven’t heard more about why over the next few months (if not sooner)

pjl44 said:

bluesuedeitzrad said:

Without zero insight from the band, here are things I am starting to believe are true:

• The band has known for quite some time—probably years—that this was Matt Cameron's final album/tour
• Matt Cameron is retiring, not quitting
• The band will go the R.E.M. route, and have a touring drummer but no official new member
• Setting Sun is their goodbye to Matt.
• We will never know why, so all we can do is enjoy the memories and keep listening

Given that we all assume it was amicable, I think it would be completely bizarre if we haven’t heard more about why over the next few months (if not sooner)

Dr. Stip Zoidberg said:

Sharing something I wrote elsewhere (TSIS):

I panicked when Dave Abbruzzese left Pearl Jam, thanks to a deep and abiding fear that a band breakup was imminent. No one seemed to enjoy being in Pearl Jam, and I assumed he was a core part of both their sound and identity (it was a different time. We just knew what Rolling Stone and Spin told us). At the very least, for the duration of my fandom, he was the only Pearl Jam drummer I knew. I didn’t know what Pearl Jam was without him. Or what they would be for me.

I was relieved when Jack Irons joined since it meant Pearl Jam would continue. I knew next to nothing about him – only that he was in the liner notes of Vitalogy, and that playing drums on Stupid Mop was not exactly the calling card I was looking for. It wasn’t until much later that I learned about his history with Ed, and that Pearl Jam would not exist without him.

I saw Pearl Jam live for the first time with Jack. It was a transcendent experience (Randall’s Island, Night 1). Prior to that moment, Pearl Jam always felt fragile – something that could fall apart at any moment, their survival dependent on the will and whim of Eddie Vedder, a man equally likely to shatter or detonate at any moment. Something changed for me after that night. Seeing them live was almost a supernatural experience– like they were channeling something larger than themselves – something primal, elemental, raw, and true that was simultaneously not of this world and its beating heart. Something that real couldn’t help but exist. After that night, Pearl Jam finally felt immortal – something that would HAVE to endure, whether they wanted to or not.

And yet, when Jack left the band, I still felt fear, if not outright panic. By 1998 it seemed inevitable that the Seattle bands were destined to disintegrate, and I wasn’t confident Pearl Jam would be different. When I learned that Matt Cameron would join them for the Yield tour, it wasn’t just that I was relieved (though I was!). This pairing felt right and proper. The greatest drummer of the grunge moment should be a part of its greatest band. I don’t think I knew he played on the demos sent to Ed, but I knew Temple of The Dog, and when Matt became an official member, it felt like the closing of a loop, or the end of an extended prologue. Pearl Jam had found its forever lineup. The one it was always meant to have.

Twenty seven years is not forever. But in terms of band dynamics it may as well be. And while Jack Irons is often credited with saving Pearl Jam, Matt Cameron is undoubtedly the reason they endured. Matt Cameron did what probably felt impossible for most of the 90s. He made Eddie, Jeff, Mike, and Stone want to be in Pearl Jam.

Matt was a flashier drummer in Soundgarden. His parts more obvious. But that makes sense. Soundgarden was the musically showier band. Pearl Jam’s playing wasn’t technical in its orientation. It was emotional. Soundgarden, for me, often felt like an exercise in craft. Whereas Pearl Jam was a study in experential truth. And I think we often forget (or take for granted) something fundamental about Matt: that he is arguably the most adaptable and selfless drummer of his era. In the innumerable albums he has guested on, the bands and projects he has been a part of, one of his singular gifts is his capacity to be whatever the music needed him to be. There is no overlap between talent and ego on Matt’s Venn diagram. He drummed in service of the song, not himself. I don’t think there is a member of the band as musically giving as Matt. There is a reason Eddie spent twenty seven years gushing about the opportunity to play with Matt. Matt enabled all of them to be their best selves, in ways that were maybe hard to see from the outside, but were so blindingly apparent to the band. And while this stage banter sometimes made it seem like Matt was in an extended guest spot, in reality it was recognition that his singular talents were not taken for granted – the ones the audience could see and hear, and the ones that could only be felt and understood by the band itself.

It's not that Matt was a chameleon. It’s just that he was monstrously talented, endlessly adaptable, and somehow always true to himself. Matt ensured whatever Pearl Jam did, the music would always maintain its integrity, and that whatever direction their individual muses took them (including his own), he would be there to hold it all together, and ensure that whatever came out of that alchemy was unmistakably Pearl Jam. In the studio for sure, and especially in the increasingly emotional and improvisational live experience.

Although Matt was the drummer on 60% of their albums and for 80% of their life as a band (I double checked the math. 80%!), he missed their imperial moment in the early 90s. He was not the studio drummer on the songs that made them famous, the songs that endured in the public consciousness. It is true that Matt will always stand outside the Ten, Vs, Vitalogy arc (he was having his own with Soundgarden) when Pearl Jam was the most important band in the world.

But there is another Pearl Jam. The Pearl Jam I have seen for twenty nine of my thirty shows. The band that could release 72 bootlegs and set two records for most albums to debut in the Billboard 200. The band that built a reputation as one of the best live rock acts of all time. Their incomprehensible performance chemistry is a product of the Matt Cameron era. The Pearl Jam that made Pearl Jam Radio possible, that made it so that you could be a fan solely of their live material and never run out of things to listen to – we owe this to Matt. His legacy is that Pearl Jam never became a legacy act. He was not of the Pearl Jam I saw on TV growing up. But he was the backbone of the Pearl Jam I was privileged to grow alongside of.

Rock bands have short life spans. Group dynamics are complicated under the best of circumstances, and having to maintain them under the glare and scrutiny of a sometimes obnoxious and entitled fan base (which is, to be fair, all fan bases) is hard to do. Bring in egos, money, the pressure and need of the machinery that depends on you, and it’s a miracle any of them survive. Most don’t. And most of us, therefore, find that our favorite music gets trapped in a particular moment in time – those brief windows when a band existed. And the music becomes a frozen, reified thing. Something we can go return to, or a piece of the past we can carry with us. But that relationship is always looking backwards, always recapturing something we had to leave behind.

But not for us. We have been blessed to grow old with our band. That the soundtrack of our lives is forever expanding, bridging our past, present and future is a gift we were given. Pearl Jam has been a constant in my life for almost 34 years – as a living, changing thing. The music did not just help me find and retain my youthful passion and outrage, but grapple with my adult responsibilities and obligations. It has been there to bridge the space between my dreams and my reality, to help me understand the world I grew up in, the world I made, and the one I will be passing on.

It is easy to take this for granted, and Matt’s departure is shocking because, whether we are conscious of it or not, it reminds us none of this is inevitable. None of it will last forever. It takes luck. It takes work. It takes love. It is a relationship, and now that will relationship will have to change. It is only appropriate that we grieve what is lost. It shaped our fandom. In countless ways, big and small, it helped shape who we are. It mattered. What follows will still be real. But it will be different.

I love Matt’s output with the band. He has anchored some stellar albums. He has been the drummer on some of my very favorite Pearl Jam songs. And he has even written a handful of my favorites. But his biggest contribution, I think, is the fact that Pearl Jam is still here. I don’t think it would be without him.

When Matt announced his retirement it was bittersweet. Matt has earned his the right to walk away on his own terms, while he can. Our heroes deserve the right to control their destiny. I wish him all the best in whatever happens next. I am sure he will be back on stage at one point. But I will miss him. What he accomplished, what he represented, and what he made possible.

This marks the end of an era, but not the end. This time I didn’t feel panic. Because Matt carried the rest of the band to a place where I no longer fear for Pearl Jam’s future. He made them comfortable in their skins. He made them enjoy being in a band together. He built the symbiotic and generative relationship they have with their fans. He helped turn concerts into revivals, and I just can’t imagine the band ever wanting to give that up. Pearl Jam will be different without him. But it will endure. Thanks to him.

Thank you Matt, for the music.
Thank you, Matt, for the memories.
Thank you, Matt, for putting in the work.
And thank you, Matt, for ensuring that this is not the end.

Merkin Baller said:

bluesuedeitzrad said:

Without zero insight from the band, here are things I am starting to believe are true:

• The band has known for quite some time—probably years—that this was Matt Cameron's final album/tour
• Matt Cameron is retiring, not quitting
• The band will go the R.E.M. route, and have a touring drummer but no official new member
• Setting Sun is their goodbye to Matt.
• We will never know why, so all we can do is enjoy the memories and keep listening

I agree 100% with points 1 & 5 and I think point # 2 is probably accurate in so much that he's retiring from PJ and being in a touring band. I don't think he's retiring from music, but i I will be surprised if he does any real sort of tours with another act. 

I'm coming around to #3... Jack Irons was behind the kit for my 2 favorite PJ albums... I couldn't see him rejoining them as their full time drummer, but if he were to do another studio album w/ them, I would be beyond excited. Outside of that, I'm really not on the "get one of the prior drummers" train. 

Point # 4 - it's entirely possible, and was one hell of a way to end the Live On Two Legs podcast from 2 days ago. 

THEBIBLEISTEN said:

I think soundgarden is doing a remake and he will devote his time to that. 

AfghanTwilight said:

THEBIBLEISTEN said:

I think soundgarden is doing a remake and he will devote his time to that. 

There is no Soundgarden without Chris Cornell.