Talking With:

Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard

By Rob Elder

Stone Gossard is a busy man. In addition to recording a new album with Pearl Jam, he also running Loose Groove Records with fellow cofounder Regan Hagar, and is currently touring with Brad.

Brad is a side project Gossard formed in 1992 with Shawn Smith and Regan Hagar of Satchel and solo artist Jeremy Toback. The band's first album, Shame, was written and recorded in 17 days. The boys allowed a little bit more time for their sophomore effort, Interiors, writing the album in 5 days, and recording it over three weeks.
Oregon Voice caught up with a relaxed Stone Gossard in Portland and found him open to questions about his bands, record label, and career.

OV: Do you see Brad as a long term project? Are you going to come back and record with them?

SG: Yeah, I've been friends with Sean and Regan for years. Me and Regan work at Loose Groove together. It's a great thing to do, it's a fun band to be in.

OV: Tell me about Loose Groove Records. You just recently went independent. What was the reasoning behind that?

SG: Well, I think our expectations were really super-inflated in terms of thinking we could just sign acts and then put them through the Sony system without being at Sony and being a part of that system- to expect that someone was going to listen to something because my name was attached to it or it was so genius because they were friends of ours. I think we learned some really valuable lessons.

Major labels are good at doing certain things like taking a band from selling 50,000 records to selling a million records. That is what major labels are designed to do. They are not great at taking you from selling 2,000 records to 20,000 records. They just don't have a really hands-on approach.

I think we just living in a fantasy that all we had to do was make records and put them in the Sony system and expect them to do well. It created a false sense for the bands, like something big was going to happen as opposed to just going out and busting your ass like Pearl Jam did. It was totally a do it yourself thing, we put out our own records and paid for 'em and paid for tours.

[Loose Grove] is an opportunity for bands to come in and make their first or second record and decide if they want to be a real band or not and want to go out on the road and do what it takes to be big. We're a label that's got a lot of resources and are able to get a lot of things done if you are able to create some of your own interest.
It's happening for bands like Critters Bugging who have really starting to do well on the West Coast. They've really stuck with it. They're really fuckin' good, dedicated musicians who tour on a minimal budget and play music all the time.

OV: Doesn't Matt Cramberlain play with Critters Buggin'? Wasn't he in the Pearl Jam "Alive" video with you?

SG: Yeah, he was the guy who played drums with us for a couple weeks. I think it was like a three week tour. Ultimately, we wanted him to be in Pearl Jam but he had other things he had to do. If you look at Critters Buggin', that¹s where his brain is at musically. At the time, we were thinking of it as a pretty long haul for Pearl Jam, I don't think anybody was planning to sell a lot of records. We were planning to go out for the next couple years and tour.

OV: What needs does Brad meet that Pearl Jam doesn't?

SG: Well, we play a Van Halen cover every night, so that kind of sums it up.
Ultimately, a band is the sum of its five individual members and any different situation is going to have all different types of feelings. I love being in Pearl Jam, I get a lot of satisfaction from the journey we've gone through together and the fact that we are still making records- and doing it collectively the way we want to do it as a band. It's really about getting consensus and feeling good about what we're doing.

Brad is the same way. This is a younger band in some ways and it hasn't had some of the attention that Pearl Jam has had. There's a different hunger with this band. Pearl Jam was very anxious to make better records and become a better band, to make records that live up the potential that we think we have. With Brad there's a little bit more youthful enthusiasm about going out on the road. It's just a different set of tastes and I can fit easily into both situations and be comfortable.

OV: This is the first time since Brad's formation that it's toured. Why tour now?

SG: The record just came out and you have to go out and promote it- plus it was fun. Pearl Jam is in the middle of making a record and we had a month off basically, which gives us a chance to listen to what we've done in Seattle and come back to it.

OV: You sang on the last Pearl Jam record No Code with "Mankind," do you see yourself doing that again in Pearl Jam or other projects?

SG: Uh, yeah if a song comes up that's right. I don't sing any lead vocals in Brad. As much as I'd had fantasies at different times about being a lead singer, ultimately it's not really what I'm gonna be. I feel like I have enough perspective now to know that I love writing songs and I like writing lyrics and doing vocal things, but the more I can do that, the better. But shit, when I can play with guys like Eddie and Sean, they pretty much show you what vocalist can do. I'm as content as I've ever been and feeling like I'm taking chances and progressing.

OV: Was it strange recording a video for Brad's "What the Day Brings" when Pearl Jam doesn't do videos anymore? Was it strange having a video that you're in after not being a part of that for so long?

SG: Not really. We did four videos with Pearl Jam and some with Mother Love Bone. Videos are always the same. The process is not enjoyable unlike making music or recording music in which the process is as enjoyable as the end product. Videos are about trying to get a little movie that goes along with the song basically. This band in particular is excited about doing videos, so it's easy for me to be excited also.
Pearl Jam for the most part doesn't get excited about videos. We've done some and kind of know what they're all about and haven't really felt a huge desire to do them. But I don't know whether we're not ever going to do videos again. I think there's a stigma involved that videos are evil, which is ridiculous. They're not. They are just movies that go along with music and they can easily be as artistic as a song.
The concept that every time a band is trying to become popular that they have to make a movie to go along with the song is frustrating. I would like to see it not be such a dramatic part of the music business. I think it is less now than it was three or four years ago. There are a lot of bands who are making it on the radio.

OV: Do you see the video form fading or- maybe coming down to a more reasonable level?

SG: That's what I sense right now. I'll watch a little MTV, but I don't sense that it has the impact that it had four or five years ago when it first came out. It was so amazing to see bands playing music on TV. Now so many things are like music videos, so many commercials, so many movies that it's all melded into one giant weird marketing thing. You see so many videos that just don't reach a song, it's frustrating.

OV: You testified against Ticketmaster in front of Congress. Do you think it is possible to be non political as a band or a band that gets bigger?

SG: Yeah. I do. I think anytime a band gets really big and suddenly the media is on you, things that you would say normally in your everyday life can get magnified to a lot of different people.

It has a whole different set of ramifications. The same thing goes about political opinion. I don't think that politics and music make good bedfellows.