While in New Zealand for Westfest 2015 at Auckland’s Mount Smart Stadium, the legendary Matt Cameron – drummer for both Pearl Jam and Soundgarden – shared some insight in an interview on Music 101 about the challenge of being in two active and long-entwined iconic bands. The thundering rhythmic backbone and revitalizing creative force to both groups is now in his 52nd year of life, and somehow still rocks circles around his rock peers.
As both groups have been highly active on the recording and touring circuit over the past few years, Cameron was forced to pick his battles, at one point announcing a temporary departure from the reunited Soundgarden to focus on his duties with Pearl Jam, which often reach far beyond the drumkit in the songwriting process. But as we’re hearing of a new Soundgarden album in the works with Matt’s involvement, the question remains: at 52 years old, how the hell does he do it?
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Read the transcript below – and take a moment to consider how totally different and potentially amazing the already-awesome “You Are” would be had Soundgarden built on Cameron’s core riff instead of Pearl Jam. (Listen to the original below)
What’s it like trying to balance two powerhouses like Pearl Jam and Soundgarden?
I’m not 25 anymore, and I don’t really need to be out on the road as much as I have in the past. I definitely want to be home a lot more with my family … I’ve got kids. And that’s part of the equation too. I certainly don’t want to trip anyone up. If it ever gets to that state, then we just have to sort of figure it out at that point. But so far it’s been working out great. We’re all been friends, and we’ve all been in bands for a long time. We all know that’s the reality of our job at this point.
When Matt writes a song, how does he decide which band is the best fit for the song?
If there’s a piece of music that has a little bit of a harder edge, I might thing that Soundgarden might like that, but there are other occasions where I bring in a piece of music that has a pretty hard edge to it and the Pearl Jam guys really like it too. I don’t really try to differentiate what goes where. I just try to keep writing as much as I can, and try to present the guys with the best stuff that I’m coming up with at that given time. Pearl Jam likes to include one of my songs just to give it a different flavor, but as with Soundgarden I think my music sort of fits the overall sound of the band, but that’s just because I’ve been doing it a little bit longer.
What did Kim Thayil think of You Are?
Ah man! We coulda killed that song!
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Thanks to The Sky I Scrape for the heads up.
