KROCK Interview with Stone Gossard, 4/5/01interview by Will Pendarvis
transcription provided by Stephen ScurtiK-ROCK: I'm Will Pendarvis and I'm sitting here with Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard. How are you man?
Stone Gossard: Hi Will. How are you?
WP: Good. What's up?
SG: I don't know. Just hanging out in New York. Enjoying the sun. Bringing you some treats.
WP: Treats?
SG: Yeah.
WP: Hey, uh, you know, uh, I don't wanna start things off on a bad note, but I am anyway. This will make you sad and depressed I think. You know, when people found out you were coming up here and whatever, people kept calling me and saying, hey ask him this, and ask him that, and all that, and more than find out how he tuned his guitar on that song or what that song means to him or anything like that, and everybody was like, ask him where he gets his pants.
SG: Well, my, uh, burberry pants? Is that what it was?
WP: Yeah.
SG: Uh. let's see. Maybe in MIlan. Maybe that's where i got 'em.
WP: Well everybody should just trek on over to Milan and pick up a few.
SG: Yeah. But Levi's, I'm wearing today and I think I bought them in a second-hand store so…
WP: There you go.
SG: It depends on which day you catch me.
WP: Um, before we move on to Pearl Jam or any of that stuff, I wanna draw on your musical expertise.
SG: Ok.
WP: On a couple of subjects. The first one is what do you know about Chris Cornell recording some songs with, uh, you know, uh, Rage Against The Machine?
SG: I've heard that. And it sounds to me like there's something going on there, but I'm very much on the outside of that equation so I haven't really talked to Chris or any of the guys in Rage but...It's gonna be exciting isn't it?
WP: Yeah, I think that sounds cool right? I don't think they're gonna use the Rage Against The Machine moniker for the recordings.
SG: No. He's kinda the best singer out there. Pretty much if you kinda uh, he does it all. He sings great, Writes great lyrics. Plays guitar great. So, I can't think of a better person for them to play along with.
WP: The other question is something you might not have any idea about but I'm intersted in, and so are so many people out there. What do you know about Layne Staley at all? Any information whatsoever. I figured just maybe even through the Seattle connection or hanging out at a bar and hearing something you might know something.
SG: I don't really know anything.
WP: Nobody does. You know, I don't even think that anybody in the band knows.
SG: He's very reclusive and I could'nt really tell you the first thing about what he does with his day. But, I mean the time I spent with him 7 or 8 years ago was, he's certainly a sweet guy. I really like him and I hope he's doing okay but I have no idea where he is.
WP: That's cool.
SG: He's definitely flying below the radar.
WP: Yeah. I talked to so many people who really wanna know and of course would love some more music from Alice In Chains.
SG: Sure. Yeah.
WP: If you're just turning on your radio, it's 92.3 K-ROCK. I'm Will Pendarvis. Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam and Mother Love Bone and Brad and Green River. What was, wait, what was the first band, um, uh?
SG: Ducky Boys?
WP: No, uh, March of Crimes.
SG: Oh, March of Crimes.
WP: I love that.
SG: Yeah.
WP: What a great name for a band.
SG: It is.
WP: Tell me about the Pearl Jam DVD. It was supposed to be released on one date and now it's been pushed back. What's going on with that? I don't even think on the ever trustworthy internet anybody knows why the DVD was pushed back.
SG: It got pushed back because we tried to cram so much stuff on there that it actually had a few glitches on a few different types of machines. It was necessarily on all the machines but there were some volume drops on a few segments of it so we had to go back in and reconfigure the information in some new way or I'm not actually sure what the final outcome of technical thing was but it bounced at ten days so it's May 1st now.
WP: It's gonna be coming out May 1st.
SG: Yeah. There's like three hours worth of stuff on there so.
WP: Touring Band 2000 is the name of the DVD and...
SG: 25 songs from probably 15 different shows and then a bunch of different camera angles and then some special feaures different segments of behind the scenes stuff.
WP: There's also supposed to, uh, is there supposed to be some videos on there that have never been seen...
SG: Oceans is on there which has never been released in the United States and Do The Evolution. And it's just gonna be chock full of exciting little tidbits.
WP: Any Easter eggs in there?
SG: Uh, I'm not sure. There's definitely a few clams.
WP: Let me ask you this too, Just when Pearl Jam, uh, what, uh, I'm assuming you guys were just like hanging out and relaxing right now.
SG: Yeah. Everyone's just kinda doing their thing.
WP: There's gotta be some grand master plan though. Any plans to reconvene or when that may be?
SG: You know, my guess is that we'll probably get back together again after the first of the year. Actually, Ed's down in New Zealand right now doing some shows with Neil Finn and a couple of the guys from Radiohead who are kinda doing a little benefit. I'm not even sure what the benefit is for but it's five days worth of shows down in New Zealand and Australia. And me and Jeff are gonna go do some snowbaording up in Alaska next week so um, we're not in a crazy rush to get into the studio right now.
WP: Yeah you guys were never really in a rush to do stuff you're always just kinda like hanging out and doing your own thing. That's kinda cool.
SG: Yeah it's pretty good. We got a pretty good band.
WP: We're gonna play a song, speaking of pretty good bands, form the Jones Beach Show recorded while the were here. It's Stone Gossard in the studio here at K-Rock and here's Daughter from one of the Jones Beach shows.
[Played Daughter from the 8/24 show that was aired live on K-ROCK]
WP: Pearl Jam from the Jones Beach Show. Specifically the August 24th Jones Beach Show. I'm Will Pendarvis. It's 92.3 K-ROCK and Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam is in the studio with me. Let's talk about Pearl Jam for a little bit. What about your side band Bayleaf?
SG: Oh wow.
WP: Been hearing about it, have not heard music from it. Tell me about that first. I heard you were doing vocals on the song and everything?
SG: Yeah there's a few vocals of mine on there and a few vocals of my good friend Ty Willman and Ty sings in Green Apple Quickstep so you might be familiar with him, but it's just a kind of a record I...a bunch of old songs I worked on over the last three or four years and i finished and Pete Droge, who is also a good friend of mine, ended up producing it so...
WP: Oh cool.
SG: Just a kind of a little something I put together over the last couple of months and I'm kinda excited about.
WP: So can we play some of it?
SG: Yeah why not.
WP: Has anyone ever heard this before?
SG: Uh well just a few people. Why don't we play track 9. This is called "Unhand Me". It's uh Ty Willman. We don't know the name of the band yet.
WP: Oh you don't? So the album's called Bayleaf?
[Stone laughs]
WP: No well, that's what's all over the internet and all the fan groups are calling it that.
SG: Yeah, I don't know if it's called that or not.
WP: Alright. Here's some band. Some band that Stone Gossard is in on K-ROCK.
SG: It's gonna be cool.
[played a song from Stone's new sideband (pretty good song too)]
WP: That is some band. We don't know the name of it yet.
SG: Yeah I wrote the song and it's my friend Ty Willman singing, so... WP: That's Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam over there and I'm Will Pendarvis it's 92.3 K-ROCK. You don't know what the name of the band is gonna be yet but uh when is it gonna come out?
SG: September. But it'll be available on our website probably sometime at the end of July.
WP: Cool. And which website?
SG: Pearl Jam. Ten Club.
WP: Alright cool.
SG: And probably pearljam.com too.
WP: Excellent. And if, uh, I don't know. You know we're having the screening of the Pearl Jam DVD tonight.
SG: Yeah right.
WP: I'm just saying I can get you tickets if you want em.
SG: Actually I'm leaving town later this afternoon so...
WP: I can look out for tickets. I know some people who can get you into that if you wanna go watch.
SG: You know I watched so much of that early on that I can't watch it anymore.
WP: Yeah?
SG: Yeah it's sort of, uh, I can't do it.
WP: Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam. Thank You dude for coming to the studio. I appreciate it hanging out with you this afternoon. And we'll keep you posted on what's going on with that and that goddamn side project that he's doing that nobody knows the name to.