Stone Gossard
Stone Gossard
Stone Carpenter Gossardis an American musician who serves as the rhythm and additional lead guitarist for the American rock band Pearl Jam. Along with Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Eddie Vedder, he is one of the founding members of Pearl Jam. Gossard is also known for his work prior to Pearl Jam with the 1980s Seattle, Washington-based grunge bands Green River and Mother Love Bone, and he has made contributions to the music industry as a producer and owner of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionMusician
Date of Birth20 July 1966
CountryUnited States of America
There is a tendency for writers to be most exciting by whatever they just wrote. Sometimes that excitement is warranted. Sometimes on further listen it's not as good as something they did a couple of years ago, but it's just not in their sights at that particular time.
If it had remained always my band, my natural tendency would have been to get more complex and arrange things more and more. That wouldn't necessarily be good for Eddie, or anyone else in the band.
I think when you put a new record out, everyone has a song or two that they feel people will be moved by so much that radio will be forced to play it.
I think ultimately, bringing more nature back into the city is a way to deal with urban sprawl and things like that. If the cities feel a little more natural, people like to live there more rather than moving out and dividing up another piece of land that shouldn't be touched.
I think that's one of the biggest problems in rock is people thinking too much, putting too much emphasis on getting things perfect or completely sorted out. Sometimes that sound of not having everything sorted out is kind of cool.
J was open to our style from the get-go. They weren't expecting us to do something that was unnatural for us.
It feels like a new opportunity for us. We're proud of the songs, and we think they have a chance to do a little better commercially.
For the most part, I really love being in a collaborative thing. And in a collaborative thing if you have a singer as good as Sean Smith or Eddie Vedder, you kind of think, well, why don't you just go ahead and let them sing? People seem to really like it.
You can say what you think music is, but the only way it really is, is how people experience it.
Right, those relationships with your parents and family are the hardest to figure out, and the same patterns get carried into a band situation.
I think I have my own sort of distinctive swing, for sure. I think that's something that comes really natural to me, to push against the beat and kind of explore a triplet feel behind everything just to see what that feels like.
A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music's simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It's different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I'm mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.
Raising awareness, changing the marketplace, effecting spiritual change - whatever it is that you decide is your thing, go for it.
Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.