With Pearl Jam's tenth studio album, Lightning Bolt, due next Tuesday, the grunge band sat down with Judd Apatow for an lengthy interview on NPR. The entire 50 minute video is available to watch on NPR's site.
Apatow's recent films deal with people struggling to cope with their rapid aging, so naturally he spends a good deal of the interview asking Pearl Jam members about the group's longevity, the changes that have occurred within the band over the last thirteen years, and the process that turned geeky teens into Pearl Jam. Fortunately, the interview touches on many other subjects and doesn't end up resembling a This Is 40 sequel.
One highlight is bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard's in-depth discussion of Lightning Bolt's recording process. The pair make Pearl jam out to be a collective of individual musicians with drastically different creative strategies, which Apatow compares to writers room where ideas fly around haphazardly, many of them not even being acknowledged by the rest of the group. Throughout the interview, Apatow attempts to make a bunch of connections between the worlds of comedy and music, but this is the most salient.
Watch the full interview to see other great moments like Eddie Vedder geeking out over Quadrophenia, Apatow being genuinely surprised to hear that Year One (a film he produced) is frequently watched on Pearl Jam's tour bus, and drummer Matt Cameron explaining how rabid a KISS fan he is. Check out the video at NPR.
