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Eddie Vedder in 1992

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How Pearl Jam's "Unplugged" Performance Captured The Grunge Gods' Pop Cultural Rise

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To commemorate the forthcoming release of RSD exclusive 'MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992),' the Recording Academy spoke with director Joel Gallen about how the then-new band approached their MTV acoustic set
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Nov 26, 2019 - 11:55 am

For the last decade or so, Record Store Day and Record Store Day Black Friday have been the venues through which bands have chosen to offer their fans feverishly anticipated album reissues and first-runs on vinyl. One of the most celebrated stars of this year’s Black Friday event—taking place Nov. 29 at participating record stores across the U.S.—is Pearl Jam's MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992), the long-awaited official release of the band's unforgettable acoustic performance from the pioneering MTV show. Recorded on March 16, 1992 and aired less than two months later on May 13, 1992, Pearl Jam's "Unplugged" episode is notable for capturing the band as it successfully navigated an unfamiliar setting in the very early stages of its still-thriving career.  

While bootleg audio files of the performance have been floating around fan circles for years, the Record Store Day Black Friday vinyl release of MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992) marks the first time fans can purchase an official, band-sanctioned version of the album. (It should be noted that previously a DVD of the performance was included in some versions of the 2009 reissue of their debut album Ten, but no standalone audio version was made available at that time.) This vinyl release of MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992) contains all six tracks from the original Unplugged television broadcast, as well as the inclusion of "Oceans," which did not make it to air.

To help commemorate the release of MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992), the Recording Academy spoke with "MTV Unplugged" director Joel Gallen about shooting the noteworthy episode as a first-time director and about how the band—vocalist Eddie Vedder, bassist Jeff Ament, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, and then-drummer Dave Abbruzzese—approached their acoustic set with equal parts refined musicality and unfiltered bravado.     

While Gallen's impressive production and directorial resume includes a variety of memorable musical events, movies and comedy specials ("Not Another Teen Movie," "Zoolander," the 2003 Super Bowl Halftime Show, 17 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, the last 14 years of "Comedy Central Roasts" and the Peabody Award-winning post-September 11 benefit concert special "America: A Tribute to Heroes"), he charted his first professional successes at MTV in the late 1980s and early 1990s. During this prolific period, Gallen produced the MTV Video Music Awards and the MTV Movie Awards, while also working on some of the most memorable episodes of "MTV Unplugged"'s earliest days—including iconic shows from Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton and Pearl Jam.  

Joel Gallen: During my first few years of working on "Unplugged," we used to shoot multiple episodes within a single day to help on production costs and get more bang for our buck. We actually shot three shows on this particular day: one with Boyz II Men, Joe Public and Shanice around two or three in the afternoon, the very famous one with Mariah Carey around seven or eight that night, and then Pearl Jam at about midnight. I remember it was so cold that day and we had just had a snowstorm, so the Pearl Jam fans were waiting outside for hours in the freezing cold. When it was time for the show to actually start taping, they were enthusiastic and ready to go.

Up until that point in my MTV career, I was mostly just a producer. However, I usually operated as a bit of a backseat director and was always very involved with the production work, the editing, getting the right shots, and all that. Once I heard we were going to be doing an "Unplugged" episode with Pearl Jam, I went to Doug Herzog, my boss at MTV, and I told him that I would really like to direct it. Not only was I a big fan and already knew their music, but also it was the third episode of a single-day shoot, which seemed like a lot to ask of any director. In this specific case, that was Larry Jordan, who directed the first two episodes that day. Doug gave me the green light and this ended up being the first show I ever directed in my life.

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At the time, both "Unplugged" and Pearl Jam were in relatively similar places in their career arcs—both were relatively new but equally on the brink of massive stardom and pop-cultural ubiquity. "Unplugged" was still finding its footing as being more than just a television show, having only released Paul McCartney's episode as an album and still being months away from releasing the juggernaut Eric Clapton "Unplugged" album. Similarly, Pearl Jam had experienced some success with the release of their debut album Ten, but at the time of their "Unplugged" taping, had only released "Alive" as their sole single to radio. Because of this, some MTV executives considered having the young band appear on the show at such a crucial momentum-building time as somewhat of a risk.   

Joel Gallen: For the most part, I think most people at MTV were pretty excited about having a Pearl Jam "Unplugged" episode, but there might've been some concern because they were relatively unknown at the time. If there were some MTV folks who did feel that way, they minimized the risk by scheduling them on the same day that we were already recording two huge names: Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men. It might’ve been in their minds that, even if the Pearl Jam "Unplugged" didn’t work, it wouldn't exactly be wasting production funds because we were doing the other two no matter what.

Some of the more conservative executives might've thought Pearl Jam was risky, but it was MTV and rock music was still doing very well on the channel at the time. You have to remember, this was 1992 and about six months after Pearl Jam's "Unplugged," we had the most rock and roll MTV Video Music Awards ever: 5,000 screaming fans on the floor of UCLA's Pauley Pavilion with all the VIP and industry people around the sides. That night, on the same stage we had Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Black Crowes, Def Leppard, Eric Clapton, Guns N' Roses with Elton John on piano, and we also did a live remote with U2. That night was actually the second time I got to work with Pearl Jam and we've worked together about 15-20 times since then.

For any trepidation that Pearl Jam's youth and inexperience may have potentially produced in the MTV offices, one would only need to see their seemingly limitless energy, powerfully expressive musical abilities and charismatically emotive frontman commanded every stage on which they performed to have any fears put to rest. Although the acoustic setting of "Unplugged" would find them playing on rented instruments with no real rehearsal just a few short days after completing their grueling first-ever European tour, the band unquestionably rose to the challenge of harnessing their raw electric roar into a more nuanced acoustic approach. While "Unplugged" would require they play without the benefit of some of their signature sonic tools—guitar distortion, amp feedback, wah pedals—they successfully transformed a small slice of their song catalog and, according to Gallen, remained incredibly photogenic in the process.      

Joel Gallen: You know how "Unplugged" works: the band walks out, everybody applauds, and then the rest is their show. Pearl Jam is just spectacular in that kind of setting. The whole band was just so raw and sensational. From a directing standpoint, I just had to try and put my cameras in the right place, anticipate the energy of the band, and react to the moments they were creating. In rehearsal, they gave us no heads up as to what they had planned. They just sort of strummed through the songs, so I didn't know what all they were going to do once the show started.

As a director and producer, I don't know that there’s a better close-up in rock and roll history than Eddie Vedder singing. I’ve shot Bono, I've shot Springsteen, I've shot Prince—I love them all and they all give great close-ups, but there’s no one better than Eddie Vedder. The energy and feeling and passion that you feel coming out of him when he's singing, especially all throughout that "Unplugged," is truly unsurpassed.  

While the band played their more reserved tracks like "Alive," "Oceans" and "Black" in a somewhat composed manner, the more rambunctious numbers like "Jeremy," "State of Love And Trust" and "Even Flow" found the band negotiating the "Unplugged" setting with a more constrained, dog-on-a-chain demeanor. By the time the band hit the escalating climax of the frenetic "Porch," Ament was playing his bass while standing on top of the kick drum as Vedder was creating the most iconic visual of their "Unplugged" set by using a sharpie to write "PRO-CHOICE!!!" down his entire left arm and onto the back of his hand. In fact, eagle-eyed viewers will spot that "Even Flow" was actually played after "Porch" (even though the two songs were broadcast in reverse order) due to the fact that the scrawled exclamation points can be seen on Vedder's hand, peeking out from under the sleeve of his jacket. At the end of "Porch," the broadcast closer, Ament launched his bass offstage to the open arms of his sure-handed guitar tech.           

Joel Gallen: We only had like five or six cameras to work with and I had a super helpful Assistant Director named Christine Clarke, now Christine Bradley, who helped make sure it turned out magical. However, I’ve got to give credit to my long-lens close-up camera operator, John Meikeljon, because he was the one who somehow got an in-focus shot of Eddie writing "PRO-CHOICE!!!" down his arm with a sharpie. It was really such a magnificent visual and a wonderfully emotional moment.

I also thought Jeff's bass toss at the end of "Porch" was a really great closing moment. I’ve been lucky enough to shoot three really cool guitar tosses: Jeff at the Pearl Jam "Unplugged" show, Nirvana's Krist Novoselic at the 1992 VMAs where his bass came back down and hit him on the head, and then Prince's incredibly memorable guitar tossing after he played "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with Tom Petty and Jeff Lynne at the 2004 Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Quick story: Prince barely made it to rehearsal for that performance and when we got him plugged in, he was just kind of strumming around and making sure his levels were okay. I asked, "You’re going to really give it to us tonight, right?" and he just smiled really big at me and casually said, "Don’t worry about it." That's all he said to me and then later that night he just ferociously unleashed that unforgettable guitar solo during the performance.

As with most "Unplugged" sessions, the band played more songs than could be included in the 30-minute run time of the show’s early days. In Pearl Jam's case, the tracks they recorded that didn’t make it to broadcast were "Oceans" and their cover of Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World." While their "Unplugged" version of "Oceans" made its first official appearance on the "MTV Unplugged" DVD that accompanied the band’s 2009 reissue of Ten and it appears on the vinyl release of MTV Unplugged (3/16/1992), their "Unplugged" version of Young's "Rockin' In The Free World" is not included on either the 2009 reissue DVD or the new vinyl release for this year's Record Store Day Black Friday.     

Joel Gallen: I do remember shooting "Rockin' In The Free World" but I don’t know why it didn't make broadcast or get released in audio form. Since it was a part of the encore, maybe they knew it wasn't going to be in there and they played it a bit looser or something like that, but I’m just guessing. Now that I think about it, probably the simple reason why it didn’t make it to broadcast is that "Unplugged" was still a half-hour show at that point and there just wasn’t enough time for it. I mean, what song would you cut to put "Rockin' In The Free World" in its place, that's the question. We weren't going to get a full hour for such a new band, which would've been the only other option. Even Mariah Carey was still only getting a half-hour show at that point.      

For Gallen, directing the Pearl Jam "Unplugged" episode not only signaled the start of his directing career, but it also began his professional relationship with the band and his personal friendship with Vedder. Gallen went on to produce quite a few more memorable moments with Vedder and the band, including their scorching performance of "Rockin' In The Free World" alongside Young at the 1993 MTV Video Music Awards and Vedder's induction speech (and three-song performance) of The Doors at the 1993 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony.   

Joel Gallen: I've done a lot of big music shows and events over the years and I still think that with everything that I’ve done, one of the most significant programs with the most personal meaning to me has to be this Pearl Jam "Unplugged" show. When I first played it back in the MTV offices, everyone was really blown away. There’s a reason why Pearl Jam's "Unplugged" has really stood the test of time and why the band has always loved it and cites it as an important moment in their history. The Pearl Jam "Unplugged" episode was also what formed a really cool bond between me and Eddie. We've worked together a lot over the years and almost every time I see him, we end up talking about it in some way. I'm lucky enough to have this beautiful professional and personal connection with the guy and it all started with their "Unplugged" taping.

Nirvana Manager Danny Goldberg Talks 25 Years of 'MTV Unplugged In New York'

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Bob Dylan performing on "MTV Unplugged" in 1994

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Dylan Goes Acoustic: Celebrating 25 Years Of Bob Dylan’s 'MTV Unplugged' Album

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Dylan’s 'MTV Unplugged' album is an important chapter in his catalog—not only because it gave him some of his best commercial numbers in years but because it firmly reinstated the folk troubadour in the cultural conversation
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
May 6, 2020 - 9:03 am

While MTV’s "Unplugged" has mostly been around in some form or fashion over the last three decades, there’s no denying that it’s most memorable and creatively fertile period was its initial run throughout the entirety of the 1990s. With a deceptively simple ethos of stripping back the sparkle and roar of electric instruments in favor of the "nowhere to hide" proving ground of live acoustic performances, the unforgiving "Unplugged" format generated some of the most iconic musical moments of the decade. Smack dab in the middle of "Unplugged"'s impressive '90s stretch lies one of its most sophisticated and mystifying offerings: Bob Dylan’s MTV Unplugged album, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this month.

Originally recorded over two nights in November of 1994 (the first and, so far, only time that has occurred for an "Unplugged" session), and broadcast on MTV less than a month later, Dylan’s appearance on "Unplugged" was certainly a no-brainer from the jump. The walking pop cultural institution began his career as a folk-song troubadour and delivered some of the most enduring acoustic music of the 1960s across his canonized batch of initial albums. Even as he uninhibitedly dabbled with various genres, songwriting styles and personas across the ensuing decades (to famously mixed audience responses), acoustic music was always anchored at the core of his sonic alchemy. In fact, leading up to Dylan’s "Unplugged" performance, his two prior studio albums—1992’s Good As I Been To You and 1993’s World Gone Wrong—were both acoustic solo albums (something he hadn’t done since the early 1960s) and featured only traditional folk songs in lieu of any self-penned compositions.

By the time Dylan had been booked for his own "Unplugged" episode, the format had already shown its elasticity and adaptability to any performer’s whims with wildly successful results, both artistically and commercially. Eric Clapton’s blues-heavy, career-revitalizing session won six GRAMMYs and is still the best-selling live album of all time. Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart and Tony Bennett’s Unplugged albums were all certified platinum, with the later also winning two GRAMMYs (including Album Of The Year). Younger alt-rock bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Stone Temple Pilots had used their episodes to showcase nuanced versatilities to their more well-known explosive ferocities. Showing its invitationally creative range early on, "Unplugged" had even devoted multiple episodes to some conventionally non-acoustic mediums like hip-hop, R&B and spoken-word poetry.  

As the collision course trajectories of Dylan and "Unplugged" materialized, many wondered just exactly what the mercurial songwriter would have hidden up his sleeve for his episode. Would he deliver a solo acoustic performance with just his guitar and harmonica, evoking both his earliest performances and his two most recent albums? Would his set list feature just the hits to woo a new generation of listeners or be filled with rarities meant to cater to his insatiable longtime fans? Would he echo his infamous "Dylan Goes Electric" performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and forsake the acoustic format altogether for an electric guitar? As it turns out, in true Dylan form, the answers to these questions lay somewhere in between and no one really knew exactly what was going to transpire until he and his band took the intimate stage at Sony Music Studios.      

Across the two-night set, Dylan and his crack-shot quintet band—which included a special appearance from in-demand producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, Black Crowes, Stone Temple Pilots, Red Hot Chili Peppers) on organ—played a total of 23 songs, with a handful of them showing up in both performances. The first night’s 10-song set featured a few more rarities, such as the live debuts of "Hazel" and "Dignity" and two songs he hadn’t played since the 1980s—"Tombstone Blues" and "With God On Our Side." The second night's 13-song set featured a few more recognizable classics like "All Along the Watchtower," "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" and "Like A Rolling Stone," while still containing the surprising selections of "Shooting Star" and "John Brown" (an anti-war protest song that he wrote in 1962 that had never made it onto an official studio album). While the collective set lists leaned heavily on Dylan’s prolific ‘60s oeuvre, he managed to also sprinkle in a smattering of tunes from his ‘70s ("Hazel," "Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door"), '80s ("Everything Is Broken," "Shooting Star") and ‘90s ("Dignity") releases as well.  

When MTV first broadcast Dylan’s "Unplugged" episode on Dec. 14, 1994, the hour-long format of the televised event understandably required some trimming of Dylan’s compelling two-night outing. Gone were both night’s openers ("Tombstone Blues" and "Absolutely Sweet Marie") and, somewhat surprisingly, neither version of the sublime "I Want You" appeared in the MTV broadcast, even though the dreamy pedal steel and bowed bass ballad garnered an enthusiastic audience response during both performances (though, it should be noted that "I Want You" was added back in for an airing of the show on PBS). The eight songs chosen for air somewhat functioned as a quasi-retrospective hits package, perfectly showcasing Dylan as a confident frontman and effortless bandleader who knew his songs well enough to continually pull at their melodic, instrumental and lyrical threads in ways that created new versions of enshrined classics. "The Times They Are A-Changin'" saunters along on Dylan’s impish delivery and some gorgeous dobro-organ interplay, the controlled pulse of "All Along The Watchtower" lands somewhere between Dylan’s acoustic original and Jimi Hendrix’s fiery electric cover, and "Like A Rolling Stone" feels more seasoned and less acerbic than his definitive Highway 61 Revisited version (and the broadcast featured a charmingly fumbled intro that drew out Dylan’s only real banter with the audience to let them know the band had gotten ahead of him). Other standouts include the slow burn, barroom slink of "Shooting Star," the refreshing swagger-and-shuffle of "Dignity" and the hymn-like anti-war existentialism of "With God On Our Side."

Dylan’s episode was packaged for release as his 40th official album and hit the market as MTV Unplugged on May 2, 1995. Along with the eight songs aired on the original MTV broadcast, the U.S. version of the record added three more cuts: "Tombstone Blues" was positioned as the rollicking opener, while "John Brown" and "Desolation Row" were plugged in mid-album as a back-to-back double shot of '60s protest sentiments and cinematic Beat poetics. Other international versions of MTV Unplugged also included Dylan’s relaxed take on the surrealist folk of "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" from his first night’s set list, which meant that U.S. customers would have to purchase the VHS release to score the elusive track. About a month prior to the album’s release, there was also a special promo CD single of "Dignity" made for the European market that featured both the MTV Unplugged live version and the Bob Dylan’s Greatest Hits Vol. 3 studio version produced by O’Brien.  

Much like the episodes for Paul McCartney, Eric Clapton, Neil Young and Tony Bennett that came before his, Dylan used the "Unplugged" stage as a primetime moment to speak to his older audience and also to introduce himself to a younger one within an environment that both groups would find extremely familiar. The mid-‘90s were still a peak time of monoculture, and legions of teenagers remained perma-glued to MTV and its various original programming efforts—especially the vibrantly popular "Unplugged." Even if most younger viewers were not as familiar with Dylan’s catalog as their parents were, there was some excitement in tuning in to hear the producer of Pearl Jam’s Vs. and Stone Temple Pilots’ Core play organ and to hear the original version of "Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door" that they may have only known through the Guns N’ Roses covers on the Days Of Thunder soundtrack and Use Your Illusion II album.

Dylan’s MTV Unplugged album is an important chapter in his catalog, not only because it gave him some of his best commercial numbers in years (it was certified gold in the U.S. where it reached as high as number 23 on the Billboard 200, and it charted even better in the U.K. where it cracked the top 10), but also because it wonderfully reinstated Dylan within the cultural conversation just prior to him releasing one of his career-defining works, 1997’s Time Out Of Mind. After letting his "Unplugged" set remind listeners of his otherworldy ability to translate acoustic-based music like no other, Dylan once again surprised his audience by collaborating with Daniel Lanois (U2, Peter Gabriel, Emmylou Harris) to craft the atmospherically bluesy Time Out Of Mind—a platinum-selling album (hist first since the late ‘70s) that would go on to win three GRAMMYs (including Album Of The Year at the 1998 awards show) and reestablish his relevancy as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the last half century (and counting).

With Dylan’s official The Bootleg Series releases already up to 15 volumes (the celebrated Travelin’ Thru: 1967-1969 entry featuring the famous Johnny Cash sessions just released last November), one can only hope that there will eventually be a set devoted to his noteworthy Unplugged moment. Not only could listeners finally have a proper way to experience all 23 tracks from both nights of filming, but it would also provide an opportunity to have some official releases from his four-show acoustic stand at N.Y.C.’s The Supper Club from the year prior—an important footnote to the story as it is rumored that Dylan’s scrapping of those acoustic recordings helped pave the way for him finally committing to doing an "Unplugged" taping.    

How Pearl Jam's "Unplugged" Performance Captured The Grunge Gods' Pop Cultural Rise

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Pearl Jam Producer Josh Evans Unpacks The Iconic Band's New Album, 'Gigaton'

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The Recording Academy spoke with 'Gigaton' co-producer Evans to discuss Pearl Jam's multi-year journey of writing and recording the album and their renewed commitments to creative experimentation and socio-political engagement
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Mar 30, 2020 - 10:55 am

"There's a reason Pearl Jam is still going strong 30 years in," states producer Josh Evans. "The guys care deeply about the details that matter and they’re determined to let go of the things that don’t."

While Evans has worked in various capacities with the legendary alt-rockers since 2006, their brand-new album Gigaton (out now on the band's own Monkeywrench Records imprint) marks the first time that the Seattle-based studio pro has been credited as a co-producer alongside the band. The feverishly anticipated record is the band’s 11th studio album overall and their first since the release of their GRAMMY-winning 2013 album Lightning Bolt. After an explosively strong trio of pre-release singles—the adventurously experimental "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," the familiarly ferocious "Superblood Wolfman" and the riff-heavy protest song "Quick Escape"—Gigaton announces a defiantly new chapter in the band's iconic multi-decade canon of bombast and breath.

Gigaton's raucous opener "Who Ever Said" finds Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder growling "Whoever said it’s all been said gave up on satisfaction" and the mantra serves as a bit of a warning to anyone who might assume the band is operating on creative cruise control. Known for continually pushing out their own artistic walls and finding previously undiscovered ways to be completely themselves, Pearl Jam has once again evaded expectations to deliver an album that is both reminiscent of their past successes and wholly relevant to the current cultural, environmental, and socio-political moment. From the climate-conscious album artwork featuring the breathtaking photography of conservationist Paul Nicklen to the unflinchingly "of the moment" lyrical directness that is usually reserved for hip-hop, punk and folk songs, Gigaton finds the band openly embracing hard-earned experience and fresh experimentation to create one of their most prescient offerings to date.         

Recently, the Recording Academy spoke with Gigaton co-producer Evans to discuss the band's multi-year journey of writing and recording the album and their renewed commitments to both boundaryless creative experimentation and uncompromising socio-political engagement.

Josh Evans: I guess you could say I kind of started in the mailroom with these guys. I first started working with them as an assistant engineer during the recording of the Avocado album, their self-titled record from 2006. At the time, the term "assistant engineer" meant setting up gear, getting sandwiches, making coffee, cleaning the toilets, or whatever else needed to be done—all of which allowed me to really get to know the band and their crew. When the album was finished, they were moving warehouses to their current location and they hired me to do stuff like moving boxes and painting walls and I ended up working around the warehouse and studio on a full-time basis.

I also started touring with them as a tech. Over the past five years or so, I started recording a lot of their demos, both for band stuff and for some of their individual solo projects. Around the beginning of 2017, they decided to really focus on crafting a new album, so we started recording demos, which turned into new songs, which eventually became the new record. I’m very lucky that they trusted me to help them see it to the end. It was a super collaborative process and it was a very organic evolution over the last three years from being the guy that hit record for the demos to really being included in the various creative exchanges that take place during the recording process. This would be a big project for anyone but it’s certainly a huge project for me.

"There's a reason Pearl Jam is still going strong 30 years in. The guys care deeply about the details that matter and they’re determined to let go of the things that don’t."

Outside of his studio experience with Pearl Jam (he also worked on their 2017 cover of Brandi Carlile's "Again Today" for her Cover Stories tribute album and their 2018 standalone single "Can’t Deny Me"), Evans has also garnered production credits for his engineering and mixing work with artists like Soundgarden, Carlile, Gary Clark, Jr., and the Secret Sisters. However, the particular designation of being a co-producer on Gigaton was not just notable for Evans individually, as it also marked a shift in Pearl Jam’s longtime relationship with GRAMMY-winning producer Brendan O’Brien, who has famously worked with the band on nine of their 10 previous albums. O’Brien still appears on Gigaton playing keyboards on "Quick Escape" and "Retrograde."

Josh Evans: I'm the biggest Brendan O'Brien fan because he's really the reason I got into recording in the first place. When I was a teenager in Seattle in the 1990s, I’d see his name on all of these albums that I loved—Black Crowes, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Pearl Jam, of course. After I started working with the band, I was in the studio with Brendan and the guys during the recording of Backspacer and Lightning Bolt and I found out that a day in the studio with Brendan is like a year's worth of studio knowledge. He’s such an incredible producer and on this album, I just wanted to carry on the high standard that he had already set in his work with them.

As the recording sessions for what would become Gigaton started up in early 2017, Evans quickly noticed that the band was operating within a very open, experimental attitude towards their new songs. Some songs were written with all of the band members jamming together in the same room at the same time and some were systematically built within multiple sessions, across multiple locations, over multiple years. Everyone’s ideas were equally on the table for consideration in service of whatever helped best support each song. This experimental environment is readily apparent in the instrumental tracklisting of the new songs, as Evans is credited with contributing instrumentation to six of the album’s 12 tracks and band members can occasionally be seen playing gear outside of their own sonic status quo: guitarist Stone Gossard played bass on "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," bassist Jeff Ament added kalimba (a metallic African thumb piano) to "Alright" and "River Cross," guitarist Mike McCready contributed some keyboard parts to "Retrograde," and drummer Matt Cameron played guitars on "Take The Long Way" and "Alright."

Josh Evans: Each band member is such a talented multi-instrumentalist—I mean, just listen to any of their solo albums—and I think the instrument-swapping was sort of a side effect of the intentional experimentation process for this record. None of the guys have any ego about who's playing what. They're only concerned about the end result. That was sort of the directive during recording: if it sounds good, we’re keeping it, no matter who’s playing it. On "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," Stone was listening to Matt's electronic drum loop and heard a bass line in his head, so he put it down. When Jeff heard it, he really liked it and didn’t have the ego to think he needed to be the one playing the bass on that song.  Even though Matt is the drummer, he’s such a talented guitar player and laid down a lot of the guitar on "Take The Long Way" and added these nice 12-string acoustic touches on "Alright" that sounded so great. Sometimes they would lay something down and then tell me to mess around with it or add something weird to it myself. It was a very open process and they were very generous and brave to want to share their songs with me like that.

Back in late January, Pearl Jam released Gigaton’s electronic-influenced lead single, "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," along with a trio of interconnected music videos; with the band deeming the third version to be their first official video in over seven years. Critical reception to the band’s bold creative evolution was initially mixed, due in large part to the sonic shift of mechanized-sounding drum patterns, New Wave synth fills, and Vedder’s undeniably Talking Heads-esque vocal delivery. However, while some listeners may yearn for the band’s more signature sonic ingredients, Evans sees the buoyantly captivating single as a refreshing merger of the band’s longtime influences and current creative freedoms.              

Josh Evans: For me, this song is the centerpiece for the record, both sonically and as a representation of this experimental way of working. All of the guys are huge music fans with diverse musical tastes that include some things that would probably surprise most fans. Up until now, the musical references that have come through most noticeably in their songs are the big ones: The Who, Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, Bob Dylan, The Clash, maybe some Springsteen. Those influences have been really clear. But Ed is also a really big fan of stuff like early Genesis and Talking Heads, which is what makes his vocal on "Dance Of The Clairvoyants" sound so natural. It comes from the same place as his Roger Daltrey-esque screams.

One thing that I'm really proud of on this song is how it continually developed and what we were able to do with the drum sounds. It started out simply enough with this electronic drum beat that Matt had made—no harmonic content, no chords, no bassline. Stone really liked it and heard a bassline that he wanted to put on it. Jeff said he could hear some keyboard stuff and the guitars that you hear on the chorus, so he added both of those. Later on, Mike came up with those funky, Bowie-like rhythm guitar stabs that really set the track on fire. After Matt heard everything together, he really wanted to play live drums on it, but everyone loved the feel of what he brought to that original processed beat and they wanted to retain the unique sonic impact of the electronic drums. So, Neil Hundt, who is Matt’s drum tech, and I spent a day in the warehouse studio with all of Matt’s gear trying to find the right combination to recreate the electronic programmed sounds with live acoustic drums. We tried all sorts of different options—taping up the drumheads, putting pillows in the kick drum, "not this one, let’s try that one over there"—so that what you hear on the record is actually Matt's live performance on acoustic drums. The only sound that remained from Matt’s original electronic beat is this specific hi-hat pattern. He also nuanced his playing throughout the recording, starting off real tight and controlled and then gradually opening it up a bit as the song progressed. It all ended up being this cool human-machine kind of performance that’s really the best of both worlds.

A little less than a month after surprising listeners with "Dance Of The Clairvoyants," the band released the album’s second single, a prototypical PJ rumbler called "Superblood Wolfman." In the lead-up to the single's rollout, the band offered up an augmented reality teaser that involved fans visiting a specific website and pointing their smartphones at the moon, which activated onscreen animations and a preview snippet of the new track. Wanting to create another cool music video as well, the band contacted animator Keith Ross of @TinyConcert who draws deceptively simplistic musical shorts with only a ballpoint pen. "Superblood Wolfmoon" is his first full-length music video and perfectly captures the song’s passionately raw, down-and-dirty vibe.         

Josh Evans: For "Superblood Wolfmoon," Ed came in with a pretty fleshed-out demo that he had recorded himself with some guitars laid over a drum machine program. It was kind of sloppy and wild and the guys just wanted to capture that same messy vibe and expand on it a bit within a full band context. We tracked it all in the same room at the same time. The experimental aspect of that one has to do with its arrangement like I still don’t know which part is supposed to be considered the chorus or which section is technically the bridge. On previous albums, we might've tried to chop up the song or define the sections a bit more, but this time around it was more about the energy and the attitude. It’s an exciting and intense song, so we intentionally tried not to overthink it or try to force it into some specific structure.

Earlier this month, the band dropped Gigaton’s final pre-release single, "Quick Escape," a multi-riff monster of a song with a thick, Led Zeppelin-like swagger that thuds and lilts on the impressively propulsive bass-drum-guitar interplay. While this track evokes the "in the room" feel of all five guys looking each other in the eyes as they lock into this massive groove, the truth behind’s its creation is that it was far more a construction than a channeling. In fact, the first time that all five guys actually played “Quick Escape” all together in the same place was during rehearsal for their upcoming tour.

Josh Evans: This one came together through more of a collage-style assembly. It had a few different drum approaches that were chopped and edited. Jeff’s bass part is from his original demo that was recorded in Montana—just a one microphone on a bass amp kind of thing. It just sounded so great that we decided to use it and not rerecord it. Jeff also played those main electric guitar stabs. Stone added that first buzzy solo that you hear and then Mike’s solo at the end is just him lining up all of his effects pedals, dialing in a cool tone, and letting loose. That’s a first-take solo as well, we didn’t touch it up at all. I think this is one that will really hit live and hopefully go on for about five extra minutes at the end.  

“Quick Escape” also features some of Vedder’s most politically direct lyrical commentary since 2002’s “Bu$hleaguer” from the band’s Riot Act album. Using quasi-science fiction themes (alongside shout-outs to Queen and Jack Kerouac), Vedder unfolds a global-to-interstellar journey “to find a place Trump hadn’t fucked up yet.” In the same vein, Vedder also directly calls out Trump – though not exactly by his given name – in the charmingly melodic “Seven O’Clock,” referring to him as “Sitting Bullshit” and wondering “Talking to his mirror, what’s he say, what’s it say back? A tragedy of errors, who’ll be last to have a laugh?” Similarly incensed political sentiments can be found in “Who Ever Said,” “Never Destination” and album closer “River Cross” as well. Though the band has never really shied away from directly engaging in socio-political issues throughout its career, Gigaton feels especially forthright in its attempts to speak clearly and candidly into the current cultural unrest. However, it should be noted that the lasting impression of the album forsakes nihilism and apathy in favor of hope and activism; as evidenced by Vedder’s call-to-action in “Seven O’Clock” (“this fucked-up situation calls for all hands on deck”) and his existential longing in “Superblood Wolfmoon” (“I’ve been hoping that our hope dies last”).    

Josh Evans: There wasn’t a lot of overt discussions regarding any of the lyrics. These guys all trust each other and trust each other’s instincts. When we started up this project in 2017, we started every day like most Americans, drinking a cup of coffee and asking each other if they had seen the previous day’s news: “Can you believe this? What’s going on here?” Like so many other people, we were just trying to make sense of it all. We all have kids and were questioning what kind of world we were creating and leaving for them. These guys have always cared deeply about that. It’s sort of eerie how even more relevant some of these ideas and themes have become in the past few weeks. That’s really the magic of this band is that sometimes it seems they’re tapped into things that we didn’t know where even there to be tapped into. We all have to find something to hang onto because it's dark right now. What’s the alternative these days?

Rounding out the sonically diverse and thematically experimental album are a couple outliers written by other band members (Cameron’s multi-metered "Take The Long Way” and a slippery waltz from Gossard called “Buckle Up”) and two of Vedder’s most emotionally intimate numbers: “Comes The Goes” and “River Cross.” The former finds Vedder having a poignant one-way conversation over his own twangy, acoustic blues strumming and the latter features his moving baritone lamenting over the invitational wheezing of Vedder’s nineteenth-century pump organ. For all of the successful sonic layering and instrumental adventurousness that takes place throughout Gigaton, both “Comes and Goes” and “River Cross” benefit greatly from the band’s underrated use of restraint and space.

Josh Evans: Some of the other songs on the album were really labored over but “Comes Then Goes” was just about capturing Ed’s performance and then not messing with it too much. We added a couple little things, some feedback textures and an electric guitar doubling the acoustic in spots, but it was mainly about Ed’s performance and his lyrics. Same with “River Cross,” the song is so solemn and cinematic that it didn’t need any extra ear candy. It was so cool to be able to mix this ancient-sounding pump organ from the 1800s with modern-day synthesizers and electric guitars in a way that still felt sacred and prayerful. Thelonius Monk had this famous list of rules for musicians and the one that was most powerful to me was “Don’t play everything, some music is just imagined. What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play.” Sometimes you have to just imply what could be there instead of adding so much in. In some songs, it’s more magical for there to be ideas that only exist in the listener’s mind. This band really understands how to leave the space for that to happen.     

How Pearl Jam's "Unplugged" Performance Captured The Grunge Gods' Pop Cultural Rise

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Kurt Cobain

Photo by Frank Micelotta / Getty Images

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Nirvana Manager Danny Goldberg Talks 25 Years of 'MTV Unplugged In New York'

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The Recording Academy speaks to the former manager about the lead-up, taping and lasting legacy of Nirvana's landmark acoustic performance
Will Hodge
GRAMMYs
Nov 1, 2019 - 11:01 am

"Good evening. This is off our first record. Most people don’t own it."

With this unassuming and charmingly self-deprecating kick-off from frontman Kurt Cobain, Nirvana launched into their feverishly anticipated episode of "MTV Unplugged"—a crystallizing performance that quickly became one of, if not the most, beloved and iconic gigs of their all-too-short career. Often celebrated for showcasing both the band and the "Unplugged" format at each of their respective creative heights, the stunningly intimate episode spawned the MTV Unplugged In New York album that was released on Nov. 1, 1994. For the 25th anniversary of the GRAMMY-winning, Billboard-topping, multi-platinum album, MTV Unplugged In New York is getting an impressive expanded vinyl reissue that drops 25 years to the day after the album’s original release.   

In addition to the enhanced aesthetic upgrades of an exclusive gatefold layout with celebratory silver-foiled front and back artwork, this MTV Unplugged in New York vinyl reissue finds the album making its double-disc debut with the addition of five extra rehearsal tracks—"Come As You Are," "Polly," "Plateau," "Pennyroyal Tea" and their revered cover of David Bowie's "The Man Who Sold The World"—that were previously only available in video form on the 2007 DVD release. This reissue is pressed on heavyweight 180-gram black vinyl and the band's website is offering a limited-edition multi-color variant as well. 

With both MTV Unplugged In New York and the show itself celebrating milestones this month (the album turns 25 on Nov. 1 and the very first episode of "Unplugged" aired 30 years ago on Nov. 26, 1989), the Recording Academy spoke to former Nirvana manager Danny Goldberg about the lead-up, taping and lasting legacy of Nirvana's landmark acoustic performance.       

Danny Goldberg: As a music fan, I really liked the idea of "Unplugged." For the band, creatively, it provided an opportunity to experiment with acoustic music, which Kurt really liked. As much as he loved punk music, he was also a really big fan of acoustic singer-songwriters like Jad Fair. Also, the timing of it was perfect because it allowed the band to continue their presence on MTV without them having to be involved with making another music video.

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The opportunity to record their own episode of "Unplugged" presented itself at an interesting time in the band's career. After two years of tumultuously navigating the cultural tide change spearheaded by their sophomore album Nevermind, Cobain, bassist Krist Novoselic and drummer Dave Grohl released the raucously powerful (and famously unpolished) In Utero in late September of 1993. The album’s lead single, "Heart-Shaped Box," hit number one on the Billboard Modern Rock chart and was accompanied by a stunningly surreal music video that was intricately created by Cobain and directed by photographer Anton Corbijn. The video quickly became an MTV mainstay and went on to win two MTV Video Music Awards at the following year’s VMAs.  

Danny Goldberg: The music video for "Heart-Shaped Box" was an extremely elaborate production and Kurt didn’t really have an idea for a follow-up video that was going to live up to that impact. However, he didn't want to stop the connection between the band and MTV on the In Utero cycle prematurely. The relationship between Nirvana and MTV was really important to Kurt from the very beginning. From his point of view, MTV was the number one connector between Nirvana and their fans in the United States.  

As "Unplugged" rose to become a legitimate pop cultural force in the early-to-mid 1990s with episodes by Eric Clapton, Mariah Carey, Rod Stewart, and 10,000 Maniacs making major impacts on radio, singles charts and album sales, there became a bit of a creative formula that continually proved successful and held up well to repetition: imaginatively rework your hits on acoustic instrumentation, invite a well-known special guest, and sprinkle in a familiar cover song or two. While those ingredients would still end up being present throughout Nirvana's "Unplugged" performance, the band's creative variations on them were not exactly what MTV was initially envisioning.

Danny Goldberg: MTV had made their requests for guests and song selections that were more in line with the typical "Unplugged" format. They raised the possibility of having guests like Eddie Vedder or Tori Amos—artists who would be well-known to the MTV audience—but I don’t think those suggestions were even passed along to Kurt. He was a real-life artistic genius and complete control freak, so he knew exactly what he was going to do. It wasn't a marketing moment for Kurt, it was a creative moment. He didn't take any creative suggestions about art and to him, Nirvana's "Unplugged" was going to be art.

For their "Unplugged" set, the band was augmented by cellist Lori Goldstein and second guitarist Pat Smear, who had just been invited to tour with the band a few months prior. When it came to the setlist, the band was well aware that the raw, livewire power of their biggest hits—"Smells Like Teen Spirit," "Lithium," "In Bloom"—wouldn’t translate properly into an acoustic format. Instead, they crafted an imagenitively special set around some of the more down-tempo deep cuts from Bleach and Nevermind, as well as three tracks from their recently released In Utero album. The song selection was rounded out by a trio of unexpected (yet wildly successful) covers of The Vaselines, David Bowie, and blues legend Lead Belly, plus three songs accompanied by their special guests, brothers Cris and Curt Kirkwood of The Meat Puppets—a band Cobain had become a fan of after seeing them open for Black Flag in the 1980s.

Danny Goldberg: The Meat Puppets were actually touring with Nirvana at the time. It was Kurt's idea to have them on board and he was very much driving the car as far as creative decisions. My assumption is that he knew he could do what he wanted to do on "Unplugged." Whatever misgivings MTV may have had as far as their normal way of measuring commerciality and programming, they weren’t going to piss off Nirvana. And Kurt was right, they totally pulled it off. 
 
Earlier this year, Goldberg released the book "Serving The Servant: Remembering Kurt Cobain," in which he devotes a whole chapter to Nirvana's "Unplugged" show. In it, he points to Cobain’s solo performance of "Pennyroyal Tea" as his favorite moment of the episode. However, there were some pre-show uncertainties as to whether it would be a full band version, what key it would be in, or if it would even be played at all. When the song came up on the setlist during the actual taping, it’s fate was still to be determined—a fact evidenced by Cobain turning to ask his bandmates, "Am I going to do this by myself?"

Danny Goldberg: I always liked "Pennyroyal Tea" a lot because I think it's some of his best writing. So, hearing him play it by himself on "Unplugged," I was just so proud of him for pulling it off and so moved by the way he sang it. He had so many different talents—as a songwriter, as an image-maker, as an extremely good guitarist—to me he also had one of the greatest voices ever. I loved the intimacy of his vocal on that performance, especially combined with some of his best lyrics.

After Nirvana's "Unplugged" taping had concluded, Cobain had some mixed feelings about the performance. By the next morning, however, he eventually settled into a clearer picture of the uniquely meaningful moment his band had created together. "At first, Kurt was freaked out about it," attests Goldberg, "but when I talked to him the next day, he had already realized that they had done something special and he was really proud of it." 

Nirvana's "Unplugged" episode aired on Dec. 16, 1993, and less than four months later Cobain was found dead in his Seattle home. In the days following his death, MTV played a plethora of Nirvana material, with their "Unplugged" episode serving both artistically and aesthetically as somewhat of a self-made eulogy. MTV Unplugged In New York would be released that following November and it would go on to win a GRAMMY for Best Alternative Music Album and be certified 5x platinum.  

Danny Goldberg: I think the Unplugged record is equally important to every other record that they made. That's not always the case for a live record, especially an acoustic one. There's so much creativity in it and there are songs that the band had never recorded before. There was also the intense drama of it being recorded just a few months before Kurt's death. Mainly though, it all comes down to the sheer emotional power and excellence of it. When people talk to me about Nirvana, as many people cite Unplugged as their favorite album as will mention Nevermind or In Utero. The band left such a legacy in such a short amount of time and its deeply affected people. A day rarely goes by that I don't see somebody wearing a Nirvana T-shirt and often it’s people that may not have even been born when Kurt was alive. It speaks to the power and beauty of his art, and "Unplugged" was certainly one of the performances that really showcased that. It’s an incredibly significant part of the band's legacy.    

Nirvana's 'Nevermind': For The Record

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Tommy Lee

Photo by Mike Marsland/WireImage

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Tommy Lee’s Inner Teen Is Always Excited To Try New Things

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The Mötley Crüe drummer talks to GRAMMY.com about genre-hopping on his forthcoming solo work 'Andro', life in lockdown and being "57 going on 15"
Bryan Reesman
GRAMMYs
Jul 8, 2020 - 11:21 am

Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee always exudes the energy of a young man who is eager for a new dare. He has nothing to prove at this point, having conquered the realm of rock decades ago. But he's always curious about exploring new vistas as heard on his forthcoming solo offering, Andro (out October 16 via Better Noise Music). The first two singles, "Tops" (with Push Push) and "Knock Me Down" (with Killvein) dropped in early June.

The original title for the album was Transgenres, but then Lee learned that in French it means transgender. He ultimately picked the title Andro because it is simple and implies androgyny which ties into the fact that the album is split into male and female energies. There are a total of eight male and five female tracks which continues a long tradition of guest vocalists on Lee albums.

For the 13 tracks on Andro (which clocks in around 32 minutes), Lee abstained from vocals altogether and picked from a growing list of dream musical collaborators—rappers and singers who are new people to most but hit his personal radar. Many of them are in the underground and some seem primed to break bigger. "The world needs to hear these people," he declares. "A lot of them are super unknown and hopefully that's about to change for them."

Lee has an affinity for rappers with British accents like Dizzee Rascal and Foreign Beggars, the latter group represented on two Andro tracks by rapper Pavan Mukhi (aka Orifice Vulgatron). "I just f**king love that kind of accent,” gushes Lee. "It just makes hip-hop or rap sound so much f**king cooler. When I heard Push Push's rap and her South African accent, which is even harder, her style and delivery and accent just freaked me out.” Lee and Push Push created the percussive-heavy "Tops," an anthem of sexual bravado.

Brooke Candy’s appearance on "Demon Bitches," along with Moon Bounce, invokes a similar vibe. "I can't even describe it," says Lee of Candy's tune. "It's hard for me to describe music. You'd hear the song and be kind of scared, yet you'd want to either break shit or dance to it. You'd be trying to figure out which one’s first."

Another British collaborator on Andro is Shotty Horroh, a rap battle champion who has collaborated a few times with deadmau5. Lee had been dying to work with him, and "SOMA COMA" combines a cascade of rapping beats, and a sampled female choir during the lead-in. Hailing from this side of the Atlantic, Canadian singer Lukas Rossi of Rock Star: Supernova fame sings on two tracks. One is called "You Dancy," which Lee says is "super, super f**king sexy and funky and heavy,” and the other is a slower, synthy reinvention of Prince’s originally peppy "When You Were Mine."

Lee heard intense American rapper Killvein a couple of years back and thought, "This kid's a f**king beast. He sounds modern but yet he's got this f**king edgy, retro screamo shit and a slightly industrial vibe." The drummer extended the invite, Killvein was down to give it a go, and he journeyed from Sacramento to Lee’s L.A. studio to bang out two tracks. One of them, "Knock Me Down," is guitar-fueled, beat-driven aggro that feels like Methods of Mayhem times three.

"I know, that kid is on fire," declares Lee. "He just killed it, no pun intended. That's how all the collaborations have gone. There's somebody I've really wanted to work with, and all of a sudden when I write the music, it dictates who should be on it."

The big revelatory moment for Lee came during his session with Julia Sykes from PLYA on the poppy "Make It Back," which he aptly describes as "a super cool EDM sounding track with a shuffle thing going on." He sent her an instrumental version that intrigued her, and when she arrived he asked her if she wanted to hear his idea for the vocal melody. She politely declined because she had some ideas she wanted to test out. Intrigued, Lee gave her free reign.

"So she goes into the studio, and my f**king jaw is on the floor," he recalls. "I got goosebumps because she's singing almost identical what I chopped together with some different acapella [samples]. I’m sitting there flipping the f**k out. We finished doing the work on the track, and I said, ‘Can I play you what I originally had?’ She's like, ‘Yeah, of course.’ We're sitting there listening to it, and now her jaw’s on the ground. ‘How the f**k did that just happen?’ And it'll probably never happen again. But I feel like it's one of those stories I have to share. Because when you're in the studio creating and something like that happens, that never f**king happens like that, it’s just unbelievable, man. I wish that would happen all the time."

Another strong collaborator on the album is King Elle Noir, who Lee proclaims has an "insane beautiful voice" and shows up on on the dreamier pop track "P.R.E.T.T.Y." and the modern R&B-inflected "Make The Storm." "This stuff is super eclectic and hybrid," he says. "I don't think there's one definitive style. It’s hard for me to even categorize this shit. F**k, there's so many genres and sub genres these days."

While Mötley Crüe fans know what to expect from the drummer in the hard rock department, his outside projects have been far less predictable. Methods of Mayhem explored heavy rap-rock sounds. On his two solo releases, Never A Dull Moment (2002) veered into alternative territory, while Tommyland: The Ride (2005) served up classic rock and modern pop influences. He tends to not repeat himself and knows that can drive some fans crazy, particularly dyed in the wool rockers who love the genre that made him famous. But he feels compelled to indulge his creative urges to dive into other genres of music that turn him on.

"I’m really all over the place," confesses Lee. "There's another [Methods of Mayhem] record called Public Disservice Announcement, and I collaborated with actually the entire world with people submitting parts from all over the place online. That was a lot of fun. A lot of work, but a lot of fun. I'm just trying to keep it real, fresh, new, and keep it moving. This is where I'm at right now."

The drummer says he wrestled internally with whether to release Andro under his own name or as another project. "Somebody might see my name on it and go, ‘I know what that's going to be’ and not even give it a shot," he observes. "Or the reverse, ‘Oh, Tommy, that could be cool.’ Or just a random unknown name, and then all of a sudden the shit just blows up because no one knows who the f**k it is. They think it's some new band. You have no idea how much I internally struggle with that, especially for new music."

Despite having worked on his latest project for two years, Lee is not sick of Andro. He feels he has a good handle on the music he is exploring. "I do know what I'm doing when it comes to this stuff, and I know what moves people so hopefully everyone will enjoy it, man," he says.

When speaking with the animated drummer, one can sense that there will always be a part of him that remains a perpetual teenager who does not want to grow up. "God, that's so true," agrees Lee, laughing. "I’m a Toys R Us kid. I’m 57 going on 15. It’s a number, man. None of it matters."

He certainly wants the party to continue with the Mötley Crüe/Def Leppard/Poison/Joan Jett summer stadium tour, which was originally slated to kick off in June 2020 but has been postponed to summer 2021 due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. 

"I think what will be interesting to see is just how much fun everybody's going to have when it's okay to go out and party,” muses Lee on when the tour actually happens. "Get your dance on and do all that again."

Assuming the 2021 tour does take place, it's possible that some in their audience might be wearing gloves and masks, which will make for a surreal sight and a sign of the times.

"Yeah, that's very possible," says Lee. "We've been touring Japan for years, and as long as we've been going there, the cab drivers wear white gloves. They wear masks when people even have just a little cold. I've seen people in masks and gloves for years, and they just do it on being respectful and clean to their their community. I can't tell you how many thousands of people I've seen in masks, whether they're on planes or cabs or trains. It’s interesting. So maybe some of this rubs off on on the U.S. if somebody does have a little cold or cough, they put a f**king mask on and stop giving it to people. These masks don't prevent you from getting sick. They were designed to stop particles flying out of your mouth to transmit them. They're never designed to stop it coming into your respiratory system. It's for the infected to wear so they don't infect anybody else, and I think a lot of people have that confused.”

With regards to that stadium tour, the quartet is reuniting to do, as Lee remind us, something that they swore they would never do again. After New Year’s Eve on 2015, the foursome agreed to cease performing collectively or under any other configurations using the name of Mötley Crüe. But last year their long-planned Netflix biopic The Dirt became a megahit that reportedly attracted tens of millions of viewers, lured in a younger generation of fans, set off a massive spike in music streams and book sales, and led to a demand for renewed touring.

"We wanted to go out on top," declares Lee of their farewell tour. "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass. We would laugh and get bummed—like, how many more reunion tours are these f**king bands gonna do? We don't want to beat those guys, so we're just going to bounce now and everybody will just do whatever they're going to do musically [outside of Crüe]. I guess the lesson here is just never say never because honestly, if you asked me in in 2018, 2019 if we were going to play again I would have said nope. I wouldn't even even thought about it. All of a sudden, you’ve got Live Nation coming through asking about a stadium tour with us and Def Leppard and we're like, What? I'm sure like myself, the rest of the guys are probably missing it. There's certainly a lot to miss about going out and playing in front of 20,000 people every night, and now in a stadium for 50 or 60,000 a night. We've never done a stadium tour. So we were like, 'F**k it. Let's go play.'"

While the group contemplates hitting the road again, one wonders if there has been time in quarantine to consider new life perspectives.

"I wish I could say that I'm thinking about things differently," admits Lee, turning more serious. "But I just trust that the universe, which is much greater than any of us, has a plan. Somebody online was saying that this is God's way of sending us all to our rooms to go think about what we've done. I thought that's really f**king profound in so many different ways. And so cool. I never thought about it that way. And you know what? Maybe this is just one big way of everybody taking advantage of this time to look within and maybe learn something new, get to know yourself even more, go inside instead of externally for things. Maybe this is really a good thing in the face of what's actually happening. Other than putting on a mask and gloves to bounce out of here for food or what have you, I'm just like the rest of the sheep just trying to follow the rules to do whatever I can to not get it or spread it or be a part of that. Yes, I guess I have made some changes and thoughts towards it, but nothing nothing monumental other than just trying to just be safe."

When asked about the possibility of solo shows supporting his new album, Lee is enthusiastic about the idea. But he recalls the learning experience of doing the first Methods of Mayhem album in 1999, which featured guest appearances from the likes of Snoop Dogg, Lil’ Kim, George Clinton and Mix Master Mike. He soon discovered that organizing a lengthy package tour with such big names was not feasible.

"Everybody's got their own bands and lives, right? I learned a valuable lesson," he recollects. "After the Mötley tour is done, I would love to play some shows. But instead of making a whole tour out of it, just pick seven or eight major cities in the U.S. like New York, L.A., and Chicago. I could easily get a bunch of artists that have collaborated with me to commit to, what, two weeks? But to commit to six months, now that ain't gonna happen."

Of course, if our coronavirus pandemic does not alleviate as expected, perhaps he could just do a concert live from Tommy's living room? "Yeah, dude!” he cheers, laughing heartily, that big kid back again. “F**k, we could go live. That’d be rad too."

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