What do the Rolling Stones' session pianist Chuck Leavell and Leonard Cohen's string orchestrator Paul Buckmaster have in common? They both appeared on Train's "Drops of Jupiter." 

While the song may conjure the Y2K adult-contemporary boom more than those vintage artists, the two studio veterans' presence speaks volumes. No matter which way your tastes flicker, "Drops of Jupiter" is a classy tune. Not that Train singer, Pat Monahan, was thinking about that at the time. A married father in his late twenties touring the world on their early hit "Meet Virginia," Monahan felt destabilized by sudden fame, struggling to square his his tour life with his home life.

Sure, he might have commanded a stage in front of adoring fans, but that didn't mean much while crying on a payphone near the venue afterward. Why? At the time, his mother was terminally ill—and her eventual passing is what inspired "Drops of Jupiter," released on their album of the same name 20 years ago on March 27, 2001. In the hit song, Monahan wonders where his mother might be: "But tell me, did you sail across the sun?/ Did you make it to the Milky Way/ To see the lights all faded/ And that heaven is overrated? " he asks.

"I wrote that song in 15 minutes," Monahan tells GRAMMY.com over Zoom. "I fell asleep and woke up and it was like my mom tapped on the shoulder, and she was like, 'Let's go. I've got it for you. Let's go write this.' And it was a story about her telling me what the afterlife was."

While Monahan admits the title track—which was nominated for Record Of The Year and Best Rock Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal at the 2002 GRAMMY Awards show— "consumed" the album, other tunes like "I Wish You Would," "Hopeless" and "Something More" provide further breadcrumbs as to his state of mind.

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As for the rest of the album? Monahan, now the only sole founding member in the band, mostly stands by it, even if he admits he was miserable at the time. GRAMMY.com spoke with Monahan about memories behind every song on Drops of Jupiter, how Leavell and Buckmaster got involved, and why he's happy never to return to this well of sorrow.

Does it feel like Drops of Jupiter came out two decades ago?

I never really think about that, but yeah. I suppose it does. A lot has happened in 20 years. I'm a lot happier than I was back then. I think that whole album is based on a lot of sadness and questions and really not having faith in the future, but now, it's a different life that I live. So, it's pretty cool to look back at that.

What was going on in your emotional life at the time?

Well, I was in a bad relationship, and I was traveling so much and I had children. It was after the first album that had "Meet Virginia" on it. It was still a time [when] there was no real money. We sold a million albums but it didn't mean that I was living in any type of luxury at all. The only thing I was able to do at that point was to pay off my credit card debt. 

We were traveling the U.S. and Canada. We may have even gone to Australia with it, but we never really went to Europe or anything. There wasn't a big push in Europe for "Meet Virginia," so writing the second record was, I would say, more pressure than I've ever felt in my life. 

We knew [we needed to write] some type of song that people would care about or the chances of making another record were going to be slim.

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Tell me about "She's On Fire."

"She's On Fire" was a fantasy. There were moments on that first tour that I met a lot of people, and I was seeing so many beautiful faces and meeting boys and girls and everything you could think of. But I was married, so there was no anything I could do about any kind of attraction I might have had. So, I had to write songs instead. "She's On Fire," I think, was a fantasy of, like, "Man. This is the magic of what a relationship should feel like."

We thought that was an obvious first single. We just thought that was the coolest song ever. When we listen now, it's obvious that it's not. But nobody else thought it was a first single, and we were really surprised. So everything obvious in my career is never the single. I should never judge what a single sounds like because it's the weird ones that make it to the forefront of radio and peoples' brains.

What about it struck you guys as the obvious first single?

It had tempo. We thought [sings hook] "She's on fiiiiiire!" would appeal to whether you liked pop radio or country radio or whatever. That sat there in a great American way. Americana, I should say.

I'm looking at the chart position. It did respectably.

It did OK. Not like we imagined. And I think it came from the fact that "Drops of Jupiter" was so big that it still had some momentum, even though the second single was supposed to be a song called "Something More." But it got dumped because of 9/11. We shot a music video for it [where] I was climbing up a sky-rise building and 9/11 happened and everything changed.

So, we went to "She's On Fire," but it was years—It seemed like two years after "Drops of Jupiter." Sometimes, a song can be so big that it can consume the entire album, and that's kind of what happened.

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Tell me about "I Wish You Would."

That was more about a fantasy of what I had always hoped to go home to. Being on the road for months and months and months and coming home, my fantasy was to come home to someone who was as excited to see me come home as I was excited to be home. That kind of thing. That's what that song's about.

That entire album is either me apologizing for shit or hoping for things, and it continued into the next album, with "Calling All Angels." That was the end of that period for me.

From what you've described regarding the first few tunes, it seems like there was a tension between home life and tour life.

Of course! I mean, I was 28, 29. My son was born when I was 23, and I was sober. I had been sober for a long time because I knew what it was going to take for a guy from Erie, Pennsylvania, to try to be successful to be in a potentially dangerous industry. Everyone around me was partying and having multiple fun relationships and I was just working.

Now, we get to the big one. Obviously, a product of grief. A really personal one and also the biggest hit.

Yep. You know, somebody asked me the other day about that, because I had lost my mother that year and we were writing and it was hard to be inspired by anything when a boy loses his mom. It was very tragic. 

But somebody asked me, "How do you feel that potentially the biggest song of your career means so much to you?" I was like, "Wow, I've never really thought about that." It wasn't a fluke. It wasn't like, "Oh yeah, we just came up with [mimics guitar riff] 'Doo-dow-now-now!' or whatever." It's a really heartfelt moment for me, so I guess I should be more appreciative. I've never really thought about that.

I wrote that song in 15 minutes, man. I fell asleep and woke up and it was like my mom tapped on the shoulder, and she was like, "Let's go. I've got it for you. Let's go write this." And it was a story about her telling me what the afterlife was. "I can swim through the planets if I want to. I can do whatever I want."

One thing about "Drops of Jupiter" that a lot of people don't talk about is that it had two veterans on it—Paul Buckmaster and Chuck Leavell.

Chuck Leavell, man. He made that song as magical as it could have been because he gave it that bounce. [mimics piano-and-drums groove] I think he played it three times and we were like, "That's good. You're good. Thank you!" He's that special?

Was that the label's push, to get a pro on there?

No, actually. That was Brendan O'Brien. We recorded that record in Atlanta, and we did not have "Drops of Jupiter." I wasn't a Pearl Jam fan, but there's a song called "Better Man" that was on the radio, so I asked if I could look into that producer, and it was Brendan O'Brien.

When I asked if I could get Brendan O'Brien, they laughed at me: "Dude, you're not a big enough band." He was about to record the Limp Bizkit album, and something happened where it was postponed or whatever and Fred Durst backed out, or something. So, Brendan, all of a sudden, was open and he took the project.

Chuck Leavell is also a Georgian, and he owns a tree farm in Georgia. He called Chuck because Chuck was an hour away and he came and did it, and it was that easy.

How about Paul Buckmaster? His string arrangement is gorgeous.

That was actually [music executive] Donnie Ienner's idea. When we didn't have a single, we also had an agreement in the band that we weren't to write outside the band. Which really put shackles on us, but we weren't aware of it at the time. You protect things that you end up breaking.

I was being asked to meet Donnie Ienner in New York, and he was about to say, "You have to write outside the band. It's time." Because we didn't have the hit he wanted. It was two days before that meeting when I dreamt "Drops of Jupiter."

So, I went to New York to have that meeting with him and I had a demo of it in my pocket. That's when I played it for him. At the time, Almost Famous was the biggest movie in the country and Elton John's songs were all over it. So as soon as Donnie heard the song, he was like, "Paul Buckmaster has to do the strings." He was so fired up about this whole thing.

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Before I knew I would be doing this interview, I learned Leavell and Buckmaster were involved from a Rick Beato deconstruction on YouTube. Have you seen that?

Yeah, I have. It's pretty interesting!

Did it teach you anything about your own song, in a way?

You know what it taught me? Humans will overthink anything! Why did he throw that ball that way? Well, I'll tell you why! Because in fifth grade, he met a girl called Sheila! Who knows what anything is, you know?

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The next tune is "It's About You."

That was an attempt to write a hit song. This is what you get stuck doing sometimes. 

Let's say you're making a sad album. Today would be different than it was when I was trying to become something. Today, you could go make a sad album and then 15 minutes later go make a different album. And you have a computer, so you can make three albums in a week, or whatever.

But when you have one chance to make an album and it potentially costs a couple of hundred thousand dollars, you start to want to feed the machine that's going to feed you. That was a song that we thought, "Man, it's got tempo and this cool drum bit and whatever."

We played it for years live and people seemed to like it because we needed that type of song, but it didn't make a huge impression on people.

I'm a songwriter myself, and I think we all have material that feels like juvenilia. It's not us anymore. Can you still inhabit the self that made this album?

Of course. It's like looking at—I wouldn't say a lesser me, but a part of me that needed to do this to be better at certain things.

My manager and I talked the other day and he was like, "Man, we're listening to these songs you wrote that didn't make the album. There's a handful of them. Your melodies are so much more complex and thought-through and better." When I think of "It's About You," I just think of [mimics goofy cadence]. There's no melody there. It's just a guy trying to rap who can't.

It's funny in some regard, but in another way, I needed to be a young guy trying to figure stuff out.

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How about "Hopeless"?

That was a pretty important song to me.

Tell me about it.

When I was [touring], "Hopeless" was, like, I was hopeless. I felt hopeless all the time. It's a wild trip. The importance of love in a human body, that need for love and affection and somebody to look at you with love, is so necessary. I was writing songs just like, "Man, I'm writing as a voyeur. I'm writing somebody else's life, but it's just like a reflection of my own."

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How about "Respect"?

That was a very particular song about a guy that I went to grade school who I and my friends didn't treat properly. We're friends today and I love him a lot. He's a wonderful guy. But I have a lot of regret about a certain couple of years of my young childhood life.

Not beating people up or anything. It wasn't like that. But it was "bully" enough that it excluded him. And that exclusion made us, the others, feel closer. That's what happens when kids are not kind. I really regretted that and still do, and that's what that song is about. Everybody needs respect, and now I know that, so I'm sorry.

How did he react to the song?

You know, he's such the kind of fella—he's a bodybuilder and could beat me up 1,000 times a day if he wanted. 

His lesson during that wasn't to hold a grudge, thankfully. His lesson was "I've just got to get through this," and he did. And he became a big, tough, strong guy so he wouldn't have to deal with guys like me and other people anymore. We all learned what we were supposed to, I suppose.

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"Let It Roll."

That was the biggest song about my mom. That was the heartbreaking "I'm lost now." I was on tour during the "Meet Virginia" days with no cellphone, no Internet, no connection to anybody. 

The way I found out my mother was terminally ill was [through] my sister. [She] said, "Hey, so-and-so's coming to your concert tonight." She came and left me a card and the card said, "Your mom's really sick. You need to call her." 

So after the show, I went outside the venue to a payphone and just cried on the phone with my mom for an hour, with her telling me that she was going to be sick for what we hoped was going to be a long time, but it wasn't. She was gone quickly, but that's what that song is about: "I don't know how to let this thing roll, but I've just got to remember you'll be in me forever."

That's so rough, dude.

It's so f**king hardcore, dude. You don't want to have that moment ever.

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"Something More."

It wasn't the magic that "Drops of Jupiter" was, but we thought it at the time. That was my speaking out against the life I was living: "I'll get through this and I'll be something more." You think you're something more right now, that you're above this, but it's going to flip.

It was at a weird time because as I said before, we were trying to write only within the band. Our drummer at the time, his name is Scott. He wasn't writing anything, so I was like, "Dude, learn how to write. We all have to write within this project. Go do it." 

So he got the keyboard and wrote the [mimics vamp] because he was a novice writer. He was writing whatever he felt in those weird minor keys and stuff. Nobody else was really writing that, so it became a fun little project to jump-start somebody's writing style.

Before we hit the last three songs, tell me what it was like to be frightened and on tour and newly famous during that boom for the music industry. I guess it was a boom, right? In the early 2000s? That high of being on stage versus sobbing on the payphone with your mom, that's such a crash to Earth.

It never really felt like a boom. It just never did. Because there's a thing that happened where "Meet Virginia," it was an underground [success]. When people find a new band, it's like ownership. I found them, I turned you on to them, you like them because of me—it's ownership. A feeling of "I just found my jam."

"Drops of Jupiter" was so big on pop radio that we almost had to transition from real fans to now pop fans. And pop fans are fickle. They deteriorate. They move on to the next thing. So, it wasn't a boom. It was a transition, and we had to figure out how to get used to it. 

Like, did we just lose all the people we gained by touring for three years with a little old song that's like a cool car? And now we're in a Bentley and they're like, 'You've changed'? We had to figure out how to navigate that.

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We've got four minutes left. "Whipping Boy."

Yeah, that was me just being me. We were listening to records that were, like, Sparklehorse. At the time, Whiskeytown, when Ryan Adams just started that project, and his guitar tone. We were trying to emulate some of those vibes. That was the darker side of what we loved musically.

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How about "Getaway"? 

That was my jam at the time because I got to play the vibraphone on it. It just felt "jazz" to me, and I grew up listening to jazz. That was a song kind of about my parents' relationship.

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Lastly, we've got "Mississippi."

That was the sleeper. That was everybody's favorite song on the album.

Whoa.

It was "vibe." You know, nowadays—and I think it's really cool; I like where music's at—we listen to vibes. Instead of "Hey, check out this album," it's more of a playlist of things that have whatever in common. That was our vibe song. I'd like to make a record of vibe songs like "Mississippi" someday.

I've got one last question. Where did the muse—or whatever you want to call it—lead you from Drops of Jupiter?

Well, it went from "Somebody please come and help me" to finding real love. True love from somebody I'm supposed to be with. 

So then, when I wrote "Hey, Soul Sister" and "If It's Love" and the happier songs, this was also a transition because people were like, "Well, that's not the same sad guy that I remember, so I'm not sure if this is for me." And I'm like, "Well, that's good because I'm going to stay here. I don't want to go back to that other thing! Your joy is coming from real misery from me, and I've got to move on, too."

How Coldplay's 'Parachutes' Ushered In A New Wave Of Mild-Mannered Guitar Bands

Mastodon's drummer and singer Brann Dailor assures you he did not purchase his shiny golden gramophone at his local shopping mall.

“I won that! I’m telling you. It’s a major award,” he says in the latest episode of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

The metal musician won his first GRAMMY award for Best Metal Performance for Mastodon's “Sultan’s Curse” at the 2018 GRAMMYs.

“‘Sultan’s Curse’ was the jumping-off point for the whole theme of the album,” he explains. “The protagonist is walking alone in the desert, and the elements have been cursed by a Sultan.”

It’s a metaphor for illness — during the creation of the album, the band’s guitarist Bill Kelliher’s mother had been diagnosed with a brain tumor and bassist Troy Sanders’s wife was battling breast cancer.

For the band, the GRAMMY award represented their version of the American Dream and culmination of their career work. Even if Mastodon didn’t win the award, Dailor was happy to be in the room: “We felt like we weren't supposed to be there in the first place! But it's an incredible moment when they actually read your name."

Press play on the video above to learn the complete story behind Brann Dailor's award for Best Metal Performance, and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of Where Do You Keep Your GRAMMY?

Brann Dailor Talks 20 Years Of Mastodon, New 'Medium Rarities' Collection And How He Spent The Coronavirus Lockdown Drawing Clowns

In April 1993, journalist Stuart Maconie coined the term Britpop for a Select magazine article celebrating the UK's fight back against the dominance of American rock. Remarkably, London four-piece Blur weren't even mentioned in the story. And yet, frontman Damon Albarn, guitarist Graham Coxon, bassist Alex James, and drummer Dave Rowntree would provide the catalyst for the scene's mainstream breakthrough.

Just a year later, Blur released what many consider to be Britpop's defining statement. Parklife served as a colorful, vibrant, and incredibly infectious love letter to all things Anglocentric, drawing upon the nation's great cultural heritage while also foreshadowing what was to come. And it instantly struck a chord with homegrown audiences desperate for guitar music that wasn't drowning in abject misery, and better reflected their day-to-day lives.

Remarkably, Albarn had predicted Parklife's success four years earlier. As he declared to music writer David Cavanagh in 1990, "When our third album comes out, our place as the quintessential English band of the '90s will be assured. That is a simple statement of fact."

Three decades after its game-changing release, here's a look at how Parklife forever changed both Blur's career trajectory and the history of British rock.

It Kickstarted Britpop's Greatest Rivalry

In one of those great rock coincidences, Blur's third LP hit the shelves just 24 hours after "Supersonic" gave a then-relative unknown Manchester outfit named Oasis their first ever UK Top 40 single. And the two bands would remain intertwined (perhaps begrudgingly so) from then on, culminating in the most high-profile chart battle in British music history.

You could argue that Oasis' Noel Gallagher threw the first stone, describing Parklife as "Southern England personified" in a manner that suggested it wasn't exactly complimentary. And according to his manager Alan McGee, Definitely Maybe cut "Digsy's Dinner" was written as a deliberate "piss-take of Blur."

An increasingly bitter war of words then broke out in the summer of 1995 as the "Country House" versus "Roll With It" war swept the nation. Blur emerged victorious, although Oasis had the last laugh when (What's The Story) Morning Glory spent 10 weeks atop the UK album chart.

It Brought Storytelling Back To Indie Pop

Heavily inspired by Martin Amis novel London Fields, Parklife was inhabited by a cast of intriguing fictional characters, essentially doubling up as a series of short stories. "Tracy Jacks," for example, is about a golf-obsessed civil servant who ends up getting arrested for public indecency before bulldozing his own house.

"Magic America" is the tale of Bill Barret, a Brit who commits to a life of excess during a Stateside holiday ("Took a cab to the shopping malls/ Bought and ate until he could do neither anymore"), while "Clover Over Dover" explores the mindset of a manipulative boyfriend threatening to jumping off the titular white cliffs.

Over the following 18 months, everything from Pulp's "Common People" and Space's "Neighbourhood" to Supergrass' "Caught by the Fuzz" and The Boo Radleys' "It's Lulu" were combining classic British guitar pop with witty Mike Leigh-esque vignettes of modern life.

It Originated The Big Indie Ballad

Dramatic ballads aren't necessarily the first thing that come to mind with Parklife, a record famed for its jaunty, "knees-up Mother Brown" ditties. But it boasts two examples: "To The End," an alternate Bond theme featuring a burst of Gallic flair from Stereolab's Laetitia Sadler, and the swoonsome "This Is A Low." Turns out the "mystical lager-eater" the record was designed to embody could also get a little vulnerable from time to time.

This appeared to give all of their laddish peers some pause for thought. Oasis, the most fervent advocates of the "cigarettes and alcohol" lifestyle, later scored their biggest hit with acoustic ballad "Wonderwall." And bands including Cast ("Walkaway"), Shed Seven ("Chasing Rainbows") and Menswear ("Being Brave") all enjoyed UK hits revealing their softer sides. No doubt Coldplay, Travis, and every other sensitive post-Britpop outfit that emerged in the late 1990s were taking notes, too.

It Paid Respect To The Greats

The Britpop scene was renowned for its slavish devotion to the first time British guitar bands ruled the airwaves, the Swinging Sixties. Oasis freely admitted they modeled themselves on the Beatles, while the likes of Ocean Colour Scene, Kula Shaker and The Paul Weller all released albums that sounded like they'd been discovered in a vintage record shop.

And while Blur would later distance themselves from the past with a sense of invention (which Albarn would also parlay into his various side projects, including the virtual band Gorillaz), they were more than happy to get all nostalgic on Parklife. See "Far Out," their only track to feature James on lead vocal, which resembled the trippy psychedelia of Pink Floyd in their Syd Barrett era, and the Sgt. Pepper-esque brassy instrumental "The Debt Collector," while there are also echoes of the Walker Brothers, The Kinks, and Small Faces. Suddenly, retro was the new cool.

It Turned Blur Into Britain's Biggest Guitar Band

The UK Top 10 success of 1991's "There's No Other Way" proved to be something of a false start for Blur, with the band soon falling by the wayside like every other baggy pop outfit that emerged at the turn of the decade. "Popscene," the 1992 single intended to revolutionize both their career and British guitar music in general, stalled at No. 32, while 1993 sophomore Modern Life is Rubbish sold just 40,000 copies.

But Parklife single-handedly turned Blur into Britain's biggest guitar band, reaching No. 1 in their homeland, spending 82 weeks in the Top 40, and eventually becoming a million-seller. It went on to pick up four BRITs, a Mercury Prize nomination, and has been recognized as an all-time great by Spin, Pitchfork, and Rolling Stone. Further proof of its glowing reputation came in 2009 when Royal Mail selected it as one of 10 albums worthy of commemorating on a postage stamp.

It Spawned A String Of Classic Singles

Parklife's campaign was kicked off in March 1994 with "Girls and Boys," a glorious dissection of British vacationers — which, surprisingly in the days when genre-hopping was frowned upon — evoked the '80s synth-pop of Duran Duran and Pet Shop Boys. Rowntree was even replaced by a drum machine, not that he particularly minded, luckily.

This indie floorfiller was followed up by the hugely underrated "To The End" and then the much-quoted title track. Everything about "Parklife" the song is larger than life: the Cockney geezer narration from Quadrophenia's Phil Daniels, the festival-friendly sing-along chorus, and the brightly colored video in which James — perhaps tipping his hat to Queen's "I Want to Break Free" -– donned soap opera drag. But fourth release "End of a Century," a melancholic tale of domestic drudgery complete with mournful trombone solo, once again proved there was a depth beyond their cheeky chappy personas.

It Made Brits Proud To Be British Again

Unable to connect with the oppressive angst and flannel shirts of the grunge movement that had plagued their first major North American tour in 1992, Blur first started to embrace their inherent Englishness on the following year's Modern Life is Rubbish. Unfortunately, this throwback to the original British Invasion was met with a resounding shrug of the shoulders on both sides of the Atlantic.

Undeterred, however, the band doubled down on all things Anglocentric on its follow-up, from its original title of London, to its greyhound racing cover art, to its celebrations of bank holidays, Club 18-30 holidays, and shipping forecasts. This time around, they managed to capture the zeitgeist (at home, at least), as the rise of New Labour and the forthcoming hosting of Euro '96 made everyone proud to be British again. Within 12 months, the UK charts were littered with homegrown guitar bands selling the idea of the English dream — and it all started with Parklife.

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When Pearl Jam threw their hands together on the cover of their debut album Ten, they laid an architecturally sound foundation — to stay unified, unbroken, always honing. Much like their hero (and collaborator) Neil Young, their aesthetic blueprint was established from the jump: on every album in Ten’s wake, they’ve dug a little (or a lot) deeper into that ineffable essence.

Pearl Jam have never made a bad record; they’ve only swung their pickaxe at that mine and been variably rewarded. On 2000’s Binaural, they hit a seam of simmering psychedelia; on its follow-up, the underrated, desolate Riot Act, they stumbled on a yawning, haunted chasm. 2009’s Backspacer, 2013’s Lightning Bolt and 2020’s Gigaton were all hailed as returns to form, yet none of them totally flipped the script.

Enter Dark Matter, their new album, produced by the young wunderkind Andrew Watt, due out April 19. Singer Eddie Vedder has declared, "No hyperbole, I think this is our best work." This time, that really feels apt: Watt’s abundant, kinetic energy and clear love for their legacy clearly knocked a few cobwebs loose.

Just listen to singles "Running" and "Dark Matter" — or album tracks, like the epic ballad "Wreckage," and how they build to neck-snapping fever pitches. Pearl Jam have always had batteries in their backs, but they haven’t sounded this young and hungry in decades.

"I think he loves the band from what he has seen us live. He knows that we, in certain moments, are unhinged," founding guitarist Stone Gossard tells GRAMMY.com of the irrepressible Watt, who’s also whipped the Rolling Stones and Ozzy Osbourne back into fighting shape. "That's part of what we do."

"It’s where rock and roll meets just religious ecstasy, where it's not about anything other than movement and rhythm and noise," Gossard adds. "And it turns into something that's not a song, but a ritual or something… sometimes, as you get older as a band, you can lose touch of that."

This interview has been edited for clarity.

Can you talk about Dark Matter’s sound? It feels so different from past Pearl Jam records, in a great way — it seems to emanate from a dark center, to all sides of the soundfield.

The sonics of it is really Andrew Watt. That’s his dream — of loving rock music, and then being in the pop world, then learning and understanding that world so well. And then going back to all of his favorite bands from when he was a kid and making records with them, which is hilarious. 

Because I keep saying this, "We're just in Andrew's dream and we're just kind of a sidebar. This is really the Andrew Watt story that's actually going on right now, and we're all just part of it."

But he really has a very distinctive sonic style. He has a studio that we just walked into the first day making this record, and it's just gear already out, ready to go: "What kind of guitar do you want? Here's an amp, whatever, the drums are here. We’ve got a microphone in the closet."

Usually, if you're in a band — and especially a band for 20 or 30 years — when you decide to do something, then your gear shows up and your guy shows up, and then all your guys argue with each other about where their stuff's going to go, it's a drama. This was no drama. There was no work involved. We just walked in and played.

It sounded like the record right away. He's running things through the chains that he wants. The way he uses compression, and the way he uses reverb, and the guitar sounds he likes, and how he places things — he's a sonic artist.

So it sounds exciting, and really live. And yet, also you can really hear the details, and it's not a mess.

It’s interesting that you bring up Watt’s pop background. Pearl Jam has always seemed at odds with how things are typically done in the music industry, so it’s great that you’re able to retrieve what you need from the machine.

Well, there's the world of pop music in terms of your perception of it, in terms of what it represents.

But also, the structures that we're dealing with in rock songs and pop songs — basically, the form is still the same. You're starting out with one part and maybe there's a variation, but it's tension and release and it's a few chords and it's a beat and it's a piece of poetry.

Those things can fit together in a lot of different ways, but there's things about pop music that are foundational to all music. There's things about it that work, and work for a reason. It gets bastardized and homogenized and all that.

So, we're still writing rock songs and pop songs — but we like to make them a little hairier, generally.

I see how the Dark Matter sessions could be the Watt show. But I’m sure it was a reciprocal conversation. What references were you throwing back at him, from the millions of miles the band’s traveled together?

Well, he’s a fan. He’s a Ten Club member from way, way back. He fell in love with Pearl Jam when he was 15 years old.

He met [guitarist] Mike McCready outside of a Robin Hood fundraiser in New York. He was with his dad, and Andrew and his dad came up and said, "This is my son Andrew; he's a musician; he really wants to become a rock star. He wants to be in bands and make records. And Mike, do you have any advice you can give him?"

And Mike said, "Finish up your college your dad wants you to, and make sure you got your bases covered." And then Andrew, of course, just went in the opposite direction and said, "Oh, I'm just going to conquer the world and then I'm going to come back and produce your band, Mike McCready."

So I love that. I love that he has that history with us. And I just think that he comes from a place, he's a real fan of the band. His enthusiasm really drove the process and his understanding of the things that he loves about us. He really wanted us to make an aggressive record. He really fell in love with our unhinged side from when he was a kid. But just loved the different ways that we had fit together as a kid.

I think he was encouraging us to find those same sort of things that worked in the past. And he's an experimenter. He's ready for anything. You can say no to him. I mean, you’ve got to be forceful. We were a united front a few times and just said, "No, we're going to do this," or whatever. But he made a lot of good decisions, and helped us make a lot of good decisions.

And I think the record, the arrangements, even just them playing now — when we're just starting to rehearse them, the songs are playing well, they're playing themselves. There's no ambiguity to them, where it's mushy. They're strong — lyrically, melodically, rhythmically. All the stool legs are in place.

As I understand it, there were no demos, and Eddie was reacting to the energy in the room, and writing in the moment. This is a great batch of lyrics. They hit you in the solar plexus.

I think one thing that we've learned over the years is that Eddie is more active and more inspired and will finish more songs — and get more excited about songs — when he's in the process of writing with the band.

So, if it's us against the world, and we're stepping into a studio — someone's throwing out a riff or someone's got an idea, and then it gets tweaked and molded — he's going to do his damnedest to make that thing. If he's in on it and feels part of it, he's going to do his damnedest to make that thing have legs and survive.

You're less likely to have something happen if you send him something than you are if you plan something when he's in the room and you're working it out. Just make it about that moment.

It's like, "I don't care about all the different things you thought your song should be or how many different ways it could go, or if it's reggae… let's try it right now with everybody and see how everyone plays it, and feels it —and do I feel it?"

And a lot of times he does, and we find that. And then once he starts going, then all of us are — phew! The energy goes up.

One of my favorite songs on Dark Matter is "Wreckage." That one builds unbelievably.

That’s really Andrew and Ed back and forth, discovering that arrangement, and the push and pull of where that song could go. I think it hit a sweet spot. All of us are part of it, but it’s understated in a way that I think is really beautiful.

It builds in a way that feels natural; it doesn’t feel gratuitous to me. It feels like a destination: you’ve reached it, and you deserve it at that point. There’s a lot going on harmonically, but the chords are very simple.

The other is "Something Special." Partly because I was looking at message boards, where the peanut gallery was complaining about its naked sentimentality. I was thinking, You don’t get it! This is straight from the heart.

Where you are in your life, and why that lyric means something to you — yeah, it’s different for everyone.

That’s a Josh Klinghoffer composition.  He’s become part of our band in a way that’s so amazing — his voice and his musicality. He’s really almost become our musical bandleader at this point, which is the best, because he’s charming and hilarious and fun to be around and always game.

Josh had this great riff. Immediately, Andrew and Ed changed a bunch of chords and moved it all around, but it turned out great. We’ve been playing it in rehearsals. It’s got great chords; it’s beautiful, sentimental and gorgeous.

And we need that on the record. The record’s pretty bleak. It’s not uplifting, necessarily. So, yeah — sometimes, you go home, and you just hang out, and you’ve got to just tell the people you love how much you love them.

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While in a studio, Andrew Watt bounces off the walls. Just ask Mick Jagger, who once had to gently tell the 33-year-old, "Look, I can deal with this, but when you meet Ronnie and Keith, you have to dial it down a little bit."

Or ask Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard. "He really got the best out of [drummer] Matt [Cameron] just by being excited — literally jumping up and down and pumping his fist and running around," he tells GRAMMY.com.

As Watt's hot streak has burned on, reams have rightly been written about his ability to take a legacy act, reconnect them with their essence, and put a battery in their back. His efficacy can be seen at Music's Biggest Night: Ozzy Osbourne's Patient Number 9 won Best Rock Album at the 2023 GRAMMYs. At the last ceremony, the Rolling Stones were nominated for Best Rock Song, for Hackney Diamonds' opener "Angry."

On Pearl Jam's return to form, Dark Matter, due out April 19. Who was behind the desk? Take a wild guess.

"You want to see them live more than you want to listen to their albums, and they have the ability to look at each other and play and follow each other. I don't like my rock music any other way, as a listener," Watt tells GRAMMY.com. "All my favorite records are made like that — of people speeding up, slowing down, playing longer than they should."

As such, Watt had a lightbulb moment: to not record any demos, and have them write together in the room. "They're all playing different stuff, and it makes up what Pearl Jam is, and singer Eddie [Vedder] rides it like a wave."

If you're more of a pop listener, there's tons of Watt for you — he's worked with Justin Bieber ("Hit the Ground" from Purpose), Lana Del Rey ("Doin' Time" from Norman F—ing Rockwell) and much more. Read on for a breakdown of big name rockers who have worked with Andrew Watt.

Pearl Jam / Eddie Vedder

Watt didn't just produce Dark Matter; he also helmed Vedder's well-received third solo album, Earthling, from 2022. Watt plays guitar in Vedder's live backing band, known as the Earthlings — which also includes Josh Klinghoffer, who replaced John Frusciante in the Red Hot Chili Peppers for a stint.

The Rolling Stones

Dark Matter was a comeback for Pearl Jam, but Hackney Diamonds was really a comeback for the Stones. While it had a hater or two, the overwhelming consensus was that it was the Stones' best album in decades — maybe even since 1978's Some Girls.

"I hope what makes it fresh and modern comes down to the way it's mixed, with focus on low end and making sure the drums are big," Watt, who wore a different Stones shirt every day in the studio, has said about Hackney Diamonds. "But the record is recorded like a Stones album."

Where there are modern rock flourishes on Hackney Diamonds, "There's no click tracks. There's no gridding. There's no computer editing," he continued. "This s— is performed live and it speeds up and slows down. It's made to the f—ing heartbeat connection of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Steve Jordan.

"And Charlie," Watt added, tipping a hat to Watts, who played on Hackney Diamonds but died before it came out. "When Charlie's on it."

Iggy Pop

Ever since he first picked up a mic and removed his shirt, the snapping junkyard dog of the Stooges has stayed relevant — as far as indie, alternative and punk music has been concerned.

But aside from bright spots like 2016's Josh Homme-produced Post Pop Depression, his late-career output has felt occasionally indulgent and enervated. The 11 songs on 2023's eclectic Watt-produced Every Loser, on the other hand, slap you in the face in 11 different ways.

"We would jam and make tracks and send them to Iggy, and he would like 'em and write to them or wouldn't like them and we'd do something else," Watt told Billboard. "It was very low pressure. We just kept making music until we felt like we had an album." (And as with Pearl Jam and Vedder's Earthlings band, Watt has rocked out onstage with Pop.

Ozzy Osbourne

You dropped your crown, O Prince of Darkness. When he hooked up with Watt, the original Black Sabbath frontman hadn't released any solo music since 2010's Scream; in 2017, Sabbath finally said goodbye after 49 years and 10 (!) singers.

On 2020's Ordinary Man and 2022's Patient Number 9, Watt reenergized Ozzy; even when he sounds his age, Ozz sounds resolute, defiant, spitting in the face of the Reaper. (A bittersweet aside: the late Taylor Hawkins appears on Patient Number 9, which was written and recorded in just four days.)

Maroon 5

Yeah, yeah, they're more of a pop-rock band, but they have guitars, bass and drums. (And if you're the type of rock fan who's neutral or hostile to the 5, you shouldn't be; Songs About Jane slaps.)

At any rate, Watt co-produced "Can't Leave You Alone," featuring Juice WRLD, from 2021's Jordi. Critics disparaged the album, but showed Watt's facility straddling the pop and rock worlds.

5 Seconds of Summer

When it comes to Andrew Watt, the Sydney pop-rockers — slightly more on the rock end than Maroon 5 and their ilk — are repeat customers. He produced a number of tracks for 5 Seconds of Summer, which spanned 2018's Youngblood, 2020's Calm and 2022's 5SOS5.

Regarding the former: Watt has cited Youngblood as one of the defining recording experiences of his life.

"I had started working with 5 Seconds of Summer, and a lot of people looked at them as a boy band, but they're not," Watt told Guitar Player. "They're all incredible musicians. They can all play every instrument. They love rock music. They can harmonize like skyrockets in flight. They just were making the wrong kind of music."

So Watt showed 5 Seconds of Summer a number of mainstays of the rock era, like Tears for Fears and the Police. The rest, as they say, is history.

Elton John

A year after Britney Spears was unshackled from her highly controversial conservatorship, it was time for a victory lap with the God of Glitter. What resulted was a curious little bauble, which became a megahit: "Hold Me Closer," a spin on "Tiny Dancer," "The One" and "Don't Go Breaking My Heart" that briefly launched Spears back into the stratosphere.

"Britney came in and she knew what she wanted to do," Watt recalled to The L.A. Times. "We sped up the song a little bit and she sang the verses in her falsetto, which harkens back to 'Toxic.' She was having a blast."

Blink-182

Watt has also worked with pop/punk heroes Blink-182 — but not after Tom DeLonge made his grand return. He produced "I Really Wish I Hated You" from 2019's Nine, back when Matt Skiba was in the band.

Where in the rock world will this tender-aged superproducer strike next? Watt knows.

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