Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [259]
JACK IRONS I got worn out touring. I have the whole sensitivity, bipolar thing that I live with. My wife and I, we had another child. I just couldn’t keep up with everything. That was a slippery slope for me at the time. I fell down.
It’s an anxiety disorder. You’re having irrational anxieties—like your life’s being threatened. You can’t get onstage in front of 30,000 people and play your best for two or three hours that way. When I was in the midst of it, I was always looking to figure out what the cause was, but the reality is that it was my own body chemistry. That’s the imbalance part. I stopped sleeping during the Australia tour of ’98. We had a big American tour coming up in the summer and I just realized I wasn’t going to make it. I had to make a choice for my health and my longevity and my family versus my career and, honestly, there was no way around it.
That was a very traumatic time and I think it was hard for all of us. It wasn’t anything personal. There’s no doubt that Matt Cameron proved to be a very worthy addition to the band and deservedly is there. How do I say it? It all happened exactly as it should have. Years later, my life’s a lot easier. I definitely might find myself in a situation that has me doing some touring someday. There’s absolutely no comparison between the place I was at when I had to leave and where I’m at now. It’s like being on fire versus being a little bit warm.
BRETT ELIASON Jack was struggling personally, and he wasn’t on his game at all. He is a great musician, but he just didn’t have the energy to bring that night after night, and he’d get lost in the arrangements, and tempos were going up and down, and he just wasn’t capable of being the drummer that he is. Having Matt join reignited the band.
MATT CAMERON After Soundgarden, I was just questioning things, like, Did I do or say something wrong? Did I play something weird? I was working with John McBain on Wellwater Conspiracy and doing other sessions, but I always kind of thought that Chris was gonna go do a solo record and then we were gonna get back together. Then I was asked to tour with Pearl Jam in the summer of ’98.
KELLY CURTIS Matt said, “Sure, I’ll do it,” and the changeover was really nice. The hysteria started to go away. That was the first non-drama tour in our life.
MATT CAMERON I was a little noncommittal at first, but after that first tour, I realized Soundgarden wasn’t going to get back together—Chris seemed pretty happy doing what he was doing and I heard reports that he was into drugs. Pearl Jam was a lot less volatile than Soundgarden was. I felt like there was a more workmanlike professionalism with Pearl Jam, which I found refreshing. The fact that I knew all the Pearl Jam guys really well made the transition a lot easier. Things were going great.
I’d played Roskilde once before with Soundgarden, and it was a really cool festival. It was always one of the best-organized festivals, too. It’s in Denmark, where everyone is beautiful-looking and has good healthcare and nice teeth, and it’s just like, what a weird place for this freak accident to happen.
EDDIE VEDDER … Right before we went on that night, we got a phone call. Chris Cornell and his wife, Susan, had a daughter that day. And also a sound guy left a day early, ’cause he was going to have a child. It brought me to tears, I was so happy. We were walking out onstage that night with two new names in our heads. And in 45 minutes everything changed.
BRETT ELIASON I was mixing that Roskilde show. It was a stormy, really windy, rainy night. A lot of people, great big crowd. Outdoor shows with wind, they don’t ever go very well. It sounds like the P.A.’s being put through a flanger, wind is blowing everything all over the place. The crowd was crunching up, as they always did for the band. Apparently, the ground was uneven, it was very muddy, and people started to go down because of the side-to-side movement of the audience. The front crunch will crush you, but it doesn’t drop you. Going side to side you lose your footing and can