Pearl Jam's new drummer | Abe Laboriel Jr.

The mystery is over. Mostly.

Pearl Jam’s first drummer since Matt Cameron is Abe Laboriel Jr. — Paul McCartney’s man behind the kit for a quarter of a century. He walked out with the band on Friday night at Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California, two days before the reveal everyone had circled.

There is one catch, and Eddie Vedder supplied it himself. Let’s go through what we actually know.

What happened at Ohana

The Friday slot was billed as “Eddie Vedder and Friends”. The friends turned out to be Pearl Jam.

With Laboriel on drums they played five songs: “Corduroy”, “Hail Hail”, “Scared of Fear”, “Wishlist” and “Dark Matter”. Not a warm-up set, either. “Corduroy” as your opener with a new drummer is a statement.

It also means our August guesses were, as promised, wrong. We said alumnus. We did mention “the boring possibility, which is often right” — an excellent session player nobody outside the industry could pick out of a line-up. Laboriel is the far-from-boring version of that.

What is still unconfirmed

Vedder told the crowd Laboriel was “filling in tonight”.

That is a very careful choice of words. It could mean a trial run. It could mean a stand-in while the permanent hire finishes another commitment. It could simply be Vedder being coy, having spent five months enjoying the secret.

Nobody from the band has called him Pearl Jam’s new drummer. Not yet.

Pearl Jam are back at Ohana on Sunday 27 September for their headline set, and Laboriel is expected to play it. That is the likeliest moment for an actual announcement.

Why Abe Laboriel Jr. makes sense

Because nobody needs to wonder whether he can play.

Laboriel has drummed for Paul McCartney since 2001, on tour and in the studio. He came up through Berklee, cut his touring teeth with Steve Vai and Seal, and has worked with Sting and k.d. lang, among many others. Having the bassist Abraham Laboriel as your father probably helped too.

He also knows Vedder already. Laboriel played on Vedder’s 2022 solo album Earthling, so this is not a stranger being dropped into a band with more than 35 years of history.

And the job is enormous. Matt Cameron left in July 2025 after 27 years, on the back of the Soundgarden catalogue and some of the most quietly clever rock drumming of the era. Following that takes feel as well as chops, and McCartney’s catalogue has been demanding exactly that from Laboriel for decades.

Final thoughts

We would put money on “filling in” becoming “joining” by Sunday night. We would not put much.

Either way, it is a good sign. Pearl Jam could have found a younger, cheaper hitter who sounded like Cameron. Instead they picked one of the most trusted drummers alive, and let him make the old songs his own.

For more on a year that has seen half of rock change drummer, see our Drummergeddon round-up, or read our full Matt Cameron feature for what Laboriel is stepping into.