Pearl Jam's mystery drummer | Who is it?
Pearl Jam have picked a replacement for Matt Cameron and refuse to say who until 27 September. Here is what is confirmed, and our guesses.
Pearl Jam have a new drummer. They know who it is. They are not telling anyone.
The name gets revealed when the band walks on stage at the Ohana Festival in California on 27 September — their only confirmed date this year, and the first show since Matt Cameron left after 27 years.
“I love the mystery of it all,” Stone Gossard has said. “The fact that nobody knows who’s going to play drums with us even makes it triply exciting.”
So let’s have a go at ruining it.
What is actually confirmed
Three things, and no more.
- The seat is filled. Gossard has confirmed a replacement has been chosen.
- The reveal is at Ohana on 27 September. No announcement before then.
- It is not Dave Krusen. Pearl Jam’s original drummer, on the band’s 1991 debut Ten, shot the idea down himself in an Instagram comment — one he later deleted, which of course only made everyone more interested.
Everything beyond that is guesswork, including everything below.
Our guesses (which are only guesses)
Fair warning: this is us reasoning out loud, not reporting. Nobody has told us anything, and there is a decent chance all of this is wrong by lunchtime on 27 September.
Stephen Perkins. The name fans keep landing on. Jane’s Addiction, deep in the same 1990s alternative-rock world, and a drummer with the looseness and the tribal, tom-heavy vocabulary that would sit very naturally in Pearl Jam. Plausible on musical grounds alone.
A returning alumnus who isn’t Krusen. Pearl Jam have had more drummers than people remember — Dave Abbruzzese and Jack Irons both had substantial tenures. The band’s history with each is complicated in different ways, which is exactly why it would be an enormous moment if either walked out at Ohana. Gossard’s glee about the secret does rather suggest a name that lands, rather than a session player nobody knows.
Somebody genuinely unexpected. Here is our actual instinct. You do not build a five-month mystery around a competent hired hand. You build it around a reveal — and the two ways to make a reveal land are a name from the band’s own past, or a drummer far enough outside their world that the room gasps.
The boring possibility, which is often right. An excellent, low-profile touring drummer nobody outside the industry could pick out of a line-up. Bands hire these people constantly because they are reliable, and Pearl Jam might simply be enjoying the marketing value of a secret that was never that dramatic.
If we had to put money anywhere, it would be on an alumnus. The theatre of it fits Gossard’s mood too neatly.
Why keep it secret at all?
Because it is a good idea, frankly.
Announce a name in July and it gets picked apart for three months by people who have never heard them play a note with the band. Every article becomes a referendum on whether they are worthy. The drummer arrives already carrying an argument.
Reveal them mid-song in front of a festival crowd and the first thing anyone knows about them is what they sound like. That is a considerably kinder way to start a job — and the same job we described in our Drummergeddon round-up, where half of rock changed drummer at once.
Final thoughts
We will update this post on 27 September, and we fully expect to have been wrong.
Whoever it is, spare them a thought. Matt Cameron sat in that chair for 27 years and is one of the most respected drummers alive. Following that in front of a festival crowd, with no announcement to soften the landing, is a properly nerve-shredding way to spend a Sunday.
For more on what it takes to step into a seat like that, Arin Ilejay’s story covers the reality of replacing a beloved drummer, and our Anika Nilles feature covers the drummer currently doing the most scrutinised version of the same job.