Pearl Jam is ‘Between Eras’ but ‘Excited About the Future,’ Eddie Vedder Says

It’s been seven months since drummer Matt Cameron left Pearl Jam, so what’s going on with the band? In a Zoom interview with Rolling Stone that was otherwise focused on his moving new documentary Matter of Time, about his charity work to support medical research, frontman Eddie Vedder said he recently read a description of the group’s current state that rang true. “The quote was, I think, ‘Pearl Jam is in between eras at the moment,’” he said. “And I thought that was actually pretty concise.”

Vedder dodged the question of whether the band has already found a new drummer, in a manner that may raise fans’ eyebrows. “ If I were to say anything,” he said, “I think we’d wanna have a band discussion about what we’d wanna say or who would be the messenger or whatever.”

But Vedder did make it clear that he and the other members of Pearl Jam are currently playing together, and feeling open to evolution, baby. “We’re in the lab, we’re woodshedding, excited,” he said. “It’s cool to think of change. As much as we’d like to have done it the way we did it forever — and we’ll still be able to do that thing — I think we’re all just excited for the future.” 

Cameron, who first came to prominence as a member of Soundgarden, joined Pearl Jam in 1998 after the other band’s initial breakup and played on every Pearl Jam studio album from Binaural through last year’s Dark Matter. He announced his departure on Instagram in July, shortly after the band wrapped a spring arena tour. Cameron did confirm he’s “still an active musician” and is currently at work on a new Soundgarden album using vocals Chris Cornell recorded before his death. Pearl Jam has cycled through five drummers since their founding in 1990, but Cameron’s quarter-century run dwarfed every predecessor combined.

Vedder’s EB Research Partnership documentary, Matter of Time, is now streaming on Netflix. Read our full interview with Vedder about the film here.