How Eddie Vedder Told Producer Andrew Watt: ‘F––– You, Back Off!’

Eddie Vedder suggested producer Andrew Watt should helm Pearl Jam’s latest album Dark Matter after the pair worked together on the singer’s solo album Earthling.

And while everyone involved with the follow-up to Gigaton is happy with the results, Vedder himself admitted that, on occasion, the process didn’t always go smoothly.

“Andrew would, to be honest, he’d start to piss me off a little bit,” he told Apple Music 1’s Zane Lowe. “And then I’d try to do something really good, just to say like, ‘Fuck you. Back off.’”

He continued: “There was one day I said, ‘Look, I need tonight off… I need to sleep or I need to do something… I’m trying to buy myself frigging eight hours or 10 hours… I just need to clear.’ Because we’re already 15 days in a row of just, go, go, go.”

Vedder said he’d also asked Watt to work on the current song with Mike McCready instead, and that Watt had replied: “I get it. I totally get it… I’m with you. I will stay an extra three weeks, whatever it takes.” The singer responded: “Okay, good, because, come on, it’s going good – but something’s going to break here.”

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Watt went on to offer Vedder a deal: “So how about this? You go home at 10 o’clock, but before you go, if you get the bridge on [one song] and then the outro on the other… And stay with us here; we’re going to record that other thing.”

Vedder continued: “I was like, ‘All right, give me 10 minutes.’ I went in and wrote and sang it and I just wanted to get the fuck out… I just needed eight hours to myself.”

Andrew Watt Reminded Eddie Vedder of Why Pearl Jam Started

He emphasized that it hadn’t been a negative experience. “I don’t have to call [Watt] and apologize… that was part of being pushed, and we should be pushed. And maybe when you’re starting to feel a little shaky and vulnerable or whatever, that could be the opening to access some of the deeper shit that might be normally closed down.

“Being on edge… ended up being helpful. … We all picked up instruments [as] a ‘fuck you’ to authority or parents who wanted you to have a real job or whatever. I think that’s always been in us.

“So to have Andrew gave us a fire, it wasn’t we were fighting with him – it was good to be pushed. And I don’t think some of it would have happened quite the way it did if we hadn’t been.”