Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament discussed the band’s original drummer Dave Krusen in a new interview on The Powell Movement. Alternative Nation transcribed his comments.
“We spent some time with him last year over the Hall of Fame stuff. That guy has handled the whole situation, I couldn’t even imagine anybody handling it as well as he has. I think he’s been the program for a long time since then. We warned him and warned him and warned him, and then we were like: ‘Dude, you’ve got to go get help. We have tours coming up, and we can’t babysit you. You can’t be falling down getting on your drum kit every night.’
We were serious at that point, we all of a sudden got another shot. We had this killer singer, and we were writing songs. We were writing so many songs at that point so quickly. We sort of felt like, we can’t mess around right now, we need to get the right people involved.
But yeah, Dave said, ‘You kicking me out of the band saved my life, because it really helped me deal with what I was dealing it.’ He said, ‘I got help, and within a year or so, I had my act together.’ He kept playing music with other bands at that point. It was huge for us to be able to play to get to play with him at the Hall of Fame thing, and sort of have that thing come full circle, and have it not be weird at all. There wasn’t anything even remotely weird about it, which is (chuckles) really unbelievable.”
