Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament was recently interviewed by The Powell Movement, and he discussed working on the 1992 film Singles, and how he created the cassettes that helped inspire Chris Cornell to write “Spoonman” and a few of his greatest songs.
“Matt Dillon’s apartment was basically my apartment. We basically took everything down from my apartment and put it up in Matt Dillon’s. We basically put posters all over the walls, and decorated it. In some ways, it was sort of the apartment that I wish I had.
We were putting a nice little Persian carpet down, which I couldn’t afford a Persian carpet, a nicer stereo. It was super fun, because any little bit of posters or tapes that were laying around the room, any of that stuff they needed, they came to me and said, ‘Hey man we need you to do this.’ So I would go to Seattle Art, which is down by the Greyhound station, and for the first time in my life, I had an expense account.
I could go in and buy $2,000 worth of art supplies, that I got to keep! It was insane, and they were paying me rent for my posters and a couple of skateboards that they ended up using in the movie. They paid me for that stuff. Just to work in an atmosphere where there were no boundaries. I would work on stuff, and Steven Lineweaver would come over and look at them and go, ‘Eh, that’s not that good.’ The next day Cameron would come through and be like, ‘Oh man that’s awesome! There’s going to be a time when Matt Dillon is going to be busking through the market, and we need some tapes for him.’
So I made these tapes that Chris Cornell later found, and ended up writing songs off of.”
Listen to the interview below.
