PEARL JAM's STONE GOSSARD Calls DONALD TRUMP 'A Performance Artist'

In a new interview with NME, PEARL JAM guitarist Stone Gossard was asked if he thinks Donald Trump can become U.S. president again. He responded: "I guess it's possible. In a sense, Trump is a performance artist and there's people that play along with his performance because it suits them in certain ways. I think in the end, I hope that they're going to realize that it's more serious than performance art."

As for what he thinks the consequences would be if Trump does get re-elected, Stone said: "I always feel like equal and opposite energies bump up against each other and when something goes too far one way you unleash another energy that will take it back in a different direction, but you don't know exactly how that's gonna happen. I still think that's going to be part of the equation, that if somehow he gets everything he wants he's also going to be met with some force that he's not expecting and it's gonna shift it into some other direction. That's the best I can hope for I guess."

Asked if he thinks Joe Biden has delivered in his current term as president of the United States, Stone said: "I'm not an expert. I'm an armchair analyst. My guess is that when people look back on it, they're gonna say that there's some things that he did that weren't being celebrated. I think there's some subtlety to what he's doing."

This past April, PEARL JAM singer Eddie Vedder blasted Trump while speaking to U.K.'s Sunday Times < about the inspiration for the song "Wreckage", which is included on the band's latest album, "Dark Matter". He said: "There is a guy in the United States who is still saying he didn't lose an election, and people are reverberating and amplifying that message as if it is true."

He continued: "Trump is desperate. I don't think there has ever been a candidate more desperate to win, just to keep himself out of prison and to avoid bankruptcy. It is all on the line, and he's out there playing the victim — 'at least they're doing this to me, because if not, they would be doing it to you' — but you haven't falsified your tax records. You don't have classified information in your basement. So the song is saying, let's not be driven apart by one person, especially not a person without any worthy causes."

When asked if Trump's time is passing, Vedder said: "I can't wait. Most thoughtful people are going through a bit of PTSD about it now."

PEARL JAM previously blasted Trump in the song "Quick Escape" which appeared on the band's 2020 album "Gigaton". That track saw Vedder narrating a sci-fi story about a devastated planet — "The lengths we had to go to then/To find a place Trump hadn't fucked up yet" — that ends with humanity taking a bitter one-way flight to start life again on Mars.

Back in March 2018, PEARL JAM bassist Jeff Ament said that having Trump as then-president of the United States seemed "like a bad dream."

In August of that year, PEARL JAM was criticized by some Republicans for a poster that showed the White House in flames and a bald eagle pecking at a skeleton they said was meant to depict Trump. That poster was a collaboration between Ament and Bobby Brown, an artist also known as Bobby Draws Skulls.

When PEARL JAM postponed its U.S. tour in March 2020 at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, the band called out the Trump administration for its lack of leadership amidst the COVID-19 outbreak.

"It certainly hasn't helped that there's been no clear messages from our government regarding people's safety and our ability to go to work," PEARL JAM said. "Having no examples of our national health department's ability to get ahead of this, we have no reason to believe that it will be under control in the coming weeks ahead."

Photo credit: Danny Clinch