Can we please put to rest the "they need to support their family" stuff? They are very, very, rich. Putting out good music would only make them richer. If they could do it, they would.

Ed did speak somewhere once about how being on the board of an LLC does change how things are done and how they themselves have had to become far more involved with everything. Can't remember if he was saying it was a positive or negative thing though. It was an interview somewhere around the time of S/T i think?

It does seem like a lot of 'dead time' for PJ as an entity but they've individually have never seemed busier. Whether recording for PJ gets worked in and around their individual schedules or vice versa, is anyone's guess.

if nothing else the gap certainly indicates that they don't feel that putting out a record is nearly as urgent a proposition as they used to (which is not the same thing as not caring)

You're 100% right - it is what it is. It's why the music from the past 5 years hasn't been and won't nearly be as good as when they were struggling. Ten they were struggling artists just inspired to make great music, VS and Vitalogy they were struggling against their own public perception which in turn inspired great music. No Code was Eddie's struggle against the super fandom/stalkers. Yield was the rest of the band struggling against Eddie to assert their musical influence. Even Binaural and Riot Act they were inspired in different directions with mixed results, but still clearly were all about making music.

Avocado and Backspacer you can tell there was something different. Not that I didn't enjoy both records, but you can tell things had changed. They'd conquered their demons, they were happy, they'd won. Unintentional as it is and unfortunately just the usual evolution of all bands. Happy vs struggling is usually the difference between average and great. Plus the challenges of running your own business is probably more interesting to them at this point. Oh well.

Bring Dave back

It's absolutely motivated by money. Not in a harsh, greedy board room type extreme, but absolutely. Eddie has said so as much when talking about piracy and ticket prices etc. It's age and experience vs maturity. You can't act 20 when you're 50 and have a wife and kids. It becomes so much harder not to think about things in terms of profit and continuing a lifestyle. This happens in all creative arenas. It is what it is for the most part.

the idea that only struggling/depressed people can make decent art is another myth I wish people would put to rest.

True.

Drugs.

It's not 100% true all the time, but more times than not when an artist (be it a writer/comic book artist/musician etc) is not on top of the world, but striving to get there, that it is then you will get the best art out of them. Clearly the guys are very much at ease these days. No evil empire in the white house anymore, no personal substance abuse issues or angst. The edge is a bit dull wouldn't you agree? Again, backspacer and S/T were good enough records, but nothing classic by any stretch of the imagination.

It's not an absolute but the evidence suggests this is the case in a lot of areas, Stip.

Dave has a point. Most musicians I know don't sit down to write when they're happy. When they're happy they spend time with friends and family. With shit ain't right is when they usually sit down to write, yanno?

Yeah, I'm also inclined to agree.

Sorrow, anger, confusion, deep melancholy: all fertile grounds for good songs.

Generally speaking, of course. There are exceptions (but not that many).

But why? I agree - but why?

5, 4, 3, 2, Skipping

When you're happy you're not woodshedding making music. There are so many ways to express happy in socially accepted ways that people don't get good at expressing it in music. You don't repress happiness, looking for an outlet. You experience happiness. But anger, that shit you can bottle up and draw on and exploit. You can repress it until you have a socially accepted venue to express it, like music. It's far easier to recall what made you angry and be angry than it is to recall what made you happy and be happy. So angry songs are the real thing, whereas a happy song is mostly likely a copy of what you remember you were feeling.

it's fertile ground for a lot of shitty songs, too.

Clearly this can be a source of inspiration for some, and Tyler's point about this being one of the only socially acceptable outlets is a good one, but good art also comes from empathy and imagination, which is why generally happy people can also enjoy art describing tortured situations. Tom Waits has been happy for 30 years. I don't think of much of REM's music coming from dark places, especially after the first few records.

I do think that art that comes from a happier place is harder to do well in part because (like love) the experience of happiness is in a lot of ways harder to explain or share in ways that don't sound trite than anger or misery

I think that's true, but I also think there's something fundamental that makes sorrowful music more enjoyable as a listener. I can't speak for all kinds of traditional music, but Greek folk music is certainly chock-full of death, heartbreak and general despair. It's not something that only arose in rock music, it's a theme that's been around as long as music has.

Do people really want to hear music about happiness and contentment, no matter how well-written it is?

Rather? Maybe not. But yea I definitely enjoy hearing such music. Black Crowes do that for me.

I try not to play the "I'm a musician" card very often, mainly because I'm not a very active one anymore, but I do really relate to this particular issue.

When I was younger, I used to write and record music prolifically. Between the years of 2001 and 2006, I probably recorded 10-15 projects of various lengths with various people, and played live constantly. When I started dating my wife late in 2006, things slowed considerably--partially because, once it became serious, I just didn't have the same kind of time to sit with my guitar for hours on end and compose, but mostly because that compulsion to create just wasn't there anymore. When at my most active, getting those songs out at times felt like a matter of life and death; once what would eventually become my family life began to take shape, the compulsion to create became increasingly more a case of simply being a creative person who enjoyed working on creative things rather than a conduit for some kind of do-or-die self-expression. Eventually, I became what, in a loose sense, my art lamented that I wasn't.

I'd recommend the book "This is Your Brain on Music" by Daniel Levitin to anyone interested in the psychology of the art form. There's a great section in there about music as a sexual fitness characteristic which I really found myself relating to. Basically he argues that, on a subconscious level, the evolutionary purpose of music is to signal to prospective mates (a) intellectual fitness, which people lacking in physical prowess not uncommonly play up in their own identities, and (b) that you have enough resources (food, clothes, shelter) to waste time perfecting a purely unnecessary skill. Until I read this, I don't think I'd realized how much of my desire to succeed as a musician was rooted in my desire to pick up chicks. It seems like the kind of thing that people who fancy themselves "proper artists" should be above, but I wonder how much of it is always there on some level. At the very least, it does seem like some of those creative signals tend to get crossed when that function is no longer prevalent.

This is obviously just one person's experience, and plenty of examples exist to the contrary. Food for thought nonetheless.

they probably don't, but you also don't need to be in a horrible place to write about those things either. again that is what empathy and imagination are for. Charles Bukowski did all his best writing recalling a very dark place. Tom Waits wrote very similar stuff imagining a very dark place.