When a curtain dropped at Ohana Festival on Friday 25 September, the Pearl Jam drummer question looked settled. Eddie Vedder had just started “Corduroy”. Behind the kit sat Abe Laboriel Jr., Paul McCartney’s longtime drummer, with a giant question mark on his bass drum, and the song’s opening line, “The waiting drove me mad”, seemed to say the rest, Rolling Stone reported.
Laboriel was back for Pearl Jam’s headline set two nights later. Then, on Monday, Vedder thanked him on Instagram for “sitting in on drums for PJ” and thanked McCartney for the loan. More than a year after Matt Cameron left, the band still has not said who its next drummer is.
The Curtain Drop That Started the Guessing
The reveal was staged as a surprise. Ohana’s first night was billed as Eddie Vedder & Friends, and Vedder opened alone, playing solo acoustic versions of Pearl Jam’s “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” and his solo song “Far Behind”. Irish guitarist Simon Good joined him for Glen Hansard’s “Song of Good Hope”, Billy Idol came out for The Who’s “I’m One”, and bassist Jeff Ament arrived for the band’s 1993 deep cut “Bee Girl”, according to Rolling Stone.
Then Vedder called for an electric guitar and began “Corduroy”. He told the crowd he would need some friends to join him, “some really good friends”, as shadowy figures appeared on a large curtain behind him. When it fell, the full band was there, with Laboriel at the drums.
It was Pearl Jam’s first show since Cameron’s exit, but Vedder’s introduction left room for doubt. He presented the drummer as “helping us on drums tonight, Mr. Abe Laboriel Jr.”, and Rolling Stone noted that sceptical fans read that as a possible one-night guest spot. Did the question mark on the drum mean the real answer was still to come?
Sunday’s Headline Set Looked Like a Welcome
By Sunday 27 September the crowd had made up its mind. Before Laboriel even sat down for Pearl Jam’s headline set on the festival’s final night, fans on Doheny Beach were chanting “Abe! Abe! Abe!”, Rolling Stone reported. He smiled and nodded.
Vedder’s stage remarks went further than on Friday. “We’re very honored that a Beatle no less, Paul McCartney, would allow us to borrow him to help us,” he said, before invoking an old musical adage that you cannot be a great band without a great drummer. “So, we thank Abe for keeping us in the running.”
He then dedicated the chorus of “Better Man” to Laboriel, the line “Can’t find a better man”, and Rolling Stone described the drummer holding his hand to his chest and wiping his eyes. The band played 18 songs, from “Alive”, “Daughter” and “Why Go” to “Setting Sun”, “Wreckage” and “Running” from the 2024 album Dark Matter, and closed with “Yellow Ledbetter” as the crowd sang along. The enthusiasm ran far enough that someone edited Wikipedia to list Laboriel as a member of the band, Rolling Stone noted.
One Instagram Note Reopened the Question
On Monday morning, Vedder posted a note thanking everyone who came to Ohana, the festival he co-founded a decade ago, for making its tenth year special. Then came the line that undid the weekend’s certainty. He extended the band’s appreciation to “Abe Laboriel Jr. sitting in on drums for PJ”, called him “obviously extraordinary at his craft”, and signed off: “Thank you so much for this weekend Abe. And thank YOU Paul. We owe you big time.”
The wording matters. When a musician is described as sitting in, Rolling Stone pointed out, that generally means they are guesting, which is close to the opposite of how a band announces a new full-time member. The thanks were for “this weekend”, not for joining. Stereogum noted that the note sat awkwardly beside a Rolling Stone headline that had described Laboriel as Pearl Jam’s official new drummer, and concluded that more clarification was needed. That live review’s headline now says the band welcomed him to the stage.
What Jeff Ament Said Before Anyone Saw the Drummer
The confusion is sharper because Pearl Jam had already said they had made a choice. The group had previously confirmed it had picked a new member while keeping the details under wraps, Rolling Stone’s live review noted. Ament described how that pick was made in an interview with Rolling Stone recorded before the reveal, to promote Since Forever, a book of more than 250 of his black-and-white photographs of the band made with his brother, designer Barry Ament. It came out on 25 September, the same night as the curtain drop.
“It was the first name that came up. … In our minds, let’s start at the top,” Ament said. The hard part, he added, was telling friends who are “killer drummers that we had a guy”. He did not say who it was, and he was careful not to call it permanent: “I hope this is our guy, but I don’t know if it is. We haven’t played a show yet, so it’s pretty hard to be fully committed.” Asked whether the new drummer might turn out to be a robot, he played along, joking that the band had finally solved its endless takes of “Even Flow” with a drum machine.
Read after Ohana, those comments settle nothing. Because Ament never named the drummer, it is not public whether Laboriel is the first name that came up or a stand-in while the band’s real pick waits. Rolling Stone raised the obvious questions, asking whether Laboriel had got cold feet about walking away from a Beatle, or whether he could make time for both jobs, since both acts have a lot of downtime each year. Nobody involved has answered them.
Why Matt Cameron’s Seat Was So Hard to Fill
Cameron’s departure in July 2025 was amicable, Rolling Stone reported. It ended a 27-year run behind the kit, and whoever takes over will be Pearl Jam’s sixth drummer. Ament said he and Cameron used to joke about having three more years left, until they were both 60. “I was joking, and then it turns out that he wasn’t,” Ament said, adding that he understood: at 60, the unrealised dream might simply be sitting at home with your wife.
The long gap fed a guessing game. In the months before Ohana, Rolling Stone wrote, fans floated almost every drummer imaginable, including Stephen Perkins of Jane’s Addiction, Josh Freese of Nine Inch Nails and Laboriel himself. Guitarist Stone Gossard seemed to enjoy it. “I love the mystery of it all,” he told SiriusXM’s Jonathan Cohen in May, adding that the band was excited simply to be getting to play again.
A Festival Vedder Filled With Friends
Laboriel was not the weekend’s only guest. Vedder turned up across the bill, Stereogum reported. He joined Bad Religion for their 1993 track “American Jesus”, on which he had originally sung backing vocals, sang the Doolittle favourite “Wave of Mutilation” with Pixies, and joined Stephen Wilson Jr. for the Temple of the Dog song “Hunger Strike”.
On Sunday, Billy Strings, who had played the Kia Forum the night before, came out for Vedder’s solo acoustic “Elderly Woman” and stayed for two covers with the full band, including a guitar showdown with Mike McCready, according to Stereogum and Rolling Stone. For a band in transition, it was a forgiving setting: Vedder’s own festival, a crowd already on side, and no tour dates riding on the result.
What Comes Next: New Songs, but No Dates
Whoever ends up behind the kit will have new material to learn. Ament told Rolling Stone the band has only just started writing. “I think everybody’s writing, but we haven’t really written a whole bunch of stuff together, but a couple of things that we have done are really good,” he said, warning that it would take “at least a few months”. Asked about a new album and tour next year, he said he would love that, adding: “We’re sort of due.”
For now there is nothing on the calendar. Pearl Jam do not have any concerts scheduled, Rolling Stone noted, so there is no obvious date by which the drummer question has to be answered. That sets the band apart from peers booked far ahead, such as Metallica, whose 24 nights at Sphere start on 1 October.
Until Pearl Jam say otherwise, the facts are these: Laboriel played both Ohana sets, Vedder thanked him for sitting in and thanked McCartney for the loan, and Ament says the band started at the top of its list. Whether those describe the same drummer is the one thing nobody has confirmed.
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