Matt Dillon's backing band, Citizen Dick. Gossard has been active in environmental pursuits, and has been an advocate of Pearl Jam's carbon neutral policy, offsetting the band's environmental impact. He has also extended his conservationist ideals and serves as a member of the board of directors at the Wild Salmon Center, an international conservation organization based in Portland, Oregon. As an artist and painter, Gossard's work can be found on many Pearl Jam releases, especially material distributed through Pearl Jam's fan club. Gossard is also an avid reader and has cited Haruki Murakami and J. R. R. Tolkien as his favorite authors. Musical style and influences Gossard is known for his hard rhythm style of playing, and his sense of beat and groove. Gossard has cited Jimmy Page and Led Zeppelin as a major influence on his style and rhythmic approach on guitar. Gossard's main instrument is a Gibson Les Paul equipped with a Bigsby vibrato system. He once said of himself: "I like rhythmic things that butt up against each other in a cool kind of way." Vedder has been quoted as saying that it is extremely difficult to collaborate with Gossard, as he outright refuses to work on anything remotely like anything he's done before. When the band started, Gossard and McCready were clearly designated as rhythm and lead guitarists, respectively. The dynamic began to change when Vedder started to play more rhythm guitar during the Vitalogy era. McCready said in 2006, "Even though there are three guitars, I think there's maybe more room now. Stone will pull back and play a two-note line and Ed will do a power chord thing, and I fit into all that." As a songwriter, the formation of Pearl Jam led to Gossard's music becoming the basis for many of the band's early songs. Eight of the eleven tracks on Pearl Jam's debut album, Ten, were musically written or co-written by Gossard, including hits "Alive", "Even Flow", and "Black". He has since made less of a solo contribution to the band's work, instead becoming part of the collaborative efforts; however, he was credited as being behind the relatively more recent hits "Do the Evolution" and "Life Wasted" (from Pearl Jam). His songwriting contributions to Pearl Jam have not been limited to music with Gossard writing lyrics on the Yield song "All Those Yesterdays"; "Strangest Tribe" (from the 1999 fan club Christmas single);