Everything about Pearl Jam totally explained
Pearl Jam is an
American rock band that formed in
Seattle,
Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band's line-up has included
Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar),
Jeff Ament (bass guitar),
Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and
Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band's current drummer is
Matt Cameron, formerly of
Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998.
Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard's previous band
Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album
Ten. One of the key bands of the
grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was criticized early on - most notably by
Nirvana frontman
Kurt Cobain - as being a corporate cash-in on the
alternative rock explosion. However, over the course of the band's career its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices; including refusing to make
music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of
Ticketmaster. In 2006,
Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame."
Since its inception, the band has sold 30 million records in the U.S., and an estimated 60 million albums worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, and "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s".
History
Formation: 1984–1990
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of pioneering grunge band
Green River during the mid-1980s. Green River toured and recorded to moderate success but disbanded in 1987 due to a stylistic division between the pair and bandmates
Mark Arm and
Steve Turner. In late 1987, Gossard and Ament began playing with
Malfunkshun vocalist
Andrew Wood, eventually organizing the band
Mother Love Bone. In 1988 and 1989, the band recorded and toured to increasing interest and found the support of the
PolyGram record label, which signed the band in early 1989. Their debut album,
Apple was released in July 1990, four months after Wood died of a
heroin overdose.
Ament and Gossard were devastated by the death of Wood and the resulting demise of Mother Love Bone. Gossard spent his time afterwards writing material that was harder-edged than what he'd been doing previously. After a few months, Gossard started practicing with fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready, whose band Shadow had broken up; McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with Ament. Vedder was the lead vocalist for a San Diego band,
Bad Radio, and worked part time at a gas station. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him. and soon signed to
Epic Records. However, concerns about trademark issues necessitated a name change; the band's name became "Pearl Jam". In a 2006
Rolling Stone cover story however, Vedder admitted that this story was "total bullshit" (even though his great-grandma was indeed named Pearl). Ament and McCready explained that Ament came up with "pearl", and that the band later settled on "Pearl Jam" after attending a concert by
Neil Young, in which he stretched up his songs as improvisations of 15-20 minutes in length, a practice known as
jamming. Krusen left the band in May 1991 after checking himself into rehabilitation; he was replaced by
Matt Chamberlain, who had previously played with
Edie Brickell & New Bohemians. After playing only a handful of shows, one of which was filmed for the "Alive" video, Chamberlain left to join the
Saturday Night Live band. Chamberlain suggested
Dave Abbruzzese as his replacement. Abbruzzese joined the group and played the rest of Pearl Jam's live shows supporting the
Ten album.
Released on
August 27,
1991,
Ten (named after Mookie Blaylock's jersey number) The album was slow to sell, but by the second half of 1992 it became a breakthrough success, being certified gold and reaching number two on the
Billboard charts.
Ten stayed on the
Billboard charts for more than two years, and has gone on to become one of the biggest-selling rock records ever, going
twelve times platinum.
With the success of
Ten, Pearl Jam became a key member of the Seattle grunge explosion, along with
Nirvana,
Alice in Chains, and
Soundgarden. The band was criticized in the music press;
British music magazine
NME said that Pearl Jam was "trying to steal money from young alternative kids' pockets". Nirvana's
Kurt Cobain angrily attacked Pearl Jam, claiming the band were commercial
sellouts, and argued
Ten wasn't a true alternative album because it had so many prominent guitar leads.]]
The band members grew uncomfortable with their success, with much of the burden of Pearl Jam's popularity falling on frontman Vedder.
Vs. included the singles "
Daughter", "
Dissident", "
Go", and "
Animal". The band decided, beginning with the release of
Vs., to scale back its commercial efforts. The members declined to produce any more music videos after the massive success of "Jeremy" and opted to give fewer interviews and make fewer television appearances. Industry insiders compared Pearl Jam's tour that year to the touring habits of
Led Zeppelin, in that the band "ignored the press and took its music directly to the fans." During the
Vs. tour, the band set a cap on ticket prices in an attempt to thwart scalpers.
By 1994, Pearl Jam was "fighting on all fronts", as its manager described the band at the time. Pearl Jam was outraged when, after it played a pair of shows in
Chicago, it discovered that ticket vendor
Ticketmaster had added a service charge to the tickets. The
United States Department of Justice was investigating the company's practices at the time and asked the band to create a memorandum of its experiences with the company. Gossard and Ament soon testified at a subcommittee investigation in
Washington, D.C. The band eventually canceled its 1994 summer tour in protest. After the Justice Department dropped the case, Pearl Jam continued to boycott Ticketmaster, refusing to play venues that had contracts with the company. Music critic
Jim DeRogatis noted that along with the Ticketmaster debacle, "the band has refused to release singles or make videos; it has demanded that its albums be released on vinyl; and it wants to be more like its '60s heroes,
The Who, releasing two or three albums a year." He also stated that sources said that most of the band's third album
Vitalogy was completed by early 1994, but that either a forced delay by Epic or that the battle with Ticketmaster were to blame for the delay.
After Pearl Jam finished the recording of
Vitalogy, drummer Dave Abbruzzese was fired. The band cited political differences between Abbruzzese and the other members; for example, Abbruzzese disagreed with the Ticketmaster boycott. The song "
Spin the Black Circle", a homage to vinyl records, won a
Grammy Award in 1996 for
Best Hard Rock Performance.
Vitalogy also included the songs "
Not for You", "
Corduroy", "
Immortality", and "
Better Man". "Better Man", a song originally penned and performed by Vedder while in Bad Radio, reached number one on the
Billboard Mainstream Rock chart, spending a total of eight weeks there. Considered a "blatantly great pop song" by producer Brendan O'Brien, Pearl Jam was reluctant to record it and had initially rejected it from
Vs. due to its accessibility.
The band continued its boycott against Ticketmaster during its
1995 tour for
Vitalogy, but was surprised that virtually no other bands joined it in refusing to play at Ticketmaster venues. Pearl Jam's initiative to play only at non-Ticketmaster venues effectively, with a few exceptions, prevented it from playing shows in the United States for the next three years. In the same year Pearl Jam backed
Neil Young, whom the band had noted as an influence, on his album
Mirror Ball. Contractual obligations prevented the use of the band's name anywhere on the album, but the members were all credited individually in the album's liner notes. favoring experimental ballads and noisy garage rockers. Although the album debuted at number one on the
Billboard charts, it quickly fell down the charts.
No Code included the singles "
Hail, Hail", "
Who You Are", and "
Off He Goes". As with
Vitalogy, very little touring was done to promote
No Code because of the band's refusal to play in Ticketmaster's venue areas. A
European tour followed in the fall of 1996.
On
February 3,
1998, Pearl Jam released its fifth album,
Yield. The album was cited as a return to the band's early, straightforward rock sound,
Yield debuted at number two on the
Billboard charts, but like
No Code soon began dropping down the charts. It included the singles "
Given to Fly" and "
Wishlist". The band hired comic book artist
Todd McFarlane to create an animated video for the song "
Do the Evolution" from the album, its first music video since 1992. A documentary detailing the making of
Yield,
Single Video Theory, was released on VHS and DVD later that year.
In June 1998, Pearl Jam once again changed drummers. Jack Irons left the band due to dissatisfaction with touring and was replaced with former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron on an initially temporary basis, but he soon became a permanent replacement for Irons. Pearl Jam's 1998
Yield Tour of North America marked the band’s return to full-scale touring. The band's
anti-trust lawsuit against Ticketmaster had proven to be unsuccessful and hindered live tours. Many fans had complained about the difficulty in obtaining tickets and the use of non-Ticketmaster venues, which were judged to be out-of-the-way and impersonal. For this tour and future tours, Pearl Jam once again began using Ticketmaster in order to "better accommodate concertgoers." The 1998 summer tour was a tremendous success, and after it was completed the band released
Live on Two Legs, a live album which featured select performances from the tour.
In 1998, Pearl Jam recorded "
Last Kiss", a cover of a 1960s ballad made famous by
J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. It was recorded during a soundcheck and released on the band's 1998
fan club single. The following year, the cover was put into heavy rotation across the country. By popular demand, the cover was released to the general public as a single in 1999, with all of the proceeds going to the aid of refugees of the
Kosovo War.
Binaural was the first album since the band's debut not produced by
Brendan O'Brien, although O'Brien was called in later to remix several tracks.
Binaural included the singles "
Nothing As It Seems", one of the songs featuring binaural recording, and "
Light Years". The album sold just over 700,000 copies and became the first Pearl Jam studio album to fail to reach platinum status.
Pearl Jam decided to record every show on its 2000
Binaural Tour professionally, after noting the desire of fans to own a copy of the shows they attended and the popularity of illegal
bootleg recordings. The band had been open in the past about allowing fans to make amateur recordings, and these
"official bootlegs" were an attempt to provide a more affordable and better quality product for fans. The band originally intended to release them to only fan club members, but their record contract prevented them from doing so. Pearl Jam released all of the albums in record stores as well as through its fan club. The band released 72 live albums in 2000 and 2001, and set a record for most albums to debut in the
Billboard 200 at the same time.
Pearl Jam's 2000 European tour ended in tragedy on
June 30, with an accident at the
Roskilde Festival in
Denmark. Nine fans were crushed underfoot and suffocated to death as the crowd rushed to the front. The band stopped playing and tried to calm the crowd when the musicians realized what was happening, but it was already too late. The two remaining dates of the tour were canceled, and the band seriously considered retiring after this event. Pearl Jam was initially blamed for the accident, but the band was later cleared of responsibility.
A month after the European tour concluded, the band embarked on its two-leg 2000 North American tour. On
October 22,
2000, the band played the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, celebrating the tenth anniversary of its first live performance as a band. Eddie Vedder took the opportunity to thank the many people who had helped the band come together and make it to ten years. He noted that "I would never do this accepting a Grammy or something." The song "Alive" was purposely omitted from all shows on this tour until the
final night in Seattle. The band performed that night for over three hours, playing most of its hits along with covers such as "
The Kids Are Alright" and "
Baba O'Riley" by
The Who. After concluding the Binaural Tour, the band released
Touring Band 2000 the following year. The DVD featured select performances from the North American legs of the tour.
Following the events of the
September 11 terrorist attacks, Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready joined
Neil Young to perform the song "
Long Road" from the
Merkin Ball EP at the benefit concert. The concert, which aired on
September 21,
2001, raised money for the victims and their families.
Riot Act: 2002–2005
Pearl Jam released its seventh album,
Riot Act on
November 12,
2002. It included the singles "
I Am Mine" and "
Save You". The album featured a much more
folk-based and experimental sound, evident in the presence of
B3 organist
Boom Gaspar on songs such as "
Love Boat Captain". The track entitled "
Arc" was recorded as a vocal tribute to the nine people who died at the Roskilde Festival in June 2000. Vedder only performed this song nine times on the 2003 tour, and the band left the track off all released bootlegs.
In 2003, the band embarked on its
Riot Act Tour, which included tours of Australia and North America. The band continued its official bootleg program, making every concert from the tour available in CD form through its website. A total of six bootlegs were made available in record stores:
Perth,
Tokyo,
State College,
Pennsylvania, two shows from
Madison Square Garden, and
Mansfield,
Massachusetts. At many shows during the 2003 North American tour, Vedder performed
Riot Act's "
Bu$hleaguer", a commentary on
President George W. Bush, with a rubber mask of Bush, wearing it at the beginning of the song and then typically hanging it on a mic stand to allow him to sing. The band made news when it was reported that several fans left after Vedder had "impaled" the Bush mask on his mic stand at the band's
Denver,
Colorado show.
In June 2003, Pearl Jam announced it was officially leaving Epic Records following the end of its contract with the label. The band stated it had "no interest" in signing with another label. The band's first release without a label was the single for "
Man of the Hour", in partnership with
Amazon.com. Director
Tim Burton approached Pearl Jam to request an original song for the soundtrack of his new film,
Big Fish. After screening an early print of the film, Pearl Jam recorded the song "
Man of the Hour" for Burton. "Man of the Hour", which was later nominated for a
Golden Globe award, can be heard in the closing credits of
Big Fish.
The band released
Lost Dogs, a two-disc collection of rarities and B-sides, and
Live at the Garden, a DVD featuring the band's
July 8 2003 concert at
Madison Square Garden through Epic Records in November 2003. In 2004, Pearl Jam released the live album
Live at Benaroya Hall through a one-album deal with
BMG. 2004 marked the first time that Pearl Jam licensed a song for usage in a television show; a snippet of the song "
Yellow Ledbetter" was used in the
final episode of the television series
Friends. Later that year, Epic released
rearviewmirror, a Pearl Jam greatest hits collection spanning 1991 to 2003. This release marked the end of Pearl Jam's contractual agreement with Epic Records.
Pearl Jam played a show at Easy Street Records in Seattle in April 2005; recordings from the show were compiled for the
Live at Easy Street album and released exclusively to independent record stores in June 2006. The band embarked on a Canadian
cross-country tour in September 2005, kicking off the tour with a fundraising concert in Missoula, Montana for Democratic politician
Jon Tester, then playing the
Gorge Amphitheater before crossing into Canada. After touring Canada, Pearl Jam proceeded to open a
Rolling Stones concert in Pittsburgh, then played two shows at the
Borgata casino in
Atlantic City,
New Jersey, before closing the tour with a concert in
Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. The official bootlegs for the band's 2005 shows were distributed via Pearl Jam's website in
MP3 form. Pearl Jam also played a
benefit concert to raise money for
Hurricane Katrina relief on
October 5,
2005, at the
House of Blues in
Chicago,
Illinois. On
November 22 2005 Pearl Jam began its first Latin American tour.
Move to J Records: 2006–present
Clive Davis announced in February 2006 that Pearl Jam had signed with his label,
J Records, which like Epic, is part of the
Sony BMG group. The band's eighth studio album,
Pearl Jam, was released on
May 2,
2006. A number of critics cited
Pearl Jam as a return to the band's early sound, with Mike McCready having compared the new material to
Vs. in a 2005 interview. "
World Wide Suicide", a song criticizing the
Iraq War and U.S. foreign policy, was released as a single and topped the
Billboard Modern Rock chart; it was Pearl Jam's first number one on that chart since "
Who You Are" in 1996, and first number one on any chart in the United States since 1998 when "
Given to Fly" reached number one on the
Mainstream Rock chart.
To support
Pearl Jam, the band embarked on its
2006 world tour. It toured North America, Australia and notably Europe; Pearl Jam hadn't toured the continent for six years. The band served as the headliners for the
Leeds and
Reading festivals, despite having vowed to never play at a festival again after
Roskilde. Vedder started both concerts with an emotional plea to the crowd to look after each other. He commented during the Leeds set that the band's decision to play a festival for the first time after Roskilde had nothing to do with "guts" but with trust in the audience.
In 2007, Pearl Jam recorded a cover of
The Who's "
Love, Reign o'er Me" for the
Mike Binder film,
Reign Over Me; it was later made available as a
music download on the
iTunes Music Store. The band embarked on a
13-date European tour, and headlined
Lollapalooza in
Grant Park, on
August 5 2007. The band released a CD box set in June 2007, entitled
Live at the Gorge 05/06, that documents its shows at
The Gorge Amphitheatre, and in September 2007 a concert DVD, entitled
Immagine In Cornice, which documents the band's Italian shows from their 2006 tour was released.
Rolling Stone reported in May 2008 that Pearl Jam is in the early stages of working on the band's ninth studio album. The new album will be the first Pearl Jam album produced by Brendan O'Brien since 1998's
Yield. Mike McCready stated that the album is "really in its infant stages right now...we have about five ideas that have been worked on." In June 2008, Pearl Jam will perform as the headline act at the
Bonnaroo Music Festival. The Bonnaroo appearance will take place amidst a
twelve-date tour of the Eastern United States in June 2008.
Musical style
Compared with the other
grunge bands of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam’s style is noticeably less heavy and harkens back to the
classic rock music of the 1970s. Pearl Jam has cited many
punk rock and classic rock bands as influences, including
The Who,
Neil Young, and the
Ramones. Pearl Jam’s success has been attributed to its sound, which fuses "the riff-heavy stadium rock of the '70s with the grit and anger of '80s post-punk, without ever neglecting hooks and choruses." The band’s 1996 album,
No Code, was a deliberate break from the musical style of
Ten. The songs on the album featured elements of
garage rock,
worldbeat, and
experimentalism. Vedder's lyrical topics range from personal ("Alive", "Better Man") to social and political concerns ("Even Flow", "World Wide Suicide"). 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."
Legacy
While Nirvana had brought grunge to the
mainstream in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam quickly outsold them and became not only the most popular alternative rock band, but the most popular American rock band of the decade. The band inspired and influenced a number of bands, ranging from
Silverchair to
Puddle of Mudd and
The Strokes. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries in the grunge scene like
Nirvana and
Soundgarden, and also bands it has influenced such as
Creed. Eric Weisbard of
Spin said in 2001, "The group that was once accused of being synthetic grunge now seem as organic and principled a rock band as exists." In April 2006, Pearl Jam was awarded an Esky for "Best Live Act" in Esquire's Esky Music Awards. The blurb called Pearl Jam "the rare superstars who still play as though each show could be their last."
Campaigning and activism
Throughout their career, Pearl Jam has promoted wider social and political issues, from
pro-choice sentiments to
opposition to George W. Bush's presidency. Vedder acts as the band's spokesman on these issues. The band has promoted an array of causes, including awareness of
Crohn's disease, which lead guitarist
Mike McCready suffers from,
Ticketmaster venue monopolization and the environment and wildlife protection, among others. Vedder has advocated for the release of the
West Memphis 3 for years and
Damien Echols, a member of the three, shares a writing credit for the song "Army Reserve" (from
Pearl Jam). The band publicize such causes via their website and include links to alternative news sources.
The band, and especially frontman Eddie Vedder, have been vocal supporters of the pro-choice movement. In 1992
Spin printed an article by Vedder, entitled "Reclamation", that detailed his views on abortion. In an
MTV Unplugged concert the same year, Vedder stood on a stool and wrote "PRO-CHOICE!" on his arm in protest. and Pearl Jam played a series of concerts on the Vote for Change tour in October 2004, supporting the candidacy of
John Kerry for
U.S. President. In a
Rolling Stone feature showcasing the Vote for Change tour's performers, Vedder told the magazine, "I supported Ralph Nader in 2000, but it's a time of crisis. We have to get a new administration in."
Vedder usually comments on politics between songs, often to criticize U.S. foreign policy, and a number of his songs, including "
Bu$hleaguer" and "
World Wide Suicide", are openly critical of the
Bush administration. At Lollapalooza 2007, Vedder spoke out against
BP Amoco dumping effluent in Lake Michigan; at the end of "Daughter", he sang the lyrics "George Bush leave this world alone/George Bush find yourself another home". In the beginning of the second encore Vedder invited Iraq war veteran Tomas Young, the subject of the documentary
Body of War, onto the stage to urge an end to the war. Young in turn introduced
Ben Harper, who contributed vocals to "No More" and "Rockin' in the Free World". The band has since discovered that some of the Bush-related lyrics were excised from the
AT&T webcast of the event, and are questioning whether that constitutes censorship. AT&T later apologized and blamed the censorship on contractor
Davie Brown Entertainment.
Pearl Jam has performed numerous benefit concerts in aid of charities. For example, the band headlined a Seattle concert in 2001 to support the
United Nations' efforts to combat world hunger. The band added a date at the Chicago House of Blues to their 2005 tour to help the victims of
Hurricane Katrina; the concert proceeds were donated to
Habitat for Humanity, the
American Red Cross and the Jazz Foundation of America.
Discography
Studio albums
Awards and nominations
Awards
Further Information
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