Pearl Jam… I feel like I’ve been watching these guys grow up for the last ten years.
I first heard them in the summer of ’91, back when I was still in Queens. Somebody at the record store put on Ten one slow afternoon. I remember Eddie’s voice getting my attention first, but it was the guitars that kept me listening. “Alive,” “Black,” “Porch” — by the end of that year I’d pretty much worn the record out.
Then I moved to Seattle in ’92 and Pearl Jam were suddenly everywhere. Ten had taken off, everybody was talking about them, and it seemed like every few weeks somebody had another story about Eddie climbing something he probably shouldn’t have been climbing.
The show I remember best was December 9, 1993 at the Seattle Center Arena. It was their third night there in a row and the place was completely nuts. They opened with “Rearviewmirror,” which I wasn’t expecting, and tore through “Whipping,” “Dissident,” “Go,” “Animal,” “State of Love and Trust,” all that stuff. “Daughter” went into a little bit of Bowie’s “Golden Years,” and by the time they got to “Alive” and “Porch” it felt like everybody in the building was singing.
What I remember most is how strange the size of it felt. I’d only been in Seattle about a year and suddenly here was this local band filling the Arena three nights in a row. They were huge by then, but there was still something kind of loose and unpredictable about them onstage.
I think Vs. is still my favorite Pearl Jam record. Ten was the one I fell in love with, but Vs. sounded like a band trying to get away from everything that had just happened to them. Then Vitalogy came along and got even stranger.
That was always one of the things I liked about Pearl Jam. Every time it looked like they could just settle into being a giant rock band, they’d do something to make life harder for themselves.
The whole Ticketmaster fight was probably the best example. In ’94 they went after them over the service charges, and Stone and Jeff actually ended up testifying in Washington. Then they tried to book shows without Ticketmaster, which turned into a complete mess. Whatever you thought about the way they handled it, you had to respect the fact that they were willing to make things difficult for themselves over something they believed in.
And the records kept changing. No Code confused the hell out of a lot of people when it came out, but I liked it. Still do. Yield felt a little more open, and Binaural took me a while. I probably appreciate that one more now than I did two years ago.
The Roskilde thing in 2000 was awful. Nine people died while they were playing. I can’t imagine carrying something like that around with you, and for a while I honestly wondered whether the band would keep going.
But they did.
Eddie was in New York just last week inducting the Ramones into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which seemed pretty damn appropriate. A kid from Queens like me is probably required by law to love the Ramones, so seeing Eddie up there talking about what they meant to him was pretty great.
From what I hear, Pearl Jam are back in the studio working on another record. No idea what it’s going to sound like, which at this point is probably exactly how they want it.
Ten years after I moved here, they’re still around.
I’m glad they are.
