Vs. 9781501355301, 9781501355332, 9781501355325

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction: My Generation Loved Their Town
Band versus Fame
Chapter 1: Grunge Glory and Growing Pains
Chapter 2: Vedder Under Pressure
Band versus World
Chapter 3: Five Against One: “Go” ● “Leash”
Chapter 4: Seeds of Activism: “Animal” ● “Rats” ● “Daughter” ● “Dissident” ● “W.M.A.”
Chapter 5: Taking (and Throwing) Punches: “Blood” ● “Indifference”
Band versus Self
Chapter 6: The Once and Future Producer: “Rearviewmirror” ● “Better Man” ● “Crazy Mary”
Chapter 7: Rhythm and Blues: “Glorified G”
Band versus Future
Chapter 8: Not Changing at All: “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town”
Chapter 9: The Means to Make Amends
Thanks
Notes
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Also Available in the Series

Citation preview

Vs. Praise for the series: It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch … The series … is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration — The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren’t enough — Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet — Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds — Vice A brilliant series … each one a work of real love — NME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smart — Nylon Religious tracts for the rock ’n’ roll faithful — Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series — Uncut (UK) We … aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way … watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Bloomsbury’s “33 31” series of books — Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com and our website at http:​//www​.bloo​msbur​y.com​/ musi​cands​ounds​tudie​s Follow us on Twitter: @333books Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Forthcoming in the series: Band of Gypsys by Michael E. Veal Timeless by Martyn Deykers Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 by Colin Fleming Once Upon a Time by Alex Jeffery Tin Drum by Agata Pyzik The Archandroid by Alyssa Favreau Avalon by Simon Morrison Rio by Annie Zaleski xx by Jane Morgan and many more…

Vs.

Clint Brownlee

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2021 Copyright © Clint Brownlee, 2021 For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. 137 constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-5530-1 ePDF: 978-1-5013-5532-5 eBook: 978-1-5013-5531-8 1

Series: 333

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

For Mom, who made me listen.

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Contents

Introduction: My Generation Loved Their Town

1

Band versus Fame 7 1 2

Grunge Glory and Growing Pains Vedder Under Pressure

9 22

Band versus World 35 3 Five Against One: “Go” ● “Leash” 37 4 Seeds of Activism: “Animal” ● “Rats” ● “Daughter” ● “Dissident” ● “W.M.A.” 50 5 Taking (and Throwing) Punches: “Blood” ● “Indifference” 67 Band versus Self 87 6 The Once and Future Producer: “Rearviewmirror” ● “Better Man” ● “Crazy Mary” 89 7 Rhythm and Blues: “Glorified G” 104

C o n te n ts

Band versus Future113 8 Not Changing at All: “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” 9 The Means to Make Amends

115 131

Thanks Notes

137 139

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Introduction My Generation Loved Their Town California, 1993. I’m nineteen, naive, a human-shaped mass of anxiety and insecurity. I’m living at home, attending community college, procrastinating, fretting over acne. I work in the Garden Center at my hometown Walmart. Billy Ray Cyrus makes an appearance in the music department there—the same place I bought a Nevermind CD—on my day off; I don’t go, as my brief country phase ended in junior high. My gangsta rap phase is history, too. My hair is long, my goatee scraggly and spare. Every day I wear jean shorts, thermal underwear, clunky boots. Flannel. I want to be someone, somewhere else. Pearl Jam is my favorite band, thanks almost entirely to my mom. She loved the Beatles—was one of those smitten, TVglued teens when the British boys crossed the pond. Though a deep dive into Christianity derailed her musical interests for a time—I had a half-hearted Christian rock phase, too— her ear for a solidly crafted song had not diminished. “You have to watch this MTV video,” she’d said one day. I think I’d already heard the song, but didn’t know what Pearl Jam looked like, didn’t know who they were, hadn’t paid close attention. “The singer is so intense,” she’d added, clearly

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taken—as she’d been with the Fab Four—with what she’d seen and heard. Well, I soon watched “Jeremy,” and that was it. Everything changed. A new phase began that still endures: long live rock. Mom was right there with me, listening and encouraging. We read about, and tuned in to, Seattle’s music scene (at least to those acts that were publicized on and beyond MTV in my state). I started dressing like I belonged in that dank, fascinating Pacific Northwest city, despite the arid heat. My meager tape and CD collection began to grow, to get grungier. ● Late that summer, I learned that Pearl Jam would be playing in San Francisco around Halloween. A close friend and I lobbied our folks to let us drive down (from north of the Sacramento valley) because their house rules still applied. Go have fun, but be careful, mine said when the time came. I think my mom was at least a little jealous. Dad wasn’t much for rock music, but understood the draw. One small problem: we didn’t have tickets, and the show was sold out. The plan was to arrive at the Warfield Theatre early and find a scalper who wouldn’t scalp us too deeply. We had a combined $110 in cash. We might have been in for nothing but a long-ass drive and a lot of disappointment. But no! Two days after I attended a Tower Records-hosted Vs. release party, I parked my dad’s drafty old Ford Courier in San Francisco and we walked toward the venue—anxious, hopeful, scared—until we came upon a loose crowd of 2

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similarly dressed young people chatting, laughing, smoking. We tuned our ears toward talk of tickets, offers to sell. We’d never bought from a scalper before. Hell, I’d never been to a real concert before. Finally, something promising: a girl had a ring of people in eager postures around her, and tickets in her hand. Just two. We made a beeline for her. She was offering the seats, but clearly uncomfortable; I got the feeling she’d never played the role of scalper. A first for her, too. A surprising assertiveness suddenly bloomed inside me. “We’ll give you $110!” I nearly shouted, risking our entire wad right off the bat. But the offer swayed her, we swapped paper rectangles, and my friend and I were going to see fucking Pearl Jam! In a beneficial coincidence that wouldn’t reveal itself for twenty-five years, I was there for the band’s first US show to support Vs. (And now you have this book.) I witnessed Eddie Vedder throwing Halloween candy to the crowd, Mike McCready smashing his guitar to shrapnel (and slicing open his hand in the process), bassist Jeff Ament jumping with splayed legs, guitarist Stone Gossard grimacing and working his neck in pigeon fashion as he played, Dave Abbruzzese fluidly machine-gunning the drums, and, of course, the magic of a powerful, emotionally invested rock band. I was in the same building as the guy who bared his teeth and soul in the “Jeremy” video, and got to personally see him do that very thing. My friend and I were on another plane when we emerged from the dark theater after the last notes of “Indifference” had faded. We were barely tethered to the ground. The 3

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microphone shoved at us didn’t register for what it was at first. Then an eager voice, shouting in our faces, “Hey, I’m a writer with Kerrang! magazine. What did you think of the show? What do you think of Pearl Jam? Are they your generation’s Led Zeppelin?” The questions came fast and our answers were inept, incoherent, sent from another planet. The microphone found other faces. The journalist, I didn’t appreciate until years later, was just one emissary from the throngs making “grunge”1 a culture-changing thing. The guy was just as responsible for how I was dressed as the members of Pearl Jam were. Fittingly, I waited in line to buy (charge) band merch. I got the only T-shirt available, a black one that didn’t even bear the band’s name, which was both cool and disappointing. It had a weird street sign graphic and the song title “W.M.A.” on the front. “POLICE” was emblazoned in white on the back. I would wear it, without really understanding its significance, for several years. I was nineteen. Pearl Jam was my Led Zeppelin. Music had made itself an inextricable part of me before I was even sure what “me” was. I was the grunge generation. ● Ten days earlier, on October 18, 1993, Vedder and Ament had rambled about Vs. and their band, and bantered with telephoning fans, on the Seattle-broadcasted Rockline radio show. I revisited the recording in 2019 out of professional and personal curiosity and was struck by how telling of a document it remains. It’s a lo-fi form of promotion that 4

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Vedder approved of at the time and contains repeated, enthusiastic takedowns of mainstream media; reveals an easy camaraderie between the frontman and bassist; and showcases Vedder’s unwillingness to speak more than anecdotally about his lyrics or himself, which he then oddly (and endearingly) countered by giving listeners his actual phone number. The show was, like Vs., a snapshot of young artists who were both reeling and careening, riding a wave and thrashing away from it. During that broadcast, the bandmates unknowingly presaged—and proactively dismissed—countless pieces that would be written about Pearl Jam, its members, and its music in the years to follow. As would become a hallmark of the band’s career, Vedder and Ament emphasized art over press, creation over observation. “That’s why we picked a beautiful art form like music. All your thoughts and emotions, they come out much clearer and much more intense, you know, when coupled with music,” Vedder said. “All this talk about it. There shouldn’t be so much talk. People act like they know about all these bands. But it’s just from what they read. They don’t even really listen to them anymore.”2 Ament added, “Whenever I try to explain a record that I really, really like to somebody, like if I just bought a record, like the new Liz Phair record, like if I was gonna explain what it sounded like, I could never really explain it. I always end up getting caught up and stuttering something, and then I say ‘Just go buy it, ’cause it’s really cool.’”3 Now, I’m guessing you bought a copy of Vs. long ago—or maybe you stream it via your favorite music platform now 5

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and then—so you’re already invested in the music. And you’re reading this book, so you’re open to my “talk.” I hope, then, that you’ll find it adds to your understanding of the record (and the history of the band), that it complements the sounds and songs you may be intimately, or perhaps only vaguely, familiar with. I hope it opens your ears to take something new from your next listen. Vedder actually said it best: “Whatever is printed seems like gospel. I don’t know. Your interpretation is the most important one.”4 This is my interpretation. It’s far from gospel, but maybe it will help you shape your take.

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Band versus Fame

8

1 Grunge Glory and Growing Pains

Though a rock music scene began coalescing in Seattle in the mid-1980s, it went unnoticed by almost everyone outside of Pacific Northwest music circles until 1991–2, when the grunge phenomenon hit like a rogue wave. It was huge, and seemed to come out of nowhere. In that region during those formative years, though—a rough triangle stretching north from Seattle to Bellingham, east to Ellensburg, and south to Portland, Oregon—dozens of bands and countless factors contributed to a building grassroots thrill, a feeling that not only was the collective music community (and its individual local movements) maturing into something borderline significant, but also that said significance might reach beyond those rough boundaries. It was an underground groundswell, intertwining the typically male rock scene with a growing female-driven contingent. It was fueled by punk devotees, metalheads, and classic rock fans growing comfortable with each other’s styles. The momentum gained pace and urgency as one decade rolled to the next.

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Local acts played dingy clubs in the area, fizzled, and morphed into others. Some recorded songs and albums. Alternative papers and fanzines covered the developments. Independent labels sprang up, among them the eventual iconic Sub Pop Records. Multiple musicians suffered fatal drug overdoses. Remaining bandmates grieved via new chords and rhythms. Soundgarden and Alice in Chains gained followings and signed major-label deals. Nirvana jumped from Sub Pop to big-time label DGC. Pearl Jam formed and signed with Epic Records in what seemed the blink of an eye. The feeling that something meaningful was developing in the area had materialized into undeniable reality by the end of 1990. Beyond the PNW, this Seattle-centered movement exploded spontaneously, white-hot, with “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in late 1991. Nirvana’s raw, disaffected yet melodic sound was revolutionary, worlds apart from popular radio’s treacly parade of synthetic pop and hair metal. With it, the tide turned, and by fall of 1992, any question of the infectious new sound’s staying power was erased by the single release of Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy.” Grunge had become the nation’s, and the world’s, soundtrack. The heavy guitars and moods of these songs and their accompanying stylized videos were not just markedly different than the blithe, superficial music that had so recently dominated the airwaves; they also reflected a young generation’s skepticism of pop culture’s champions, of the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” approach to both artistic consumption and living life. The songs reflected a disillusionment with the Gulf War and frustration with 10

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the powers-that-be who deemed it necessary. The themes were deep and poetic and encouraged study through repeat listening. The bass lines and guitar chords were chunky and layered—audible ladders that gave inviting purchase. And, of course, they were simply successful songs; they sounded great, induced bouncing knees (and banging heads), and encouraged singing along. In short, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and “Jeremy” were cathartic. The albums that featured them, then—Nevermind and Ten—didn’t just shift musical tastes. They changed lives. The fact that I bought Nirvana’s record at a rural northern California big-box retail store speaks for the generation-altering phenomenon that was grunge; in about one year, it had become mass-marketed and commoditized. (And scores of Seattle bands were given record deals based largely on the resulting hype.) I was one of the millions blown away by the “Seattle Sound”1 at an impressionable age, one of the young, unshorn masses with eyes glued to MTV. Radio and television fed us more—more Pearl Jam and Nirvana songs, Soundgarden songs, Alice in Chains, Temple of the Dog, the Singles film and soundtrack. Cameron Crowe’s story put Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Chris Cornell, Layne Staley—and Seattle—on the big screen. National rock magazines, too, showed us how cool all these guys were with their hair and torn clothing and clear disinterest in mainstream culture. They sure as hell didn’t concern themselves with colleges and careers and their parents’ politics or religions. Look how much they enjoyed playing music! Look how comfortable they were on stage, off 11

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stage, with interviewers, in their flannels, with their shirts off! They were so fucking cool. And they didn’t need hair spray, spandex, or sexed-up models to prove it. To California and Nebraska and Florida and Barcelona and Sydney kids, this was a sudden sea change. To the guys making this music, it was a profoundly mixed blessing. To America, Europe, and beyond, it was a less than two-year upending of conventional culture, where bubbly genres that had recently been successful were almost completely replaced with heavy, though still melodic, rock and roll— almost exclusively made in the Pacific Northwest. And the movement had only begun. The long-gestating underground had become the main­ stream, and listeners were insatiable. They voraciously con­ sumed photos, videos, magazines, clothes—see Marc Jacobs’s 1993 grunge-inspired (and ridiculously expensive) fashion line—and the music, of course. They craved records. They needed tours. They yearned to touch the hands of the freshly crowned rock gods howling into mics, slinging guitars, pounding drums. They bathed in the sweat flung from musicians’—and fellow concertgoers’—whipping hair. And as is consumerist culture’s way, what fans got was never enough. Now, imagine being an early twentysomething whose talents and passion have suddenly become a lucrative commodity. You’re a musician who always dreamed of making a living through your art, if not outright rock stardom—and bam, you’re living that dream. You had your preferences and ideals, but whatever they were, there was no time to check your rise against them. You’re suddenly 12

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making money playing music and don’t need to wash dishes or serve coffee or wait tables to cover the rent. It goes beyond the creatively satisfying and monetarily rewarding, too. People adore you. In the physical sense, in the stargazing sense, in the gold-digging sense. Take your pick of sexual partners. Drink or dope up all you want, if that’s your thing. Forget about responsibilities. People will do errands and accounting for you. They will load, carry, and unload your gear. They’ll do anything to keep you inspired and encouraged, to keep you writing and recording and touring. Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad? It certainly doesn’t turn off some artists and acts, and isn’t inherently negative. But one inevitable by-product is a need to constantly be on, to either subsume yourself and always be available to others, or to make that accessibility an inauthentic act. Pearl Jam’s members weren’t ready for this. When thrust into the spotlight and handed the world, they jerked back as if delivered an electric shock. Not that there weren’t mixed emotions; success brought with it a host of fickle reactions from guitarists Gossard and Mike McCready, bassist Ament, drummers Dave Krusen and Dave Abbruzzese, and Vedder. Amusement. Sarcasm. Disdain. Excitement. Fear. And, ultimately, crystallized by Vedder’s leadership position in the band, affront. That hadn’t been Vedder’s initial response to growing crowds and enthusiasm. Once the San Diego (by way of Illinois) vocalist and guitarist grew comfortable—with Seattle, with larger audiences, with being accepted by respected locals like Cornell—his early shy demeanor and 13

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stage presence transformed into an earnest openness. He wore his emotions on his proverbial sleeve on stage and off. He met with concertgoers after shows, replied to fan mail with handwritten letters, sometimes reached out to fans by phone. Vedder valued the personal connection he could make with people through music, and the more the better; it validated writing and performing songs in the first place. But that initial success snowballed, picking up speed as it expanded. The attention quickly grew too constricting, too demanding. As Ten and its songs ascended Billboard charts in 1992, Vedder himself rose to icon status. He and Kurt Cobain were anointed unofficial spokesmen for a generation that sought individualism and independence, and saw the artists as poster boys of in-your-face integrity. Vedder and Cobain were plastered on magazine covers, were front-andcenter on TV, and had to fight for moments of privacy. Not even the comfort of home was sacred; a manic fan attempted to crash her car through the wall Vedder had only recently erected on his property. ● It was too much, too fast. The fame, the demands, the exposure. When “Jeremy” premiered on MTV on August 1, 1992, Pearl Jam had been a band for less than two years. Ten, the album that featured the song, had been out almost exactly one year. The band’s members had become global rock stars with one record. As Vedder noted later, it was like “being strapped to a rocket ship. But some of us weren’t built for speed.”2

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When I spoke with him about that ascent for a magazine article, pointing out that he’d gone from a gas station employee to a cultural icon in a virtual snap of the fingers, he corrected me: “I went from a gas station attendant to a mental case.”3 So after the “Jeremy” single and video hit, out of selfpreservation, Vedder and Pearl Jam pulled back. No more videos. Fewer interviews. Even as the accolades and awards rolled in, they eschewed wide publicity. Vedder, both the performing and public voice of the band, put a stop to almost everything. This retreat wasn’t seen as wholly necessary by the entire quintet. Ament and Gossard, members of Pearl Jam precursor Mother Love Bone—which was poised for its major-label debut when vocalist and leader Andrew Wood died in early 1990— had more experience with the quickening road to success and had steeled themselves for the possible ride. Then-drummer Abbruzzese, not at all averse to fame, was particularly miffed by Vedder’s backpedaling from the spotlight, and the rhythmmaker’s dissent would largely contribute to his eventual dismissal from the band. (More on that later.) But even as the wary response drove a wedge into the band’s early 1990s persona, it sowed the seeds for Pearl Jam’s solidarity, edification, and lasting future character. It allowed the band to develop into an entity larger than its circle of members—an enduring force mobilizing millions of music fans, and a catalyst for both the music industry and social change. Before there was much evidence for any of that, though—in 1992 and 1993—Abbruzzese wasn’t the only 15

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one questioning Vedder’s lead. Much was made in those days of the frontman’s ostensible about-face regarding success. Those who were critical of the band saw Vedder as a hypocrite, rejecting the very rise he’d presumably hoped to achieve—because, the thinking was, isn’t that what anyone playing music for audiences really wants? (Today, and likely evermore, people will disagree on that point. Discuss among yourselves.) One of Vedder and Pearl Jam’s biggest critics—if you judge by media amplification—was Nirvana frontman Cobain. He not only disapproved of the band’s perceived pursuit, and then rejection, of fame early on, but also had a low opinion of its music. He told Musician magazine that Pearl Jam was a purveyor of “corporate cock-rock”4 and took the judgment further with Rolling Stone, saying he had “a duty to warn the kids of false music that’s claiming to be underground or alternative.” He said Vedder led a “bandwagon” band.5 The pointed, close-to-home skepticism was almost as difficult for Pearl Jam’s bandmates to handle as stardom itself. Ament responded to Cobain’s insults with his own ire, noting the Nirvana frontman “obviously must have some really deep insecurities about himself. Does he think we’re riding on his bandwagon? We could turn around and say that Nirvana put out records on money we made for Sub Pop when we [Ament and Gossard] were in Green River—if we were that stupid about it.”6 Despite this heated exchange being fanned by the media into a Pearl Jam versus Nirvana “feud,” the two bands didn’t hate each other. One didn’t really believe the other was unworthy of praise. But perhaps Seattle wasn’t big enough 16

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to birth two world-famous bands, their nearly-as-successful contemporaries (Soundgarden and Alice in Chains), and a host of other notable rock acts simultaneously. Maybe there wasn’t room for so many musicians’ egos. And maybe the expectations and pressures the so-called Seattle Sound generated were too much for its two hallowed spokesmen to handle. Or could it be that Vedder and Cobain (and their bandmates) were simply too young and full of pride and anxiety to initially fully embrace the other’s efforts? Perhaps they were focused on their own work and didn’t intimately know what the other’s band was doing or why. And their early publicized thoughts were overblown by eager magazine writers and rumor mongers—a New York Times-proselytized “lexicon of grunge” was invented, off the cuff, by a former Sub Pop employee, after all—transforming their short-lived sentiments into a myth that would ironically help define the genre and era. This kind of sensationalized conflict and public sidepicking comes with the culture-shaping territory. Beatles versus Rolling Stones. Backstreet Boys versus NSYNC. Katy Perry versus Taylor Swift. Kanye West versus Drake. You don’t help define a generation without a little (or a lot) of outspokenness and conjecture about your worthiness. It’s good drama, and it sells. Pearl Jam versus Nirvana, though, was much more smoke than fire. By September 1992, the reality was that the bands regarded each other with respect, and though they’d both rocketed to fame at about the same time, just didn’t know each other well. The closest any individual members got was 17

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at the MTV Video Music Awards that year, when Vedder and Cobain danced together while Eric Clapton performed “Tears in Heaven.” The touching episode was captured on video, but like any truly mythic moment, was personally witnessed by few; footage wasn’t widely seen until Cameron Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty film was released in 2011. In the clip, following their close sway, Cobain puts a finger to his lips while he, Vedder, and several onlookers laugh. No one can know about this, his gesture suggests. It might change everything. Vedder noted in the companion Pearl Jam Twenty book, “After the MTV Awards, I remember going out surfing the next morning and remembering how good that moment felt and thinking, Fuck, man. We were going through so much of the same shit. If only we’d talked, maybe we could have helped each other.”7 But being under a media microscope prevented the men and their bands from cultivating relationships. They were in such thin, stratospheric air that taking a deep breath and connecting wasn’t possible. Instead, they were painted as enemies. To this day, there’s rarely a conversation about the early days of Pearl Jam, or Nirvana, that doesn’t include mention of rivalry with the other band. At a 2019 reading in Seattle, Serving the Servant author (and former Nirvana manager) Danny Goldberg brought it up himself while talking about his relationship with Cobain in the early 1990s. He noted that the Nirvana frontman was driven to succeed, and when he saw Pearl Jam being played on MTV more than his own band, he called Goldberg to tell the manager that needed 18

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to change. (The audience, and author, chuckled. Any harsh feelings faded long ago.) The anecdote underscored that there had been an element of competition that, while played up by publishers and producers into a feud, undeniably stoked some of the fire behind both Vs. and Nirvana’s own late-1993 record, In Utero. Inflated newsstand hype was a major source of Vedder and Pearl Jam’s distrust of the media at the time. It informed the singer’s lyrics and delivery—most blatantly in the on-thenose screed “Blood”—and the band’s rhythms and notes. It fomented aural aggression throughout the Vs. tracklist, and an equal hostility toward traditional publicity at the time of their second record’s release. Cobain, as we know, unfortunately also chose to burn rather than fade, in his own, irrevocable way. Hype no doubt had bearing on his trajectory as well. ● Such is the danger of fame: everyone forms an opinion about you and thinks they know you. Though you’re proverbially “above it all,” the reality is that you’re under a microscope. Every minute, every day. And it’s not a relatable experience. No one can know what the roller-coaster ride is like except those buckled into the car—and perhaps the friends and family close enough to feel the whoosh created by its runaway passing. Cornell, a Seattle native who befriended Vedder shortly after the latter’s arrival in the city, was locked in a parallel ride (with Soundgarden) at the time and had a bird’s-eye view of his new friend’s strenuous journey. 19

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“[Vedder] wanted Pearl Jam to be a band that goes out and tours in a van and pays its dues and plays clubs and makes albums, and has a slow, natural life,” he said. “Somewhere in there, he wants the whole world to know who they are, but he was very, very specific about not wanting it to be right this second.”8 Ament echoed the sentiment: “We all came from nothing, or not very much. And all of a sudden, the world is your oyster. You go from not being able to get a show in town at the two-hundred-capacity club, and now you have every band in the universe saying, ‘Do you want to go on tour with us?’ It was great, but it was weird. The overriding feeling was of guilt, like, do we deserve this yet? There may be a time when we deserve it, but we didn’t think it was that quickly.”9 Most of the band members wanted to earn the keys to the kingdom, not have them eagerly tossed over after one album. So, led by Vedder, they retreated and made a second record that plainly delivered that message (and multiple others)— with its cover, its lyrics, its searing guitars and hard-charging rhythm section. Vs. was a vicious, commentary-laden record quietly punctuated with reflections on disappointment and regret. It was a middle finger to the roller coaster’s operator, to “the man” behind the societal machine of fame. It was a calculated response to what had launched the band into the stratosphere, constructed specifically to sidestep rising even further into rarified air. Pearl Jam actually put effort into limiting the accessibility of the album. In that regard, Vs. was a massive failure. 20

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Like Ten, Pearl Jam’s second record was a hit. Unlike the debut record, the sophomore effort, released (on CD, a week after its vinyl incarnation) on October 19, 1993, was instantly embraced. And the rocket ship propelling the band rose higher than any had before. More copies of Vs. sold in its first week than all nine other albums in the Billboard 200’s Top 10 combined: 950,378. It was a record. Three years into its existence, Pearl Jam was already too big to fail. On the charts, at least.

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2 Vedder Under Pressure

Vedder had long admired artists who transformed their passions into day jobs, and layered modest successes into storied careers. Bruce Springsteen. Tom Petty. Pete Townshend. As a young twenty-something making music in San Diego, he saw them as role models rather than idols. He didn’t worship them for being rock stars, he appreciated the way they’d come to support themselves with their art. Like them, he poured his soul into songs and performances. Like them, he focused on the music for the music’s sake. Like them, he took a dedicated, workmanlike approach to his craft. And in 1990, at twenty-five years old, music was his life. He loved to surf, and had to hold down a gas station job, but most of his efforts went into fronting the rock band Bad Radio. If Vedder wished for anything, it was for even more time and outlets for music. One day in October, that very thing came to him in the form of a single cassette tape. On the tape were instrumentals recorded by Ament, Gossard, McCready, and borrowed Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron—a nascent band in

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search of a singer. To say the music inspired Vedder would be an epic understatement. The formation of Pearl Jam is a story unto itself, but the Reader’s Digest version is this: it was quick and easy. Within a month, the new Seattle band (with Dave Krusen assuming drumming duties) recorded ten songs, played its first show, and signed a major-label deal. The effort Vedder (who flew up from California and camped out where he could in those first whirlwind weeks) and his new bandmates had put into their work—separately in Bad Radio, Green River, and Mother Love Bone among other earlier bands, and together in what they initially named Mookie Blaylock—had paid off. Everything just clicked. The timing. The sound. The band. If Pearl Jam’s debut record, Ten, had been a hit outside the groundswell of grunge, Vedder’s reaction might have been more measured and accepting. A successful first record wasn’t anathema, but the scale of its success—and the quick appropriation of his and his band’s very likenesses to label a cultural movement—put a massive cart before a skittish horse. Near-instant celebrity left Vedder distrustful and angry. In a December 1993 Spin story, he demonstrated those emotions when he excused himself from the interviewer in order to accept a platinum record award. “The first one I smashed in a fit of rage, you know,” the artist said about the prize. “This is the source of all my problems!” And then he returned, employing the honorary disc as a serving tray for beer and potato chips.1 Fame was all the more difficult for Vedder to accept because of how much of himself he injected into his work. 23

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In Pearl Jam’s early days, the man had put his heart into fan interactions. He’d engaged in lengthy, open conversations with magazine writers. On stage and camera, he’d fearlessly climbed girders, flashed feral eyes (seen in the “Jeremy” video), and bared his soul (heard on “Oceans,” “Black,” “Alive”)—giving even casual onlookers a simultaneously captivating and alarming look at his inner struggles. Vedder sang about a lost father. He sang about lost love. He sang about profound regret. Not obtusely, not if-youinterpret-it-a-certain-way. The pain was obvious, on full display. He didn’t worry about how much of himself went into Ten’s lyrics because, as he said, “I was protected by the assumption that no one else would ever hear that shit. That was a luxury, that gratefully, in some ways—because of the things that came with it—was taken away by the second record. There was no government on my writing at that time, because there didn’t need to be.”2 Vedder’s openness was rewarded with fan and media adulation. It gave young listeners living through their own difficulties—whether standard adolescent angst or problems far more profound—a sense of connection. In Vedder, they saw a guy who understood them. And what better rock-androll story is there than one in which the star is an Everyman? A tortured figure with a heart of gold? Vedder, thanks to his heavy, seemingly so personal Ten lyrics and plainly worn authenticity, was more accessible than the equally tortured but aloof, sardonic Cobain. That backfired. In the wake of Ten—and Temple of the Dog, Nevermind, Soundgarden’s Badmotorfinger, Alice in Chains’ Dirt, and the Singles soundtrack, among other notable Seattle 24

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records of the era—a rising wave of attention built so high that it lifted the Pearl Jam frontman ever closer to the sun. The world loved the band and its Northwest brethren, but it really loved Vedder and Cobain. The rise was both exhilarating and disorienting to Pearl Jam’s leader, still fresh from SoCal and its soul-soothing ocean waves. It all happened so fast that he didn’t have a chance to reconcile his ascending reality with his personality or personal philosophies. By the time Vedder had a moment to consider how Townshend or Petty would handle such a rise, he could ask them himself. In about three years, with one album, he’d reached an arguably parallel level of fame. The propulsive grunge movement had another adverse effect on Vedder and Pearl Jam: it separated the members from each other, put them in individual boxes to deal with the spotlight on their own. So even as they embarked on recording a sophomore record in early 1993, the five men were on different planets. Despite being together for almost two and a half years, the band had yet to fully gel, because they hadn’t been afforded the opportunity. They couldn’t accurately speak to each other’s opinions and creative approaches, or even to the structure of the band itself; each contributor was instead doing his best to stay upright in the maelstrom. And they’d already churned through two drummers. More pressing than that lack of collective identity, though, was the matter of how Vedder—the band’s default spokesman and assumed public mouthpiece—would handle celebrity while making another album. All eyes were on him. In the band, outside the band, in the mirror. He had to come to 25

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terms with accelerated success so he could steer Pearl Jam toward a unified response. And he was cracking, becoming that rattled “mental case.” ● By the end of 1992, Vedder had become the stand-in not just for Pearl Jam, but for the Seattle-based music movement that was roaring across the planet—and thus, by extension, for a large swath of young Americans. As with Cobain, who’d been elevated to the same position, Vedder didn’t want the job. Because following a late 1991 show supporting Red Hot Chili Peppers in New York, a concertgoer had hugged Vedder intensely, then revealed that the bulge the singer felt between them was the packaged ashes of a friend who’d died of a heroin overdose.3 Because not long after that, a woman who claimed Vedder had raped her and fathered her children rammed her vehicle into the wall protecting his house. Because Vedder received soul-shaking mail from fans. “Something like ‘Alive,’ so many people dealt with death through that song. Like people dealt with the death of love through ‘Black’ and so many people dealt with suicide through ‘Jeremy,’” he said. “The kind of letters that got through to me about those songs, some of them were just frightening.”4 Because the vocalist was no longer comfortable in public—or at home. Someone always wanted a piece of him, wanted to invade his personal space. He even adopted a habit 26

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of wearing a military-style helmet in public during that time, plainly displaying his need to protect himself from the world. Reflecting on the time between Ten’s smash-hit status and the recording of Vs., Gossard said, Ed was just so on the edge that he made the decision to pull everything back. It’s like, “I can’t, I need to stop, I don’t want to do it.” I think everybody went, “Okay, this is going to be interesting. Let’s see what happens.” We all thought if we weren’t going to be going down the same path, the mania would probably go away. The wisdom of the decision wasn’t evident for a while.5 In the meantime, one important upside of fame revealed itself: Vedder could reach out to, talk with, and ask the advice of the very artists he’d admired for so long. Stardom fortuitously brought him, and his bandmates, experiences and connections they may never have otherwise had. Pearl Jam blinked and found themselves meeting Neil Young. Vedder and McCready performed “Masters of War” at an event celebrating Bob Dylan’s career. The band opened for a Keith Richards side project on New Year’s Eve in New York. The settings and luminaries grew more rarified—which afforded the young musicians the ability to seek guidance from those who’d already reached such heights, or managed to skirt them while continuing to make authentic music. In the case of Dylan, Vedder spent “an epic night out at an Irish bar” in late 1992 with the legend—and Tom Petty, George Harrison, and Eric Clapton. One can only imagine the kid-in-a-candy-store position Pearl Jam’s vocalist found himself in that evening. Among other things, he would ask 27

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Dylan “how to deal with all the attention.” The man’s answer? “‘Don’t read anything in the paper. Don’t watch TV. Get away.’”6 In the 2011 deluxe box reissue of Vs., a scrapbook-style notebook compiling lyrics, photos, and bandmates’ sketches includes a full-page Vedder drawing of the words “E.V. no T.V.” It’s easy to draw a line from Dylan’s advice directly to Vedder’s mindset during the period leading up to, and following, the second album’s release. And while maybe not entirely realistic, Vedder took the media-blackout declaration seriously. Neil Young’s influence was more profound; their 1992 meeting spawned years of performances at Youngbuoyed Bridge School benefits, a 1993 European tour with the older artist, the full-length 1995 Mirror Ball collaboration, and over three hundred Pearl Jam performances of Young’s “Rockin’ in the Free World” in the decades since. But Young’s most important contribution to Vedder and Pearl Jam was more philosophical than tangible: “Neil taught us so much at an important time,” said Vedder. “He really had a huge influence on what was important, how to handle yourself, how to deal with things. How to protect your ability to make music.”7 It was that sage perspective and advice that made him beloved “Uncle Neil” to the band. In January 1993, Vedder’s status (and talent) was the lynchpin for reuniting the Doors’ surviving members for the first time since 1978. Pearl Jam’s singer filled in for the classic band’s late lyricist Jim Morrison during its Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction. Vedder handily performed “Roadhouse Blues,” “Break on Through,” and “Light My Fire.” 28

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His dark hair, intense stage presence, and round baritone voice delivered an uncanny Morrison echo no one else could have executed. There was also an eerie subtext: Morrison’s early and immense fame surely contributed to his untimely demise. The result? Even more people were smitten with Pearl Jam’s singer. Later that month, music fans’ idolization of Vedder embarrassed him in the presence of another musician he considered an inspiration. At a Rock for Choice benefit honoring the twentieth anniversary of the Roe v. Wade decision, he played his first set as a solo artist outside of Pearl Jam—but it did not begin comfortably. He was introduced by former X singer Exene Cervenka, and when he walked onstage “the air was rent with hooting, hollering, and the earsplitting, high-pitched screams of teenage Pearl Jam fans, and the atmosphere, steeped only moments earlier in the political significance of the event, suddenly took on the mindless, frenzied air of a Sixties teen-show taping,” wrote Kim Neely in her reporterly Five Against One. “Eddie was mortified.”8 Likely worse than the joyous noise sparked by Vedder’s appearance was his sight of Cervenka walking away, “both hands clapped over her ears and a disgusted expression” on her face. In that moment, his reality and his philosophy collided; his success was an unstoppable force, his wariness an immovable object. And he could do nothing about the conflict in the moment except to silently mouth the words, “It’s not my fault” to Cervenka’s back.9 (That assertion has been argued for and against—on Vedder’s behalf—countless times by Pearl Jam fans, haters, 29

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and everyone between over the years. Was fame his “fault”? Did he ask for it? I’m not going there. If you were hoping for a takedown of one side or the other, sorry not sorry.) All the early 1990s attention paid to Vedder wasn’t lost on Young. As the younger artist jokingly recalled, “Neil and I were sitting and talking once, sometime around [Vs.], and he said, ‘Don’t get away from the band. I bet there’s a lot of people telling you to do something on your own.’ And I thought to myself, No, I haven’t heard that at all!” Although Vedder would eventually record and tour as a solo artist, he was (and remains) devoted to Pearl Jam. “Don’t worry, I’m sticking with these guys,” he told Young.10 That was around mid-1993. In June of that year, with Vs. complete but months from its release, and Ten and its songs still garnering awards, Pearl Jam toured with Young and U2. The former engagements went swimmingly; the latter, not so much. (Pearl Jam’s artistic aesthetic didn’t align with the calculated bombast of U2’s Zooropa phase or the expectations of that band’s fans. It was not a comfortable fit for anyone.) Regardless, the band’s—and Vedder’s—star continued to soar. Fame played no small part in Vedder shaking hands, later in the year, with the songwriter and musician he admired most. As hero-meetings go, it would prove to be of the storybook variety; Pearl Jam’s frontman and the Who’s pinwheeling guitarist and sometime vocalist, Pete Townshend, instantly connected and remain friends to this day. Townshend was everything Vedder had wanted to be well before the latter co-founded Pearl Jam. The elder man was a driven, visionary artist. He composed epic arrangements and 30

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performed them with conviction. He wrote Quadrophenia, the Who’s 1973 tale of a rudderless, existentially shaken British youth, which Vedder treasured. Little did Townshend know that he’d been something of a surrogate parent to Vedder, who had learned that the man he called his father wasn’t a relative at all just as his actual father died. Pearl Jam’s singer had even hung an oversized, handdrawn likeness of Townshend in Pearl Jam’s early playing space, so the storied professional could watch over the upand-comer in spirit. “I should be sending Pete Townshend cards for Father’s Day,” Vedder quipped at the time.11 By August 1993, you could say the two musicians were equally famous. The soaring success of Ten and Pearl Jam stood in contrast, though, to the Who’s multiyear evolution into a successful rock act; the prodigy was experiencing things at a much faster pace than the master had. Vedder, therefore, had a lot to talk with Townshend about when they greeted each other following a performance by the latter in California. The pressing topic on the younger man’s mind wasn’t Quadrophenia or the Who’s impact on his life, though. Then more than ever, he needed advice. Famemanagement advice. “[In] the very first meeting we had,” Townshend said, “He said, ‘Help me. I don’t know whether I want this.’ I think I said, ‘I’m not sure you have a choice. Once you’ve been elected, you have to serve as mayor.’ I think that helped him, because at that time, I think part of him wanted to go and be a bum on the beach in Maui.”12 Townshend’s matter-of-fact response may not have been what Vedder wanted to hear—was he hoping to be convinced 31

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to quit the band? to fully embrace stardom? feel free to speculate—but it re-drew everything in stark relief, which the younger man appreciated. Perhaps fame was something he could go on wearing, unlike the brown thrift-store coat he’d ditched (and later memorialized in Pearl Jam’s “Corduroy”) after fashionistas deemed it haute couture. Maybe it would afford him a wider platform to highlight social issues like he had with “Jeremy.” It might not necessarily have to be a damning anchor; he could use it as a constructive tool as well. Serving as mayor meant making the rules, and Vedder had already begun doing just that, though without seeing it that way, maybe, until speaking with Townshend. He and Pearl Jam, in recording Vs., had embraced the idea that songs could simultaneously be artistically satisfying and carry moral heft. The frontman’s lyrics for many of the new tracks spoke directly to human faults—idolatry (“Blood,” “Indifference”), ignorance (“Rats”), lorded privilege (“W.M.A.,” “Glorified G”), and abuse of authority (“Daughter,” “Leash”). They were songs with stories, with messages. Also, some of those songs were without mass-appeal riffs or clear vocal hooks. In an attempt to regulate media exposure, the band had intentionally constructed multiple Vs. numbers to be radio-unfriendly. As Vedder told Rolling Stone, We were all trying to tame the beast. I was the guy who got [stalkers] or whatever . . . and so it probably seemed more life-threatening to me . . . you know, we’re talking about melodies and hooks in a song, and could that be life-threatening? . . . I felt that with any more popularity we were going to be crushed, or our heads were going to pop like grapes.13 32

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Perhaps the most pointed effort made in this vein was to keep one song off their second album altogether. “Better Man,” recorded during the Vs. sessions, was clearly hit material. Producer Brendan O’Brien pointed that out immediately, which backfired; the song then became verboten by Vedder. He would not be persuaded to reconsider (until the band reconvened to record its third record). Vedder and his bandmates’ efforts to fly just under the mainstream radar with Vs. proved feeble, of course. But by the time the sophomore album broke first-week sales records and propelled Pearl Jam to even greater heights, they had begun to gel, to foster the nucleus of a collective identity, and to understand the ramifications and possibilities of their power. Vedder in particular felt more confident in the public eye, even if he didn’t relish the attention. Because he’d come to understand that he could say what he felt, and that people would listen—be it his band’s fans, the media, or fellow musicians he’d befriended on the rise. What might have come of Pearl Jam had Vedder (and, surely, its other members) not sought grounding advice early on? What would their follow-up to Ten have sounded like and become had they not seen icons like Neil Young and Pete Townshend as mentors and beacons of integrity? It’s easy to imagine that the second record would have been something much different, likely without the intensity or lasting relevance of Vs. It’s also entirely possible that the band, relying on its own devices, might have folded under that immediate, immense pressure. There may have been no second record. But once you’re elected, you have to assume the role. 33

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3 Five Against One “Go” ● “Leash” Success breeds higher expectations. Once you set the bar, you want to raise it, not make it your status quo, certainly not bring it down a peg. It’s as true for musicians as it is for carpenters, accountants, teachers, scientists, or customer service agents. When you find that sound, that formula, that email tone that just clicks—you can’t continue to aim right at or below it. You refine, try to improve, to do better. Anything less successful the next time would, reasonable or not, feel like a failure. There’s an inverse aspect to this, too: “success” in the eye of the beholder. The kid who bonds with a teacher wishes more educators would take the same approach. The couple who furnishes their bedroom with the custom dresser now wants a matching headboard. The music fan who plays her favorite record until she knows every vocal tic, can hum every bassline—she can’t wait until the act puts out another album. She expects it, of course, to be even better. It’ll be her new favorite record. That’s how I think, how you think, how everyone thinks. It’s not that what we’ve already heard isn’t good enough.

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It’s that the threshold for “good enough” only moves one direction. And, actually, it’s not thinking at all. It’s emotion— which, by definition, irrationally makes the listener, and the artist, expect ever better. The sky’s the limit. Why would you aim below the horizon? That question complicated Pearl Jam’s follow-up to Ten. The expectations were massive. The world had by then made the band and several of its brethren—Nirvana, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains—household names. Seemingly every record from a rock band in Seattle was greeted with radio airplay, magazine love, boosted sales, and listener adulation. Bands from other cities (and countries) were also taking up the guitar-heavy approach and pounding out their takes of what had been labeled grunge, widening the malleable definition of “alternative rock.” The world banged its collective head to heavy chords and sang along with big choruses. Millions were eager to do the same to Pearl Jam’s next effort. That fact was all too obvious to Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready, and Dave Abbruzzese—and the pressure was intense. If they recorded something less listener-friendly, people would consider it a miss, even conclude that Pearl Jam was a one-hit act that had been in the right place at the right time. If they made a record vastly different from Ten, they might alienate a large swath of fans. And retreading the same territory would beget zero creative satisfaction. That last point might have been the toughest part— because Pearl Jam’s members held their craft sacred. Those who said Ten reflected a “corporate” or “sellout” approach to rock and roll, who believed the band was focused on making 38

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mainstream hits rather than authentic art, couldn’t have been more wrong. The bandmates had a coalescing vision of what Pearl Jam should be, and a skin-deep chart-chaser wasn’t it. In a 1992 interview for MTV Japan, Gossard emphasized their approach to making art in the towering shadow of their initial effort. He stated that in looking toward a second album, the band was “trying to understand the intangible things about the first record . . . stuff that we didn’t even think about or realize that people really responded to. [We’ll] try to retain those elements, but at the same time do something new, something different. Try to keep, from our own perspective, growing musically and growing emotionally.”1 The band’s label, Epic Records, might have appreciated the act’s integrity but was, predictably, focused on the bottom line: sales. Epic pressed Pearl Jam’s manager, Kelly Curtis, to keep the Ten hits coming into late 1992. As Curtis put it in Everybody Loves Our Town, “There were some great people at the label that were really supportive, and then there were people that didn’t understand. Tommy Mottola, the CEO of Sony Music [owner of Epic], told me . . . that if we didn’t release ‘Black’ as the next single, it would be the single hugest mistake I’ve ever made in my life and my career.”2 Pearl Jam, testing its budding strength, refused to commercialize “Black.” But by early 1993, a perfectly arduous storm had descended upon the band. Every day, the hungry masses were clamoring louder for more. Articles about the Seattle Sound and its twin champions, Pearl Jam and Nirvana, were piling up and tightening the screws. Plus, there was the band’s contract with Epic to record more material. The pressure was omnipresent. 39

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Perhaps most crushing was Pearl Jam’s very hometown. Seattle was ground zero for a cultural movement the band had helped create and, therefore, had become as overbearing as its fabled misting gray skies. The Emerald City had transformed into a microscope and the five musicians were bugs pinned beneath its lens. It was anything but an ideal environment for fostering creative integrity and solidifying a fragile, fomenting aesthetic. “We just needed to get out of Seattle. [It] was starting to feel a little weird,” Ament recalled, in what may be the understatement of his career.3 So when they were ready to record new music—the bassist, for one, inspired by his own curveball “mixtape of Police, Peter Gabriel, and reggae”4—they hit the road. Pearl Jam packed their gear and headed for a remote studio in California’s Bay Area. New setting. New headspace. And a new producer, for good measure. The band would quickly find that change is not inherently good. ● Vedder, as the most objectified member of Pearl Jam, was also the most wary of the spoils of his band’s success. So upon realizing that the space he and his bandmates would use to record their follow-up to Ten was a posh accommodation boasting, among other things, a dedicated chef, he bristled. The Site, set in the picturesque San Rafael foothills thirty miles outside of San Francisco, could have been the final factor that vaporized Pearl Jam before the band found its identity and its way. The name itself suggested entitlement, 40

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bore a “you have arrived” connotation. And in addition to the chef, there was a basketball court, a sauna, a pool, space to sleep, space to roam. All impressive amenities that had been previously enjoyed by the likes of Keith Richards, Dolly Parton, and Huey Lewis and the News, but when compared to the band’s spare experience recording Ten, were wild, disorienting—and to Vedder, ridiculous. “I fucking hate it here,” he admitted to Rolling Stone writer and Singles director Cameron Crowe at the time. “How do you make a rock record here? Maybe the old rockers, maybe they love this. Maybe they need the comfort and the relaxation. Maybe they need it to make dinner music.”5 In the Pearl Jam Twenty tome, Vedder reflected, “On the first record, we were living in a basement, and I was pissing in Gatorade bottles and putting quarters in the parking meter so my truck wouldn’t get tickets.” While working at the Site, he “felt too far away from the basement. It was a hard place for me at that point to write a record. Especially with lyrics, I didn’t want to be writing about hillsides and trees among luxurious surroundings. I was more into people and society, chaos and confusion, and answering the question, ‘What are we all doing here?’”6 Ascending producer Brendan O’Brien, who’d engineered the Black Crowes’ first two records and the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magic and had been introduced to Pearl Jam by the latter band, did his best to help Vedder answer that both personal and existential question by harnessing the positives of the studio and sidestepping what some of the band saw as negatives (or at least excessives). A musician himself, O’Brien understood the situation, saw 41

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that Pearl Jam was under immense pressure, and initiated a routine to build, and maintain, momentum. “They had just blown up with popularity out of nowhere,” the producer said. “My role at the time was really getting those guys in a room and getting them in a head space to record. I encouraged us to meet every morning. It was like, ‘OK. Tomorrow, 9:30, pep talk in the kitchen, and then we’re going to play softball.’”7 O’Brien’s regimen was part diversionary tactic, part classic creative redirection—encouraging artistic thinking by leading the mind’s shallower layers elsewhere. He and the band followed the morning games with studio time where the majority of Vs.’s songs were incubated from start to finish. They’d only brought a few solid compositions with them and agreed to the producer’s suggestion that they work through and record each song completely before moving on to the next. The approach ran counter to typical rock recording sessions—in which bands capture separate vocal and guitar and rhythm tracks for various songs, in whatever order whims strike, and then mix the pieces together either on the spot or at a later date—and it was a stroke of genius. Taping and mixing each song to completion before moving on allowed Pearl Jam to capture and convey the authenticity that they’d become known for on stage, to achieve the “raw and live-sounding” energy Ament later said the band was looking for. Ample volume was an important ingredient, too. The bassist noted that he “recorded all [of his] parts live with the drums, amps in the room full-blast.”8 As McCready attested, the thorough-and-loud approach “kept us focused, kept the basic tracks more live, and kept us 42

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working.”9 It’s what gave the heady songs such punch, and the slower-burning tracks lived-in depth. It’s also what enabled the band to record “Go,” “Blood,” and “Rats” in their first week at the Site. Those three songs are some of the hardest-charging of the record, and their lyrical topics indicate Vedder’s antagonized headspace. They are the sound of a band on fire—in all senses of the phrase. Pearl Jam, kicking off the Vs. sessions, was clicking as creatively as they had in their first few weeks together. Yet at the same time, fame and their (mainly Vedder’s) rage against it had created an explosive friction. Evidence is in the first words sung on the album: “Oh please don’t go out on me, don’t go out on me now.” The practical interpretation is that Vedder was imploring, even if only metaphorically, his new band—and perhaps himself—not to go off the rails, not to crash and burn. The singer and his four bandmates had much at stake with their second record. Its reception could spell more fame, fan disappointment, a breakup, who knows? Anything was possible, but one thing was certain: the lyricist was barely holding on, and those words opening the record—accompanied by the breakneck pace and raw aggression catapulting “Go” into listeners’ ears following a near-thirty-second warming primer—set the stage in a hurry. Pearl Jam has asserted that “Go” is “about a car on the verge of breaking down,”10 but it’s hard to believe Vedder didn’t have Pearl Jam’s perilous trajectory in mind when he wrote the lyrics shortly after arriving at the Site—a setting which reflected the band’s success in every luxurious touch. While there are lines that support the breakdown explanation (“Moving oh so swiftly / With such disarm”), 43

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there are others in the song that suggest Vedder might have been seeing himself in a mirror, from someone else’s point of view, or projecting personal emotions (via an automotive parallel)—regret, anger—onto a character also on the verge of shutting down, at risk of failing under immense and constant pressure. I pulled the covers over him Should have pulled the alarm Turned to my nemesis A fool, not a fucking God Whatever Vedder’s true intent—and he has never been exactly forthright in explaining—those are not lighthearted lines. Something, be it a vehicle or a human being, is in a bad place. The one clear element is that the observer has perspective, and a certain distance from the hurtling, seemingly doomed subject in question. Which might just be the frontman imagining a version of himself stepping back to take it all in, crying out a warning—and hoping for the best. Ironically, and perhaps inevitably, Vedder had something of a breakdown soon after recording “Go” and the other early songs. ● “I don’t think anybody anticipated that Eddie wasn’t going to relate to [recording at the Site] very well,” reflected O’Brien. “He didn’t like that Stone would show up in a robe and slippers to rock. So there came a point about halfway through where there was a group of songs for which he had 44

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no lyrics, and he let me know he had to go off and disappear for a while.”11 This was right after Vedder recorded what he’d written for “Leash,” which took overbearing authority to task. Like “Go,” much can be extrapolated from the words—not to mention the singer’s incensed delivery. The opening lines: Troubled souls unite, we got ourselves tonight I am fuel, you are friends, we got the means to make amends I am lost, I’m no guide, but I’m by your side I am right by your side And the closing: Drop the leash, drop the leash . . . Get outta’ my, my . . . Delight, delight, delight in our youth . . . Get outta’ my fuckin’ face Whether the “troubled souls” Vedder addresses are his bandmates or Pearl Jam’s young, restless fans, he aligns himself with them in opposition to a great foe who is leading them, pulling them, plotting to dictate their future––in other words, the world outside the band, personified. Here Vedder also speaks directly to his position as band leader and generation spokesman in one brief line: “I am lost, I’m no guide, but I’m by your side.” It’s an indirect echo of the man’s early connections with fans—answering mail personally, speaking with listeners intimately—and proves that though he had found he couldn’t safely maintain that

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closeness, he tends toward it still. Vedder can’t help but identify with his listeners’ plight. And his message to the rule-makers, the authority figures, “the man” who lords over the world’s teens and young adults is impossible to misconstrue. “Get outta’ my fuckin’ face” says it all. Perhaps it was the process of composing these lyrics that brought it all to bear—the luxurious environs, the quickening fame, the unreasonable expectations, all serving as choking constraints—and sent Vedder off on his own. Perhaps this tackling of broad generational themes spawned a realization that while he indeed felt “lost,” Vedder was truly in a position to “guide” millions of impressionable young people. He had a microphone and a rapt, growing audience. Either way, he needed to distance himself from the band to get closer to answering that existential question about what it all meant. So Pearl Jam’s lyricist spent several days on his own, sleeping in his truck, driving and hiking around the rolling hills, and wandering San Francisco’s streets. Alone, Vedder attempted to separate himself from what fame had wrought. He contemplated deep ideas. He ditched conveniences, enriched his understanding of others’ troubles, and inflicted himself with a fine case of poison ivy. Vedder described his self-imposed separation, in part, as “going to the park up the street in San Francisco, in skid row, and trying to get inspiration from the conversations of crack addicts walking by or something.” In other words, experiencing the real world rather than a privileged, blissful one. Proving how difficult it was to maintain perspective, and to dial into the pure human aspects of song lyrics, he 46

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also said, “The first record we made not thinking anybody was going to hear it. Now, it’s a little different—‘Millions of people heard [Ten].’ And everyone [in the band is] probably feeling that way on different things. We weren’t allowing ourselves space.”12 Leaving the rest of Pearl Jam in the studio afforded Vedder just that, and if a common interpretation of their original title for Vs. is to be believed, also contributed to a mounting tension within the band: Ament, Gossard, McCready, Abbruzzese, and manager Curtis versus Vedder. “One, two, three, four, five against one” begins the quick and punishing “Animal.” Though the song includes no explanation of those adversarial numbers, many listeners would come to assume the song evidenced Vedder feeling out of place at the Site (and in general) and outnumbered by his more amenable bandmates. Even Gossard saw credence in that interpretation at the time; he suggested the record be titled “Five Against One.” “[The name] represented a lot of struggles that you go through trying to make a record. Your own independence— your own soul—versus everybody else’s. In this band, and I think in rock in general, the art of compromise is almost as important as the art of individual expression,” Gossard contended. “You might have five great artists in the band, but if they can’t compromise and work together, you don’t have a great band. It might mean something completely different to Eddie. But when I heard that lyric, it made a lot of sense to me.”13 Pearl Jam ultimately decided against “Five Against One” as the title, swapping it for Vs. per Ament’s last47

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minute suggestion—an unspecific word that maintains the connotation of conflict. “Five Against One” actually made it onto the initial cassette release, but the vinyl and compact disc press runs appeared title-free, so the record might have been mistaken—by the rare music browser who hadn’t heard of Pearl Jam in 1993—as an eponymous effort. “Vs.” does not need to be printed on the cover to convey that sense of conflict, though. The mangy sheep shoving its snout through a too-small square of wire fencing gets that point across. The animal is snarling, showing its teeth, cocking its head in anthropomorphic angry resolve. The vertical length of wire beside its muzzle is even bent to the opposite side, as if shoved out of true by sheer mammalian force. Is it trying to escape its confines? To attack the photographer (Ament)? Either way, one can easily imagine the sheep thinking Get the fuck out of my face. (The original vinyl packaging bears a slightly different shot in which the sheep appears demure rather than angry; given the CD-heyday era of Vs.’s release, though, most of the general public knows that snarling face as the album’s cover. That’s why you see it on the front of this book.) I see the farm animal representing Pearl Jam, and the fence all of the expectations, forces, and pressures in place on the band in early 1993. And while Gossard’s reading of Vedder’s “Animal” lyrics makes good sense, I think Vedder also saw his band as a single united protagonist, fighting “against one”—the rest of the world boxing them in. There was certainly internal static at the time, but the leader had to understand that the power of the band was stronger than his alone would be. Had he any designs on ditching the others 48

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and going solo, he certainly would have touched audiences, but at what personal cost? No, Vedder wasn’t at such odds with anyone in the band yet. He just needed some air. And it proved refreshing. He returned from the city streets and poison ivy-dotted hills to his fellow musicians inspired. “No words were exchanged as he made his way into the vocal booth, nodding at his bandmates along the way. ‘Let’s try “Daughter,”’ he said.”14 And they settled in to record one of Pearl Jam’s more elegant classics. The space that Vedder made for himself became part of the band’s recording routine—which, according to Ament, “Other than Ed writing a few complete songs, remained very collaborative.”15 The lyricist would stay at the Site, sometimes sleeping in the sauna, until the setting became too much—or he needed new inspiration—and off he would go in his truck, equipped with camper and sleeping bag. These periods of escape to the real world filled the man with ideas not just for songs, but for how Pearl Jam should support the release of their second record.

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4 Seeds of Activism “Animal” ● “Rats” ● “Daughter” ● “Dissident” ● “W.M.A.” One hallmark of the grunge era was a turn away from the general emptiness of popular rock songs of the 1980s; Pearl Jam and most of their Northwest contemporaries had no interest in musically extolling the virtues of partying and girls. But while other major bands labeled as purveyors of the Seattle Sound tended toward dark personal topics including drug use and depression, Pearl Jam explored similarly uncomfortable interpersonal and social issues, starting with Ten’s “Alive,” “Why Go,” and more sensationally, the video for “Jeremy.” Vedder explained his motivation to bring these concerns into his lyrics with an analogy of oil painting. He said that a painter like himself might choose to start with something small that feels like it should be given more space, more visibility. Then they explore the original image or object or idea, bringing it closer, blowing it up into a larger work. “To make something of it. To give it action, to give it reaction. To give it importance.”1 It’s the approach he took after finding an

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undersized newspaper article about a kid bringing a gun to school—and it lent the resulting song both authenticity and urgency. On Vs., this magnification of—and disappointment in— human faults is reflected in multiple songs, proving that the lyricist and band were concerned with topics much broader than their own professional dynamics and individual relationships and struggles. It’s not a stretch to say that Vedder and Pearl Jam exhibited fundamental “wokefulness” well before progressive culture championed the idea of social responsibility across all aspects of daily life—or before social media existed to make it a (contentious) buzzword and culturally pervasive thing. Prominent rock acts of the previous decade literally sang the praises of excess; this band fueled its sound and catalog with angry lamentation of the virtues that so many people, and society, somehow lacked. Respect. Justice. Peace. Cue the furious “Animal,” Vs.’s second track (and one of its six singles). “Why would you wanna hurt me? . . . I’d rather be with an animal,” Vedder howls through a chink in a wall of thick guitar chords. And in those two brief, fierce phrases, one of the frontman’s primary lyrical concerns—and the general mood of the record—is established: human beings make life shitty for each other. Even the hand-drawn liner artwork for the song suggests that other creatures might be more worthy headliners of life’s hierarchy. In the song’s title, the letter “i” is replaced by a stately primary digit: “An1mal.” This brusque song—which positions the quintet in conflict with the world through its quickening “five against one” count-off—is also Vs.’s most direct tie to the snarling 51

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sheep on the cover. “Animal” plainly states that at that time, Vedder (and the band) would have felt more comfortable in a quiet pasture in the company of ovis aries than anywhere else with homo sapiens. Sheep wouldn’t ask questions, wouldn’t escalate expectations, wouldn’t hurt anyone. The song goes deeper than that, though. Layer the cover image over Vedder’s “Animal” lyrics and a context of resistance is revealed: that sheep may be blissfully ignorant of human shortcomings, but it is clearly imprisoned by said humans— and by all appearances fed up with domesticity. Perhaps if Pearl Jam and the animal were on the same side of the fence—a device of both real and symbolic oppression, of hostility— they could overthrow, or at least escape, the powers that be. If that wild toothy snarl, Vedder’s raw voice, Ament’s “grinding 12-string bass,”2 and McCready and Gossard’s intertwining, breakneck riffs are any indication, the five men and one animal might be the impetus of an interspecific revolution. Together they might trample every fence, topple every wall, and create true freedom. Or so it’s easy to imagine the bandmates feeling when they rip through the song—then and now. In a way, “Animal” takes an inverse approach to the themes of “Leash”—albeit in similarly raucous, aggressive fashion. How much better might humanity be, the former song posits, if we flattened every barricade, shed all constraints, and actually embraced each other? What if we treated each other as we did our beloved pets? It’s a big idea, it’s established within the first six minutes of Vs., and it’s echoed throughout the album. ● 52

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Pearl Jam revisits the theme of animal superiority seven songs later with “Rats.” The blues-tinged, bassline-driven track ironically elevates the reviled rodent by favorably comparing its behavior to that of the humans who stand so tall above. The song’s lyrics are essentially a somewhat metaphorical list of actions one might associate with rats. While Ament’s shuffling, darting bass emulates the motion of short legs, Vedder sings a litany of disagreeable conduct supposedly eschewed by the superior species, human beings: They don’t eat, don’t sleep They don’t feed, they don’t seethe Bare their gums when they moan and squeak Lick the dirt off a larger one’s feet They don’t push, don’t crowd Congregate until they’re much too loud Fuck to procreate till they are dead Drink the blood of their so-called best friend They don’t scurry when something bigger comes their way Don’t pack themselves together and run as one Don’t shit where they’re not supposed to Don’t take what’s not theirs But this outline of misdeeds prefaces an inevitable, final damning judgment: “They don’t compare.” Though Vedder doesn’t verbally attribute this line to humankind, it is succinct, pointed commentary on that species—which serves as revealing punctuation to the preceding lines. People do feed, push, fuck, suck each other’s symbolic blood, shit where they want, steal what they want. People compare. 53

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Once the singer finally voices the song’s title in two seething shouts (“Rats!”), and McCready’s fiery leads and Gossard’s chugging rhythm weave into a slow fade, the simplicity of Vedder’s judgment takes on existential heft. To rephrase his lyrics: rats don’t find fault when given options, don’t make choices based on personal preference. They don’t act on bias. That can’t be said of people, so which is the more civil animal? The final, half-sung, repeated line is the most cryptic one in the song: “Ben, the two of us need look no more.” It’s a fitting reference, though, to a 1972 horror film (and its theme song, recorded by a fourteen-year-old Michael Jackson) in which the “Ben” in question is befriended and protected by a caring boy. Ben, of course, is a rat. Vedder, then, is identifying with the boy—and underlining his earlier “I’d rather be with an animal” sentiment—by nodding to the boy’s fulfilling (even if disturbing) relationship with the rodent. It’s also notable that Vedder’s scathing message here is wrapped in a song unlike anything Pearl Jam had released to that point. Like “Jeremy,” Ament’s low end drives “Rats.” And like many of Ten’s tracks, the song builds to a surging refrain. But there’s little else that rings familiar with the first album’s cuts—which is an indication both of the band’s desire to call attention to the song (and its lyrical concern), and of Pearl Jam’s burgeoning creativity. Indeed, subsequent records would feature more sonic exploration as the band increasingly allowed itself to indulge its less straight-ahead influences and impulses. ● 54

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Vs.’s third song, “Daughter”—and its second single, which would become a Top 40 hit—shifts the energy of the record’s opening, but not the tone. The guitar chords are largely acoustic, Abbruzzese’s snares and cymbals have more air to breathe, and the pace is slowed to a sing-along clip. (If you’ve attended a Pearl Jam concert in the last twenty-five years, you’ve likely heard—and perhaps been one of—thousands of voices complementing Vedder’s own, throughout this setlist staple.) It’s what you might call a “stripped down” song—a marked change following the electricity exploding from the album’s first two tracks. “Daughter” sounds sentimental and touching. It’s not. Vedder’s protagonist in the song is a girl oppressed, or at best neglected, by her mother. In few sketched details, we understand that the child in question is “alone, listless” and “can’t deny there’s something wrong” in her home, with her parent, or with herself. The singer has said that the girl has a learning disability and that the mother punishes—or outright abuses—her for the deficiency. In the first verse, the girl “tries to make her [mother] proud,” but, by the chorus, has moved beyond needing that connection. “Don’t call me daughter, not fit to,” Vedder repeats. The idea is a gut-punch for anyone with a child— or a parent. Imagine your mental state if that essential relationship was so damaged. Knowing Vedder’s own history was shaped by troubled family relationships makes it easy to assume that some nugget of personal experience informed the heartbreaking story of “Daughter.” But his connection may have been solely an emotional one, or the song born out of someone 55

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else’s story, as was “Jeremy.” Interestingly, the “daughter” in question was originally a “brother.” The film Pearl Jam Twenty captures an early, off the cuff yet rather polished take, with Vedder singing still-gelling lyrics—including the “Don’t call me brother” phrase—to a Gossard guitar accompaniment. Though Vedder has younger brothers, the finished song doesn’t feel directly tied to him. (The family member and gender change may have been purposeful in that respect.) Whether due to the different point of view or the soaring, distance-creating promise of the line “She holds the hand / That holds her down / She will rise above”—the song has a universal context. We can all agree that abusive parents are awful, that any child being mistreated deserves to “rise above.” Those fundamental human sentiments, along with the song’s ear-friendly construction (written mainly by Gossard), lend “Daughter” its magic. The redemptive theme of the song again runs parallel to that of “Leash.” Rather than telling her mother to “get the fuck outta my face,” though, the girl in “Daughter” resoundingly rejects her mother’s title. It’s another call to be released from oppression, to be allowed to think and act independently. And that, of course, also drives listeners to identify with Vedder’s lyrics. Those words spoke profoundly to a young, misunderstood, disaffected generation in the early 1990s and continue to resonate nearly three decades later. Times have changed, but the inherent struggles of coming of age have not. ● 56

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Two songs deeper into Vs. is another single: “Dissident.” Like “Alive,” it’s a slow-build, epic-chorus effort that invites the listener to belt Vedder’s seemingly triumphant lyrics along with him. But as with that song and “Daughter,” just because there’s an undeniable hook doesn’t mean it’s a feelgood affair. The image on the “Dissident” CD single’s cover is indicative of the tone and subtext: a close-cropped image of the singer presumably performing the song. Vedder’s bent over himself, clutching the microphone close to his chest, hair obscuring his face. He could be ill, in pain, perhaps heaving bile between verses. Like the cover of Vs. itself, it is decidedly intentional artwork, and less ambiguous. Here it’s the singer, rather than an animal, cocked with visceral emotion. It’s a depiction of a sort of digestion instead of aggression. A self-directed emotion, not a projected one. The image appropriately underlines the meanings Vedder ascribed to “Dissident” in the album’s era. “I’m actually talking about a woman who takes in someone who’s being sought after by the authorities for political reasons,” Vedder said. “He’s on the run, and she offers him a refuge. But she just can’t handle the responsibility. She turns him in, then she has to live with the guilt and the realization that she’s betrayed the one thing that gave her life meaning. It made her life difficult. It made her life hell. But it gave her a reason to be. But she couldn’t hold on. She folded. That’s the tragedy of the song.”3 That heavy theme has parallels to Ten’s “Alive” (the disorienting misery resulting from a loved one’s death) and “Even Flow” (centering on a homeless protagonist inspired 57

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by a man Vedder knew at the time) and provides further proof that Vedder and Pearl Jam harbored concerns beyond their own experiences. I wonder, though, if that explanation captures the full truth of the song. Vedder has always been guarded about the true meaning of his writings—in both the personal and universal senses—and in Pearl Jam’s early years purposefully sent journalists and fans off the scent of his real intentions.* This hunch is given credence by the other documented ascribed meaning of “Dissident.” Vedder said that the female character’s “holy no” was a deflection of attempted date rape, and that “a woman’s word is sacred and the no means no and that’s what a ‘holy no’ is.”4 While this aspect of the song’s story doesn’t cleanly align with his other explanation—the man could have both tried to rape the protagonist and lent her life meaning, but that seems a stretch—it’s one heady concern woven with another. Human rights. Politics. Tragedy. No matter the actual, complete meaning of the song, “Dissident” is both an earworm and an eye-opener. Vedder’s “holy no” explanation also underlined his band’s support of women’s rights, which they’d made clear with their 1992 Rock for Choice performance and, more dramatically, later that year during Pearl Jam’s MTV Unplugged set when the frontman frenziedly scrawled “PRO-CHOICE” on his arm. Their concern wasn’t fleeting or devised for good PR; the men of Pearl Jam actually cared about women, and not in an objectifying “Cherry Pie” sort of way. No, the feelings were authentic and ran deep. Vedder’s refrain in “Dissident” underscored that truth: “Escape is never the safest path.” It was true for the dissident’s harborer and 58

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also true for those concerned with social rights and political issues. With this line, he really stated that running from a problem would never solve it. He said you had to take a stand. Fittingly, Pearl Jam put that approach into practice with Vs. With its sophomore album, the band set the stage for one concerted philanthropic effort after another in the following decades, from supporting Planned Parenthood to the Apache people (during a stop on the Vs. tour) to concertgoers bitten by Ticketmaster’s service fees to the underserved, skateboard-loving youth of Montana to Seattle’s exploding homeless population. There’s an undeniable connection, too, between the female-character driven “Dissident” and the band’s 2018 protest fuck-you “Can’t Deny Me.” Both songs include pointed rights-based messages that casual listeners (and even some sing-along participants) may not pick up on. Both songs live in the mind of someone affected by hurtful policy. Both songs—evidenced in the latter’s accompanying simple, animated video featuring a female, likely migrant, protester—center on a woman’s difficult situation and stance. Multiple YouTube comments below the “Can’t Deny Me” video indicate that some listeners are turned off by Pearl Jam’s collective conscience informing its songs. But that’s been its members’ approach since Ten and “Jeremy.” No, the safest path is for other bands. *When talking with me about writing the “MommaSon” trilogy (“Alive,” “Once,” “Footsteps”) after receiving the initial demo tape of instrumentals from Gossard, Ament, and McCready, Vedder nonchalantly admitted his 59

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mischievousness with lyric meanings. The myth of those three songs went: he got the cassette; he went surfing; inspired, he went home and wrote the complete story arc across the three songs. True? Vedder: “Of the many stories I’ve told over the years which I completely fabricated just to keep people’s interest, that one is actually true.” ● Vs.’s most surprising track was, and still is, “W.M.A.” Like “Rats,” it sounds almost nothing like other Pearl Jam songs to that point, slowly galloping in on a bongo beat and layering on more warm percussion and stuttering bass and guitar veins and unintelligible Vedder chants to evoke timeless tribal performance. The song builds to a hot crescendo— McCready and Gossard’s licks flickering like blue flames—as the band’s compositions tend to do, but not in familiar versechorus-verse construction. There is no true chorus. As Ament put it, the song is “a bit of an art project,” a partial byproduct of the rhythms on his mixtape—slung by Sting, Robbie Shakespeare, Aston “Family Man” Barrett, and others. And the experimentation works. It’s “one of my favorite songs we’ve ever done.”5 “W.M.A.” highlights the married dangers of white privilege and unchecked authority. The song was inspired by one of Vedder’s solo San Francisco experiences: “It had been a couple of days since I had a shower and I’ve got my old shoes on and I don’t look too great,” Vedder said. I’m sitting there with this guy who’s of a darker color than me, and along come these cops. . . . And they just ignored 60

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me and [started] hassling him. Compared to me, this guy looks as respectable as fuck. But they started hassling him, and that just blew me the fuck away. . . . I was just really wound up by it. I had all this fucking energy rushing through me. I was mad. Really fucking angry. I got back to the studio and the guys had been working on this thing and I just went straight in and did the vocals, and that was the song.6 In today’s parlance, then, “W.M.A.” is a hot take. But unlike so many visceral reactions, Vedder’s angry opinion had a solidly legitimate basis then and remains just as valid now. “He won the lottery when he was born,” his lyrics begin. “Took his mother’s white breast to his tongue.” Those opening phrases alone say much about American culture and Anglo identity in the early 1990s, and acerbically convey the singer’s feelings on both. But “W.M.A.” doesn’t simply express white guilt, or justifiable outrage, in song form. It’s a unique echo of the incendiary truth spoken notably—and controversially— in 1988 by the hip hop group N.W.A. in “Fuck Tha Police”: some people tasked with protecting and serving were doing the opposite to Black citizens. Like the rap song before it, Pearl Jam’s track gives listeners a first-person account of a specific form of racial injustice— but from the outraged white passerby’s perspective. “Trained like dogs, color and smell / Walks by me to get to him,” Vedder sings, recounting what he’d seen on the street. Again, two pointed, poetic phrases that summed up an inexcusable status quo—and that have, unfortunately, repeatedly been proven astute since. The problem this song underscored

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in 1993 remains systemic today. We are only now seeing a broad recognition of this truth. “W.M.A” is an acronym derived from the verse “Big hand slapped the white male American,” which is either a reference to a white baby being professionally back-slapped by the doctor who delivered it, or the older white person having their wrist slapped by authority for breaking the law (or both). When hands are mentioned later in the song, they’re those of the lawman in question: “Do no wrong, so clean cut / Dirty his hands it comes right off / Police man.” Just like the hands used by white officers to beat unarmed Black man Malice Green to death in 1992; a photo of Green appears in Vs.’s original “W.M.A.” liner notes along with a newspaper excerpt recounting the severity of the beating. And since then? Similar hands have wrought the afterlives of Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others. Though a legitimate song rather than a curiosity (like “Pry, To,” “Push Me, Pull Me,” “Arc,” and other efforts found on later Pearl Jam albums), “W.M.A.” didn’t lend itself to radio airplay or hit status—by design. Its inclusion on Vs. was an act of promotion itself, though, ensuring that many (white) rock fans would be exposed to the song and be encouraged to think about the injustice of police brutality and the reality of white privilege—long before that idea was a common topic of conversation and the spark of an awareness movement. Due to that subject matter, and to the current sociopolitical climate and rightfully resulting Black Lives Matter crusade, “W.M.A” has remained timely. In 2018, during the band’s second The Home Shows performance to raise funds to 62

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combat Seattle’s homelessness epidemic, Vedder altered some of the song’s lyrics during an interjected medley in “Daughter.” Though he changed more than one phrase, it was a single swapped word that spoke volumes. “Dirty his hands it comes right off,” he sung. “President man.” That was quite the barb in 2018. By mid-2020, it’s merely pedestrian, though possibly it would have still triggered boos in a less liberal-leaning crowd (like Vedder’s criticisms of George W. Bush at a New York show in 2003). These elements of “W.M.A.” alone make it arguably the most socially aware (or woke, if you prefer) song in Pearl Jam’s catalog. But Vedder’s words in this song cut even deeper into white American faults. Exactly halfway into the song’s six-minute length, he half-speaks, half-sings “Jesus greets me, looks just like me,” as if under his breath. The ironic line is there and gone, not repeated, but it’s a massive missive. He’s pointing out that our government, our society, our very existential fabric are based on myth: the standard portrayal of Jesus has always been as a Caucasian savior. The phrase “In God we trust,” then, an intrinsically American sentiment, conjures the same white benevolence. Which is exactly what white Christians historically wanted people to envision. But while contemporary American bands like Tool saw faith-based protests at its mid-1990s concerts, Rage Against the Machine aggressively courted controversy with blunt stances on multiple social and political issues, and N.W.A. sparked backlash with its lyrics promising violence against authority, “W.M.A.” made surprisingly few—if any—waves, despite Vs. being a massive success. This may be largely due to Pearl Jam not existing primarily as a pointed protest 63

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vehicle (like RATM) .  .  . and a predominantly white rock audience—and media—not really listening, not really getting the song.** It’s worth noting that the above groups that triggered certain segments of the public in the early 1990s also had then-polarizing “PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LYRICS” stickers slapped on their albums. Yet Vs. boasts two instances of “fuck” in its first song, eleven F-bombs overall, several mentions of “shit”—and no warning on its cover. Some have said that the Recording Industry Association of America program, an admittedly voluntary practice of placing warnings on the covers of potentially offensive records, highlighted prejudicial thinking back then (if not still today). “If you were a white rock act, you could get away with a couple of F-bombs or a couple of curses on your album and not get stickered,” pop critic Chris Molanphy told Newsweek. “But if you were a rapper or even a hard R&B singer and you said something as daring as ‘pee,’ you could get labeled.”7 One could simply assume that Epic Records’ executives’ decision—labels themselves have always determined whether or not the warning will appear—was informed by racial bias. Pearl Jam was a guitar-rock band of white guys, which in itself could have seemed harmless to (white) music-industry suits. But it’s less likely that possibility than it was Vs.’s lack of sexual or drug-related lyrics or themes. Why? Because bad language alone didn’t necessarily seal a record’s fate. That’s why a Jon Spencer Blues Explosion album including the song “Fuck Shit Up” didn’t get a sticker and the Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magic did. Pearl Jam’s profanity was neither overt nor lascivious. 64

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There’s also the slight possibility that Epic’s people simply didn’t hear Vedder’s fucks and shits—or didn’t want to. Before the record was finished, they complained that the singer’s vocals weren’t clear enough. “Some person at the record company . . . wanted the vocals turned up,” Vedder told Melody Maker. “He wanted people to understand exactly what I was singing. So I told him what [the song “Animal”] was about and he said, ‘You’re right. Let’s leave the vocals as they are. Maybe we don’t really want people to understand it.’”8 End of discussion. Pearl Jam and manager Curtis didn’t compromise with Vs. The profanity, the weighty themes, the pointed lyrical commentary, the audio mix—it was all intentional, authentic, and of a piece. It spoke directly to the band’s integrity. (Would Vedder have edited his profanity if Epic had warned the band that the record would be labeled “explicit”? I don’t think so.) Calling out racially motivated police brutality in 1993, like calling out a law-breaking president in 2018, stands as proof. If the industry didn’t understand that intention during the grunge boom, if the media didn’t pay attention to it, even if much of its own audience didn’t realize it, the fact remained. Pearl Jam wasn’t a surface-level band. Almost thirty years later, they posted an image of Vs.’s handwritten “W.M.A.” lyrics and artwork on their social media feeds, without comment, in response to the latest murder of a Black person at the hands of law enforcement. The thoughtful, deferential comment came via a brief thread a few days later: Pearl Jam was started with a love for music and social justice. Our organization has been reflecting on where

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unconscious racism is still showing up in our own lives and how we can do better. While we continue to dig in, we do not want to contribute to white voices overtaking the narrative that the Black community is sharing. It is the responsibility of each of us to listen and educate ourselves on how to be better humans sharing this planet.9 The band followed the statement with a link to a Medium article about going beyond words of allyship and taking real action. In 1993, Vs. itself could have qualified as such an act. **Exhibit A: Those “W.M.A.” T-shirts sold at Pearl Jam’s Vs. tour stops in 1993 that I mentioned earlier. The black shirts bore a rectangle graphic resembling a street sign on the front. Below a red “W.M.A.” was a slightly stylized illustration of a police officer grasping a much smaller, slumped perpetrator. On the back, in big, stark white letters was “POLICE.” Nowhere on the shirt was the album title or even the band’s name. Pearl Jam wanted it that way; it was both art and a statement, and the band’s fans were more than happy to drape it over their chests and backs. I was one of them. And multiple times when wearing the shirt, I was mistaken for a police officer. Each time I apologetically explained that “police” was misleading, that it was a band’s shirt, and left it at that. Talk about not really getting it.

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5 Taking (and Throwing) Punches “Blood” ● “Indifference” It’s difficult to imagine, but Pearl Jam could have been much more of a juggernaut than Ten and Vs. made them. By late 1992, they were pumping the brakes even as they set their sights on the second record. The evidence had already started to mount, via occasional half-hearted, jokey media interviews with McCready, Gossard, and Ament. In one mid-1992 clip, the two guitarists even bantered with a “talking table” (actually the band’s road manager, Eric Johnson, speaking from the furniture’s obscuring underside) that asked typically softball questions about the Seattle Sound and Pearl Jam’s fast fame. In response to the question “[Can you tell us] about the recent success of your Platinum-selling album?” McCready answered with a laugh, “Let’s not. Let’s not talk about that.”1 The band was doing less talking all the time. Curtis, too, was something of a killjoy in the eyes of record executives, promoters, and marketers. “We turned down inaugurals, TV specials, stadium tours, every kind of merchandise you could think of,” the manager recalled. “I

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got a call from Calvin Klein, wanting Eddie to be in an ad. I learned how to say no really well. I was proud of the band, proud of their stances. We were starting to use the power for more political, more charitable type things.”2 This approach didn’t fit the mold of stereotypical rock stardom, which involved snowballing publicity and increasingly cavernous concert venues. Vedder, already steering the band (albeit begrudgingly), aimed to avoid such trappings. He and the other members chose performances carefully, and the singer was very vocal—with both writers and concertgoers—about the size of the locations they played. They declined interviews. And based largely on the media cyclone created by “Jeremy,” Pearl Jam stopped making music videos. In those glory days of MTV-stoked celebrity, the band’s decisions were counterintuitive. This was not a reflex reaction. Though performed under duress and scrutiny, the backpedaling was calculated, unwavering. The artists meant to stay true to the notes and chords and songs that gave them their platform. Above all else, they were activists for access to music. “We’re not concerned with how many people buy our albums—but we are concerned with how closely people listen to our music. It’s nice to be able to share our art with people, and that’s a rare opportunity. Now, so many people have bought our record and the whole thing has become so mind-blowing, that I don’t even care anymore,” Vedder said after Ten was certified Gold. “It doesn’t matter to me how or why people bought our record or if our success had anything to do with some ‘Seattle wave’—we’re a band, and our music is an art. We’re not on tour to sell records—we’re on tour to share our art.”3 68

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This approach spawned dual, eye-opening David vs. Goliath conflicts, and the band was not the daunting giant in either scenario. The first battle was with the media mechanisms that fueled—and were fueled by—the adulation of rock stars. The second was with the music industry itself, which methodically pressed acts toward larger live audiences and—thanks to unchallenged gatekeeping king Ticketmaster—therefore higher ticket prices (and fees) for each concertgoer. Given the public nature, longevity, and heretofore unquestioned stature of the parties targeted, wildly successful but upstart Pearl Jam was poised to lose both fights. “In retrospect, it was brilliant—it was what we had to do,” Gossard said. “Ed’s instincts were totally correct. If we had followed the advice of everyone in the industry, or our own egos, we would’ve gone for it until it went down the drain.”4 At the time, though, the battles were hell. Pearl Jam did not come out of them unscathed. ● If any single song on Vs. conveys Vedder’s foremost emotions in early 1993, it’s “Blood.” Though the title is a metaphor, it’s also a near-literal labeling of something the frontman and his bandmates had put into their work—grieving the loss of Andrew Wood (in Ament and Gossard’s case) prior to forming Pearl Jam, recording two records, touring extensively, and opening themselves to worldwide fawning and scrutiny all in the span of three short years.

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There was also the increasingly physical toll Vedder’s impressive (and frequently frightening) live-show antics— climbing girders, dangling high overhead, diving into crowds—had taken by late 1992. As Brett Eliason, who mixed a live recording of “Blood” for the “Daughter” CD single, noted, “One of the last times Ed went into the crowd was Lollapalooza—in Ontario, Canada [in 1992]. People were literally trying to take pieces of him. He was bloody, his shirt was torn up, somebody had him by the hair.”5 But being physically ripped into by over-eager fans paled in comparison to the figurative essence ceaselessly drawn from Vedder and printed in newspapers and magazines and shared on televisions across the planet. What had once been seen as a means of connection with listeners and fans had, in short order, become an imposing demand of the singer’s time and mental and emotional capacity. The pressure-cooker atmosphere transformed Vedder’s daily private life into a matter of public concern. His initial openness had backfired. And now his very “blood” was splattered on countless pages and screens on a daily basis. I’m not the first to speculate that the opening lines of “Blood”—“Spin me round, roll me over, fuckin’ circus / Stab it down, one-way needle, pulled so slowly”—not only unabashedly hammer this topic but also potentially include clever Vedder wordplay. Clearly, the man feels abused—the first two clauses suggest being violated—and is incensed as a result. The “fuckin’” here hits the same testy nerve as that in “Leash”; Vedder, again, has had enough. Look at the individual words 70

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more closely, though, and there are clues that the sources of his ire are specific publications, or at least conveniently lend their names to words in Vedder’s phrasings: “Spin me round” could be a reference to Spin magazine. “Roll me over” may relate to Rolling Stone. And “fuckin’ circus”? Circus magazine. All music magazines, all of course covering Pearl Jam in those feverish months and years of the grunge era. Even if this interpretation was not Vedder’s intent, the possibility is intriguing, and the words awfully advantageous. There’s no questioning what you can hear in these lyrics: Vedder’s raw, breakneck delivery sears even the listener’s throat. Every word is a shredded shout, every inflection flayed with a rusted razor. It’s hard to imagine the singer completing a sole performance of the song’s lyrics without a break to rest his inflamed vocal chords, let alone multiple takes. You can almost hear literal blood being forced out of his larynx, imagine it beading and flying from his lips as he sing-shouts the succinct but drawn-out chorus: “It’s my blood.” Every word in this song is pointed and clear. “Drains and spills, soaks the pages, fills their sponges,” he sings. The “pages” are real, the “sponges” metaphoric but evocative. Then, “Paint Ed big, turn Ed into one of his enemies.” The song laments Vedder’s life literally writ large, and the resulting toll of that is unquestionable. By naming himself in the song, saying that all the published stories make the man one of his own “enemies,” he’s telling the listener that the media has recast him as something he never wanted to be: a rock personality rather than an authentic person. If not in fans’ eyes, at least in his own. 71

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The final complete verse reiterates the sentiment. “Stab it down, fill the pages, suck my fuckin’ life out, man.” It’s rather sad punctuation on a difficult song, with Vedder seemingly resolved to the reality of his role as a high-profile artist. As the listener, rocking with the song’s hard-edged rhythm and punk-speed pace—or as Ament aptly called it, “crazy unhinged heaviosity”6—you almost feel guilty in the final frenetic minute, as if you’ve witnessed a nervous breakdown you might have personally triggered. The pounding drums and snarling guitars shift slightly from the song’s barreling speed into a chaotic clashing grounded by flashing snares and a late rumbling Ament bassline—and then it all pauses, with about fifteen seconds remaining, to give the band (and the listener) a moment to breathe. Then, in the song’s last few moments, a guitar lick briefly jangles an almost playful tone, creating a strangely friendly end to the furious track. It feels like a knowing smirk, Vedder wryly saying, Don’t worry about me. Please. Fame is a difficult thing for the everyday person to understand. When you’re in no position to receive such attention and acclaim, the very idea of it can be tantalizing. But “Blood” testifies that there’s much more to celebrity status than success and money. There’s a dangerous dark side. Like the existence of any protest song or love song tells us, though, the planet will keep spinning—and the machinations of our society will continue clanking of their own accord— regardless of one artist’s political stance or hurt feelings. In the case of “Blood,” this was proven true one week after Vs. was released on CD and cassette. ● 72

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Time magazine is iconic as much for its red-framed cover design as for its big-issue journalism. Every week, the visual device invites you to study the cover’s subject—typically a human figure—as you would a fascinating museum piece. As newsstand staples go, it’s one of the most storied and recognizable anywhere. Even for those not interested in current affairs, that stark crimson outline creates an eyegrabbing target. And whoever is pictured inside it is, by definition, newsworthy. Time put Eddie Vedder in its frame on October 25, 1993. The frontman was captured there mid-howl, eyes squeezed shut, nostrils flared, teeth bared. He grasped a slanted microphone in both fists. “All the Rage” read the big, sly headline beside him. The subhead underlined the dual meanings of that lead phrase: “Angry young rockers like PEARL JAM give voice to the passions and fears of a generation.” Rage. Anger. Passion. Fear. Voice of a generation. No understatement there. The ironic fact that Vedder might have been singing “Blood” in the image emblazoning their magazine must have been lost on Time’s staff. Irony, though, was and is not the magazine’s trade. No, the Vedder cover, like most of those before and after it, was an earnest and sweeping theme statement for the story inside. And if the massive success of Ten and recordbreaking first-week sales of Vs. hadn’t already legitimized— and mainstreamed—Pearl Jam, a Time cover certainly did. Of course, the editors couldn’t have known that the band’s second record, released a week before publication, was going to sell nearly a million copies in that span, but the timing was shrewd. 73

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The magazine’s reporting was crafty, too. What no newsstand browser or Time reader outside of the Pearl Jam camp knew at the time was that Vedder had rebuffed the magazine’s request for an interview and had not approved the photo of him appearing on its cover. Not only that, but Kurt Cobain had also said no. “Kurt and I only spoke on the phone a few times, but we discussed this during one of them,” Vedder said. “Time wanted to interview both of us, and we just decided we didn’t want to do it. We agreed that we didn’t want or need any more attention at that point, then they still put me on the cover. I heard later that he was upset about it, which made me even more infuriated about the situation.”7 Already incensed enough to write a song about the media’s insatiable hunger, Vedder was rocked to his core by the Time story and its appropriation of his image. As a result, he further tightened the clamp on Pearl Jam’s PR efforts, and when he did voluntarily speak in the following year—to fans during concerts, and to occasional interviewers—he angrily cited the incident, proving it was a turning point for himself and the entire band. As McCready later put it, Vedder’s efforts to steer the band further away from the spotlight were unequivocal. “Eddie took it over. Benevolent dictatorship, that’s kind of the theory,” he said. “Jeff and Stone running things from one angle, but with Eddie, it was all about pulling back.”8 Vedder’s reaction to the Time cover (and the general increasing hype) was an escalation of the withdrawal he’d initiated when “Jeremy” hit and that had frustrated McCready and Abbruzzese, if not others—including fans and critics—for many months. Though his efforts would 74

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eventually prove wise, they stoked a fomenting dysfunction at Pearl Jam’s core. Most people, of course, didn’t know the band’s growing pains were so painful at the time; sales figures and radio airplay drowned out any hint of a seething inner dynamic. In 1998, Five Against One documented the widening rift between band members due largely to Vedder’s tight hold on Pearl Jam’s reins before and after Vs. was released. According to author Neely, the vocalist’s bandmates exhibited “tolerance” in “letting Eddie be Eddie.”9 But the rest of the band would soon come to either acquiesce to Vedder’s approach (or lack thereof) to the media, or honestly adopt it for the good of the band. Everyone but Abbruzzese. A telling episode is related in Cameron Crowe’s October 1993 Rolling Stone article, “Pearl Jam: Five Against the World.” Crowe inadvertently presages Abbruzzese’s eventual dismissal from the band with this brief passage describing a band-meeting chat: “‘So are we talking about “Daughter” as the first single?’ drummer Dave Abbruzzese asks casually. Suddenly, all air leaves the room. The other four members dog pile on Abbruzzese. What single? One meeting at a time! What do you mean, single? Abbruzzese shrugs. Perhaps it’s still a little too soon to mention the unmentionable.”10 Then, one-on-one, the drummer tells Crowe, “There’s a lot of intensity over decisions. And I think it’s great. But every once in a while, I wish everyone would just let it go. Make a bad decision!” Then Abbruzzese “looks out at the same green forest” Vedder vowed that he hated. “Look at this place! It’s paradise.”11 75

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Those telling exchanges took place before Vs. was released. Afterward, with the “All the Rage” cover in mass circulation, Vedder prohibited such public, promotional talk—even though the band had a tour on the books. Hometown newspaper The Seattle Times opened their early December piece on Pearl Jam’s trio of Vs.-supporting concerts with a sentiment the band’s drummer may also have felt: “Damn that Eddie Vedder! Just when it’s time to write the big story about Pearl Jam, on the eve of the band’s homecoming shows Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday at the Arena, he clams up. The other guys in the band aren’t talking either, and their excuse is that Vedder is the band spokesman.”12 Ironically, Pearl Jam staying out of the news quickly became news itself. In May 1994, Vedder told the Los Angeles Times, “I didn’t see being on the cover of Time as an accomplishment for the band. I was afraid it might be a nail in the coffin .  .  . I’m worried about the hype thing, that if people start seeing your picture everyplace and hear all about this ‘spokesman’ stuff, they’ll get turned off.”13 Pearl Jam’s loyal fans, of course, would not be turned off by the band’s actions, and writers would cover them, regardless. But when you consider that a month earlier, Cobain had killed himself, effectively making Vedder the grunge era’s sole “spokesman,” media exposure must have felt more like bloodletting than ever. Gossard’s personal take on the demands of the band’s singer back then: “My goal, what I really want to achieve, is not to need [Vedder]. Because he is needed by so many people who don’t really understand him.”14 Seeing it that 76

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way must have helped Vedder’s approach fully sink in for the guitarist. But Pearl Jam was not a band to simply stay quiet and maintain a status quo. Its members felt compelled to address other concerns. So following the release of Vs., they laid low on the promotional front, grieved the loss of Cobain, and doubled down on the one thing that drove them to play music: the people who wanted to see them live. That effort would soon make the Time cover, and the band’s struggle to embrace the way Vedder handled fame, pale in comparison. ● Pearl Jam worried over fans’ access to live music well before they started a war with Ticketmaster. Like the band members’ philanthropic and social interests, making their concerts available to everyone who wanted to attend was important to them from the beginning. In May 1992, the band planned to marry two of those concerns with a free outdoor concert at Seattle’s Gas Works Park which would double as a voter-registration event. Given Pearl Jam’s popularity at the time, a crowd of up to 40,000 was expected to descend on the park. That prospect made the city nervous enough to cancel the event just days before it was scheduled. Not surprisingly, the decision didn’t sit well with either the band or the fans who’d been thrilled by the prospect of a free show. While the latter sent complaint letters to the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation, the band re-engaged with Seattle to find a suitable new space and date. 77

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The now-legendary “Drop in the Park” took place in September at Magnuson Park. Pearl Jam funded the entire event, including shuttling some of the nearly 30,000 fans— almost 3,000 of which who registered to vote onsite—out of the park afterward. Ament and Vedder, ever the activists, cited fans’ voices for the show coming together. “It’s really easy to become apathetic and feel like you can’t make a difference,” Vedder noted the day of the show. “This is just proof that you can, and they can do the same thing in November [in the presidential election].” “This shows that maybe there are some people who are ready to listen to young people, and for things to change a little bit,” echoed the bassist.15 The bootstrap culmination and logistical success of “Drop in the Park” motivated the band to do more. To fight harder for what they believed in. To take a more active role in selecting venues. To have a say in what concertgoers paid for the privilege. So with Pearl Jam planning the release of Vs., they thought about the supporting tour differently than another rock act might have. The first leg of the Vs. tour included many eyebrowraising venues across the western United States—smallish clubs, university coliseums, and civic events centers off the beaten mainstream rock path. Pearl Jam attempted to scare off scalpers (and thus people getting ripped off) by capping ticket prices. The shows sold out, but as my personal experience can attest, scalpers still existed—many were just fellow fans who had as much or more empathy as they had interest in turning a profit. To further prevent resale, and to personalize the ticketing experience, the band would later 78

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experiment with tying each ticket sold to a specific person, printing their name on it along with the event information. The details disclosed on concert tickets proved to be an integral piece of Pearl Jam’s strengthening tour-executing efforts. For the second leg of the tour, in the spring of 1994, the band attempted to work around a long-established system that favored promoters, venues, and of course ticket sellers (specifically Ticketmaster) even over touring acts themselves, not to mention the fans—by trying to strong-arm Ticketmaster into eliminating, or at least disclosing on the face of each ticket, the service charges the band saw as egregious. “This summer, if Ticketmaster’s gonna do something with us, they’re gonna have to come around, or we’re gonna deal with this tour ourselves,” Ament declared at the time. “Ticketmaster wants to charge $4 a ticket this summer to print [the tickets] and sell them. The tickets are going to be $18, but when you put a $4 service charge on it, it ends up being 22 percent of the ticket price, which is more than we’re making.” “It’s the same way with merchandising. All the promoters and record companies are in bed with the venues, so they allow each other to charge 35 percent or 40 percent of the t-shirt prices, when in a lot of instances, the bands are only making 30 percent. . . . The one thing that’s really, really great about being in the position we’re in is having the power to go in there and fuck with those people,” Ament said. “It’s a beautiful thing.”16 Pearl Jam did fuck with many of these players in 1994, making news but achieving limited success. Because their shows were basically guaranteed to sell out, some promoters and venues bent—even if near-imperceptibly and 79

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temporarily—to their demands, so every show could go on. But there were last-minute challenges in several cities that threatened to leave thousands of concertgoers with worthless tickets, regardless of what fees were printed on them. One notable example: “For the Detroit concert, held at the Masonic Theater, the band had attempted to circumvent Ticketmaster entirely, offering three hundred tickets to members of its fan club and selling the rest of the available ducats through a newspaper lottery system,” wrote Neely. The band had negotiated a per-ticket service fee that would be paid to the promoter and a facility fee for the venue. But Ticketmaster, which had an “exclusive agreement” with the promoter, threatened to sue the promoter for breach of contract—and only relented when the promoter agreed to pay Ticketmaster part of its service charge.17 The entrenched system of capitalistic incest and kickbacks continued. These behind-the-scenes logistical fights over percentages and fees were exhausting, but Pearl Jam’s members felt the overall effort in mapping out their tour was necessary. In fact, they actually crystallized their requisites for ticketing while on the road: “They would only play venues where the per-ticket service charge was limited to 10 percent of the ticket price, the service charge must be disclosed separately on the face of the tickets, and the backs of the tickets were to carry no advertising.”18 Ticketmaster’s response? Threatening to sue any contracted promoter that worked with the band outside of Ticketmaster’s purview. The battle lines were drawn. ● 80

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Most people familiar with Pearl Jam from early on know something about the band’s ensuing bureaucratic conflict with Ticketmaster, with their very public charge that the ticketing company had a monopoly on the industry and that the US government should intervene. What is often forgotten, or not even realized, is that Pearl Jam’s members, in the spring and early summer of 1994, were already beginning to record a third album; were plotting tour dates beyond the middle of the year; were combating substance abuse and varying reactions to fame; and were struggling to process the tragedy of Cobain’s suicide—as colleagues who’d actually known him. He might not have been a close friend, but he was one of them. A Seattle musician. A fellow artist. It is during this tumultuous, trying valley between Vs. touring and the release of Vitalogy, Pearl Jam’s next record, that the band very nearly splintered. One major crack that evidenced the turmoil: the band cancelling its summer tour due to the inability to mount a string of shows while working outside established booking conventions, without the power or flexibility enjoyed by Ticketmaster. It was a massive concession, but likely allowed the band to avoid a complete meltdown under the stress of booking a makeshift tour even as they performed shows. When Gossard and Ament testified before the Infor­ mation, Justice, Transportation, and Agriculture Subcommi­ ttee at “congressional hearings regarding possible antitrust action against Ticketmaster” on June 30, there was necess­ arily much more on their minds than what people paid to see them play live; their very appearance as a duo held telling, symbolic weight. The guitarist and bassist who 81

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played together in Mother Love Bone and built Pearl Jam were photographed raising their right hands in Washington, DC, instead of Vedder. The band knew that the singer’s appearance would trigger a media circus and overshadow the issue at hand. And Gossard and Ament’s relationship was perhaps the only high-functioning one among the five men. Arguably the most powerful band in the world at that moment, and representing all American artists in the country’s halls of justice, Pearl Jam’s internal solidarity was faltering. McCready was battling addiction. Abbruzzese was baffled by nearly every band decision regarding the media. Gossard and Ament were adjusting to not wielding the most authority within the band; Vedder held the all-important reins of communication tight. And each man mourned the loss of Cobain in his own way. Circumstances pushed the members away from each other—which obviously wasn’t a sustainable model. Notably adding to the stresses on Pearl Jam was the lack of support from other artists in their plight against Ticketmaster. Though carrying the torch for a noble cause, Gossard and Ament alone represented every artist playing to audiences in America. No one else sat with them before congress to give credence to the concern that Ticketmaster had an unfair stranglehold on the industry—which didn’t go unnoticed by the band. As McCready put it, “We had a lot of bands saying, ‘We’re with you, Pearl Jam.’ And they all bailed, every one of them. A lot of big-name bands bailed on us. We were out there twisting in the wind by ourselves.”19 The awkwardness of that position alone irked the Pearl Jam camp. The reception Gossard and Ament received in 82

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DC was salt in the wound. They were treated, ironically, like rock stars. Attending congresspeople, instead of respectfully hearing out the bandmates’ testimony, made small talk about the artists’ music. One member even called them “darling guys.”20 Though they’d earnestly worked with a lawyer to prepare for a true legal discussion, their presence, and concerns, were not taken seriously. But the bassist and guitarist sat through it all. Pearl Jam did all they could to air their legitimate grievances. And in this case, media coverage worked in their favor. “I think that maybe that showed some integrity,” McCready said. “And people thought, ‘Okay, they’re really doing this for the right reasons. They’re trying to keep the prices low.’”21 This (mostly) intra-band unity in the pursuit of integrity was the glue that held Pearl Jam together, however precariously, in 1994. The band left DC feeling patronized and disappointed. (The experience inevitably contributed to band members’ coalescing cynicism and distrust of government, which would fuel future songwriting efforts.) But they returned to Seattle battle-tested, even more determined to pursue what they felt was right. The tenets they had laid out in their efforts to book a tour outside the established ticketing process seeded an intrinsic, wide-reaching philosophy that the band continues to operate with today. By the time the government released a brief statement in 1995 that it had determined Ticketmaster was not monopolizing the industry, Pearl Jam was already playing an exclusively non-Ticketmaster tour. No venues that were in bed with the company. No service charges that fueled selfserving relationships between profiteering parties. 83

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Working outside of Ticketmaster’s influence was far from easy and would eventually prove an untenable solution. (The company, essentially endorsed by the government then, is now as powerful as ever.) But Pearl Jam’s fervor borne out of Vs., their unyielding principles, and the trying atmosphere at the time enabled the band’s members to ultimately gain control of the rocket ship. The decisions they made in touring behind their second record reset the band’s course toward a manageable, fulfilling, independent future—and the eventual honor of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inclusion. In the moment, though, things were dire. ● I will light the match this morning, so I won’t be alone Watch as she lies silent, for soon night will be gone Oh I will stand arms outstretched, pretend I’m free to roam Oh I will make my way, through, one more day in . . . hell I will hold the candle, till it burns up my arm I’ll keep takin’ punches, until their will grows tired Oh I will stare the sun down, until my eyes go blind Hey I won’t change direction, and I won’t change my mind I’ll swallow poison, until I grow immune I will scream my lungs out till it fills this room Those are lines from Vs.’s slow-burning closing track “Indifference,” sung between a “How much difference 84

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does it make?” refrain. Because much of the record is so recognizably personal to Vedder, it’s natural to hear that repeated question as a pained admission that his and Pearl Jam’s multifront fights are likely exercises in futility. Even the pace and sparsity of the haunting song suggest that all the fire has gone out of the band through the course of the record. Given those factors, it’s tempting to read pervasive cynicism and resentment into the closer. But that’s not the primary message or feeling here. No, “Indifference” is about the ceaseless fight to stave off those sentiments. It’s indication that Vedder and Pearl Jam have a potentially bottomless well of willpower, an endless fight left in them. Proof is in each declaration Vedder sings between asking if what he—and anyone who identifies with the lyrics—does matters. It’s in Vedder’s slowly increasing vocal intensity, peaking with the cathartic promise to stare at the sun until it burns away his vision. It’s also in starting the record over again after the last lingering, single note of “Indifference” fades; “Go” and “Animal” stoke the fire afresh with every new listen. Self-doubt is human nature. Each day brings new opportunities to question one’s motives and actions. Everyone handles the difficulties differently; songwriters and musicians tend to address it with their instruments. By choosing to make “Indifference” the end punctuation of Vs., Pearl Jam leaves the listener with a sense of camaraderie— again doing what Vedder and the band did from day one: creating a means for people to connect and identify with the band members as fellow human beings. The final song also suggests, in typically shrewd Vedder fashion, that 85

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“indifference”—not the tribulations we all routinely face—is actually the core human problem in question. Without feeling, there is no defeat of self-doubt. Without concern, there is no activism. Without passion, there is no music. When Vedder sings “I won’t change my mind,” he’s discreetly prodding the listener to hold true to their own ideals—just like the band did in releasing and supporting Vs. It’s not a blatant message as in “Leash” or “Rats,” but it’s loaded nevertheless: fighting and losing is better than passive apathy. That attitude was Pearl Jam’s philosophy when it came to standing for what they believed in and touring behind their second record—and beyond. The band was all-in on their principles and those would drive each of their decisions moving forward.

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6 The Once and Future Producer “Rearviewmirror” ● “Better Man” ● “Crazy Mary” In the film Pearl Jam Twenty, Stone Gossard recounts the band’s drunken, unruly September 1992 performance at an MTV-sanctioned release party for Cameron Crowe’s Singles as a turning point in the young band’s career. He calls that debacle “The birth of ‘No.’” In other words, there would be no more just saying “Yes” to publicity and appearances. (They’d done the MTV set as a favor to Crowe.) Each request, from then on, would be carefully considered if not outright rejected. While the guitarist may have attributed this significant pivot to the premier party, the first overt evidence of their shift in approach came with Vs. and his band’s logistics in support of the record. The common thread between that sloppy show and the studio album that followed? A technical whiz, and accomplished musician, named Brendan O’Brien. The man’s induction into the Pearl Jam camp was a trial by fire. MTV couldn’t use the audio captured during the band’s performance; it didn’t align with the solid, polished sound

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audiences expected from Pearl Jam or most successful bands. Saddled with footage and sound that didn’t make for good TV, the channel sought help from Epic Records. In turn, the label reached out to O’Brien, who had by then been tapped to produce Pearl Jam’s sophomore album. So if you were one of the relative few who watched either of the two airings of the network’s special, you saw the band (haphazardly) performing “State of Love and Trust,” but you heard much of a studio recording of the song (which featured on the Singles soundtrack). O’Brien combined the two into a palatable mix that the casual viewer wouldn’t think sounded like crap, even though the band’s too-loose appearance suggested otherwise. It was an impressive feat. Salvaging the Singles release performance, though, was nothing compared to O’Brien’s orchestration of Pearl Jam’s studio execution, getting the band’s disparately minded members on the same page during their Vs. sessions and successively nailing down song after song—thus completing a highly anticipated, now-classic record. ● Though already credited with work for notable acts, O’Brien had his work cut out for him with Pearl Jam. The band had sought him out because of his achievements in mixing and engineering of breakthrough, signature-sounding albums Shake Your Money Maker (the Black Crowes) and Blood Sugar Sex Magic—and thus unwittingly set the groundwork for a partnership that extends to this day. (Though O’Brien didn’t produce Gigaton, the band’s tenth and latest studio

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record, it’s hard to imagine him not playing the role again in the future.) At the time, though, the producer and the band were just getting to know each other, and the former didn’t dare look beyond the next few hours, the next rolling of the tape. The band’s star was precipitously rising; he had to forcibly keep it at eye level, and keep Pearl Jam’s members focused—and under the same roof as much as possible—as the air around them grew ever thinner. Though O’Brien’s previous credits had been more technical and less front-and-center than the role he assumed with Pearl Jam for Vs.—and his signing on to follow up the massive success of Ten was quite the ask—the producer was undaunted. He established a rapport, and an approach, with Pearl Jam well before the band convened at the Site to write and record. In addition to salvaging the Singles party audio, O’Brien remixed “Jeremy” for music video and radio play, making himself a known quantity with the band. Then on August 21, 1992, O’Brien and Pearl Jam entered Atlanta’s Southern Tracks Recording Studio to get a feel for making music together. “I felt a lot of pressure, right or wrong, because I thought I was on the hot seat to see what I could do,” the producer said of that first effort. “It was Pearl Jam Nation at that point. At any moment, I was expecting a call telling me they were going with any number of other bigger-name producers. Why wouldn’t they? But they stuck with me.”1 The arrangement paid quick dividends. In two days, O’Brien and Pearl Jam captured initial demos of “Leash” and “Rats,” and covers of the Dead Boys’ “Sonic Reducer” and the Who’s “Baba O’Riley.”2 Though none of those takes would 91

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end up on Vs., and the men wouldn’t come together again until the spring of 1993, this early work set a precedent for methods and pacing. (Bonus: “Sonic Reducer” made it on the band’s 1992 fan-club single.) When they reunited, O’Brien wasted no time. “On the first day [at the Site], [he] had the band set up in a semicircle around the drums, planning to let them limber up for a week or so before he began the actual recording,” wrote Neely of the California sessions. “But they’d barely begun jamming on the ideas they’d brought in before the producer was scurrying around the room, excitedly setting up mikes. Soon afterward, O’Brien gave up all pretense of letting the band rehearse and moved Dave into a separate, tiled room to isolate the drums. Clearly, this was a band ready to make a record.”3 As with the making of Ten, progress was quick and promising at first, despite O’Brien having encouraged the band to descend upon the Site without too many readymade song structures or lyrics, so they could reach more milestones as a unit. Under his direction, he and the band recorded four songs in short order—“Go,” “Blood,” “Rats,” and “Leash”—and mixed each down to a polished track, rather than setting aside individual instrumental and vocal takes to be assembled later. This atypical method might have lengthened the amount of time the band spent on different ideas, but it allowed them to put finished work behind them and cement their momentum. The producer’s intuition on how to create the record proved astute, aligning well with the artists’ fervent creativity and Eddie Vedder’s simmering cauldron of thematic concerns. In those first days, O’Brien must have felt that 92

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the circumstances were serendipitous—the band really was firing on all cylinders. A big-time producer with nothing to prove might have simply lent their name and cache to the record and passively assembled takes the band favored. An over-eager or powerhungry individual might have catered to Vedder’s whims in an attempt to gain celebrity favor. Someone with ego to spare might have bullied their way into Pearl Jam’s sound, challenging the band on every decision and take. O’Brien, however, established a framework and then let the band’s discussions and musical noodling within that approach drive natural creation—and then gracefully pressed them to perform at each of their individual bests. Jeff Ament referred to O’Brien as “a super pro.” Looking back at Pearl Jam’s relationship with the producer, he said, “I’ve always felt, working with him, that he understood me as a bass player and that’s not always easy. A lot of producers are there to please the singer. But I’ve always had a great rapport with him. I can tell him I want something to sound like the O’Jays or Led Zeppelin or PJ Harvey and he gets it.”4 O’Brien’s own musical talents contributed to that ability, allowing him to speak the same language, to identify with what each man wanted to accomplish. He played guitar, bass, and organ, among other instruments. The skills made him a trustworthy creative leader; the highly functional relationship he cultivated with the band members allowed collaboration to come naturally. The six men worked as a team. Fittingly, the credit on Vs. read “produced by Brendan O’Brien and Pearl Jam.” 93

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Managing progress at the Site was a multifaceted, difficult task, though. The band was clearly disjointed, with its frontman in a different mental—and sometimes physical— place than the other four members, and each of them in their own unique headspace. They progressed on music at one pace while Vedder composed lyrics at another. A tipping point, then, was inevitable, and when it came, O’Brien nimbly kept the band productive and on track. As we know, after those first four songs, Vedder folded under the weight of his band’s ascendant reality. He ducked out of the Site to get time alone—and find inspiration—out in the real world, away from the swanky, insular studio. The abrupt change in routine could have triggered O’Brien—to argue, to fret, to over-assert, to stifle the other band members’ internal and interpersonal processes—but he rolled with it, instead. When Vedder returned from that first brief hiatus ready to record “Daughter,” the producer was ready. Pearl Jam buttoned up the song quickly, and Stone Gossard, for one, still believes it is one of their most successful efforts. “I look at that as one of the best songs I’ve written and one of our best collaborations,” he said. (The song is credited to Gossard and Vedder alone.) “It was figuring out a weird tuning that all of a sudden just made the guitar feel different.” And there was Vedder’s idea to change his original protagonist from “brother” to “daughter.” As O’Brien said, “‘Don’t call me brother’ has this kind of hippie connotation, but ‘Don’t call me daughter’ was just straight up deep.”5 That kind of O’Brien-championed cathartic experim­ entation extended beyond the instruments to the members’ 94

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very roles. Dave Abbruzzese contributed guitar ideas. Typical rhythm player Gossard contributed lead solo riffs. Vedder played guitar for the first time on a studio track (“Rearviewmirror”). O’Brien, seeing that this approach, and the transition from four members to the complete quintet could be made relatively smoothly, maintained the course. When Vedder needed time, he got it without protest. When the singer reunited with the band, all systems were go. The routine worked, and the tracklist grew. The producer didn’t simply roll with every good-enough take and personality twitch, though. He surely wouldn’t have earned the band’s long-term trust if he had—but his assertiveness led to some uncomfortable episodes. As Abbruzzese politely pointed out (prior to his dismissal from the band), there were “moments of coming from different places. . . . There were definitely times when it was like, ‘Oh, jeez!’”6 You can actually hear evidence of that tension in the song that would, ironically, later be used as the title for Pearl Jam’s 2004 “greatest hits” record. ● Just prior to the final, quiet seconds of “Rearviewmirror,” there’s a quick clatter that many listeners may not discern given that it comes on the heels of a hard-charging, headbanging crescendo. There’s a woody knick-knack-clack, the sound repeats more distantly, twice, and then the song ends. Perhaps you’ve heard it dozens of times and haven’t recognized 95

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the sound at all; it’s there and gone, and with the intensity of the breakneck finale still reverberating in your ears, doesn’t instantly register for what it is: drumsticks hitting each other, hitting a drumhead’s edge, hitting something. Maybe you do hear it and imagine Abbruzzese performing a stick-on-stick flourish, as rock drummers sometimes do to punctuate a song’s closing. Or maybe you imagine a fervent staccato banged out in celebration of the full-throttle rhythm screeching to an adrenalized halt. You don’t guess that Abbruzzese was pissed off, and after completing his final frenzied snare cracks, threw his sticks against the studio wall in frustration. But that’s exactly what the drummer did, what the tape captured, and what the band and O’Brien decided to leave in the final mix. “Rearviewmirror” has long been a Pearl Jam fan favorite and concert standard, and for those familiar with the song, it may be all the easier to take its runaway speed—and the difficulty required to execute its pacing and notes—for granted. Though it doesn’t seem as heavy and hard as “Go,” “Animal,” or “Blood” upon a casual listen, careful parsing of the four-and-ahalf minute track illuminates at least some of why Abbruzzese was so frustrated: playing drums that fast for that long isn’t a breeze. (Especially for a drummer with carpal tunnel issues.) On top of that, Pearl Jam was at a climactic time in their Vs. sessions; “Rearviewmirror” was the last song they recorded for the album, and the band and producer were reaching the finish line with equal parts eagerness and trepidation. After about two months at the Site, they were anxious to wrap everything up—but not so keen that they would compromise on the final effort. 96

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This song, then, was something of a microcosm of the recording experience itself: all the start-stop sessions, all the fervent writing and collaboration, all of Vedder’s interruptive but accommodated excursions into the city culminated in a song that accelerates from a gallop to all-out abandon, powered by Abbruzzese’s percussion and Ament’s bass. For about forty-five seconds, “Rearviewmirror” rides comfortably on the drummer’s snares and spare use of cymbals, with a snap occasionally added on the off-beat. Then the song builds and lopes forward, a steady cymbalcrash added to the mix. Thirty seconds later, Abbruzzese and Ament shift down and begin another steady, but quicker, build to speed. Then, halfway through the song, the instruments perform the equivalent of an engine idling, with a tighter cymbal becoming the brief focal point—before all the players jam into gear again and race to a thirty-second cacophony of swirling guitar flares and a mad crashing of drums. The pace is as fiery as anything on the record, but sustained for at least a full minute longer. Compounding the demanding performance was O’Brien “not [being] satisfied with Abbruzzese’s playing”7 of the song. The producer had the drummer hit the rhythm again and again, seeking a powerful, flawless complete take—ultimately getting it at the expense of Abbruzzese’s tolerance, but to the betterment of the record. “Rearviewmirror” frustrated Vedder, too, perhaps because the “verse riff was something he’d been noodling on for years,” and he needed it to ultimately come to fruition perfectly. Yet after many attempts, the singer was still “unhappy with his vocal takes.”8 Or it may have been because, as Crowe noted 97

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in Rolling Stone, the song was about suicide—the “drive today” and mirror in question might be typically sly Vedder metaphors, or literal descriptions of the protagonist, fleeing the abuse of an aggressor, speeding toward a self-inflicted death. And up to the final, successful Site performance, the singer thought it sounded too “catchy.”9 While not the final track on Vs., “Rearviewmirror” reflects the literal completion of recording—nicely supported by Vedder’s roaring centerpiece, “Saw things / clearer / once you were in my / rearviewmirror.” Tellingly, too, he would in 1994 describe the song’s culmination as “like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There’s an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave.”10 Well, once Pearl Jam wrapped the song, they quickly cleared out of the Site, putting the volatile recording phase behind them. What happened immediately after Abbruzzese finished his final take is also telling. The drummer heaved his sticks, which you can hear. Then, what you can’t hear: he threw a fist through one of his snare drums, ran it outside, and pitched it over a hill. The drummer who’d called the Site “paradise” was wishing it good riddance. “Those guys were coming off a ten-million-selling record, so they were feeling the pressure,” O’Brien said, summing up both the entirety of the Vs. sessions and that frustrated finish. The drummer boiling over was only one indication that “it was just time to leave that place. It was time to go.”11 Though the Site may have worn out its welcome, it had served its purpose. ● 98

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As is typical with album recording sessions, Pearl Jam wrote and completed more songs than would appear on the resulting LP. Unlike most instances of rejected songs never being performed again, or becoming “rarities” possibly unearthed later, one of those finished while O’Brien and the band assembled Vs. would eventually become a massive hit—and it was shelved due to that very possibility. Vedder wrote “Better Man” years earlier while in Bad Radio. A YouTube search should turn up footage from 1989 of a remarkably solid performance by that band of the song much as Pearl Jam would later perform it. The story is there. The soaring refrain is there. The earworm hook. The sense that the melancholic female protagonist is going to end the relationship that’s dragging her down . . . unless she doesn’t. All the elements that you may know and love, and feel every time you hear Pearl Jam play the song, are already in place. It was a winner in its first incarnation—it just didn’t have Pearl Jam’s caliber of execution or its eager audience. The band rehearsed “Better Man” with O’Brien early in their days together, and the producer was, not surprisingly, instantly convinced the song would be a standout. He wanted it on Vs. and said as much on the spot. “After they finished, I was like, ‘Awesome! That’s a hit! That’s fabulous. Why haven’t I heard that before? It wasn’t on any of the tapes I had.’” The enthusiasm in his words is still palpable years later. “They all just looked straight down, and the whole room was deflated. I knew I’d said the wrong thing. It was a very personal song for Eddie, and one of the first songs he’d written,” he said. And most importantly, given Vedder’s reticence to claim the spotlight, “He didn’t want to hear that it was a big smash hit.”12 99

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Vedder bristled. O’Brien insisted. So the frontman reiterated his stance with a smart, passive-aggressive move. He’d taken to writing lyrics for potential songs on sheets of paper and taping them to poles in the band’s rehearsal space, and O’Brien had started looking over them to see what Vedder had on his mind—specifically hoping Vedder might tape up those “Better Man” lyrics. The singer knew what the producer was up to and proved it with a photo. “He sticks a Polaroid in my bag and says, ‘Check this out later,’” recalled O’Brien. “It was a Polaroid he’d taken of the lyrics on the post, and [a] note [on the post] says, ‘Here’s those lyrics you were asking about.’ It was kind of brilliant, but it was also him serving notice, like, ‘We’re not going to talk about that song right now. In due time, but not now.’”13 A producer of different stock might have dropped the subject at that point. Instead, O’Brien tactfully pressed Vedder to accept “Better Man” as a Vs. song—and did get all of Pearl Jam to try it at the Site. The studio performance was less than stellar, though, which may have been the result of a decision Vedder had made but not told the producer yet: to let the Pretenders’ Chrissy Hynde sing the lyrics and to put the song on a charitable Greenpeace record.14 To paraphrase O’Brien’s response to that revelation: WTF? Hynde, for unknown (or unspoken) reasons, didn’t arrive as planned when the band was to take another pass at the song. Which was just as well, because O’Brien was happier to drop the subject and (temporarily) forget “Better Man” existed than let someone else sing Vedder’s lyrics. Given the singer’s cleverness and long-view perspective, that might have been his intent all along. 100

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The standoff between songwriter and producer ultimately did bear fruit, even if it wasn’t in the form of the prized song appearing on Vs. It was, instead, O’Brien coming to appreciate Vedder’s point of view on lyrical content, public exposure, and internal politics. An understanding was established. Boundaries were marked. Mutual respect deepened. If it hadn’t been crystal clear prior to the “Better Man” situation, that disagreement had written it in stone: Vedder was the band’s leader and center of power. He would not be overridden. Every song he wrote was sacred to him, and that emotion drove what he and the band did with each one; as he’d said about the similarly near-and-dear “Black,” “Some songs just aren’t meant to be played between Hit No. 2 and Hit No. 3. . . . Those fragile songs get crushed by the business. I don’t want to be a part of it. I don’t think the band wants to be part of it.”15 Though most people weren’t aware of the missing song at the time of Vs.’s release, the omission of “Better Man” spoke volumes. Equally noteworthy (and ironic) was that when “Better Man” saw the light of day, it hit big—just as O’Brien and Vedder knew it would, despite the latter’s attempts to make it less likeable. A note the singer wrote about the song, which appears in the Vs. and Vitalogy deluxe box set-enclosed notebook replica, reads “Choruses too fucking poppy. Right now I can’t stand this.” The man’s frustration is evident in his messy scrawl and underscoring. Despite Vedder and the band’s efforts to craft a less “poppy” “Better Man” for 1994’s Vitalogy, the song spent eight weeks atop Billboard’s Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. 101

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It wasn’t even released as a single. ● Another song recorded during the Vs. sessions but not appearing on the album has also since become a concert sing-along: Pearl Jam’s cover of Lucinda Williams’s “Crazy Mary.” Williams was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1993, and the band had agreed to contribute their take of the song to Sweet Relief, an album that would benefit the stricken singer-songwriter with sales proceeds. Despite not being a Pearl Jam original, “Crazy Mary” has for years now been one of the band’s most revered and hoped-for live performances—due in large part to Williams’s songwriting prowess, but also to O’Brien’s production of, and instrumental contribution to, the studio track. The version of the song that appeared on Sweet Relief featured Williams’s backing vocals and rhythm guitar as well as the producer on Hammond organ. The warm, round undercurrent of keyed notes complete “Crazy Mary’s” touching sound—a deliberate departure from the original’s dramatic strings and backing vocals—helping to give the song a layered depth that is less heard than felt. The addition of O’Brien’s organ to Pearl Jam’s musical arsenal would go beyond one notable song. His use of the instrument also opened the door to the band embracing Hammond extraordinaire Boom Gaspar in 2002. Gaspar has come to virtually own live performances of several of the band’s songs, including the O’Brien-orchestrated,

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loose, lived-in take of “Crazy Mary,” which gives him ample room to roam the keys. Audiences don’t greet the man at every show with a resounding “Booooooom!” because they dislike the element he lends the band. Rather, Gaspar’s instrument has become an organic and integral element that, braided with McCready’s equally essential and unpredictable guitar leads, give listeners another way to lose themselves in the music. For anywhere from, say, six to ten minutes. It’s possible that without O’Brien’s early instrumental inspiration there would be no Gaspar organ on later studio tracks and extended concert jams. Which, despite the organist not being an official Pearl Jam member, is hard to imagine. O’Brien can be credited for much more than soaring keyed notes and a single record, though. After producing Vs. with the band, its members have had him return for five more studio efforts. Pearl Jam might not be Pearl Jam without his deft ability to both catalyze and capture its multilayered immediacy. Brendan O’Brien, then, could be the band’s equivalent of the fifth Beatle.

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7 Rhythm and Blues “Glorified G” Rock music without drums would be like baseball without a bat. It’s integral to the style. Percussion lends rock and roll its spine, gives listeners a beat to dance to, a pulse to time their hearts by, a reverberating echo to soundtrack their lives. If rock bands tend to churn through drummers, it’s not because they’re interchangeable. (The parodic Spinal Tap storyline is funny because it’s grounded in truth.) It’s because percussion can shape a band’s overall sound. It’s intrinsic. If the feel a drummer creates, with both their playing and personality, doesn’t align with what the group is aiming for . . . someone else will soon be seated on the riser. (You might argue the same for guitarists, bassists, and singers— but bands tend to form around those front-of-stage players.) Sometimes, drummers walk away; more often, they’re sent packing. Dave Abbruzzese’s case, while ultimately playing into the musical stools trope, was not so cut-and-dry. Pearl Jam’s third drummer stepped in following Matt Chamberlain’s short tour stint, which came after original (Ten) percussionist

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Dave Krusen excused himself to address an addiction. Abbruzzese brought a solid, punchy, subtly flashy style to the band’s songs. He and Ament synced on rhythm nicely, too, which was instantly evident in the shows he played with the band in late 1991. The drummer and Gossard also aligned on approach, as both tended toward a funk flair that would be showcased on “W.M.A.” and “Rats.” Tuning your ear to the percussion in those songs reveals a cornucopia of both undulating and punctuating beats: bongo, tight cymbal, splash cymbal, sparse snare fill. Both unusually arranged songs tug at the ear thanks to their lyrical themes and funky, flourishing percussion tracks. Abbruzzese’s contributions on Pearl Jam’s second record went beyond his drum kit. He brought the guitar riff of leadoff song (and first single from the album) “Go” to the table, too. “Dave had an acoustic guitar in dropped-D tuning, and he came up with this riff,” said McCready. “He didn’t have a pick, either. It was odd to have a drummer playing guitar but also to have such a cool riff.”1 The thick, weighty chords ride amid the song’s heavy, driving bass drum—which combine with McCready’s racing leads to propel the song, within mere seconds, to a frenzied pace sustained for three minutes. The man made his mark in a hurry. The drummer’s skills were undeniable, and his role in Pearl Jam perpetuating a cohesive sound—despite making a more varied record than Ten—significant. “I knew that ghosting notes on the snare and punctuating the rhythms with percussive elements such as splash and Chinese cymbals were going to allow for a more flamboyant style of drummer to fit in without ruining the melodic sensibilities of the Pearl 105

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Jam sound,” Abbruzzese later said of his creative approach.2 He was not there to simply provide a beat, in other words, and his commitment was apparent in the solid grounding of each song, both live and studio-recorded. Many early Pearl Jam fans still believe—thanks to Vs. and concerts at the time—that Abbruzzese remains the best percussionist the band has had, which is a bold opinion, considering eventual (and fifth and, one has to assume, last) drummer Matt Cameron’s world-class skills and style. Opinions aside, the man contributed much to both Vs.’s sound and the band’s early 1990s success. Abbruzzese’s musicianship was one thing. His flamboyant style of personality was another—and it was a major factor, if not the sole factor, in his undoing with the band. ● There’s a moment in Pearl Jam: The Kids Are Twenty, the companion film to Crowe’s Pearl Jam Twenty, that allows viewers a glimpse of a fundamental difference in character between Vedder and Abbruzzese. It’s as simple as it is revelatory. The band is performing an intimate show in a tiny Switzerland venue, circa 1992, crowd tightly pressed around them. Aside from Vedder, they are all seated. The guitarists are playing electric, a modest bank of speakers standing mere inches behind Ament, magnifying the small space and close proximity to the audience. Vedder sings the first few verses of “Garden” with his eyes closed, as if revisiting a haunting memory. McCready, Ament, and Gossard are clearly dialed in, bodies swaying with their entwining notes.

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Abbruzzese, while only a couple of feet behind the others, appears somewhere else entirely. He looks blissful, serene. An unlit cigarette hangs from his lips. His sticks work smooth and steady, seeming to move of their own accord. When someone steps up from beside his kit with a light, the drummer accepts it with a nonchalant grin. He continues to drum, rhythm unwavering, puffing the cigarette hands-free. Like a pro. Like a rock star. Vedder ran from the spotlight. Abbruzzese relished it. The singer focused on the cathartic power of performing, and experiencing, music. The drummer appreciated the spoils the music brought, too, including the smallest of entitlements. One man hated the Site and the privilege it represented. The other only saw upside. Both had clear ideals and priorities; they were just on opposite ends of a spectrum. Ament, Gossard, and McCready were at different places along that spectrum between frontman and backstop themselves, but their considered eye on the business aspects—touring, ticketing, exposure, their future—tended to align them with Vedder. And if a side had to be taken, who would go against the public face of the band, regardless of their feelings? If Vedder were to bail, it was clear to all, there would be no Pearl Jam—and Ament and Gossard had already had one solid act vaporize (due to the death of leader Andy Wood). But there were no sides in early 1993. There was, however, “Glorified G.” Like several other songs on Vs., this one is not a straightahead rock effort. It’s lively, driven by snappy Abbruzzese snares and McCready and Gossard chords firing left and 107

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right—one guitar stuttering, the other answering, then combining in a heavy wave. There’s a peppy, feel-good aspect to the sixteen-second instrumental opening. Then Vedder jumps in with an unlikely declaration: “Got a gun, fact I got two / That’s ok man, cuz I love god.” Now, different people may interpret those lyrics in their own ways. But the intent of the words, and the song itself, is twofold: (1) generally, to illuminate the problematic stereotypical motivations (and posturing) of gun ownership; and (2) specifically, to call out bandmate Abbruzzese. The drummer, one day at the Site, casually mentioned to some of the others that he’d recently made a gun purchase. Actually, not just one, but two. Not only was that noteworthy among the group, but it raised Vedder’s hackles. Abbruzzese’s own words—“In fact, I bought two” and “glorified versions of pellet guns”—quickly became song lyrics jabbing right back at him.3 Vedder’s opportunistic borrowing of casual band conversation for lyrics could have translated to a throwaway song scrap or a gimmicky track memorable only for the inside joke. Instead, he wove a wry, pointed statement through the drummer’s revelation, making his (and by extension the band’s) position on America’s gun culture clear: Don’t think, dumb is strength Never shot at a living thing Glorified version of a pellet gun Feels so manly, when armed And, interjected late in the song, “Kindred to being an American.” That’s no small assertion, even if there is a 108

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baked-in satirical element. One wonders how Abbruzzese not only didn’t take personal offense—surely he wouldn’t have participated in the song’s recording, otherwise—but how he must have laughed off Vedder’s point of view enough to accept the song, and the story behind it, becoming a matter of permanent public record. They obviously agreed to disagree, but what a public compromise. Looking through the lens of today’s hyperaware, outrageprone culture—and knowing Pearl Jam’s societal power in 1993—it’s surprising to recall that “Glorified G” didn’t stir pro-gun audiences or the National Rifle Association to objection, even though it was released as the final single from the record. The subject matter, like that of “W.M.A.,” was essentially a nonissue in the media. All the attention, instead, was for album sales, for the airplay of its five less direct, less critical singles. And for the band’s desire for less attention. “Glorified G” can be considered, along with “W.M.A.,” as Pearl Jam’s first clear positions on “political” issues—which illuminates an irony that has developed within its fervent fanbase over the years. As the band has grown increasingly more vocal and socially active, and publicly supported or opposed various political figures and agendas, more early listeners have turned deaf ears to their music. Evidence can be found on Pearl Jam’s own online community forums and social media timelines. The gist is typically “Shut up and just make music like you used to.” Which proves that the people airing the grievance weren’t ever paying close attention. The band has always had a conscience and has never been afraid to let it guide them. 109

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The 2018 catchy protest blast “Can’t Deny Me” didn’t come out of nowhere. Its roots lay in the awareness that drove “Glorified G,” that fueled “Jeremy” before that. (See also: “Do the Evolution,” “Grievance,” “Bu$hleaguer,” “Green Disease,” “World Wide Suicide,” “Mind Your Manners,” etc.) And in that responsible respect, Abbruzzese’s impact on the band—both thematically and aurally—reverberates still. ● “Glorified G” is only the most obvious evidence that there was friction between Pearl Jam’s drummer and singer (and beyond); an iceberg of conflict was lurking below at the time of Vs.’s recording and release. Abbruzzese unabashedly enjoyed the upside of fame. He thought the battle with Ticketmaster was backward. There are anecdotes and second-hand accounts of other issues, or at least passive-aggressivity, that created everyday irritation within the band. Rather than indulge in gossip, though, suffice it to say that Vedder and Abbruzzese simply didn’t get along as well as bandmates ideally would, and if Vedder quit, Pearl Jam would cease to exist. The fact that Abbruzzese wasn’t replaced in 1993, that he would perform on all but one of the songs on Pearl Jam’s next album—and their fourth drummer, Jack Irons, was hand-picked by Vedder—is a testament to what he brought to the band. For three years, his musical contributions far outweighed any discord created by the differences between him and the others. The drummer’s eventual 1994 dismissal—a meeting for which Abbruzzese thought, tellingly, that he would be 110

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discussing Pearl Jam potentially working with U2 producer Daniel Lanois4—told a significant story, too: that the band had begun to understand what it was as a collective, and how each of its members shaped—rather than were shaped by—the whole. Abbruzzese, though tattooed with the band’s early “stickman” logo, didn’t represent Pearl Jam—the band, the brand, the culture-changing entity. While difficult for the drummer and his fans to accept (even now), the decision to cut ties with him proved the group was both changing and gathering strength. Abbruzzese’s exit, and Irons’s subsequent arrival, was also symbolic of Vedder’s increasing influence—and the capitulation of founding duo Gossard and Ament. The reluctant face of the band had by then grown more comfortable with the role and was shaping Pearl Jam’s dynamic beyond just how it interacted with the media. His decisions would shift their sound, too. That hierarchical evolution—and, among other things, McCready’s personal struggles—would prove trying for Pearl Jam as they next recorded Vitalogy, but would also stand as the major reason the band ultimately survived the tumult and fallout of the grunge era. The band’s third record might have been borne out of adversity, but what they experienced while making and supporting Vs. steeled Pearl Jam’s members, poised them for decades of fruitful, familylike coexistence. The testy relationship between Abbruzzese and Vedder played no small role in that fact. “Glorified G,” then, effectively posits that the pen is mightier than the sword and the gun.

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8 Not Changing at All “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” If Vs. was the last album Pearl Jam made—and it easily could have been, given the internal and external struggles they faced from 1992 to 1994—its members might now look back at it with faded but wistful regret, like the narrator of “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” does her former lover, and her life. Fortunately for the band and its fans, no “What could have been?” (or Where Are They Now?) is necessary. To the contrary—Vs. remains a touchstone event, and era, in Pearl Jam’s lengthening history. Perhaps unwittingly, they drafted a working blueprint for their career with the album, how they promoted it (or chose not to), and how they toured at the time. “Elderly Woman,” like so many other songs on their sophomore effort, reflected the band’s choice to start playing by its own rules and controlling its own fate. The song’s name, obviously, is remarkably unlike all the one- and two-word titles in Pearl Jam’s catalog to that point— and certainly isn’t quick off the tongue. (Eddie Vedder joked

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about that very thing in his and Jeff Ament’s 1993 Rockline broadcast. He surely wasn’t the only radio voice that referenced the title’s length, as “Elderly Woman” saw airplay as the album’s fourth single.) That wasn’t an arbitrary choice, of course; the name is a device that sets the scene for the listener before they’ve heard a single note or Vedder lyric. You know who the song is about, and have a sense of its tone, with a glance at that long string of loaded words. The sound and atmosphere of “Elderly Woman” stand out, too. To aid the touching melancholy kindled with Vedder’s lyrics, the guitars are largely acoustic and Ament’s bass lingers on every note. It’s a simpler, quieter approach that plays counterpoint, like “Indifference,” to the album’s largely aggressive arrangements. The song would have been a natural fit in Pearl Jam’s 1992 MTV Unplugged set. Like the first few songs the band recorded for Vs., “Elderly Woman” came together with surprising speed. The guitar chords hit Vedder one morning at the Site, and his lyrics followed as if summoned. In under half an hour, he had written the entire song, and by the end of the day, the band had captured what you hear on the finished record.1 The quickness with which Vedder penned the words suggests that the regret-fueled song tapped into something personal. Some of the lines seem to support that, as Vedder’s own character—how he saw it, or perhaps a romanticized vision of it—feels evident in these lines: Me, you wouldn’t recall, for I’m not my former It’s hard when you’re stuck upon the shelf I changed by not changing at all

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Small town predicts my fate Perhaps that’s what no one wants to see I just want to scream . . . hello Like the woman who remains in rural stasis decades after splitting with her love, overwhelmed by conflicting emotions upon seeing the former flame again, the frontman had gained some perspective on the recent pre-fame and celebrity-status parts of his life. Vedder was aged by circumstance (“not my former”), had distanced himself from some of those developments (“upon the shelf ”), and forced himself to maintain a status quo amid the chaos spurred by success (“changed by not changing at all”). Perhaps, most fundamentally, he strived only to be a fellow human being rather than an idol (“I just want to scream”). Vedder’s rich, articulate voice is front-and-center throughout “Elderly Woman,” and his words create a detailed sketch of anguished introspection known all too well by just about everyone over the age of thirteen, whether they hurt from a failed relationship, the death of someone close, a missed opportunity, unforgiving hindsight, or other personal tragedy. Regardless of one’s age or identity, it’s easy to relate to the singer’s protagonist. This thematic tug at the heartstrings plays the most overt role here, as the song eschews both rhyming verses and a standard chorus. The line “Hearts and thoughts they fade away,” a kind of repeated aside rather than stereotypical, radio-ready refrain, underscores the emotion—and still manages to plant its mellow melody in the listener’s mind. Pearl Jam’s live performances of “Elderly Woman” are

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typically bolstered by the crowd’s backing vocals, including that screamed “hello,” making it clear that the relatable authenticity imbued throughout is as powerful an ingredient as any massive vocal hook. The acoustic-electric spine of “Elderly Woman” carries one from start to finish, too. Unembellished, warm, sparse strings and a clean bassline deliver the song to its full strength, at about thirty seconds in, when they’re complemented by sparse, jazz-like amplified guitar licks and Dave Abbruzzese’s punctuating cymbals. Then, as the song nears its end, the instrumentation peels back again—drums, slow-pulse bass, electric guitar—so that intimate acoustic sound fades away, a literal echo of Vedder’s repeated lyric. It’s that deftly textured, genuine atmosphere of “Elderly Woman”—exhibited as well in “Daughter” and “Dissident” and “Indifference”—that makes Vs. feel like a timeless document of human feeling. It’s the equal and opposite urgent scorch of “Go,” “Animal,” “Blood,” and “Rearviewmirror” that lend the record a perpetually of-the-moment feel. And the ever-topical thematic undercurrent provided by “Glorified G,” “W.M.A.,” “Rats,” and “Leash” add pointed heft not found in the average rock record. Altogether, the tracklist stands as a career-defining statement. Vs. told listeners in 1993 that Pearl Jam was following a unique, unpredictable muse. That the band’s five members represented a broad set of tastes and influences, and each man played a crucial role in their collective then—a freshly minted force that had just begun to understand its own strength—and in what it would ultimately become. Yes, Vedder was their spokesperson and soul, but Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, and Abbruzzese—later Jack Irons 118

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and Matt Cameron—have given that soul tangible, palpable, necessary breath and life. Despite the contentious studio time and intra-band disagreements, Pearl Jam’s members discovered this truth as they finished their second record. “I remember going into the control room and being blown away at how incredible it sounded,” said Ament. “We were actually becoming a good band. We could get superheavy, weird, and experimental and also mellow. We were achieving our goal, which was to be a band that could play a lot of different styles.”2 He also set a new personal bar with the songs. “It set the tone for how I wanted to play bass for a long time,” he said.3 Gossard looked at the effort just as favorably: It’s maybe my favorite Pearl Jam record. It felt more like we could be this super hard rock band, have these folk songs, have a ballad, have . . . kind of a groove kind of song and a mid-tempo rocker. I think [Ten] has that to some degree, but Vs. continues the experiment in a way that shows that we’re not going to be just one thing. We have multiple songwriters and different perspectives.4 ● All those perspectives, perhaps inevitably, sparked conflicts—most notably over how Pearl Jam addressed fame and responded to being held aloft as the new decade’s epitome of rock stardom. But just as important to the band’s longevity was how those personalities and points of view aligned on how Pearl Jam should use its generation-defining superpowers for good. 119

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Vedder, for one, was thinking bigger well before his band had recorded Vs. In August of 1992, he said, “I’ve got so much more important stuff on my mind, like looking out for the world in other ways as far as something much bigger than music and musical tastes.”5 This was not posturing—the band had already played a Rock for Choice show; the singer had made a visual statement while appearing on Saturday Night Live with a handwritten “No Bush in ‘92” message on his T-shirt; they’d played an Earth Day benefit concert; and, among other things, they were part of Lollapalooza II, a festival event built around betterment through music, art, and political awareness. It’s not surprising, then, that Pearl Jam has also used its concert poster art to express its views over the decades. This gig artwork, largely created by Ament’s brother Barry and his Ames Bros. team, gives the band another way to make statements they feel are important. There have been scores of posters featuring political or social cause-based imagery, from caricatures of President Bush and his allies to the silencing of Lady Liberty to associating the American flag with war to depicting the Trump White House aflame. The Aments, and the band, see each show as an opportunity to seize the visual medium as well as the aural, despite the criticism—within and outside of Pearl Jam’s fanbase—that sometimes kindles. Responding to the offense taken at certain Pearl Jam concert artwork displayed and sold while Bush was in power, Vedder wrote, “Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest. I see 120

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love for a country spinning out of control, and the need to acknowledge the problem and be active against it.”6 Over ten years later, following a backlash created by the Trump administration-inspired poster, Ament stood firm: “The role of artists is to make people think and feel, and the current administration has us thinking and feeling. I was the sole conceptualist of this poster, and I welcome all interpretations and discourse. Love, from the First Amendment, Jeff Ament.”7 This awareness and pride in highlighting issues that the band members feel deserve attention goes back to the wake of Vs.’s release—as does the acknowledgment that this approach makes Pearl Jam unique. The sole statement on Ames Bros.’s first poster for the band, crafted in the spring of 1995, is this: “SPONSORED BY NO ONE.” (The phrase was surely inspired by like-minded mentor Neil Young’s 1988 “This Note’s for You” video, in which Young raises a toast with a beer bearing the label “SPONSORED BY NOBODY.”) In the years since, the band’s members have never stopped running with that approach. They’ve evolved from a byproduct, and major ingredient, of pop-culture hype to a responsible, philanthropic force that plays music to enact social change. Even as their cultural cache has settled into the same classic quadrant as their own touchstones—Tom Petty, KISS, the Who, Bruce Springsteen, Cheap Trick, Iggy Pop, and others—the quintet (and its entire camp) has pursued its agenda while largely continuing to eschew traditional marketing and publicity. These efforts have made the members of Pearl Jam largerthan-life figures, but in completely different ways than they 121

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were in the early 1990s. Just as the band’s quick formation and execution of Ten and Vs. reflected a collective DIY ethic, today the band runs its own record label, dictates its tour terms, and hand-crafts its charitable efforts. Vedder, Ament, Gossard, McCready, and Cameron are more rock entrepreneurs than rock stars. Together, the men support high-visibility philanthropy through Pearl Jam’s Vitalogy Foundation, which since 2006 has raised funds through a donation built into every concert ticket purchase (set as a not-insignificant $5 per ticket for the most recent tour), regular auctions of special items and memorabilia, and partnerships with like-minded entities. (Prior to that there were many one-off benefit shows like those for the Bridge School, hurricane relief, and ending hunger.) Pearl Jam’s most notable recent fundraising effort, The Home Shows, was an unprecedented alignment of over 160 parties to combat homelessness in Seattle’s King County—which culminated in at least $11 million raised in tandem with their two August 2018 concerts at the Seattle Mariners’ home stadium. Over $1 million was contributed by the band itself. Three years before Pearl Jam initiated its foundation, it kicked off ongoing efforts to mitigate or offset the carbon dioxide produced by its touring activities—factoring in everything from shipping to transportation to attendance of every show. And band members have not just contributed money to preserve the environment; they’ve also spent time planting trees, making grassroots appearances, and meeting with policy makers. 122

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These natural-world concerns are an ever-strengthening feedback loop that Pearl Jam initiated with the release of Vs.; the initial CD run of the album was packaged in an EcoPak Jewel Box, so called because it contained far less plastic than the standard CD case, and folded open on paper hinges. Every CD the band has issued since has eschewed standard plastic packaging. The band’s 2020 studio album, Gigaton, took an overtly visual approach with such responsibly minded efforts: its cover was a moody, apocalyptic image of a Norwegian ice shelf melting at raging waterfall speed. (The seemingly unreal visual was captured by photojournalist Paul Nicklen. When the record was announced, viewers witnessed its disturbing spilling-water spectacle in social media-triggered augmented reality at physical installations across the globe.) That curious single-word title was also both a science lesson and a warning; “gigaton” is a measurement used to quantify the quickening, devastating loss of Earth’s ice—in billionton increments. Pearl Jam’s tenth studio offering, then, was perhaps its most veracious activist statement yet. Its artwork alone spoke volumes. Along with these high-profile collective efforts, each band member continues to choose smaller, varied, personal philanthropic concerns to support through the foundation— from McCready’s Crohn’s & Colitis Foundation to Ament’s Skatepark Projects to Gossard’s wild horse preservation to Vedder’s EB Foundation to Cameron’s American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Pearl Jam’s “Acts” web page is a testament to what its members believe in and how they’ve voluntarily taken on the 123

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multifaceted responsibilities of civil stewardship for nearly thirty years. ● Humanitarianism is of course just one intrinsic aspect of Pearl Jam’s continued existence. The band’s compassionate external yin is counterpart to a passionate, inner-working yang—what they do to get their music to listeners, concertgoers, and fans around the world. The business part of being a band. Making records. Touring. Publicity. Commerce. How they do this today has its roots in how they did it in 1993. The results were mixed back then—or perhaps counterintuitively positive, given the damper the band consciously put on things. That early outcome was due in large part to grunge’s media-fueled grip on society, and Pearl Jam’s members and manager Kelly Curtis recognized that. They adapted nimbly, evolving their approach with each subsequent record and tour, bringing more responsibilities, and liabilities, in-house all along. Though beholden to Epic Records for over a decade, by 2000 the band was eager to experiment with the method and format of their releases—and to step away from corporate trappings. First there was the Billboard-busting set of seventy-two officially issued “bootleg” albums capturing their tour—in no-frills packaged, reasonably priced, highquality CD form—in support of sixth studio album Binaural. They would release many more boots in subsequent years, via multiple outlets and in varying forms.

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Pearl Jam executed a unique one-album deal with J Records (the eponymous Pearl Jam, or the “Avocado” record) in 2006. The band, in a remarkable nod to DIY music retailers, arranged to give the ThinkIndie distribution coalition an exclusive window to supply all other outlets with the record. In the same year, Pearl Jam funneled an exclusive CD release, Live at Easy Street, through ThinkIndie, as well, giving back to stores like the one where it was recorded in 2005, West Seattle’s own Easy Street Records. (The performance is one of legend, given its extremely intimate size, location, cast of characters, set list, stellar sound, and simple improbability.) This reverence demonstrated for independent retail—and favorable terms set by the band—marked a first for an act of Pearl Jam’s stature. It was unheard of then and set an indielove precedent for in-store performances and releases for bands such as Metallica and Foo Fighters to follow. Three years later, the band released its next studio effort, Backspacer, on its own label, Monkeywrench Records. Again, Pearl Jam crafted advantageous conditions for independent record stores while simultaneously trying a new experiment: partnering with retail outlet Target to offer exclusive merch alongside the record. The latter alignment wasn’t executed flawlessly or universally applauded but proved that the band’s members were bringing ideas to the table, were thinking of their fans and the livelihood of those who sold their record, as well as their own careers. The novel approach both echoed their deliberate, strategic support of Vs. and demonstrated their noble intent. With each subsequent release—including Lightning Bolt in 2013 and Gigaton—Pearl Jam emphasized the vinyl 125

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format, as well—issuing different weights, colors, inventive packaging, singles, limited runs. (Ament and Vedder scored a Grammy for Best Recording Package for the former record, which featured a die-cut cover and song-specific artwork.) The band’s members have long adored records—long-time fans and early concertgoers may remember the Vs.-era sticker featuring a yellow turntable, sawblade record, and the phrase “Viva la vinyl”—and their attention to wax, along with their independent leanings over the years, served as undeniable inspiration for ThinkIndie leaders’ launch of Record Store Day in 2008. Over a dozen years later, the initiative has become a bona fide biannual global event, directly contributing to vinyl’s resurgence. (Unlike so many events canceled in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Record Store Day was only restructured, not shut down.) It’s fitting that Pearl Jam was the Record Store Day Ambassador in 2019, the year both its Live at Easy Street and MTV Unplugged were released on RSD-exclusive vinyl. No other act—perhaps short of Jack White—has played such an important role in re-establishing the format’s prominence, so the ambassadorship could be seen as a well-deserved reward. After all, Pearl Jam issued Vs. on vinyl a week ahead of its CD release, simply to give devotees of their favored format the first listen. Another career constant that Pearl Jam initiated in the Vs. era is giving fans an exclusive chance to score good tickets to shows which will undoubtedly sell out (and that remains every single one). In 1993 and 1994, selling tickets directly to members of its fan club was both out of respect to their support and a convenient way to sidestep Ticketmaster. In the years 126

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since, the program has evolved to give lucky Ten Club members a shot at the best seats in each venue—closest to the stage. (Or at least pairs of seats purchasable at face value.) Despite the band ultimately (and, honestly, inevitably) demurring to the ticketing behemoth, they’ve maintained solid control over selecting venues, how tickets are sold, and how the added philanthropic contribution with each show is used. For the Gigaton tour, Pearl Jam’s make-friends-withenemies collaboration with Ticketmaster resulted in “Ticketmaster Verified Fan,” a platform intended to thwart scalpers and bots from taking tickets from—and then ransoming tickets to—actual fans. The band touted it as “a safe, reliable, ticket-buying experience” that “ensure[s] tickets get directly to fans.” The united parties also introduced “North America’s first Fan-to-Fan Face Value Ticket Exchange,” allowing fans to buy tickets, at the price originally paid, from those who could no longer attend.8 Time will tell how these developments play out, as the band rescheduled the tour for 2021, given the pandemic. In 2020, Pearl Jam also wrote a formal plea to New Jersey lawmakers behind the “Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing Act,” designed to reduce instances of tickets being bought by scalpers and bots rather than would-be concertgoers. The band’s letter stated, “We believe that [the act] primarily, if not entirely, benefits professional ticket resellers using the so-called ‘secondary market.’ We urge you to stand with us and our fans to reject this flawed legislation.”9 These innovative efforts and public overtures are only the most recent incarnation of the well-intentioned ideas that 127

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Pearl Jam began drafting in the early 1990s and has been refining ever since. Part of the band’s calculation was a conscious effort to always make the music (and corresponding artwork) the focal point—a direct response to the members of the band, most significantly Vedder, being singled out as hallowed celebrities at the time of Vs.’s release. Every record is notable for its considered, cohesive packaging as well as its lack of frontand-center band imagery. Studio and candid photography is favored when the members appear at all; even promotional shots of the band provided to the media over the years have been few and far between. This downplaying of self and focus on how the music is recorded and shared is reflected in Pearl Jam’s philosophy on music videos. After the fame-fanning success of “Jeremy”— which the band had intended as an eye-opener to the troubles within families behind closed doors, not to the band’s existence itself—they turned away from the format. As Ament said then, “Ten years from now, I don’t want people to remember our songs as videos.”10 With “Jeremy,” though, the two formats have proven inextricable. (The band leveraged that fact on June 5, 2020, when it finally released the original cut of the video which MTV had barred; the uncensored version made it clear that the boy in question committed suicide by gunshot, so Pearl Jam made it public on Wear Orange Day, an annual effort to spread awareness of gun violence.) In later years, when Pearl Jam explored short-form video again, it was in animated, band-free pieces (“Do the Evolution,” “Can’t Deny Me”) or performance mode (“I Am 128

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Mine,” “Save You,” “Sirens,” etc.). Breaking the mold was the 2013 video for “Mind Your Manners,” which combined the two approaches—thus representing the most “promotional” band-forward product in decades, even including a closeup of those intense Vedder eyes. But as with “Jeremy,” there was an agenda: to underscore the song’s message that war doesn’t improve humankind and is not a beneficial solution. The band’s most recent video, for Gigaton single “Retrograde,” was an animated statement, only depicting each member via a tarot-card likeness, in support of a message on climate change delivered by a cloaked, psychic Greta Thunberg. As Vs. originally attested, its creators have never been afraid of speaking up—in person or through their art. Some may not appreciate Pearl Jam weighing in on politics, social concerns, and the like, but the band could never be accused of not having a point of view. As activist Howard Zinn wrote— and Vedder would later sing in the song “Down”—“You can’t be neutral on a moving train.” The band’s members see forming and sharing opinions as human responsibilities, and when a song or video can reinforce theirs, they’ve considered it an asset. ● You don’t have to take a long view back on Pearl Jam’s career, though, to see the impact of Vs. The record’s influence was near-immediate. It came through loud and clear throughout the band’s next studio album, released just thirteen months later.

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Vitalogy ran with the themes the previous record had introduced—a punk-paced, raucous opening salvo; intentionally hook-free vocal arrangements; songs with socially responsible messages or commentary; an ode to the vinyl format itself; a variety of tempos and sounds all with a live urgency—and marked what remains the most unique album in their catalog. Just as Vs. included instant fan favorites and hit songs, so did the third record. Again the band put much thought into the record’s packaging—perhaps more so, given the unique, retro medical-reference nature of the liner booklet. Again they sidestepped music videos and standard mass publicity efforts, choosing to promote the album primarily through touring. Again, the record was a critical and bottom-line success, but more on Pearl Jam’s terms than with Vs., given the fresh wisdom they brought to the experience. Another carryover was producer Brendan O’Brien. Despite the occasional friction they’d earlier experienced in the studio—especially over “Rearviewmirror” and “Better Man”—Pearl Jam’s members were comfortable with O’Brien and happy with what they’d created together. The producer’s musical and technical skill set, combined with his familiarity with the band’s individual personalities and collective character, made him the ideal choice for the band at its most daring. He and Pearl Jam’s members had indeed learned much during their time together at the Site—including not to record there again.

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9 The Means to Make Amends

Pearl Jam is no longer at odds with the media and the world. The inverse is also true: the media and the world is no longer thoroughly enamored with Pearl Jam, no longer blanketing newsstands and airwaves with stories about the band and its members. Though Vs. has sold over seven million copies to date, the bulk of those sales were made long ago. That’s not to say that, in the quarter-decade-plus since Vs., artists and populace have grown indifferent toward each other. To the contrary, the band continues to tour, conduct philanthropy, and most importantly, make new music. And people continue to listen—buying tickets, buying records, streaming songs. A large swath of Pearl Jam’s fanbase may be aging gen-Xers who’ve stayed loyal since Ten, but many of those fans now have kids who carry the torch as well. Wherever the band plays, it can attract tens of thousands. And Pearl Jam’s place in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, even if purely a symbolic accomplishment, is the highest honor for an act of its kind.

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There’s a direct correlation between the band’s long, slow descent from the superstardom of 1993’s Vs. and its solidification as one of the greatest rock acts America has ever borne. As they became less of a headline maker, Pearl Jam grew more successful—by its own members’, or any musician’s, definition. That journey was Vedder, Ament, Gossard, and McCready’s vision all along. Make music. For a long time. As a career. It took some internal reconciliation and the inevitable fade of grunge fever to achieve the course they desired, but Vs. served as a sort of GPS for the journey. Though fame nearly torpedoed the band initially—and even as it receded over the decades and other styles and artists rose to the forefront to shape younger generations—it has proven to be a catalyst for Pearl Jam’s continued relevance. To revisit the rocket-ship metaphor, the initial ascent was much faster and more perilous than they wanted, but it ultimately placed them in an orbit where they could take seats behind the controls and plot coordinates for . . . absolutely anywhere. It’s fairly easy to imagine Pearl Jam’s members piloting their careers to great (maybe even HOF-level) heights in other acts had Pearl Jam imploded after Vs. They obviously had the talent, passion, and business savviness that can contribute to lasting relevance. But there’s more to their collective persistence than a cocktail of interests, skill, and timing— something that directly contributes to their staying together and continuing to craft solid albums. That something also explains why people still feel compelled to buy their music, travel far and wide to see them live, and pay an annual fee to remain in their fan club despite today’s distracting flavor-ofthe-minute musical culture. 132

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I believe that quality is simple human decency. Vedder wrote replies to fan mail, called listeners to say hello. Ament and Gossard placed their trust in the singer even as it seemed the man might tear down the success they’d sought for years. They gave McCready time in 1994 to focus on his health, and the guitarist returned from rehabilitation on a new trajectory that would see him become an outspoken supporter of patient advocacy groups and the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation. Even Abbruzzese’s tenure suggests that the band members, including the drummer himself, had enough mutual respect to continue collaborating well beyond a point at which others might have drawn the line. And in 2020, the band’s few press statements about its latest record have focused tightly on Pearl Jam as a more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts collective, been notably complimentary toward each member’s skills and contributions. For this band, it’s always been about the music. But it’s also always been about people. Those making the music, those listening—and everyone else. Original drummer Dave Krusen put it this way, when referring to his leaving the band to address alcohol addiction that the others were concerned about (as they would later be with McCready): “They saved my life. It was the only thing that woke me up.”1 Mark Arm, whose band Mudhoney first supported Pearl Jam on tour in 1993—a mutual olive branch itself, as the latter band arose out of the split of Arm, Gossard, and Ament’s Green River—got a close-up view of how they did things in the Vs. era. His uninformed opinion had been that Pearl Jam’s members’ drive to establish musical careers was 133

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a silly attempt to “win the lottery,” but then he witnessed the band’s inner workings personally. “Our minds were blown. Everyone—from the techs to the band to their management— was super cool . . . Pearl Jam’s sound and monitor people worked with us and totally helped us out. Everyone got along. The band had circled its wagons and was dealing with all of that crazy hype on their own terms.”2 Arm’s bandmate Dan Peters seconded the notion, saying “Pearl Jam’s a band you could look at as a model of how to do things properly in the rock world. They treat people with respect, they surround themselves with straight-up, honest people.”3 The Fastbacks’ Kim Warnick echoed the sentiment. “All those guys are just the best. And they’re kinda like the best ambassadors [Seattle’s] had for a rock band. Just the things they do for this city. . . . It’s pretty phenomenal. They turned out to be the most punk rock band ever.”4 Case in point: Pearl Jam’s support for an effort to add funding for “mobile pit stops” to Seattle’s 2020 city budget. The effort was spearheaded by local nonprofit institution Real Change, which benefits low-income and homeless populations. The “pit stops” were public toilets, which have been essentially impossible for homeless people, tourists, downtown company employees, or anyone else in Seattle to find. Helping to raise awareness that “Everybody Poos”— well, that’s both essentially human and intimately punk rock. ● How much difference does integrity make? It’s an endlessly debatable question, given the recent examples 134

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of unscrupulous people succeeding at the highest levels. I would argue, though, that without all the human ingredients fueling it—talent, passion, wherewithal, self-preservation, and decency—Pearl Jam’s second record would not have the teeth it still does over a quarter of a century later. Those incisors are bared in “Animal” and “W.M.A.” and “Blood,” revealed with a sneer in “Glorified G” and “Leash” and hauntingly veiled in “Daughter” and “Indifference.” The righteous fire of Vs. reverberates decades later in “Mind Your Manners” and “Can’t Deny Me” and Gigaton. The carefully plotted support of the early record points directly to Pearl Jam’s current control of its own fate, from a remarkably active social media presence to fan club privileges to rare media appearances outside of its members’ philanthropic efforts. Still, Pearl Jam’s members haven’t reached their destination. Though they’re no longer angry with music writers and media decision-makers and cultural appropriators, they continue to tend a searing fire. That “five against one” phrase still has topical cache. Now it’s ignorance that the band is most clearly aligned against—the ignorant who have been elevated to positions of power, the ignorance of those leaders’ policies, and the ignorance displayed by not engaging, not taking a stand, not caring, not voting. Pearl Jam’s political bent—which is just another form of decency, if you’re doing it right—has turned some listeners and fans off. Some people just want to rock out with their conscience off, and there are still plenty of acts to accommodate that. This one, though, continues to feel it has a responsibility to speak up, speak out, and be an example— and inspiration—to others. 135

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At a time when necessary fundamental change seems both inevitable and impossible, the band’s efforts feel all the more critical. “Please don’t go out on me,” two decades into this unstable millennium, could be seen as an appeal to America’s societal foundation itself. “Don’t go,” indeed. For those who turn to music for solace, for connection, for strength, for hope, Pearl Jam’s survival of the Vs. era continues to pay dividends. That recording and touring period paved the way for all that the band and its members have done since. Vedder continues to scream his lungs out. McCready, Gossard, Ament, and Cameron continue to fill rooms with chords and rhythms. Because, as they each believed well before Pearl Jam existed, every album is sacred and makes a difference. Every song. Every note.

136

Thanks

I hadn’t thought seriously about writing this book until a storied record store owner told me I should. Really, I should have known I had a Pearl Jam book in me—I’m a writer! I’m a fan!—but as is often the case, I needed a wiser person to say it for me to start believing it. I’d like to recognize him and a handful of others who’ve provided words of encouragement (and much more) over the years. Susan Littlefield gave me my first copywriting job and quickly suggested I write about music on the side. (She gave me original vinyl pressings of Ten and Vs. back then, too. Just because.) Soon after, Mark Baumgarten encouraged, improved, and then printed some of that writing in Seattle publications. I likely never would have even attempted a music-related book had he not challenged me to be a better interviewer and writer in the 2000s. Mark Wilkerson’s research buoyed a certain band’s twentieth anniversary-celebrating tome. When I asked him a couple of process questions, he shared a lot of that research, as well. Here’s to the sincere kindness of strangers—and to being strangers no more.

VS .

A couple of years ago, I asked Easy Street Records’ Matt Vaughan if I could talk to him about his pivotal role in the resurgence of vinyl. He invited me to his shop for a conversation, then pointed at a 33⅓ book display there and said I should pitch one. His suggestions and support are a major reason this volume exists. boice-Terrel Allen’s editing unquestionably made this a better book, and his easygoing approach was likely more appreciated than he realizes. No published work would bear my name were it not for my parents’ support—in general, and specifically around writing. My dad once gave me a chunk of petrified wood and the note “To remind you of the permanence of paper.” I have no doubt his permanent soul is smiling about this. Profound thanks is due to my gracious, generous wife. She voluntarily reads all the words, helps me weed out the crap, reminds me to believe in myself . . . and does the parenting while I type the hours away. Neither my heart nor my head—or our wonderful son—would function without her. As Wayne and Garth said, I’m not worthy. Much of my writing (and perspective) would not exist without Pearl Jam’s members, current and previous. (The same can be said for a few people in the band’s camp. You know who you are.) Thank you.

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Notes

Introduction 1 “Grunge” has always felt like an arbitrary and improper term for just about every well-known Pacific Northwest band of the era except Mudhoney and Melvins. That’ll be the only time I wrap the love-it-or-hate-it term in quotation marks. 2 “Rockline Interview 10/18/93,” Five Horizons. http:​//www​ .five​horiz​ons.c​om/ar​chive​/arti​cles/​rockl​ine.s​html (accessed October 18, 2019). 3 “Rockline Interview 10/18/93.” 4 “Rockline Interview 10/18/93.”

Chapter 1 1 This term is more apropos than grunge, though it still clumps together a large number of bands that did not sound all that much alike. Also the last instance of quotes. 2 Simpson, D. (2009), “How Eddie Vedder Survived Pearl Jam’s Success,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 17. https​:// ww​w.smh​.com.​au/en​terta​inmen​t/mus​ic/ho​w-edd​ie-ve​dder-​

NOTES

survi​ved-p​earl-​jams-​succe​ss-20​09091​7-gdt​q5x.h​tml (accessed November 21, 2019). 3 Interview with the author. 4 Humphrey, C. (2001), Loser, 2nd edn, Seattle: MISCmedia, 172. 5 Humphrey, Loser, 172. 6 Humphrey, Loser, 172. 7 Jam, P. (2011), Pearl Jam Twenty, New York: Simon & Schuster, 89–90. 8 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 118. 9 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 120.

Chapter 2 1 Greer, J. (2018), “The Courtship of Eddie Vedder: Our December 1993 Cover Story on Pearl Jam,” Spin, October 19. https​://ww​w.spi​n.com​/feat​ured/​pearl​-jam-​1993-​eddie​-vedd​ er-in​tervi​ew-co​ver-s​tory/​ (accessed June 15, 2019). 2 Interview with the author. 3 Neely, K. (1998), Five Against One, New York: Penguin Books, 120. 4 Jones, A. (1994), “Interview with Eddie Vedder,” Melody Maker, May 21. http:​//kur​tcoba​in.co​m/int​ervie​ws/in​tervi​ewwi​th-ed​die-v​edder​-melo​dy-ma​ker/ (accessed August 27). 5 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 90. 6 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 98. 7 Interview with the author. 8 Neely, Five Against One, 182.

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NOTES

9 Neely, Five Against One, 182. 10 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 109. 11 Neely, Five Against One, 231. 12 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 116. 13 Hyatt, B. (2006), “Eddie Vedder’s Embarrassing Tale: Naked in Public,” Rolling Stone, June 20. https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​com/ m​usic/​music​-news​/eddi​e-ved​ders-​embar​rassi​ng-ta​le-na​ked-i​ n-pub​lic-1​02395​/ (accessed June 9, 2019).

Chapter 3 1 “Pearl Jam – Jeff, Stone, and Mike Interview (Texas, 1992),” YouTube. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=kV7​K8JhF​XKc (accessed December 3, 2019). 2 Yarm, M. (2011), Everybody Loves Our Town, New York: Crown Archetype, 374. 3 Interview with the author. 4 Interview with the author. 5 Crowe, C. (1993), “Five Against the World,” Rolling Stone, October 28: 52. 6 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 132. 7 Epstein, D. (2018), “Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs.’: 10 Things You Didn’t Know,” Rolling Stone, October 19. https​://ww​w.rol​lings​tone.​ com/m​usic/​music​-news​/pear​l-jam​-vs-t​hings​-you-​didnt​-know​ -7315​55/ (accessed April 8, 2019). 8 Interview with the author. 9 Neely, Five Against One, 186.

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10 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 11 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 132. 12 Prato, G. (2009), Grunge Is Dead, Toronto: ECW Press, 332–3. 13 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 58. 14 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 132. 15 Interview with the author.

Chapter 4 1 Interview with the author. 2 Interview with the author. 3 “Dissident (song),” Wikipedia. https​://en​.wiki​pedia​.org/​wiki/​ Dissi​dent_​(song​) (accessed June 23, 2019). 4 “Dissident (song).” 5 Interview with the author. 6 Epstein, “Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs.’” 7 Schonfeld, Z. (2015), “Does the Parental Advisory Label Still Matter?,” Newsweek, November 10. https​://ww​w.new​sweek​ .com/​does-​paren​tal-a​dviso​ry-la​bel-s​till-​matte​r-tip​per-g​ore-3​ 75607​(accessed October 27, 2019). 8 Childers, C. (2019), “26 Years Ago: Pearl Jam Avoid Sophomore Slump With ‘Vs.,’” Loudwire, October 19. https​ ://lo​udwir​e.com​/pear​l-jam​-vs-a​lbum-​anniv​ersar​y/ (accessed October 19, 2019). 9 Jam, P. (2020), Twitter. https​://tw​itter​.com/​Pearl​Jam/s​tatus​ /1268​31752​39104​96257​ (accessed July 1, 2020).

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Chapter 5 1 “1992-05 – Stone Gossard and Mike McCready (interview),” YouTube. https​://ww​w.you​tube.​com/w​atch?​v=3vV​rBZA1​vPQ (accessed December 3, 2019). 2 “Spin Online, August 2001,” Five Horizons. http:​//www​.five​ horiz​ons.c​om/ar​chive​/arti​cles/​spin8​01.sh​tml (accessed June 20, 2019). 3 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 80. 4 Epstein, “Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs.’” 5 “Spin Online, August 2001.” 6 Interview with the author. 7 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 118. 8 “Spin Online, August 2001.” 9 Neely, Five Against One, 190. 10 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 52. 11 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 52. 12 Macdonald, P. (1993), “The Most Popular Band in the World,” The Seattle Times, December 5. http:​//com​munit​y.sea​ttlet​ imes.​nwsou​rce.c​om/ar​chive​/?dat​e=199​31205​&slug​=1735​442 (accessed July 26, 2019). 13 Hilburn, R. (1994), “He Didn’t Ask for All This,” Los Angeles Times, May 1. https​://ww​w.lat​imes.​com/a​rchiv​es/la​-xpm-​ 1994-​05-01​-ca-5​2475-​story​.html​ (accessed July 25, 2019). 14 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 55. 15 McNerthney, C. (2018), “Pearl Jam’s Drop in the Park 1992: Previously Unseen Interviews and Footage,” KIRO 7, August

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7. https​://ww​w.kir​o7.co​m/new​s/loc​al/pe​arl-j​am-s-​drop-​in-th​ e-par​k-199​2-pre​vious​ly-un​seen-​inter​views​-and-​foota​ge/80​ 84158​48 (accessed September 8, 2019). 16 Neely, Five Against One, 270–1. 17 Neely, Five Against One, 272. 18 Neely, Five Against One, 273. 19 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 148. 20 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 148. 21 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 148.

Chapter 6 1 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 89. 2 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 89. 3 Neely, Five Against One, 186. 4 Letkemann, J. (2008), “Pearl Jam Reteams with Brendan O’Brien for New Album,” Billboard, May 2. https​://ww​w.bil​ lboar​d.com​/arti​cles/​news/​10456​62/pe​arl-j​am-re​teams​-with​ -bren​dan-o​brien​-for-​new-a​lbum (accessed July 25, 2019). 5 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 6 Peiken, M. (1993), “Dave Abbruzzese of Pearl Jam,” Modern Drummer, December. https​://ww​w.web​citat​ion.o​rg/5w​WenLo​ yj?ur​l=htt​p://p​earlj​amhis​tory.​no.sa​po.pt​/PJAr​ticle​s_Int​ervie​ ws_12​-xx-9​3_-_m​odern​_drum​mer.h​tm (accessed June 30, 2020). 7 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 8 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133.

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9 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 51. 10 Hilburn, “He Didn’t Ask for All This.” 11 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 12 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 134. 13 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 134. 14 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 135. 15 Crowe, “Five Against the World,” 57.

Chapter 7 1 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 2 Aubrecht, M. (2018), “Exclusive Interview: David Abbruzzese,” Off Beat, January 11. https​://ma​ubrec​ht.wo​rdpre​ ss.co​m/201​8/01/​11/ex​clusi​ve-in​tervi​ew-da​vid-a​bbruz​zese/​ (accessed August 17, 2019). 3 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 4 “Spin Online, August 2001.”

Chapter 8 1 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 133. 2 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 136. 3 Interview with the author. 4 Jam, Pearl Jam Twenty, 136. 5 Brace, E. (1992), “Raging Rocker with a Political Beat,” The Washington Post, August 14. https​://ww​w.was​hingt​onpos​ 145

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t.com​/arch​ive/l​ifest​yle/1​992/0​8/14/​ragin​g-roc​ker-w​ith-a​-poli​ tical​-beat​/4f04​fbf8-​e129-​4fb0-​9ee2-​6fe13​68daf​0e/ (accessed July 25, 2019). 6 Ames Bros Inc./Ten Club LLC (2007), Pearl Jam vs Ames Bros, self-published, 33. 7 Young, A. (2019), “Pearl Jam Defend Anti-Trump Poster,” Consequence of Sound, August 17. https​://co​nsequ​enceo​fsoun​ d.net​/2018​/08/p​earl-​jam-d​efend​-anti​-trum​p-pos​ter/ (accessed December 3, 2019). 8 Pearl Jam News (2020). https​://pe​arlja​m.com​https​://pe​arlja​ m.com​/news​/publ​ic-ti​cket-​sale-​info/​news/​publi​c-tic​ket-s​ale-i​ nfo (accessed January 29, 2020). 9 Zanona, M. (2020), “What Pearl Jam Wrote in a Letter to Rep. Frank Pallone,” Politico, February 18. https​://ww​w.pol​itico​ .com/​newsl​etter​s/hud​dle/2​020/0​2/18/​what-​pearl​-jam-​wrote​ -in-a​-lett​er-to​-rep-​frank​-pall​one-4​88349​ (accessed February 19, 2020). 10 Epstein, “Pearl Jam’s ‘Vs.’”

Chapter 9 1 Interview with the author. 2 Prato, Grunge Is Dead, 333–4. 3 Cameron, K. (2013), Mudhoney: The Sound and Fury from Seattle, London: Omnibus Press, 180. 4 Tow, S. (2011), The Strangest Tribe, Seattle: Sasquatch Books, 228–9.

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Also Available in the Series

1. Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes 2. Love’s Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans 3. Neil Young’s Harvest by Sam Inglis 4. The Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller 5. The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice 6. Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh 7. ABBA’s ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits by Elisabeth Vincentelli 8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland by John Perry 9. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott 10. Prince’s Sign “☮” the Times by Michaelangelo Matos 11. The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard

12. The Beatles’ Let It Be by Steve Matteo 13. James Brown’s Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk 14. Jethro Tull’s Aqualung by Allan Moore 15. Radiohead’s OK Computer by Dai Griffiths 16. The Replacements’ Let It Be by Colin Meloy 17. Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis 18. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. by Bill Janovitz 19. The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli 20. Ramones’ Ramones by Nicholas Rombes 21. Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno 22. R.E.M.’s Murmur by J. Niimi 23. Jeff Buckley’s Grace by Daphne Brooks 24. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. by Eliot Wilder

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

25. MC5’s Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese 26. David Bowie’s Low by Hugo Wilcken 27. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes 28. The Band’s Music from Big Pink by John Niven 29. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper 30. Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan Le Roy 31. Pixies’ Doolittle by Ben Sisario 32. Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Miles Marshall Lewis 33. The Stone Roses’ The Stone Roses by Alex Green 34. Nirvana’s In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar 35. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti 36. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless by Mike McGonigal 37. The Who’s The Who Sell Out by John Dougan 38. Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth 39. Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns 40. Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark by Sean Nelson

41. Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard 42. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy 43. The Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck 44. Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier 45. Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier 46. Steely Dan’s Aja by Don Breithaupt 47. A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor 48. PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me by Kate Schatz 49. U2’s Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite 50. Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef 51. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich 52. Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson 53. Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 54. Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel

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55. Patti Smith’s Horses by Philip Shaw 56. Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality by John Darnielle 57. Slayer’s Reign in Blood by D.X. Ferris 58. Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs 59. The Afghan Whigs’ Gentlemen by Bob Gendron 60. The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen 61. The Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl 62. Wire’s Pink Flag by Wilson Neate 63. Elliott Smith’s XO by Mathew Lemay 64. Nas’ Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier 65. Big Star’s Radio City by Bruce Eaton 66. Madness’ One Step Beyond. . . by Terry Edwards 67. Brian Eno’s Another Green World by Geeta Dayal 68. The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka by Mark Richardson 69. The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol 70. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Facing Future by Dan Kois

71. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten 72. Pavement’s Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles 73. AC/DC’s Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo 74. Van Dyke Parks’s Song Cycle by Richard Henderson 75. Slint’s Spiderland by Scott Tennent 76. Radiohead’s Kid A by Marvin Lin 77. Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk by Rob Trucks 78. Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr 79. Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese by Hank Shteamer 80. Johnny Cash’s American Recordings by Tony Tost 81. The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls by Cyrus Patell 82. Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me by Nick Attfield 83. Television’s Marquee Moon by Bryan Waterman 84. Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen 85. Portishead’s Dummy by RJ Wheaton 86. Talking Heads’ Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem

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87. Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson by Darran Anderson 88. They Might Be Giants’ Flood by S. Alexander Reed and Elizabeth Sandifer 89. Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet by Phillip Crandall 90. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum 91. Gang of Four’s Entertainment by Kevin J.H. Dettmar 92. Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation by Pete Astor 93. J Dilla’s Donuts by Jordan Ferguson 94. The Beach Boys’ Smile by Luis Sanchez 95. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven 96. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold 97. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves 98. Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild 99. Sigur Rós’s () by Ethan Hayden 100. Michael Jackson’s Dangerous by Susan Fast 101. Can’s Tago Mago by Alan Warner 102. Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha

103. Hole’s Live Through This by Anwen Crawford 104. Devo’s Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy 105. Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley 106. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann 107. Beat Happening’s Beat Happening by Bryan C. Parker 108. Metallica’s Metallica by David Masciotra 109. Phish’s A Live One by Walter Holland 110. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr. 111. Blondie’s Parallel Lines by Kembrew McLeod 112. Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead by Buzz Poole 113. New Kids On The Block’s Hangin’ Tough by Rebecca Wallwork 114. The Geto Boys’ The Geto Boys by Rolf Potts 115. Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out by Jovana Babovic 116. LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver by Ryan Leas 117. Donny Hathaway’s Donny Hathaway Live by Emily J. Lordi 118. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy by Paula Mejia

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119. The Modern Lovers’ The Modern Lovers by Sean L. Maloney 120. Angelo Badalamenti’s Soundtrack from Twin Peaks by Clare Nina Norelli 121. Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth by Michael Blair and Joe Bucciero 122. The Pharcyde’s Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by Andrew Barker 123. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein 124. Bob Mould’s Workbook by Walter Biggins and Daniel Couch 125. Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night by Patrick Rivers and Will Fulton 126. The Raincoats’ The Raincoats by Jenn Pelly 127. Björk’s Homogenic by Emily Mackay 128. Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee by Rachel Lee Rubin 129. Fugazi’s In on the Kill Taker by Joe Gross 130. Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by Ronen Givony 131. Lou Reed’s Transformer by Ezra Furman 132. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Peepshow by Samantha Bennett

133. Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera by Rien Fertel 134. dc Talk’s Jesus Freak by Will Stockton and D. Gilson 135. Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele by Amy Gentry 136. Odetta’s One Grain of Sand by Matthew Frye Jacobson 137. Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible by David Evans 138. The Shangri-Las’ Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las by Ada Wolin 139. Tom Petty’s Southern Accents by Michael Washburn 140. Massive Attack’s Blue Lines by Ian Bourland 141. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach by Roshanak Kheshti 142. The Wild Tchoupitoulas’ The Wild Tchoupitoulas by Bryan Wagner 143. David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler 144. D’Angelo’s Voodoo by Faith A. Pennick 145. Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall by Manuel Betancourt 146. Elton John’s Blue Moves by Matthew Restall 147. Various Artists’ I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen by Ray Padgett 148. Janet Jackson’s The Velvet Rope by Ayanna Dozier

151

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149. Suicide’s Suicide by Andi 152. 24 Carat Black’s Ghetto: Coulter Misfortune’s Wealth by Zach 150. Elvis Presley’s From Elvis in Schonfeld Memphis by Eric Wolfson 153. Carole King’s Tapestry by 151. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ Loren Glass Murder Ballads by Santi Elijah 154. Pearl Jam’s Vs. by Clint Holley Brownlee

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