This past Mother’s Day I caught Pearl Jam on the Cleveland, Ohio, stop of their 3-week East Coast sweep of the States. Vocalist Eddie Vedder, guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, drummer Matt Cameron and bassist Jeff Ament are out promoting their ninth studio effort, Backspacer, whose title is a nod to Vedder’s habit of writing on a typewriter. Released in the fall of last year, Backspacer debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, the first Pearl Jam album to do so since No Code in 1996.
For Cleveland fans, the Backspacer Tour marks the first opportunity that city has had to hear the band perform live in four long years, and Pearl Jam made up for the lost time in spades. They rocked out like it was their last show ever, tearing through a marathon set whose songs were hand selected by Vedder. In their effort to avoid repeating themselves, Vedder crafts a brand new set list for each show Pearl Jam plays, in every city, and has done so for every tour since the band’s inception 20 years ago. The 18-song Cleveland set included a mix of crowd-pleasers and rarities for die-hard fans as well as selections from the new album. The band even indulged a few lucky fans their song requests, played a cover of The Who's "Real Me," and tacked on not one but two encores that were mini-concerts themselves. When the house lights finally came up some 2½ hours later, fans and band members alike were spent. A group smoke was clearly in order.
Despite the fact that Pearl Jam are now in their 40s, with Vedder, Ament, and Cameron all pushing 50, they continue to put on a show with all the vigor of their flannel-wearing heyday, minus the extreme contact sports their shows were once known for. The roiling mosh pits, the stage diving and crowd surfing have been chalked up by Vedder to the exuberance of youth and the band having just been let out of the gate. Today, Pearl Jam rely solely on the delivery of a song to engage their audience. That, and a little harmless pogoing.
Of all the groups to emerge from the alternative/grunge movement of the 1990s, Pearl Jam are the last of the so-called Seattle bands left standing (unless you count the recently reunited Soundgarden after a 12-year absence.) Their music helped to define a generation and was instrumental in bringing alternative rock to the mainstream. Pearl Jam have navigated the years intact, without lineup changes or breakups and reunions. "Whenever you stick with a long-term relationship, good things come out of it and you end up getting into areas you would never get into unless you've worked through tough times," says Ament. And Pearl Jam have weathered plenty of those.
Like when their debut album Ten took off in 1992 and they were criticized in the music press for being posers who wanted to cash in on the alternative rock explosion. Grunge god Kurt Cobain even got in a potshot and mocked them for being commercial sellouts.
Or the time right after the release of Ten when they went up against pressure from their label to put out music videos. The band refused and instead encouraged their fans to listen with eyes closed and to go with whatever unique images and interpretations the music evoked.
And then there was the much publicized brouhaha between Pearl Jam and the monopolistic Ticketmaster, who had begun adding a service charge onto concert tickets. The band's hardheaded boycott of Ticketmaster kept them out of U.S. venues for nearly three years. Pearl Jam eventually conceded when no other bands would back them and because Ticketmaster had exclusive agreements with nearly all stadium-size venues. By the by, the Ticketmaster markup has risen from $3.50 to as high as 30-50% of a ticket's price since Pearl Jam first took up the fight in 1994.
The toughest time for the group though came with the tragedy at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark where nine fans were crushed underfoot and suffocated to death when the crowd rushed the stage, an event that left Pearl Jam at a crossroads of whether to go forward or call it quits.
The rage of Pearl Jam's youth is slowly being tempered with age. You can hear it in Vedder's turning inward, turning out the contemplative lyrics of someone who's been around the block a time or two now. Pearl Jam have grown into a band who are a model of consistency and idealism and credit their longevity with setting boundaries and striving for balance. Over the past couple decades, they've amassed a cult-like following on par with that of the Grateful Dead and have cultivated their own fan club whom they reward handsomely with primo seats to their shows. The band charge reasonable ticket prices and play long concerts, night after night, to ensure fans get their money's worth. And Pearl Jam continue to reject rock star excess and passionately back causes they believe in.
Eddie Vedder has said that, "...at some point along the way we began feeling we wanted to give people something to believe in because we all had bands that gave that to us when we needed something to believe in. That was the big challenge for us after the first record and the response to it. The goal immediately became how do we continue to be musicians and grow and survive in view of all this. The answers weren't always easy, but I think we found a way."
The current leg of the Backspacer Tour wraps with a couple shows in New York City's Madison Square Garden on May 20th and 21st. I've heard from sources close to the band that they are taking the tour pretty much on a month-by-month basis but that it is "highly likely" Pearl Jam will play more U.S. dates when they return home from Europe in July.
Pearl Jam are currently working on new material for their next project. In the meantime, they are releasing professionally mixed bootleg recordings from their 2010 tour. The first shows will be available starting in mid-May.
For further information on where and when you can catch Pearl Jam live, including a complete list of upcoming European tour dates, check out the band's website at www.pearljam.com.
