Pearl Jam: The Trials And Success Of The Grunge Titans (Full Documentary) | Amplified

the grunge explosion of the early 90s was responsible for the creation of some of the most influential incendiary and iconic acts in rock music managing to endure the storm that saw many fall by the wayside pearl jam fronted by the darkly charismatic eddie veda bucked the mainstream trend and succeeded to be recognized as much more than just a representation of the movement from which they emerge with their intense sound haunting lyrics and raw aggression they have transcended the grunge scene to cement their place as one of america's greatest rock bands particular genius and a particular burden was to come along at a time when they could charge forward and summarize the past at the same moment and believe me they were tarred and feathered by punk rock kids for actually caring about how music sounded this sort of goes back to maybe the grunge tag with that was pearl gen even grunge at all and you know now i just think of it as sort of vintage rock and roll you know it's much more of a kin to the stones and you know the beetles and jeff back and you know all those cream and all that stuff which is that's that they're heroes too so you know if they're the ones holding the the torch for a good old honest rock and roll you know i think they've certainly helped maintain that standard of you know honesty [Music] they have definitely found this place where they are tremendously well respected there's probably no band in america who is more respected by fans and by other musicians certainly than pearl jam [Music] pearl jam is one of the most important bands of the last two decades in american music you know there were a number of bands that came out of seattle in the 90s nirvana soundgarden allison james and pearl jam what's remarkable about pearl jam is 20 some years after their beginning they're still around and in fact of all those fans that began in that era they're the only band that's still around they combine a lot of elements that are appealing to the american people we've got the classic rock influences there's guitar solos and yet at the same time you've got the the great lyrics and the poetic side of a sort of a dylan or a springsteen with eddie bringing that to the table they've never sold out they've never used media tricks there's been a bit of mystery about the band and they continue to tour and play live and you know people will always be looking to see what this family going to do next [Music] [Music] eddie veda was a long way from his native evanston illinois when he joined forces with stone gossard jeff ammond mike mccready and dave crewson in seattle to form pearl jam in 1990 as just another band from a scene that had been slowly building in the pacific northwest towards the end of the 80s that would come to be known as grunge pearl jam were one of many acts fighting to be heard amongst the feedback scream of the seattle sound they would go on to spearhead the movement along with fellow groups such as nirvana soundgarden and alice in chains the rise of the alternative generation as the decade drew to a close heralded a new approach to rock music in the region one that threw out the glitz and glamour of la arena rock and brought in something that was not only aware of its roots but that felt more aggressive nihilistic and raw the importance about seattle as a scene is that it can't be seen as something that was invented out of nowhere in fall of 1991 when you had nirvana and soundgarden and pearl gem all releasing albums within the space of a few weeks of each other essentially it wasn't like everyone woke up one day in seattle and said oh let's invent grunge rather what you have is a scene that is all over the place it's a whole bunch of people working in a particular vein that over time the most successful the most uh well-known approaches will be seen to stand for the whole grunge was like-minded musicians who came from seattle or the seattle area who valued punk rock but they also valued very sludgy heavy hard rock from the 70s so if you took that punk ethos and crossed it with black sabbath you'd have something like grunge in the late 80s the music scene in seattle was extremely quiet backwater no band had any chance of breaking out of here it felt like at that point and getting success anywhere beyond the pacific northwest at that time playing to a hundred people was kind of what the big time was nobody thought that there was a chance for success beyond that small sleepy quiet club scene i think as a result people began to think of recording records as kind of the the goal and those records did better than anyone expected it was the success of the records made by the bands of seattle that made the seattle music scene drawing influences from hardcore punk and metal as well as indie rock the movement slowly built and with it so did the industry around the bands one notable contributor to the scene was the small independent label sub pop started by bruce pavett and jonathan poneman in 1986 with the release of their seminal deep six compilation album they provided a needed outlet for many of the emerging acts that soon signed to the label these included bands such as malfunction sound garden and the first seeds of pearl jam green river the green river consisted of a mark armed singer and you also had jeff menthe bassist and also stone gaster the guitarist and those are the three main guys that people tend to know and that was a band that um you can compare to the stooges maybe a little bit as far as mark arms iggy pop type stage persona he was very confrontational didn't think twice about jumping into the audience and as far as musically you had two factions you had mark arm that was more into the stooges then you had jeff and stone that were maybe more into kiss and more mainstream i think than what mark arm was probably listening to and what his idea of a band would be [Music] seem all right [Applause] [Music] oh [Music] there's a story that um jeff ament tells that they were i think in 1988 or a little bit earlier maybe 87 they were in california and they saw a performance by jane's addiction and stone and jeff were blown away by them thinking that they were great and mark thought that they just sucked and uh jeff said at that point he realized that him and stone just differed too much for mark and shortly thereafter they split up and then from there mark went on to do mud honey which is a great band and jeff and stone formed a mother loved one gossard and ammond joined with charismatic malfunction lead singer andrew wood along with greg gilmore on drums and fellow green river member bruce fairweather to form the band mother love bone in it 1988 of just it was just kind of destiny i had to be i couldn't find my band that i wanted to be in green river broke up right at the right time and they were the guys i needed to be in the band that i wanted to form with a musical flavor that was inspired more by the 70s rock sounds that had caused the split in green river mother lovebone was looking to take the seattle music scene by storm i think a lot of us grew up listening to you know black sabbath or arrow smith and kiss and stuff and i think a lot of us got into the punk thing because from a playing standpoint we could relate more to the ramones or something you know i mean it was you play along with blitzkrieg bop you couldn't play along to nobody's fault or something like that mother love bone was a great band i saw them on a number of occasions and they're a vastly underrated band partially because their record i think doesn't capture the excitement that andrew wood had as a live performer of anybody that you met in the seattle music scene in the mid 80s he was someone that was just full of life a wonderful human being very charming and a great charismatic front man and andy wood was the complete opposite of mark arm he was more into kiss and all the arena rock bands like steven tyler elton john he was even a fan of so he meshed well with their kind of thought that i mean their kind of thought of what a band should be [Music] inside your head [Music] [Music] you know there's i mean a heavy glam influence i mean you know you look at andrew wood and you think well that guy clearly loves freddie mercury but it wasn't quite the same kind of glam that you heard uh in you know in poison and motley crew and the sort of you know dominant metal bands of that era you know that grunge supposedly killed off even for seattle at the time it was a pretty big sound and that that group also made no bones about the fact that like they wanted to become a big band like they you know they they they never wanted to be mark arm like they never just sort of wanted to have a group that sounded kind of scuzzy and that was fine um you know they they definitely had goals uh and so that immediately set them apart as well uh you know because being being careerist in seattle in 1990 was like this you know just this it was that was madness you know that was how you got banned from the crocodile cafe at that point in seattle that was something that you'd never admitted to it was uh considered um in poor taste to admit to the fact that you wanted to be stars now it's certainly true that everybody wanted to be stars you know everyone wanted detention but they kind of wanted it on their own terms having made their rock star intentions very clear mother love bone was fast becoming a success on the seattle scene and attracted attention from several major labels eventually signing to polygram subsidiary mercury records on which they released their debut ep shine in march 1989. the following year in march 1990 with the world seemingly at the feet of this new band and with less than a week before their first album apple was to see the light of day lead singer andy wood died in hospital following a heroin overdose at the age of 24. wood's death was a massive blow to the burgeoning seattle music scene and also halted immediately any further activity from mother love bone which in turn paved the way for the birth of the band that was to become pearl jam now andrew wood is very important in terms of pearl jam for a very simple reason if he hadn't passed pearl jam would not exist and the problem with that is it makes it sound like that you know he had to die which is a ridiculous idea i'm sure anybody would tell you it's like no they'd much rather have him around uh pearl jam is something that was a uh is is great of a tragic accident and then became its own its own thing from there following mother love bones demise and still reeling from the sudden death of andy wood both jeff ament and stone gossard began picking up the pieces of their music careers joining forces with another seattle guitarist mike mccready whose band shadow had recently parted ways they set about forming a new band and recording some demos in order to bring in a singer and a drummer for their project a copy of the demos eventually found its way into the hands of the now san diego-based eddie veda the thing with someone like eddie vetter is you have another case of a sort of a classic american upbringing that's almost almost a stereotype in some eyes and that's not to belittle him rather it's one of those things that especially at the time it was seen to be almost a classic story of somebody who had you know struggles at home a broken family trying to make his own way and taking comfort in music he's a working stiff he's a security guard he's down in san diego he's playing basketball with his buddies he's performing in bands one of his basketball buddies is a guy named jack irons who of course has already had tasted some success thanks to his work in the red-eyed chili peppers jack irons uh passes on this demo tape that he gets from stone gasser and jeff ammond who are looking for a drummer and a singer vetter the legend goes listen to the music before surfing came up with lyrics went up to seattle was in the band and really came to define the band over time uh even though it was pretty much the last guy in in the beginning when they brought eddie in he'd never really fronted a band before you know he hadn't had a whole lot of experience sort of commanding a stage or even writing lyrics all that much like he had written things but he never really you know he had journals but hadn't put a ton of it to music and it was also you know you had five guys from four guys from seattle and then this dude from san diego who liked surfing and was sort of into the earth and the ocean and you know and kind of had that vibe about it the band clicks right around the same time that the temple of the dog project is uh being recorded uh so that enables vetter to start working in a full-on studio setting with not merely uh stone gasser and jeff emmett but chris cornell as well and get some sort of further recording experience under his build and they start playing around and playing out and the big advantage too is that if it had been eddie vetter fronting a band getting some major label attention well maybe some of those initial steps missteps you could say that maybe maybe every band must inevitably do at the start would have been more of a problem later on because it's a case where it's sort of like okay here's the rock world and what am i going to do with it how am i working here but he's got the support of a couple of guys who have already been through everything they have already been through everything they've been through working on minor labels they've been working on indie labels they've been working on major labels they've been uh they've been signed they've toured and they have suffered an ultimate blow in not merely the band breaking up but bringing up due to the death of a front man almost everything you could say packed into a few years space but they are already grizzled veterans in a weird sort of way and because of that you have a sort of support team that kind of already knows some of the drill it ended up being this sort of perfect fit because i think his you know he came from uh you know he was obviously a big fan of the type of hard rock that the mother love bone dudes were doing and but he was also you know really interested in the kind of the more punk aspect of it the the the more kind of egalitarian you know real um you know kind of diy aspect that the guys from green river so he really kind of ended up being the keystone that held the rest of the group together with drummer dave crewson completing the lineup the band operating under the name of their favorite basketball player mookie blaylock was ready to begin work and played its first show in seattle in october 1990 drawing on their mother love bone experience jeff and stone brought in their contact at polygram michael goldston to help them get a deal unlike many new bands on the seattle scene they signed to major label epic records that year in the spring of 91 the band now called pearl jam due to trademark concerns regarding the use of blaylock's name went to the local london bridge studios where they recorded their seminal album 10 in just over three weeks when i spoke with jeff he mentioned that when they found eddie for their debut album 10 they wanted to do the complete opposite of what they were doing with mother love bone with their full-length debut apple they wanted to not spend as much time because with apple they spent way way too long it was too much thought out with 10 they wanted to be just right back to basics very quick they just wanted to get everything i think back on a smaller level and as a result it's definitely more stripped down and even more punky than that you could say i think that this plays again into the london bridge is that it's a bigger studio and it has all these windows and everything so you can set up that way where everyone's playing in the room with headphones ice but all the instruments are isolated so i know that was sort of a shift too even the way studios were designed in the 80s you know even out of the 70s people were designing these tight small carpeted studios where this studio london bridge was designed after some of these bigger famous london studios with all the brick and the hardwood so i think that actually played into some of the seattle sound as well and maybe the vibe too of playing together live you know like you would in a rehearsal room when pearl gem made 10 this obviously predated its release predated never mind so as far as i was concerned anyway there wasn't the seattle sound um when i was working on the tin machine record with david bowie he was very influenced by bands like the pixies and sonic youth and you know his album with tin machine was grungy although it really didn't define how the sound became but i think once the bands find their feet and their music the sound sort of comes together and i don't think 10 necessarily represented the majority of the grunge sound but it's certainly from a musical standpoint it was that was the beginning of that path [Music] [Music] oh [Music] the release of 10 in august 91 was a very low-key affair with pearl jam being just another new band from the seattle scene however the timing proved to be significant nirvana's never mind album issued in september thrust the grunge sound into the mainstream and heralded the arrival of a new breed of rock music 10 supported this and started to gain steady momentum across america it's often overlooked that within the same span of a few months you had 10 and never mind but also guns and roses use your illusion records um which were i mean if that isn't sort of a metaphor for the death knell of american rock you know at the time and that sort of symbolism for that transition then i have no idea what is obviously the thing that 10 had going for it was it had these gigantic singles that sounded amazing on the radio like it's i i know that when they went back and remastered that record they kind of switched around the production a little bit and um and it's it's debatable whether or not it actually improves it um but i think to me and obviously you'd never know this because who would broadcast those songs on radio now um but i have a feeling that the the new production would sound less good coming through you know a transistor radio in 1991. when people look at 10 one thing that's important to remember is that 10 broke as an album not in seattle it broke across the united states through fm radio stations essentially at the same time and through mtv videos they had a huge role in making that record a hit it sounds like classic rock radio and became classic rock radio it sounds like something that had a lot of stuff on it that was easy going and yet had some passion to it it was something that it sounded good it was mixed to sound good it was mixed to sound like something that you just put on just imagine yourself just listening to in hallways driving around in your car doing whatever when we mix that record the music at the time was still very rock driven there were still a lot of bands like your tesla and warrant and all those sort of things around so nobody was afraid of things like reverb and making things sound big later the grunge sound became more about being honest and dry and natural so when i was mixing 10 i wasn't really afraid to use all the colors that were available to me and when i heard the music i was i i really wanted it to be a deep emotive sound because i felt that there was a lot going on in that music that could be brought out and because it was um it was very much a performance recording there was a lot of room to try reverse reverb or a delay here or a reverb there and that was my intention the thing that made them great immediately and and it attracted people to them immediately was that you know you heard the opening riff to alive and it sounded simultaneously like it was something fresh and totally new and you know and totally great and emphatic but it also sounded like it could be a classic rock song like it sounded like something that was also comfortable and familiar and you know something that you you know could play spot the influence and you kind of knew where it was coming from i think that's why rock fans felt better about getting behind pearl jam because it felt like a smoother transition than something as abrasive as never mind [Music] what you thought [Music] the thing with not only project but all those grunge bands at the time again they were a complete reaction to what was prevalent prior to them you know your guns n roses type bands they i think were a little more uh gritty and weren't afraid to speak their mind they were a little more thought provoking with their lyrics and it was i think why it became so popular the whole grunge thing a lot of the younger music fans and uh they could really relate to what eddie vetter was saying and also what kurt cobain was saying and also chris cornell because it's music being used as a vehicle for something where you have a sense of a band really playing together a sense of a band actually just you know going out and just you know hey man this is real this is us this whole idea of uh the image on the front cover of them all just sort of like we're a unit we're doing this that whole thing this whole ethos it's one of those things that it can strike people almost as false because it seems too good to be true it seems like okay it's almost like the yeah you know us against the world here we all are this is what i'm seeing from my heart and i think that music fans could relate to that more than say you're vince neils of the world or whoever you know where it's a guy traveling around in a limo you know there's such a difference between him up on a stage and say like you know kurt cobain or like you know eddie vetter who could just be a guy who was waiting in line to go see a black flag show [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the thing about many of those songs from ten but particularly alive is we didn't really know what it was about and this is the way most music works it is defined by your experience of it not necessarily the songwriters experience of it but in this case the particular biographical dimensions of alive would remain shrouded for years it was a very personal very intense very pointed song by eddie vetter who had grown up believing that a man who he would find out was his stepfather was his biological father and in point of fact he'd met his biological father didn't know that he was anything other than a friend of the family the song is a lament in anthem form he was able to put these images these thoughts these stories into something that actually struck a chord and he was able to do so in a way that both drawn his own experiences and he's been very open about which songs in particular have been the most autobiographical alive is a very good example and he's also been able to draw them on experiences of others jeremy is another classic example from that album of things that had happened in life tragic situations melodramatic they can be so a lot of the songs are but he found a vehicle that satisfies him to be able to get these thoughts out these things that he's been working on for years the combination of veda's poetic observational and biographical lyrics combined with the old-school rock edge of gossard and ammon's music helped ten gain a vital foothold across the united states with drummer dave crewson being replaced by dave abreuze pearljam's success was steadily building as they set out on their supporting tour although singles from the album were not being released domestically both alive and even flow were met with steady commercial and critical success overseas at home despite strong interest the public and most importantly members of the seattle music fraternity greeted pearl jam with caution some unsure as to whether they would be able to sustain such an initial impact while others began to question their legitimacy as an authentic grunge act you know to be perfectly honest at the time 10 was a very very difficult album to understand it's an album that explained itself on the radio song by song when it arrived as an album from a band i'd never heard of because i was in new york i didn't know who really they're not one of the seattle bands i heard of and you know you had heard of other bands it's not just that nirvana had put out a record beforehand they toured relentlessly leading up to never mind and i had a nirvana album at home i had seven inch singles by nirvana at home i'd seen soundgarden probably a half a dozen times but in the mail this record comes by pearl jam doesn't sound like a very grungy punk name didn't sound like a very grungy punk band didn't really cohere for me it was a big album in seattle it definitely sold a lot in seattle but it wasn't like seattle made that band and some of these other bands out of this area seattle made them a star to start with with pearl jam there almost was a reaction within seattle because it was like they became big without our blessing they made a big mistake they didn't go further and find more of the bands that were already here and had been here even before the bands that were exploited were you know that's what it makes me feel guilty of the success of our band because it should have been spread out to the success of like a number of bands here they became so big so fast that they outran seattle's support in it to a degree and i think that explains a little bit of the odd relationship seattle and other members of seattle bands always had with pearl jam one of the most notable criticisms to be aimed at pearl jam came from nirvana's kurt cobain who called the band a commercial sellout and this led to a reported feud between the two front men the feud between eddie vetter and kurt cobain that got written up in a few magazines and got a lot of attention really wasn't a feud basically what happened was that kurt cobain said a couple of things to a couple of journalists in a couple of interviews about how he thought maybe pearl jam were carreras was the term that he used and i think cobain's attack of pearl jam had less to do with pearl jam and more about kurt wanting to position himself he was just as much a careerist as any veteran he wanted to be successful he made a video for mtv he made an album he released an album on a major label and he was ecstatic that it sold as many copies as it did at least early on but he felt that by criticizing pearl jam and saying they're more careers than i am that he could then kind of reclaim some indie cred himself [Music] [Applause] [Music] hello [Music] in truth pearl jam were a target they were a band that came off and and shot for the stars from the beginning they played arenas they made some videos and they also and occasionally in interviews came off maybe as a tad arrogant but all that could be said for cobain as well but i think it was more a feud that was created by kurt simply to position himself it had less to do with any true animosity between the two men i was asking jeff ament about it and he was saying that the press really kind of had a lot to do with that that at the time pearl jam was exploding irvana was exploding and it was just a matter of reporters maybe going to kurt cobain with 50 pearl jam questions and they'd go to pearl jam with 50 nirvana questions it was just kind of a war that way it wasn't really that the bands didn't get along but there is an incident which i write about in heavier than heaven which is truly a very very beautiful scene if you can imagine this happening and it happens at the 1992 mtv music awards where you know already this animosity has happened kurt has said a couple things and the media has really blown out of proportion and there was a point that didn't get captured on tape but i've talked to a number of people who witnessed it where kurt and eddie actually had this brief little slow dance together where they sort of joined each other and they did this little trot around the dance floor and that intimacy is really a very beautiful image if kurt cobain hated eddie vetter there's no way on earth he would have done that he never slow danced with axel rose put it that way what is true though is that behind the scenes after both men became famous they did in a way become friends they had a number of times that they met privately and there was i think a respect that happened between the two bands in a way they both had a similar story they both became huge stars very quickly and i think the demands of fame overwhelmed them so there were probably more similarities between eddie and kurt i think than either were wanting to admit at the time [Applause] [Music] regardless of the criticism that came their way pearl jam's star continued to rise midway through 92 despite having been on sale for almost a year 10 was experiencing its full breakthrough pearl jam began to gain massive exposure on radio and television appearing on saturday night live and performing an acoustic set on mtv for their unplugged series as the grunge explosion continued the pressures of touring and fame were soon starting to build on the band with the release of their third single jeremy pearl jam unhappy with the overplay on mtv stumbled into a controversy regarding the interpretation of the video as a result they took the bold step to withdraw from making promotional videos altogether the whole jeremy situation was a very bizarre little perfect storm obviously the uh you know the record had already been you know become this pretty big thing um you know the alive and even flow singles had already been you know become staples on modern rock radio jeremy comes out that becomes gigantic but then it also ends up getting this weird backlash from people you know not only from people who you know thought that the band was getting too big or you know whatever else you know but also from uh uh uh you know the the the same sort of conservatives who who you know don't like to see violence anywhere and there was you know there was all this confusion about what happens at the end of the video there's a large contingent of people who thought that the end of the video meant that jeremy went to the front of the classroom and executed his entire class when i'm you know it's fairly obvious when you actually look at it that he's actually killing himself and that's where the sort of blood spatter comes from that was the thing that sort of been like well this has now gotten too far and it sort of flipped the switch in their brain and that combined with that first 18 months or so i mean they you know they put out two records and did a ridiculous number of tour dates and played the vmas and and had all this other retention for stuff it's like um you know so by the time it came around to that um they did something that i don't think any band has ever done in history and they consciously decided to be smaller [Music] [Music] didn't give attention [Music] oh [Music] to come out and publicly criticize mtv and to say we're not going to make any more music videos there was no band as popular as pearl jam at that point who walked away from making music videos remember nirvana a band that always had to some degree more critical cred than pearl jam kurt cobain was still greatly in in incredible detail planning what the music video for heart-shaped box would be that was something he was very involved in and he still saw that as a viable way but eddie vetter around that same time said i don't want to be in a music video anymore and they stop making them and that issue forever will be linked to pearl jam now if you're a young band who has middling success you're going you're just sort of like you know you've done a national tour or two you got some attention you're not going to have this cachet you're not going to have this relative cloud you are however pearl jam with 10 who has scored this massive commercial success and you can say like nope sorry no we don't want to do this and what is the band's label going to do what are they going to say are they going to say well we need more publicity for you out there they didn't need more publicity at that point everyone already knew who they were by the end of 92 he got to the point where they had been parodied on saturday night live where they're sort of appearing on more recovers they were just you know people knew who they were they had already gotten over that introduced pearl jam to the world thing that had happened [Music] pearl jam had indeed been introduced to the world the surprise global success of 10 left the seattle rockers with a fairly arduous task in creating a follow-up album that could meet the expectations of their adoring fans yet also appease their peers from the now flourishing seattle music scene in the spring of 1993 pearl jam now music superstars were taken to plush studios the site in northern california only a stone's throw away from george lucas's skywalker ranch it was a venue that reflected the band's commercial success of the past two years however this troubled the already burdened veda who was showing increasing signs of difficulty dealing with his newfound hero status and idolization betty was not happy at all with the surroundings of uh the studio studio that they recorded verses at that they rented out a beautiful nice scenic place in california and he didn't want that at all he wanted just something you know just the complete opposite and uh to to get back in the right frame of mind he would go in his truck and travel to i believe san francisco it would just sleep in his truck overnight and would just mingle with people just walking around the area whether it be junkies or just people walking around just trying to get some kind of different kind of thought process or something to feel his creativity for songwriting i think what was hard for pearl jam by the time of the second record is that the first record came from nowhere there were no expectations no one knew who eddie vetter was the day that 10 was released there were 60 people who were waiting for eddie vetter's album and they were always relatives um or the handful of people who'd seen one of the off-ramp shows you know there was not a crowd demanding we want our eddie vedder songs but by the time of the second record there were such expectations on eddie that i think it became increasingly difficult for him he truly had to perform he had now a reputation to live up to he had a standard that he had set and i think he was tormented to a degree he wrote some great songs when he was tormented but i also think that we go a few records later than that he finally starts to bring the other band members in and basically says i give up i need other people to write songs i can't do it all myself anymore vetter was someone who was tortured by fame in ways that seemed both necessary and unnecessary and the particular way that he dealt with it was to withdraw at that time that worked this was a path blazed by kurt cobain refusal became something that the mass audience wanted out of its icons at that time for veteran the path wasn't just blazed by cobain though that was the most obvious of the trailblazers at the time it was also blazed by people like neil young neil young who had become a titanically important artistic figure and also an important commercial figure by being weird and by refusing to play by anybody else's rules and to veter and to pearl jam young would become sort of a lighthouse keeper he was the one who showed them the way [Music] [Music] the sound [Music] she recognized [Music] [Music] [Music] she just for vetter instead of explaining who he was he refused to explain who he was where he had come from what his songs meant all of this was a way of withholding from the audience that made the audience only want him more it became a kind of perverse dance despite veda's objections the band pressed on producer brendan o'brien had been brought in and it was his goal to create an album with a more authentic live flavor i think that one of the great shifts for pearl jam is finding brandon o'brien because he is the sort of well i don't know fifth member is exactly the fair assessment but he's that you know that following that old sawhorse he's the fifth beatle when it comes to pearl jam because he has been very essential to capturing their sound once he became you know their producer engineer whatever you want to call him um he uh brought in more of a live sound to pearl jam brendan's a guitar player and he's not he he gets right to the root of of what they're trying to do and i think that as a musician he has given them their sound and kept it natural and raw and i think that some other producers may have tried to force a sort of more developed produce sound on them and brendan hasn't done that all their records that he worked on sounded better they sounded rar they jumped off of the album more and there was a huge shift i think between 10 and when brendan came in versus was released in october 93 to high anticipation featuring a raw aesthetic and a less produced feel it was an instant critical success but commercially the album proved to be a monster with 10 still riding high in the charts having now outsold nirvana's never mind versus recorded sales figures just shy of 1 million copies within its first week making it the fastest selling album the world had seen versus is an astonishing album in many ways just because of something that you know the band would probably you know hate almost hate to have to talk about but it's true the smash commercial success of it it was just a ridiculously huge selling album out of the gate when the actual figures were announced it was almost literally a million copies i mean that was just something that you know people's jaws were dropping but it also was sort of interesting and ironic because um you know for a record that's sold as big as it did it's an extremely raw album i mean you can already hear hints of the sound that they were kind of morphing into and it has rarely any of that slickness that's on 10 there's a lot of jagged edges and it's it sounds really claustrophobic i mean it's very clearly a record full of songs written um on the road and uh you know in the midst of turmoil the fun part though was that it was something that the band seemed to be happy with and the fans seem to be happy with at the same time it's one of those things where you saw the potential future of the band that they then turned away from that's the importance of verses you have an album that has another slew of hits that are appear on the radio with incredible frequency um go the first single of course you have a daughter you have dissident you have other tracks to get a lot of airplay and everyone again is really into this now again it's not a case that no one's being blindsided by this anymore people know what to expect and there's this idea this overwhelming idea that has now been constructed around uh around what the band has done and around especially what veteran has done as a front man that here speaks the truth i swear [Music] is foreign [Music] well versus is much much more of a punk rock record than tanner's much more of a punker i remember putting it on the moment i got it and thinking you can't do that you can't play a straight up hardcore punk baseline on a major label record that's number one in the country that that's not allowed who who does that you know i mean in certain ways it was more straight up punk rock than nirvana was and i think versus is a very apt title because that's them just reacting to forces from the outside i've always found it great that they were originally going to call the record five against one um because i always took that idea to mean we are one band versus you know whatever else is on the outside world and we are we are being overwhelmed and um and so those songs end up being this really sort of interesting cycle of you know just them sort of flailing and fighting back but doing it in the you know sort of most you know rocking loudest way possible but at the same time you have a case where the band had gotten so good at what it already had done that you listen to it sometimes and you almost think hmm if they had stayed on this route they might not be around anymore this might have just simply been the first of many sequels to 10 which would have just been 10 all over again to a large extent not to a complete extent but to a large extent that is what versus is you hear a song like dissident and it's almost overly familiar in terms of being a live part 2. that's a bit of a stretch but it's not completely untrue [Music] she had to turn around [Music] oh [Music] [Music] [Applause] it wasn't their fully integrated record yet it was the record i think they felt they had to make the record that they could make then because they'd gotten their legs under them as a live band an extremely important difference between the first and second pearl jam records at the time of the first record they're basically a backup band for two guitarists at the time of the second record they're a working band you do have a sense that's the band sound that they had you know worked on they developed rehearsals that they had released on tandem then turned out to be something that would be a huge success was something that they could start to do very easily and almost too easily at the same time no one's questioning the fact that their passion for the music is unchanged no one's uh questioning the fact that uh eddie vader is still somebody who is uh his comes up with turns of phrase with the ability to have this voice that people respond to that people really like and appreciate again it's also an easily parodied voice but it is nonetheless a recognizable strong voice that the band are able to create uh songs that are something that's you know melodies things that were played on the radio go down well it sounds good well i do think there's a storytelling element that eddie began to explore more by the the second album certainly jeremy and some of the songs on the first album are little vignettes but he was more willing with songs like daughter or elderly woman he was willing to kind of write maybe it's not fair to call it a raymond carver short story because it's not as fleshed out as that but it's it's a it's a very finely constructed moment in time that he's trying to capture there alone [Music] [Music] this was a unique time in rock and roll never before and ever since really have men so successfully talked about the problems of uh well being men or uh in rock and roll that doesn't usually happen or so successfully advanced the idea that hey you know what women have something to say too um so so the idea of a daughter yeah don't don't call me daughter you know is this this is a kind of feminist sentiment um yeah it is a different kind of song um that kind of ballad was not a very grunge kind of ballad um that was more a a zeppelin three kind of acoustic ballot [Music] [Music] will remind [Music] i think eddie as a writer finally came to his own he wrote great anthems on the first album but in my opinion as a music critic i'm not sure that those songs will stand the test of time they stand the test of commercial success there'll be linchpins for that but i think eddie as a writer got much better he focused and i think spent more effort on the lyrics of the second record and um you know he's become he understood music more he's become a much much better songwriter as time has gone by the release and subsequent success of verses not only validated pearl jam's credentials as one of the leading acts in the industry at the time but also demonstrated the potential of the band once again partaking in a grueling tour schedule in support of the album pearl jam's achievements appeared even more remarkable due to their lack of extra promotion as not only were they refusing to make music videos but they were now becoming increasingly more reclusive when it came to press interviews preferring to deliver their music directly to their fans at shows by the spring of 1994 grunge was well and truly a global phenomenon it was not only pearl jam and nirvana reaping massive success but other acts such as soundgarden whose super unknown album had broken them into the mainstream grunge clothing had become the fashion and seattle the birthing ground for a thousand different acts all vying to be the next big thing however reality suddenly hit home hard when the news broke on april the 8th that kurt cobain nirvana lead singer and idol to so many music fans around the world had died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head it was an event that affected many and came as a severe blow to the grunge movement when kirk committed suicide it was like the air went out of the balloon of seattle in so many ways the expectations had been so high and and so many bands were doing so well but kurt's death gave us an appreciation understanding that that all along there had been a dark side to this that this phenomenal success we were seeing would not continue um and what's interesting is that it's the year after kurt's death that pearl jam fine huge success that sound garden finally really break through that alice and chains have one of their biggest years so the commercial juggernaut of the seattle scene still continues but i think knowing and having interviewed almost all the guys that were in the bands that were left in that in that era everybody felt deflated and depressed by kurt's death the effects of cobain's death were far-reaching but for eddie veda they were particularly personal as he had lost the only other individual who understood the pressures of being a key representative for generation x in a weird sort of way it's almost an echo with what happened with andrew wood's death earlier not in the sense that the circumstances are truly tied they're not but what you have is a case where a tragic incident is what propels the ban to kind of rethink what they're doing if it's something that's being developed beyond that the idea that you are a spokesman for a generation and then one of the the only other person who seems to have this role is no longer there and has done so in the most tragic and terrible of ways his reaction was the idea that now all the more attention gets focused on him again as the front man one person fronting a group of five individuals i think that kurt saw a lot of a lot of himself and eddie and i think vice versa because they were both sort of people who would just really want to make music and had come from you know very difficult backgrounds and who never really intended on becoming rock stars and sort of were given this this role of being a you know a spokesperson for a generation um that they never really asked for it's nothing to strive for it's actually like this kind of success or trying to fulfill this kind of hype it can destroy everything it can destroy what's real which is like music to you or what's real which is your life you know it can destroy it you know it can make it uh a commodity at at whose cost at yours at your life and you know your music they'll you know take it all away from you what vetter actually does is try to figure out how to go on making records and being a rock star on his own terms and dictate what the meaning of that is because being unable to control that is part of what part of what does cobain in so he becomes someone who is very very controlling of how his records are going to come out how he's going to talk to the press about them it would have been a very different thing had he been able to communicate as directly with the audience as a band can now but you know he really couldn't uh and it it just became this big black hole he was absolutely caught right dead center of you know what the grunge scene was and he wasn't really part of that you know he was an import so he had to you know it was probably really awful and confusing for him you know it must have been really hard and i felt bad for him and i remember back in the day too he would always complain like they were on the cover of newsweek this this one month or and it was during a bosnian war or something i remember he was famously saying you know why put us on the cover you know how could we be more important than that and it seemed like he wasn't appreciative of his fame and so the idea that it's all sort of piling in on eddie vader in particular makes him go like okay stop please space hold up just you know stop the death of kurt cobain had highlighted the tragic effects the pressures of fame can bring and although the issue was now at the forefront of the industry it was something that had not been overlooked by pearl jam who are now continuing their apparent withdrawal from the media spotlight since late 93 while still on the road for the versus tour the band had been hard at work recording their third studio album vitaligy with producer brendan o'brien finally released in october 1994 it was a distinctly less commercial record and featured a broad mix of styles know vitality is as close to a perfect album as pearl jam made certainly for me their classic record and and the one where they get the reach of what they can do right um you know their ability to go back to not just the metal and grunge that they come up on but also the music they grew up on so that means more ballads more of a classic 60s and 70s rock sound uh vetter who talks obsessively about the who has a voice that invites comparisons more to jim morrison than pete townsend and works with a band that stretches out better than the who did and both these things are are part of vitality [Music] taken [Music] futures above [Music] it is the moment where you hear him on the radio and think sure sounds like a rock star to me you can hear him more clearly less buried in the mix less adorned by guitar noise those are the kinds of songs they were making then all the grunge bands draw upon any wide variety of styles of music it was not any just one style that they were i think aligned to you know if you take pearl gym sound garden nirvana you can't just say well you know all they did was heavy metal or hard rock there's always folk type songs there's beatles type stuff um you know pearl jam in particular even had some funky things such as the song animal off of verses has kind of like a funky type of guitar riff that's the thing with pearl jam and also the other bands their music in their styles whenever they were trying to do a different type of style it never sounded forced it sounded very natural and they were also able to inject their own personality into it and totally make it their own [Applause] [Music] sort of sets a a kind of a template for program records later they always had a screamer on there you know you're sort of your your your last exits your spin the black circles you know they always had a couple of introspective ballads like even when they went out of their way to not write an arena anthem they still sort of accidentally did with corduroy because ended up becoming this this pretty big song and then you get to uh the back half of it and it's got these weird sonic experiments that you know that stupid mop song and and and bugs which is i don't think people give any enough credit for being it's just one of the weirdest things ever put on a mainstream rock record they're kind of experimenting in a way that they hadn't before sonically they're they're trying different approaches to what a song is um you know the the album cover itself is a great example it's a very weird kind of entity that stands alone and it shows pearl jam you know kind of becoming this uh art of your band i mean look you know i never spent a long time trying to figure out what the concept of vitality was you know it seemed to have something to say to us about being vital and it seemed to come packaged in this patina of americana um they seem to be grappling with what it meant to be an american band at that point and they really get it right [Music] i don't they really get the past and the present right at the same time better than anybody had um also because most bands recording then weren't really looking further back than the 70s you know i mean if they were paying any homage to their roots it was a little zeppelin a little black sabbath a little alice cooper you know for pearl jam it went deeper it really went back to the 60s you couldn't say it was the whole history of rock because it didn't really go back to elvis but it it did go back to those glorious 60s moments 64-67 the flowering of rock and roll worldwide and they meant to and they were good at it i think that if there was a record in their canon that reflected their personality best it would be vitality because i think it represents you know this band that is really that is really passionate that is quiet when it needs to be that has that knows about melody can you know that that is you know is capable of incredible musicianship um is sometimes goofy is sometimes you know interested in getting outside of their comfort zone um i also think lyrically it's a very very powerful record i think it's you know it clearly it's sort of any really getting to uh the root of the things he's concerned about and and the stories he wants to tell one key track from vitality not for you focused on the exploitation of music fans by the commercial industry something that veda and the rest of the band felt very strongly about i would argue my favorite song by pearl jam still to this day is actually not for you it's a very very focused song it is not quite like the other anthems they've already done on their first two albums it is something that's a slow burning build it's incredibly intense it's something that rises up with a it just it dare i say it flows it's something that everything about it connects together it's a very simple song in the face of it but it's a virtue of simplicity that just keeps going forward everything sort of clicks in you get a sense of better working himself up in a very very intense way but the band two really locking into something [Music] [Music] the subject matter of not for you had particular significance as at the time of vitality's release pearl jam had been embroiled in a dispute with concert agent ticketmaster after discovering that service charges had been added to the price of their tickets during the versus tour [Music] the band opted to boycott the company and their summer tour was cancelled this was a bold step in an attempt to do the right thing for their fans and to fight the commercial music machine but it seemed as if pearl jam would ultimately take the stand alone [Music] when i spoke with eddie my book wrenches that he actually talked about that and it's not as you know people make it out to be well they just woke up one day and they were like you know ticketmaster sucks let's just take them on it wasn't like that at all it was actually a step-by-step thing ticketmaster at the time had a complete monopoly which they pretty much still do today they had like surcharges and stuff on their tickets and there was no clear explanation as to what these surcharges were for so i think pearl jam was the first band to stand up and say well what is this about and they couldn't get a clear answer to pro jam's credit um their hearts were absolutely in the right place um you know they've always and i think this was really the the incident that made them so much about the fans that they you know under that they heard that fans were saying these uh service charges and whatever else this is all and again it gets in the way of the music and it's primarily eddie saying you know what you're right we are going to figure out a way to work around that you know there were a number of other bands that stepped forward and said yes we're with you pearl jam but none of those bands decided that they were only going to tour in non-ticket master venues pearl jam's the only one everyone else said yeah ticketmaster is bad but thank you very much pro you know pearl jam but we're still gonna you know do business with ticketmaster pearl jam said no ticketmaster i think the quote is even ticketmaster is the enemy unfortunately they sort of accidentally ended up punishing the fans it was right when no code was coming out and it was going to be their first ticket master free tour and it was a big deal because they were going to play the east coast for the first time in several years and so um you know and so they ended up you know having to book odd cities with strange venues because you know they had to get venues that weren't already affiliated with ticketmaster and in order to get tickets you had to call a very strange 800 number and there was it was always like very limited i remember you know having all of my friends you know calling it exactly the same time trying to get through for you know this sort of very finite number tickets and so they ended up making it more difficult to be a fan of the band so you know was it a success you know probably not i mean because the tour had all kinds of problems and and i think people ended up being a little bit unhappy um but they certainly gained something from it and they certainly sort of earned a certain amount of respect and and you can't fault them for you know for trying i mean so anytime you know david's going to take on goliath you have to root for the underdog the situation with ticketmaster and the stance that pearl jam had taken prevented them from playing in the united states for almost three years with the 95 tour for vitality declared a failure pearl jam continued stripping back as a brief respite from the rigours of running their own act the band recorded with one of their major influences neil young on the album mirabal by the summer of 1996 the grunge juggernaut was beginning to show signs of slowing down following the demise of nirvana and parjam self-enforced absence from the road coupled with internal conflict in other major grunge acts such as soundgarden and a steady rise in pop music it was clear the landscape was changing pearl jam as a band had grown in many ways and this became apparent as they released their fourth studio album no code in august that year a step beyond the work they had completed on vitality it was more experimental and further away from where they had started with ten however it was ultimately deemed inaccessible to a large proportion of their fans and many began to drift away no code wasn't made to be a commercial blockbuster record that thing's all there in the title do you want to understand it no there's no code you can't break it you know i remembered the day the record came out pearl jam at that point was renting a studio that's not too far from where we're sitting in fact just four or five blocks away big warehouse which was pearl jam central and you went in there and all their guitars were stacked there and they conducted press interviews in in this big warehouse previously you know you had access to pearl jam sort of separately but now they were big enough that it was kind of like three or four days of media interviews and um uh they i think wanted the record to be successful but they already were saying things in interviews with the release of that albums that they didn't want it to be as successful as they had been before it's a very odd thing for a band to say most bands put a record out and they say i want to sell as many copies as i can you'd never hear beyonce or jay-z say we only want to sell a couple million we don't want to sell 10 million but pearl jam were literally saying things like that at that time so i think they wanted to lower expectations for no code [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] it's a disjointed record to a degree you have other band members now contributing but that that sort of contributes to a lack of cohesion on that album it's got a few good songs but it's it's not my favorite pearl jam record and in fact it's not in the top five and i think most pearl jam fans agree and maybe the band members now agree as well no code is really the height of their experiment with refusal um and it is possible to refuse so much that the audience stops running towards you mind you all of their heroes did this as well neil young made records that were spectacularly unsuccessful the point is is that he continued to make whatever records he wanted and occasionally would come back and make a record that was successful but it didn't stop him from making whatever records he wanted and and that's their model at this point um we're gonna make whatever record we want we need to do things our way [Applause] [Music] [Music] they're still trying to find their equilibrium in a time of great difficulty following the death of cobain following this extended absence from the road during their battle with ticketmaster and really trying to figure out how they can navigate a world that really doesn't want them to do anything they want the way they want to uh they had more successful experiments with that than no code with their boycott of ticketmaster once again preventing pearl jam from a full tour in support of no code the album failed to achieve the high success of their previous work moving into 1997 and returning to the recording studio it seemed that the band had finally come through their dark period producing an album that would re-establish their classic rock credentials yield kind of represents the last hurrah for pearl jam as this real mainstream commercial act mostly because of the success of giving to fly which is a you know one of their biggest singles and was the thing that you could not run away from on radio although i have a sense that a lot of people bought yield thinking that it was going to be more in the ten-fold because it you know it has that because give me the fly is such like a i mean you know it's got the riff from going to california on it i mean it's you know it's such a sort of a a classic sounding real kind of 70s influence song [Music] him down on his knees [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] why [Music] i think a lot of people remember yield as not the album that it actually is because it is fairly fairly raw and fairly you know not quite as um as kind of loose and and jagged as no code or bytology was but it's still playing pretty fast and loose with the rules i would imagine that the reaction to noko and especially reaction the tour you know made them kind of like well maybe all right maybe we need to take a step back a bit maybe we need to think about a little bit more and and reset a bit to me yield is a program record um and it's a pearl jam record in between records in which they don't want to sound so much like pearl jam in between much more experimental records where they're trying to find their way uh yield is the the record where they're now going to return to the road and as if to celebrate it they make the kind of record that made them famous i i actually think it's quite a good record um notable as their records so often are for the ballads rather than for the harder songs but the specific meaning of the title you know part of it is they want to give up and get back on the road um that's the point of it being named for a traffic sign and having a traffic sign on the cover of the record we want to go back on tour and if that means we have to yield to this touring machinery governed by the death star called ticketmaster okay we're back yield marked a return to form for the seattle five piece as it received critical success and a strong commercial position in the courts pearl jam had failed to win their case against ticketmaster and finally relented returning for a full tour during which drummer jack irons withdrew from the band to be replaced by former soundgarden member matt cameron moving into the 21st century pearl jam's place in rock music had been firmly cemented experimental album binaural was regarded as a release for the true pearl jam fan along with 2002's riot act while their self-titled pearl jam album in 2006 the most recent release backspacer were considered strong demonstrations of classic rock in the 21st century i think by the time you get to binaural and by the time you get to the 112 or whatever it was bootlegs that they put out themselves from that gigantic tour that they went on around the world i think by then pearl jam definitely knows who they are what their role is and who their fans are and that's around the time when they reinvent themselves as this kind of always on the road workhorse by binaural then you're dealing with the hardcore pearl jam audience and you're also dealing with fans that you know are going to see every pearl jam concert you know they become almost like the grateful dead for this group of people i think there's a significant number of pearl jams audience today that are people that are former deadheads and the reasons for that is that pearl jam's live concerts are always exciting there are always cultural events that kind of um are more than just a concert they're a band that never play the same thing twice in a row and they care a lot for their fans [Music] [Applause] has a very specific sound um you know it's the one time pearl jam decided to make a headphones record which is strange for a live band but uh you know but there's some stuff that works and then you know riot act they're sort of these when they start to become a kind of more of a political band uh you know there's always they've always sort of been socially conscious throughout their entire career but um you know i mean i think that they've never written anything as sort of direct as bush leaguer by the time you get to that self-titled record in o6 i love that that album was self-titled because like that is what a pearl jam album sounds like and this is what it is and this is what you know it's going to be and you know if if if you don't like it you know and move on check in with us next time whatever but if you do you know this is what you're going to get and these are the these are the layers that you're going to get and this is the the commitment you're gonna get [Music] [Applause] [Music] inside your head [Music] uh for 2009's backspacer pearl jam moved away from their contract with sony and set up their own monkey wrench label on which the album was released the paradigm within the music industry shifted and suddenly pearl jam were no longer beholden to epic records they then could go out and release records themselves they could do that whenever they wanted and they began to make these deals where they had a one-off with the label we're going to release an album we're going to put it out and they totally ran the show themselves we have a case where a band fulfills its own major label contract and is able to pull the rip cord and walk away without a care in the world sony asks them please we'd love to have you stay they realize they've got a steady catalogue selling band and the band goes like nope don't need to anymore and they didn't they're able to record albums and release them at the pace they want to do they're able to pursue all the various side projects they want to do as well that stone gossard has with brad and satchel you had jeff ament doing three fish you have eddie vetter famously doing the dead man walking soundtrack and then finally within to the wild his first full-on solo album right there and then you have all sorts of other projects and all sorts of other things happening and then you have them living life you have them uh you know married kids family you have uh the classic sort of cycle you know other interests other things in life come to the fore you look at backspacer and you look at a band that was able to have a number one record well into its career you're looking at a band that became kind of the negative label that was placed in it oh they're just a bunch of classic rock you know types and all that well they have become a classic rock band they have become a band that people look at now and go like yeah you know there's them they're still out there doing their thing [Music] is [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] i think the most recent record is is really a return to form it's it's got some great songs it's they're all very short they're all very energetic it's not a record of anthems and yet the fixer you know kind of has an anthematic who sound but it's not long stretched out anthematic choruses the contrast of that artistically with the songs on versus or 10 is is is remarkable um i think pearl jam is a band that to use a wisened old sawhorse of a metaphor they're like a wine they've matured and as time has gone by it's a richer taste looking back now on pearl jam we're looking at a band that is coming up on its 20th anniversary from its first formal release so we're talking about a literal generation that there could be somebody out there into the band or enjoying them now who was born when the album was released was born when uh when the band first played together there is no other grunge band that still exists there are no other bands from seattle in the 90s zero when eddie vetter stands on stage and sings he's a guy who's laying claim to a tradition the tradition he talks about is pete townsend the guy he sounds like is jim morrison the guy they recorded with as a backing band is neil young [Music] those bands aren't going to be here forever and pearl jam comes along at a particular point 20 years on they meant to take the torch and they took it even though the scene that pearl jam sprang from has long since diminished they have managed to endure the roller coaster ride of the 90s and their classic rock edge has allowed them to maintain a strong fan base and still feel relevant today as they move through the 21st century pearl jam are comfortably at the top of their game proving that you don't have to burn out and you don't have to fade away [Music]

Channel: Amplified - Classic Rock & Music History

Views: 403,211

Keywords: 90s music, Amplified - Classic Rock & Music History, Eddie Vedder, Eddie Vedder story, MVD license, Pearl Jam history, alternative music, amplified documentaries, band life retrospective, band members, best documentaries, classic albums, classic performances, fine documentaries, iconic musicians, iconic performances, music industry insights, rare footage, rock history, rock music history, rock star interviews

Id: LFHPs9CuX7M

Length: 88min 7sec (5287 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 08 2022