Preserving their legacy

Pearl Jam tours in support of well received new disc

 

By Alan Sculley

Philly EDGE Correspondent

 

For the first time in a decade, Pearl Jam may be looking at the prospect of having a huge hit CD with its new self-titled release. Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has basically one thing to say about facing another huge wave of success: Bring it on.

   “I would love to have a huge record again and be in the press. It would be fun,” McCready said in a phone interview from Toronto on the opening night of the band’s North American tour, which is set to make a stop for two dates at the Tweeter Center in Camden this weekend.

    “If it happens, that would be great. If it doesn’t, we’ll still go on and tour like we always have. The buzz that’s been around (the new CD) has been pretty exciting. The fact that we’ve been getting played on the radio again, that’s kind of neat. That’s all cake. Me personally, I love it.”

   That certainly may not have been the response from the band members a decade ago, when Pearl Jam was arguably the most popular band in the world, having released three CDs, Ten, Vs. and Vitalogy that sold 20 million-plus copies combined.

 “We blew up and all that was happening, and (singer Eddie Vedder) was getting really uncomfortable and we were all struggling with different issues. (Eddie) said ‘Hey, we need to chill out and go against everything that a record company would want you to do, or a manager or other band members would want you to do,’” McCready said. “I think it made us survive. It kept a sense of normalcy to our lives.”

   The band members – Vedder, McCready, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament (drummer Matt Cameron joined the group later) -- purposely retreated from the public eye. They refused at various points to do any videos, interviews or promotional appearances– a move that McCready admitted made things difficult for Pearl Jam’s former label, Epic Records, to promote the band’s CDs. The group also chose to experiment with its signature sound, branching out musically beyond the kind of concise, hard-hitting rock and hearty balladry that had attracted so many fans to the band.

   The act’s decision to sue Ticketmaster also blunted Pearl Jam’s momentum, despite the reams of publicity it generated. The band argued that the company held a monopoly and charged unfairly inflated service charges for processing tickets.

   Ticketmaster was eventually cleared of monopolistic practices and the agency and the band eventually made peace. In the meantime however, Pearl Jam only played scattered shows in the United States during the mid-1990s because of the limited number of non-Ticketmaster venues.

    The band has maintained a strong fan base regardless of Ticketmaster issues and waning radio airplay. A story in Entertainment Weekly (May 5, 2006) called the group “the new Grateful Dead,” crediting its fan base’s “obsessive” nature in attending live shows.

   Pearl Jam endears itself to those fans in many ways, not the least of which is its altruism. The band’s Vitalogy Foundation is set to donate $1 per paid ticket to a local charity for every date on the group’s 2006 U.S. tour. The Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic which works to overturn and prevent wrongful convictions (May 27), and Philadelphia’s Spiral Q Puppet Theater (May 28) are the beneficiaries for the local dates this weekend.

   The deep connection with its fans may be helping generate success for Pearl Jam. The lead single from the new record, “World Wide Suicide,” has rocketed up the charts, topping Billboard magazine’s Modern Rock chart. Meanwhile, the CD debuted at No. 2 on Billboard’s album chart with 279,000 in first-week sales.

    The CD has also drawn rave reviews, with many critics claiming that it delivers the kind of energy and passion the band exhibited on its first three records. McCready concurred with those sentiments.

   “It does harken back to, I believe, the Vs. era, to the energy of the time,” he said. “I think our brains are more suitable to handle it now. Back then we were just 25, 26, and we were just kind of blown away by the attention and the fact that the thing sold a million records in a week or whatever it was… The chaos and the fun and all the stuff that was happening then was all brand new. The music of this record, I believe, captures the energy of that time, but with more of a confidence now.”

   “World Wide Suicide,” a song that recalls the full-throttle guitar rock of “Go” (from Vs.) and “Spin The Black Circle” (from Vitalogy), sets the tone for the new CD with a crisp beat and sharp guitar riffs that anchor the song under Vedder’s impassioned singing.

   The band began work on the disc right on the heels of the 2004 “Vote For Change” tour, on which a number of big-name acts tried to rally support for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. McCready said that outing stoked the creative fires for the new CD.

 “(It was) exciting for us to be part of that whole democratic process and speak up as taxpayers and citizens of the United States,” he said. “Certainly it didn’t work out how we wanted it to, and we were kind of bummed and depressed from that. But you’ve got to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, to use a cliché, and you’ve got to keep moving on.”

    Not surprisingly, the new CD includes several songs that address the state of the world during the G.W. Bush presidency, including “World Wide Suicide,” which forcefully examines the futility of war, and “Unemployable,” which laments the dead-end future of an unemployed older worker.

 In McCready’s view, several factors have helped generate the strong initial response to the Pearl Jam CD – including the climate of today’s world.

 “I think it’s the times we’re living in. We’re reacting to how that is, and that comes out musically,” he said. “I believe that having a new record label (J Records) that’s excited about it (helps). The promotional side makes people get to hear it on the radio or get to see us on TV.  I also feel that we worked really hard on it for about a year and a half…We really wanted to make this as powerful as possible, so we put all of our positive and spiritual energy into that record.”

   The new songs are also adding a charge to Pearl Jam’s live show.

 “We want to make these new songs as exciting as we feel they are on the record, and to make them as exciting as some of our older tunes are,” McCready said, noting the band rehearsed for a solid month before starting the tour. “So we’ve been working hard, more than we ever have for any tour.”

 

What: Pearl Jam with My Morning Jacket

Where: Tweeter Center, Harbour Blvd., Camden

When: Sat. and Sun., May 27 and 28, 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $42.50- $56.50

Call: 856.365.1300