Pearl Jam: There's a riot goin' on, and it's no act

BY ROD HARMON

Bradenton Herald

During the encore of Pearl Jam's North American tour opener in Denver on April 1, Eddie Vedder donned a George W. Bush mask for the song "Bushleaguer."
The lead vocalist had been doing the same in Japan and Australia for the caustic track, which takes jibes at the president with lines such as "He's not a leader, he's a Texas leaguer ... born on third, thinks he got a triple." But this time, some fans walked out of the venue in protest.
The backlash was just one of an increasing number of incidents involving celebrities who speak out against the Bush administration. In March, the Dixie Chicks were the target of boycotts after Natalie Maines made a negative comment about Bush. Actors Martin Sheen, Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon have received a hail of criticism for their opposition to the war.
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready didn't notice the walk-outs, and said for the most part, audience reaction was positive. But he bristles whenever someone is termed "unpatriotic" for exercising free speech, or when it's implied support for the administration and the troops must be intertwined.
"I fully support the troops," McCready said by telephone the day after the Denver show. "My father was in the Navy, and my grandfather was in the Navy, so I have very strong military ties. My dad was in Vietnam, and when he came back, he was spit upon. I have a cousin in the 1st Marine Division who's over in Iraq right now.
"So I have to look at it from the view of the people who are actually doing the job. I can question the administration and its decisions, but I can't question the troops. I hope it's over soon, and that they come back alive."
Pearl Jam has never been afraid to go against the status quo. Exploding from the Seattle grunge scene of the early '90s, its combination of classic rock riffs and introspective lyrics tolled the death knell for the superficial pop that had dominated the previous decade. Almost everything they did flew in the face of what the industry had deemed necessary for stardom, from refusing to do videos to battling Ticketmaster over service charges.
At the time, it was bold behavior. In retrospect, it probably saved the band, McCready said.
"We certainly jeopardized our career in certain ways by doing that, but we're very happy about where we are now," he said. "We had to pull back, because we were getting too big, and had we not done that, we might not subsequently still be a band. I mean, I guarantee you, we wouldn't be."
Pearl Jam's seventh studio album, "Riot Act," reflects the members' maturation from angry young rockers to reflective statesmen. Despair and hope battle for the soul of the project through songs such as "All or None" ("It's a hopeless situation, and I'm starting to believe/That this hopeless situation is what I'm trying to achieve") and "Love Boat Captain" ("It's already been sung, but it can't be said enough/All you need is love.")
Death is a prevalent theme throughout the disc, which could be perceived as a reflection on the band's loss of friends over the past year, including Dee Dee Ramone, Joe Strummer of the Clash and Layne Staley of Alice of Chains. Staley and McCready had been friends since they were teenagers, and played together in the side project Mad Season in the mid-'90s.
"It was tough to see him kill himself that way," McCready said. "I hadn't heard from him for many years, so I was assuming the worst, and that turned out to be correct. The thing about him was, he was really a good guy with a bad drug addiction, a bad disease."
Staley's drug overdose was the latest in a long line of rock star deaths caused by substance abuse, a list that's beginning to resemble a phone book in length. McCready, who has battled his own demons, feels lucky to be alive.
"I never got into the needle, but it's all the same," he said. "Some of them kill you a little bit faster, some of them take a long time and kill you slowly and make life miserable. It's either jail, institutions or death if you play around with that stuff. That's been proven over and over again."
Despite the melancholic feel of "Riot Act," the disc also has some full-tilt rockers with a mid-'60s R&B touch provided by keyboardist Boom Gaspar, a friend of Vedder's. The addition of keyboards for the first time opened up new possibilities for the band and added to the energy that was already evident in the studio, McCready said.
"We had been away from each other for about a year after our last tour, so we were excited to see each other and excited about rocking out," McCready said. "I think one of the reasons we're still around has a lot to do with the fact that we don't hang out with each other when we're not on the road. We look forward to coming back to Pearl Jam as our family thing, and then we go on vacation. We don't drive each other crazy."
As with their last tour, Pearl Jam will be issuing double-CDs of every concert to stave off bootleggers. A compilation disc of rare tracks, B-sides and unreleased material is planned for later this year, and the band may return to the studio immediately after the tour rather than take a break, McCready said. The group's contract with Epic has also expired, so the members are kicking around the idea of forming their own label.
Whatever Pearl Jam does, its M.O. is always the same: do it because you want to, not because someone tells you. So don't look for "Bushleaguer" to go away because of a few disgruntled fans.
"Eddie has a Bowie kind of thing that he's doing with it now," McCready said. "He's really taken it to another level."