Pearl Jam: Life after 'Suicide'
War, corruption, ecological ruin and a variety of global downers were consuming Eddie Vedder until he committed World Wide Suicide, first to paper, then to tape.
The process of recording the issue-driven songs on Pearl Jam, the band's eighth album, "let me clear my head," the singer says. "I feel like my brain gets to be reseeded. We were in a cave, and we're finally seeing daylight."
Fans also seem relieved to see the band reclaim the spotlight it abandoned in the mid-'90s. Pearl Jam has sold 516,000 copies after entering Billboard in May at No. 2 with 279,000. It's a far cry from the record-setting opener of 950,000 for 1993's Vs. but a step up from Riot Act's debut at No. 5 with 166,000 in 2002. Its tour is a box-office sizzler, and anti-war Suicide is the fastest-charting single of the band's career.
"I feel lucky we stuck it out long enough to have a song played on radio again," bassist Jeff Ament says.
After the Vote for Change tour, Pearl Jam entered the studio in November 2004 armed with manic energy, moral indignation and not a single composition.
"That's not very economical," Vedder concedes. "We wrote in the studio. Everyone chipped away at a big rock that went from an airplane to a mermaid to someone we all recognized."
They channeled frustrations over the Iraq war and John Kerry's defeat into a confrontational storybook riding on classic-rock thunder and grace. In addition to expressing open contempt for Bush administration policies, Jam spins tales about unsettled lives in post-9/11 America.
"I feel our country is being driven down a dangerous road," Vedder says. "How do we get our hands on the wheel and our feet on the brakes?"
His 21-month-old daughter provided as much inspiration as his steady diet of dire headlines.
"The whole world changes the day you drive her home from the hospital," he says. "You experience the fragility of life beaming out of your newborn and it projects out into your anger at the way the world is run. Globalization and the love of the bottom line is the religion in corporate boardrooms, and greed puts this whole planet in danger. Now that I see it as my daughter's planet, I'm even more (angry)."
Activism is nothing new to the Seattle force that lost a protracted battle against Ticketmaster and supports Artists for a Hate-Free America, Doctors Without Borders, PETA and 44 other groups touted on its website.
Pearl Jam has been less aggressive promoting Pearl Jam. Never at ease with star trappings and standard marketing practices, the band at its peak stopped making videos, declined sponsorships and retreated into experimental records.
"It's an undeniable fact that it was our goal to stifle record sales and pull back to a place where we could live our lives in a human fashion, which meant outside of fashion," Vedder says. "But at some point, you realize that to keep the music and live shows vital, you need to raise your hand in class."
Still, some winced when the rebel rock act, which includes drummer Matt Cameron and guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, signed to Clive Davis' pop-centric J Records.
Davis "wanted to know how we ran our business and how we saw ourselves down the line," Ament says, noting that J honchos "seemed comfortable with how hands-on we are. They put their two bits in a couple times, but it wasn't that different from our 13 years with (Epic)."
Hipper label Epitaph also courted the band, which opted for wider distribution. That aim contradicts an early impulse to recoil from the masses. Now Vedder regards the band's rise during the grunge explosion as traumatic but enriching.
"It seems that time was not so long ago," he says. "You can almost still feel the hangover. It was such a magical time. Too bad we weren't able to enjoy it. By the time things started settling down, Kurt (Cobain) was gone.
"We had a strong instinct for self-preservation. We wondered how we'd sound 10 years later, and we imagined what kind of record we'd make after a few chances to fail and mature."
Ament adds: "We have yet to make our best record. We went from being not very good players but wearing the punk-rock emotion on our sleeves to pushing boundaries and experimenting. If we can bring all that and write a good pop song with a strong hook, that'll be our best. It has to do with being ready."
Its credibility, creativity and commercial viability remain intact. Will the chemistry hold up?
"It's an ongoing exercise in democracy," Vedder says. "One reason this record took so long is that democracy is hard. There's a little dictator in each of us. But we have a strong constitution."
