I like many of Pearl Jam’s principles and many of their songs, but I’ve felt uneasy about the band – and haven’t felt much like a fan – since around ‘94-’95 (it shocks me that that is fourteen years ago, as old as I was at the time). After the majesty of Ten, and the experience of feeling Vs. hook deep into my psyche, I was disappointed by Vitalogy. On paper, it looked like a good record: it was very attractively packaged; literally, the paper the sleeve was printed on looked good. It featured some beautiful, tender songs. But it didn’t swing; it didn’t groove. Not the way it should have. I found myself skipping tracks while playing it, because some of them were annoying to listen to.
Then Pearl Jam fired Dave Abbruzzese. Dave’s Unplugged performance hypnotised me when it was aired, and his drumming on Vs. still inspires me to listen ever more closely to that album – if not to pick up some drumsticks and start playing on the furniture, or simply to bop around. It is paradigmatic drumming for me: an actualisation of a Platonic ideal. I cannot think of another album by any heavy rock band whose drumming surpasses this one in musicality (but I’ve heard a few that come close: Awake, The Need to Change the Mapmaker, Mötley Crüe, Return of Saturn, Infernal Love, The Colour and the Shape, H2O, Built to Last, and the Deftones albums spring to mind). Since Dave had been the most compelling reason of all for me to listen to Pearl Jam, his departure felt like the last straw. If Vitalogy was evidence of the band’s decreasing ability to assess the musical merits (read: release-worthiness) of their recordings, then Abbruzzese’s firing suggested it had also lost the ability to assess the musical talent of its members. My expectations of Pearl Jam dropped off the scale and I lost all but a peripheral interest in their subsequent work.
Today, I listened to Vs. and, while doing so, tried to find out a little more about it, and about the band. I stumbled across this compilation of interview excerpts, and was pleasantly surprised to discover that whatever they may have lost at one time or another, Pearl Jam remained inspirational in other regards (at least, until the time that article was compiled – in 2001). They seem, like Dave Grohl – who was very down-to-earth when I met him at a Rocket From The Crypt show many years ago – to have mastered the rare art of being rock stars while keeping their priorities as thoughtful human beings more-or-less intact. And since their priorities were typically commendable, this is a praise-worthy and inspiring achievement. I’ve seen good musicians in other bands lose perspective under much less pressure, and once or twice I’ve been among them.
Here’s to keeping your head when all around you are losing theirs, and to respecting human art above artifice.