‘Vitalogy’: the Pearl Jam album that helped to launch the vinyl boom
There is a sense of performance to playing a vinyl record. The act of flicking switches, unsheathing fragile discs, and sitting back as the first looping precession of vinyl hiss embalms the room is a ceremony of sorts, one that calls for a cold beer or cup of tea to accompany it. This act forces a higher level of engagement with the music at hand, and Pearl Jam have always been advocates of this.
In fact, it was one of these ceremonies that made Eddie Vedder want to be a musician. He grew up in Evanston, Illinois, until he was nine, when the sunnier climes of San Diego came calling for his family. He would soon find his own calling therein. One fortuitous night, his life would change thanks to the happenstance of a hip hired hand. “I was around nine when a babysitter snuck Who’s Next onto the turntable. The parents were gone. The windows shook. The shelves were rattling,” he recalls.
The writer Graham Greene once said, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” This was the moment that happened for Vedder. “That began an exploration into music that had soul, rebellion, aggression, affection. Destruction. And this was all Who music,” he continued. But it was also the tactile delivery method, the sense that he was in the room with a whirling presence. Without that spinning reminder, music can sink back into the background.
In the 1990s, Vedder seemed to see this unfortunate symptom of the digital age before most. While engagement with image and marketing might have been at an all-time high, engagement with the heart and soul of music appeared to be on the slide. Riding a wave of fame after two massively successful record, Pearl Jam were determined not be complicit in this. So, for their third album, Vitalogy, they came up with a plan.
Despite vinyl record sales representing a fraction of the music industry at the time, for the first two weeks of the release of Vitalogy, the humble LP was the only available format of the album. “A CD is like bad acid, not for production or consumption. Viva la vinyl,” the liner notes declared. Augmenting the point, the band also released the single ‘Spin the Black Circle’.
While limited turntable ownership at the time might have meant that the album only hit 55th upon release and slunk down to 173 the following week, the band’s point had already hit the press. Pearl Jam had made a pressing case for the sincerity of musical engagement. They refused MTV videos and harked back to analogue purity. Meanwhile, their massive fanbase had to either wait patiently or get on board with the vinyl revolution that they were calling for.
The fact that as soon as the record was released on CD, the album shot up from 173 to first in the chart proves that most of their followers held out. However, Vedder and his bandmates knew that their ploy was unlikely to create an overnight U-turn, but considering that they were also boldly battling against the monopoly of Ticketmaster at the time, they were effective in getting fans to think about music in a less commercial manner than the mainstream industry was encouraging.
You can’t have a relationship with a shuffle button, nobody gets sentimental about algorithms, and we forget what music means to us so much on streaming that we need an annual wrap-up to tell us what we’ve actually been listening to. That’s why more and more people, since the release of Vitalogy, have turned to vinyl. It’s not just audiophiles or keen collectors, but everyone who craves a greater, tangible attachment to the music that they love.
The holistic appeal of vinyl is something that Vedder was always keen to encourage, explaining in 1999, ”It’s very difficult to create artwork that can compete with an LP on a CD. We tried it a lot and, you know, size matters. It’s very hard to make it have that same romantic feel.”
Adding, ”Not to mention the difference between the highs and lows, and the warmth.”
The only drawback he saw was the same one that exists now: ”For some reason, vinyl nowadays costs, you know, $30.”
