The one decision Pearl Jam called their “greatest blessing”
It wasn’t going to be easy for anyone in Pearl Jam to deal with fame once they hit the big time.
No one in Seattle was planning on becoming famous when they started making their masterpieces, but sometimes it takes the right combination of great riffs and low singing for people to fall head over heels for any band when they come out of the woodwork. But if Eddie Vedder had his way, he was going to make sure that they were making the kind of rock and roll that they could still be proud of when they were older.
They weren’t in the business of following trends, and even when they compromised their vision, like in the video for ‘Jeremy’, they made a point of never doing that again. His vision for the band was about playing on their own terms, and while that did mean limiting access to interviews and making any public appearances, it was the only way for Vedder to preserve his own sanity as the frontman of the band.
And since they weren’t going the conventional route, they had the ability to stick their neck out on the line when they wanted to as well. No one had the gall to go after a money-hungry conglomerate like Ticketmaster, and while the band didn’t exactly win their case against keeping tickets outside of their fans’ reach, they did help shine a spotlight on how the sausage was really made in the industry.
Once they entered the 2000s, though, they started to get dangerously close to becoming a nostalgia act. All of the biggest names in grunge had either died off, were on hiatus, or breaking up altogether, but as one of the few bands still standing, they were trying to challenge their audience again. Their middle period was them embracing art rock a lot more, and while some albums might have been a bit weirder than most, they weren’t about to cower to the pressure of what their fans wanted.
They still wanted to make music that would make them happy, and that usually meant changing up their setlist. If you go to see a typical Pearl Jam show, you can still count on hearing tunes like ‘Alive’ at every show, but there was still a lot more surprises in their setlist, whether that means throwing in the odd cover song based on wherever they’re playing or occasionally pulling out a deep cut that no one would have thought of.
Anyone else would be mortified of disappointing that many people whenever they go out onstage, but after being a little apprehensive, Stone Gossard remembered being forever grateful for changing up their setlist from one date to the next, saying, “It’s funny but, a lot of those decisions that we made, it took me 10 years to see why they were good. In that regard, mixing up our setlist every night is one of the greatest blessings we could have ever done. The door is so open for us to be who we are every night.”
But mixing up the setlist hasn’t just kept the band fresh; it’s also changed the fanbase somewhat. It’s not like the longtime fans were pissed or anything once they started to change things up, but since no one knows what they’re going to play, they do have a reputation that seems a lot closer to a band like the Grateful Dead than the average alternative rock stadium band.
It’s not exactly the easiest tightrope to walk every night before going on tour, but it does at least free the band up to take a few more chances onstage as well. And since they promised everyone that they weren’t going to be the average rock and roll band, not knowing what the band is playing every night is them delivering on their promise about expecting the unexpected.
