“Put my head down”: The Pearl Jam album that marked their lowpoint
No band isn’t at least a little bit familiar with some tension whenever they make a record. There are a lot of cooks in the kitchen whenever someone tries to put the right 12 tracks together, and even if everyone has a fair say in what gets used, there are still bound to be a few bruised egos when the final product is put out. Right when Pearl Jam seemed to be at their commercial pinnacle, though, bassist Jeff Ament admitted that they were at their absolute worst when working on this masterpiece.
Then again, Pearl Jam getting famous wasn’t something any of them asked for. They might have had dreams of becoming rock stars, but they wanted it in the same way that REM did, where they would spend years cutting their teeth in the underground before finding their way into the mainstream.
But once Ten arrived in the wake of Nirvana’s Nevermind, everyone was convinced that they had the next answer to hair metal, complete with Eddie Vedder’s signature gruff delivery on every single track. They were now doing numbers that every band dreamed of, but Vedder was pissed. He had spent the better part of a few months writing down his most personal feelings, and now he was being questioned about what every line he wrote was really about.
Even if they couldn’t have control over what the media did with them, the frontman knew he could have control over the music as time went on. Looking at the songwriting credits for Ten, the lion’s share of the material was dominated by Stone Gossard, but after being fairly democratic on their sophomore album Vs, Vitalogy saw Vedder take the reins and start making strange art-rock style changes to their music.
He was still trying to accommodate every member, but looking at the background behind this record, none of the band was all that comfortable. There were moments of brilliance like ‘Not For You’ and ‘Nothingman’, but listening through some of the strange moments on the record, tracks like ‘Bugs’ and ‘Pry To’ were practically excuses for the band to vent out all of their feelings about where they were.
Despite going through a lot of hardship together to make Ten, Ament said that the entire band seemed on the verge of collapse during this period, saying, “The first record or two, Ed and I could talk. But now communication was at an all-time low. I responded like I’ve always responded: just put my head down and played. There were songs on Vs. and Vitalogy where I had no idea where they came from. It almost became a game or a puzzle.”
It’s not like Vedder was willing to roll over on his decisions, either. Judging by how No Code sounded and the fact that he ousted drummer Dave Abbruzzese from the group, the frontman had slowly taken over the group now that he had the reputation as their de facto mouthpiece. In retrospect, though, reeling back was one of the best options they could have gone for.
Since most of the biggest names in grunge didn’t survive to see the end of the 1990s, the fact that Pearl Jam ran away from the limelight actually helped them preserve their loyal fanbase, sticking by them through the years no matter what they put out. It was a hard journey to get through something like Vitalogy, but it might also be the reason why the band can still function today.
