That’s the crowd that any real, living, breathing band wants, because they’re going to push you into some places that keep you alive. It felt like the whole stadium knew they hadn’t played it since 1971. He’d turn to me and say, oh, they haven’t played this song since 1971. I wasn’t that familiar with the Dead at all, and a few times each night, the audience just erupted. Ament experienced that magic himself when he saw the Dead for the first time in Las Vegas in May 1993, just days after Pearl Jam wrapped sessions for its second album, “Vs.”Īs Ament recalls: “I went to those shows with a guy who worked with our trucking company. “I’m almost certain people have come to our shows, and the crowd has gone nuts, and they look to the super-fan to their left to ask what’s going on, and they’ll say, ‘They’ve only played that song six times ever’ - that’s just amazing to me,” Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament tells Variety. That “you have to be there” spirit has elevated Pearl Jam’s music far beyond its studio origins and into a place its band members admit they never could have expected it to go. Although the two acts have little to nothing in common musically, they share a fierce dedication to cultivating a unique and special relationship with their fans, who travel the globe to experience shows that are never the same from night to night. The question, then, is how did Pearl Jam turn that corner, when none of its contemporaries could? One explanation comes in the form of an unlikely role model: the Grateful Dead. drew 88,000 to Seattle’s Safeco Field, 83,000 to Chicago’s Wrigley Field and another 72,000 to Boston’s Fenway Park in 2018. Thirty years in, Pearl Jam is the only one of those bands still standing, and while the commercial heights of “Ten” are far in the rearview, the group remains one of the most in-demand live acts in the world - its last pre-COVID concerts in the U.S. A slow seller at first, “Ten” went on to move 13 million copies and became one of the greatest debut rock albums of all time. Pearl Jam, formed by members of battle-tested Pacific Northwest groups such as Green River and Mother Love Bone, and fronted by an unknown San Diego transplant named Eddie Vedder, entered the fray with its debut album, “Ten,” on Aug. But there was another of Seattle’s Big Four ready to make some noise.
0 kommentar(er)
