Live On 4 Legs: Pearl Jam Podcast

Pearl Jam found time after No Code to take a bit of a breather during 1997 to get out of the spotlight, recalibrate and record their next record Yield. The tours that had been utilized without the usage of Ticketmaster were put on pause for the year, but they found a way to get a couple shows in with the help of rock 'n' roll titans, The Rolling Stones. For four dates in November, Pearl Jam opened for the Stones in Oakland playing hour-long sets and showcasing some brand new songs from the Yield record.

This episode is a watch along episode, so if you planned just to listen, take a stroll over to our YouTube channel so you can watch us watch the entire show in full. This show was recently brought to light by band archivist, Kevin Schuss, on their social media Rearviewmirror lookback video series. He shares a story about how it was pouring rain on the third night of this run and how he ran out to a golf pro shop in order to grab some rain suits for the band to wear on stage. Even though they looked like a hip hop dance troop, the band puts on a great performance in the rain as the warm up for the Stones. There is an OTOTO opener that we'll get into at this show, and we'll talk about top flight versions of Hail, Hail, Corduroy, Brain Of J, Immortality and more.

We'll also get into a discussion about the Stones and why Pearl Jam and other popular bands of the era were opening for them on that tour, and how Yield set the band up for their writing process on future records.

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After three successful albums and becoming a world wide phenomenon, Pearl Jam entered 1996 ready to put out a new album and shift the dynamics of their song writing in a direction that perhaps the world wasn't ready for. To the wayside went some of the aggression and raw power that dominated Vitalogy opting for a more self reflective approach for No Code. The live shows were still without Ticketmaster, but continued to evolve, and this became the first year where we got to see marathon performances reaching nearly three hours and over 30 songs featured on the set. The 1996 representative for our Chronology Series is a show from Buffalo, New York that had everything you'd want from this era - flawless performances and an energized crowd.

We invite our good friend, Steve Bennett, back to the podcast this week to talk about this show being his first of nearly 100 that he's attended. And the stories here are can't miss. From failing to get tickets through an 800 number to dealing with brokers through the newspaper as a fifteen year old, it is the classic story of how far a high school student was willing to go in order to experience this band. And for it to be life changing once stepping inside the arena makes all the difference. This show marks the first non-VIP event in the building that's housed the Sabres for 30 years, and Pearl Jam would go on to play there three more times in following tours.

Steve's stories will dominate the conversation, but we'll also dig into the next step that this band took to develop a more mature sound in their music. We'll spend some time talking about how Present Tense marked massive changes for the band's mentality, and how even a song like Better Man was greatly improved upon since the following tour in 1995.

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Moving ahead in our series to Pearl Jam's highly regarded 1995 tour covering the first of two nights from Milwaukee's Summerfest. This year saw many changes for the band including a new drummer with Jack Irons, no Ticketmaster venues played or corporate sponsorships promoted and a change within their sound to fit what they were evolving into. This Milwaukee show comes at a time that was pretty controversial - it was the first show in two weeks since Ed was stricken with food poisoning at their Polo Fields show in San Francisco. The incident was seen as a turning point for the band that was dealing with their own internal struggles. It was either get on the same page as a team, or come to terms with the reality of a possible break up.

This show allows us to dig into some topics about what the band's future looked like and how they were about to overcome the challenges laid ahead for them. Three days after would be the famed Soldier Field show, so the turnaround in order to get on the same page happens quick. This show will deal with a little bit of ring rust, but after a speech where Ed addresses media spreading rumors about him and the band, the show is kicked into the gear that we love from 1995 performances. Not For You, Alive and Blood are the headlining moments, but the show stealer comes from a duo named Lightning And Thunder well known throughout the upper midwest for covering Neil Diamond songs. With the movie Song Sung Blue having recently come out featuring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson that chronicles their journey, a big part of it included this moment where they sang Forever In Blue Jeans with Ed in front of a crowd of 30,000.

We'll also dig into Ed's vocals at the time and how mentors of his encouraged him to limit his screaming in order to preserve longevity. We discuss whether it would've been wise to take advice from either Neil Young or Roger Daltrey, and perhaps share a baseball analogy along with it. As a matter of fact, there are many baseball analogies featured in this episode!

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The chronology takes us to 1994 in this episode during a time where there were no act in the world bigger than Pearl Jam... outside of maybe Ace Of Base. Coming off of the release of Vs., the band continued to struggle with their rising stardom. Tickets for their shows were in such high demand, yet the band wasn't quite ready to take on bigger venues to hold the capacity crowds that wanted to experience them. This episode focuses on a show from Miami where the capacity issues reach a boiling point and led to fences being broken down, fans rushing the stage and arrests being made. For an 8,000 seat venue, an alleged 24,000 got through to see the show. On top of that, the band was unhappy because the venue featured corporate sponsorship signs that they demanded be covered up.

It took the band an hour before they took the stage, which could have added to some of the commotion going on outside the gates, but when they started playing, you could sense a real anger and frustration in their tone. There's a moment where they needed to have a fan kicked out for being too dangerous in the pit. That emotion is what motivated them throughout the night as songs like Blood, Deep, Porch, Not For You and State Of Love And Trust brought intensity to what was already a tumultuous evening.

We'll also talk about the beginning of their battle against Ticketmaster service fees and how maybe our only hope in our current environment is... Kid Rock... kill me.

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The timeline moves ahead to 1993 this week, a massive year for Pearl Jam as their sophomore album Vs. was released with a ton of fanfare backing it. It can be argued that there's no year of this band's career where they were bigger. The record was a massive success, tickets to their shows became nearly impossible to attain, but as all of this was taking shape, the band was not comfortable with their role as the top artist in the world. Their focus was on writing, continuing to raise the bar for their live shows and as we see from this show in Mesa, Arizona, raising awareness for meaningful causes like protecting indigenous land Mt. Graham from (I kid you not) alien observation towers.

This show centers a little bit around preservation of Apache land, and we'll discuss how an incident with a crowd member is connected to that. But the moment that people are gonna remember the most from this show is that it marks the official live debut of Yellow Ledbetter. Having released it as a b-side a year prior, fans in the know began to gravitate towards it, and after some time had passed radio stations would put the song into heavy rotation. Being unlike the rest of the catalog at the time, Ledbetter stood out for it's moody Hendrix inspired guitar wailing from McCready and anthemic chorus build ups. We'll discuss whether or not the band had plans for this song to be incorporated into the rotation, or if it was the will of the fans that turned it into the end of show curtain call that it is today.

We'll also do a deep dive on the era and talk about the band's budding mentorship with Neil Young as well as massive performances of Once, Jeremy and... John Denver?

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