>From RIP March 1993
PEARL JAM-- THE PRICE OF FAME
by S.L. Duff

The ascension of Pearl Jam, the Seattle band that began in blueprint from as
Mookie Blaylock and proceeded to explode into multiplatinum success, has been
documented a million times over-- so much so that when the group headed out
as part of the Lollapalooza extravaganza this past summer, they decided to
put a lid on the media and not grant any more interviews.

   "There's something to be said for not saying too much," bassist Jeff Ament
has explained.  "I think a lot of times, especially the way the music is now,
things are way too spelled out for people."

   Pearl Jam has proven that they are a band that values their privacy. By
and large they are still coming to grips with their sudden incredible
popularity.  In our last conversation with Eddie Vedder ["Pearl Jam: How
Sweet It Is," October '92] the vocalist bristled at the notion of "success"
being equated with units moved. To Vedder-as well as Ament, guitarists Stone
Gossard and Mike McCready, and drummer Dave Abbruzzese -it's the music that
matters. They feel Pearl Jam's recordings and live performances relay their
messages to the fans much more efficiently than any piece of printed
journalism ever could.

  Nonetheless, the quintet have become superstars, whether they like it or
not. In fact, they were voted Best New Band of 1992 by you, the readers of
RIP. As a thank-you for the award, Ament broke the group's silence and
interrupted a well-deserved vacation in his hometown of Missoula, Montana, to
talk to us.

  "When I was growing up-especially growing up in Montana," Ament said, "I
would go out and buy a record, and maybe I would find a couple of magazines
that had some stuff about the band, and that was about  all you knew about
them. You might have an opportunity to go see the band-maybe. Now there's a
zillion magazines and MTV that are all over bands, including us. It's kind of
a sensory overload. You find out everything  you ever wanted to know about
these bands and these individuals. To an extent, I think the mystique behind
the band gets lost. That can be frustrating. That had a lot to do with us not
wanting to do interviews and not wanting to be all over the covers of
magazines and not wanting to do another video and all those sorts of things.
We kind of felt like, well, we've said more than we needed to say for this
record. Why don't we leave ourselves something to say for the second one."

  In our last interview Vedder opined that perhaps Ten the band's only LP to
date, had been overanalyzed a bit.

  "We may be protective about the whole thing, the attention," he said "You
can call it hype, because it is. It [Ten] got a little hyped up, and I think
they're intimate songs. I see it as more of a foreign film. It's more like a
character study than a blockbuster movie with stunts and car crashes. It's
not Terminator 2; it's more like a small film."

  In that same earlier interview Ament sighed at one point and said, "The
thing is, I'm just sick of talking about myself," and Vedder quickly agreed.

  "I really don't like doing this," he added. "It's no offense to you, and
it's no offense to the people giving us attention; it's just right now-and I
hope you understand -you know, jeez, can we have just a week off? Traveling
and touring and stuff, it can be not normal. It's very surreal. I've always
been into things that are surreal, so I'm kind of into it. It's kind of cool,
and I appreciate it. It's not a burden. I completely appreciate seeing the
world. That's why I'm so exhausted by it when I get back, because I've just
soaked it all up. I need a little bit of time to remove myself and walk down
to the store and maybe skateboard over to somebody's driveway and hang- just
be normal for a couple of days. And this doesn't feel normal to me, I hope
you understand. Here I am, trying to impress upon you where I'm coming from
when, at the same time, I said I don't give a fuck, and so, really, I don't.
But you know, I do care. I mean, we're all people. I guess I give a little
bit of a fuck."

  At the time of that earlier interview the band had just wrapped up their
first U.S. headlining tour and were departing for a tour of Europe. Ament
reports back now that that tour, which preceded Lollapalooza, became even
more "not normal," causing the band to cancel half a dozen dates.

  "You start to suffer from sensory overload," he says, "and start to get
numb. You might even start to react in ways you don't normally react. It got
a little bit weird, but before anybody snapped, we realized there were some
things that weren't quite right and actually pulled out of Europe. We blew
out six shows over there. It was a really, really hard thing to do. There
were a lot of things we were looking forward to on one level, but on the
other level we were just about to lose it. I think we proved to ourselves
that we were actually mature enough and on top of it enough to realize that
something wasn't right and that we all needed a rest. It was a great
experience, but it was definitely a weird experience. It was dreamy, in a
Twin Peaks sort of fashion."

  Recovery was quick however and the band jumped at the opportunity to do
Lollapalooza. They enjoyed the chance to tour with many of their fiends and
due to an early set time that had them off stage at approximately 4:00 pm on
show days, they had the options of remaining at the festival and partying
with their pals jamming onstage with whoever or going into town for a movie
or other relaxation.

  Many critics leveled complaints at Lollapalooza this time out asserting
that it had drifted from its original intent of presenting a so-called
alternative lineup in a festival/carnival atmosphere. The scribes griped that
the 92 bill was too white-male-metal major-label oriented-in a word, too
corporate.

  "To me," Ament says, "the soundbite words of the year would be 'corporate'
and 'alternative.'  Those two words are kind of funny. They're words I'm
really sick of hearing. Anybody who's selling records on any level is
involved in some sort of corporate bullshit. If all you want to do is play
music, fine-- sit at home on your porch and play music to your dog or to your
wife or your kids or whatever. But if what you really want to do is reach
people and play music in front of people and exchange that energy and
exchange ideas, the best opportunity to do that is to play in front of more
people and sell more records and go to more countries, and it all kind of
relies on each other. The only way you can go overseas is if you sell a
certain amount of records or have enough money to do it. It's kind of this
round-robin thing for people to bitch and complain about. I think if your
heart is good and you stay on top of where the money is going and what's
happening, you can do it in a way where you actually feel good about it. It
doesn't have to be something that makes you lay awake at night and say, 'God
I can't sleep because I'm too corporate.'"

  As we're talking to Ament (in late October) the band is preparing an
acoustic set as part of a benefit for The Bridge, a school for children with
cerebral palsy which is being organized by Neil Young and will also feature
 Elton John and James Taylor. Also, Vedder and Mike McCready performed
"Masters of War" at the Bob Dylan tribute in New York, and Stone Gossard has
been using his vacation to work on a side project with ex-Malfunkshun member
Regan Hagar. By the time you read this, though, Pearl Jam will have regrouped
and be well along on their next record.

  "I'm really excited just to practice again," enthuses Ament, "to go back
down to our practice place and go across the street and have a cup or coffee
and go down to eat at Cyclops and just hang and be a band again and be
buddies again. I know there's going to be a lot of material. We're probably
going to spend three months or so rehearsing; that's a long time. Stone, in
particular, has a lot of songs. He's pretty much been writing all year. The
rest of us have a handful of ideas and songs. Once we actually get in a
situation where we're playing together again, it's going to kind of explode."

  Pearl Jam, the group, has already exploded. Ament comments on being named
Best New Band.

  "It's really cool that there s a lot of people that would actually vote for
us as being the best of anything, so on that level I think it's great. At the
same time I don't know how I feel about awards like that. I think the best
awards are just different moments in your life that seem magical. On one
level I think it's great, but at the same time I don't want to put too much
weight behind something like that. It's been such an amazing year that I
think we have to kind of check ourselves and keep ourselves humble. We made
as good a record as we could at the time, but I think it's a really young
record. The next record and the record after that are going to be a whole
different theory for us. At that point maybe I'll have a little bit more
appreciation for awards and things like that. Right now I'm a little bit
tentative about those sorts of things."

  Hey, guys, congratulations anyway!