And now, the story of the incredible disappearing Pearl Jam.

Remember them? Biggest band in the world about 1994. Waged a one-band war against business as usual by refusing to play ball with T-shirt vendors, promoters and Ticketmaster in an effort to keep tickets and merchandise more affordable for its fans. Gives the cold shoulder to journalists, MTV and radio programmers by declining to release videos and singles or even to do interviews. Acquires a reputation for being obstinate, self-serious and humorless in spite of best efforts to do the right thing.

The band tries to do tours of non-Ticketmaster concert venues in 1995 and '96, and ends up nearly breaking up from the strain. The Justice Department, after soliciting Pearl Jam's testimony in an antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster, decides Ticketmaster isn't operating an illegal monopoly after all. Pearl Jam's fourth album, the 1996 "No Code," ends up stiffing on the pop charts; it goes on to sell only 1.3 million copies--3 million fewer than its predecessor, "Vitalogy," and 8 million fewer than the band's 1991 debut, "Ten."

"No Code" is hospital jargon for "Do not resuscitate," and the question became, Was it time to pull the plug? The band had fought what it deemed to be the good fight, and ended up getting its butt kicked. Neither its fans nor other bands had lined up in Pearl Jam's defense when it took on Ticketmaster, and the legions of grunge loyalists were further alienated by the more introspective sound of "No Code."

But as Pearl Jam shrunk from public view, the band not only got stronger, it got better.

"No Code," despite a couple of flat moments, turned out to be the most musically adventurous of the band's first four albums, a document of resilience and spiritual growth mirrored by a more subtle and supple sound. And the band has topped itself again with the freshly minted "Yield" (Epic), a striking work that couples the passionate roar of old with a mesmerizing array of guitar textures and agile rhythms.

Gone is the raw angst that gripped the early albums. In its place has come a series of songs about transcendence, self-realization, faith and acceptance, from the delicate "Wishlist" and hymn-like "Low Light" to the soaring "Given to Fly" and Beatles-esque anthem "All Those Yesterdays." In between there are the scorched earth "Brain of J" and "Do the Evolution," a rock-solid Iggy Pop homage. But the centerpiece moment is "In Hiding," in which a sun shower of psychedelic guitar frames Eddie Vedder's soulful croon: "It's been about three days now since I've been aground/No longer overwhelmed and it seems so simple now/It's funny when things change so much/It's all state of mind."

And just what is Vedder's state of mind? "It's not a bad time to be me--I'll admit it," the singer says with a laugh, calling from the band's rehearsal space in Seattle. Vedder knows only too well his reputation as one of rock's most earnest and difficult personalities. It's an image at odds with his private reputation as a practical joker and loyal friend. If Vedder has been guilty of anything the last few years, it's bad PR.

"When the natural progression, or what you would think would be the natural progression of the band gets mutated and becomes bigger than you can handle, maybe you take steps to make it a plausible situation in which to work in," he says in explaining his virtual silence over the last five years. "What is the main work? To make records. That is our main concern. That is what we'd like to leave as some kind of legacy."

But the band's feud with Ticketmaster over lowering service fees became the focal point in the summer of '95; when Vedder collapsed on stage in San Francisco from food poisoning and the band canceled several tour dates, Pearl Jam teetered on extinction.

"The day after that show, I thought it could very easily have been over," says guitarist Mike McCready. A new drummer, Jack Irons, had just joined the band, and "we weren't comfortable with ourselves yet. We were all concerned whether Ed wanted to do this anymore. He was in a van doing his pirate-radio thing (broadcasting underground rock records illegally from various tour stops) and the rest of us were flying to shows. We were on different wavelengths and not communicating well."

Irons to the rescue

Just as he had in 1990 when he recommended Vedder as a vocalist to Pearl Jam founders Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, Irons came to the rescue. "We all sat down after that show and asked, `Do we even want to be a band anymore?' " McCready says. "And the consensus was that yes, we did, but that we needed to regroup and get away from each other. Just us sitting down and confronting each other and deciding what was important turned us around. And a lot of that was Jack's doing--he'd hold up a red flag whenever a problem started to show up and say, `Let's talk,' whereas before we might have skirted some issues."

Which may explain why so much of "No Code" and now "Yield" is about pushing past obstacles. Vedder describes "In Hiding" as a song written from the perspective of a surfer knocked down by a big wave: "You're hit hard and you're swimming as fast as you can because you only have so much breath, only you realize you've been swimming the wrong way and you hit bottom. And that's not actually a bad thing, because at least you can push off. You've hit the depths, but now there's only one way to go."

But Vedder insists the band never hit bottom. "The band, and in a broader sense music in general, has always been a place where you're liberated," he says. "I always thought of this band as being extraordinarily fortunate for the most part. The few negative things that come along, whether it's ridiculous exposure in the media or being misunderstood by the media, there is not much I can do about that. The band has always been a real positive thing, and we have the people who listen to our music to thank for that."

He says the band has no regrets about its Ticketmaster fight, even though it has softened its stand somewhat and will play some Ticketmaster venues in cities where there are no other options on a 40-date North American tour scheduled for this summer, its most extensive road trip since '94. "We got to see up close what it was like to be crushed by a huge corporate giant," Vedder says with a laugh. "That was extremely interesting, educational and disappointing. But it was reality. The surcharge on a ticket was just one more aspect of being a band we wanted to handle in a responsible way, from crowd safety, to sound, to the price of a T-shirt.

Left out on a limb

"Some bands don't care about that stuff, and I always thought they should. Then I was in a band, and we all agreed we should handle the situation in what we thought was an ethically sound manner. . . . We thought there was a bunch of people behind us, then we looked around and it was just us (laughs)--hanging there. Then the people who led us down that way (in the Justice Department) bailed too. But it was still the right thing to do. If we were out there standing alone, fine. I'm proud of that, actually."

Consider the price, and then consider how many rockers within striking distance of the limousines-and-champagne circuit would have passed it up: As the most popular rock band in America at the time, Pearl Jam probably could have rolled in $50 million annually in concert revenue if it had just played by the industry rules. And, says McCready, "We alienated some fans. That's my biggest disappointment from all this. A few told us they would have paid the extra amount to come and see us and not have to go to these out-of-the-way-venues we were playing to avoid Ticketmaster."

Now that the media firestorm has died down and the band has been passed up by some of its contemporaries as MTV-generation favorites, Pearl Jam has dug back into the music and found new inspiration. Whereas once the songs were filled with characters dangling from the ledge of circumstance, cruelty and bad luck, "Yield" claws toward the light.

"As a teenager and through your 20s, you're still wrestling with things around you, things you can't change--hence, frustration and punk rock," says Vedder, 32. "It's not that I find it boring, it's just frustrating: Bang your head against the wall, scream in pain, record it. OK, great, there's a song. Now I'm much more interested in taking the closest off ramp to some kind of solution."