==========

01/xx/98

From: PearlLover
Message-id: <19980120211700.QAA09120@ladder02.news.aol.com>

I got this off a Satchel mailing list. It first ran in the January issue of "Rip It Up"...



Like a rolling stone: an interview with Brad's Stone Gossard



"Hell of a riptide you got in that country!"



Stone Gossard, guitarist in Pearl Jam and Brad, head of Loosegroove Records, and owner of Seattle's Litho Studios, is laughing about his last visit to Auckland in 1995, when two sold out shows at the Mt. Smart Supertop were somewhat overshadowed by a bandmate nearly drowning in the surf at Piha. Perhaps it's a little uncharitable to laugh, but Gossard doesn't think it was that big a deal. "I don't think he even came close to

drowning. The beach where he got sucked up by a riptide had guys hauling people out every 40 seconds, but when you're as famous as Eddie Vedder, it turns into a big story." Gossard is speaking from his office at Loosegroove, where he's simultaneously juggling label duties, fielding phone calls, and conducting interviews. He'll be in New Zealand twice in as many months; in January with Brad - a collaborative project that includes Satchel's Regan Hagar
and Shawn Smith (also of Pigeonhed), and solo artist Jeremy Toback - and the following month when Pearl Jam kick off their world tour with an outdoor concert in Auckland. Brad's first album, Shame, appeared in 1993, and although interest was initially aroused due to Gossard's involvement, the attention it ultimately received was centered on the soulful vocals of Smith, and the laidback, 70s flavoured flow of the songs. Halfway through 1997, the
second album, Interiors, was released, and as surprising as it was that Brad chose to regroup to record a second album, more surprising still was the news they were to tour the new album - something so called "cut and paste" acts are not known for doing. "We've ended up touring it quite a bit. We did two months in the states and we'll do another three weeks in Australia and New Zealand. But that'll be the end of the tour cycle for that." After having
been a purely studio-based concern, Gossard thinks the band dynamic has changed noticeably. "Yeah man I think we certainly are a lot more confident as a band, now that we can go out and kinda rock." Gossard pauses as he's interrupted by slightly unkind laughter from elsewhere in his office. "I'm getting some feedback from the peanut gallery here. No, we definitely felt like we came together as a band more, so it'll be interesting to see what kind of
record we make next time we do one - whenever that may be - simply based on the fact we've gone out and played live."  It's interesting that although Shame was released through the Loosegroove imprint, Interiors has come out on Epic. "Loosegroove couldn't afford us."  I suppose that this way you can charge the label for the recording costs, and as it was done in your studio..? "Oh yeah, I'm getting it from both ends!" he snickers. Of course, it's
worth remembering that Epic weren't taking too much of a chance, as Brad became quite well established with their debut. However, Gossard says that  when Brad made Shame, they had no idea how the album would be received, nor if they'd ever do anything else. "We just thought, lets put this out for the fuck of it and see what happens, and a lot of people fell in love with the record so we were happy with ourselves. Later, we actually had some time to
do more recording. Because Pearl Jam doesn't tour that much, I have a lot more time to be able to pull that stuff off, whereas people who put out records then tour for a year and a half, the last thing they'd think of doing would be making another record."  Was it a case of knowing the time was right for another Brad album, or was it just that the time was convenient for everybody involved? "Both - convenient and right."  Finding the right people to
make any musical endeavour work means you're usually halfway there, and  Brad are one step ahead, with connections between the members stretching back to 1984, when Gossard's band Green River shared a practice room with Hagar's outfit, Malfunkshun. " That's what's fun, we're definitely old friends - except for Matt, our new guitar player who we met recently, but he's a sweetheart. I love working with Regan, who's artistic tastes I've respected for
years, and I think Shawn is a tremendous singer and he's one of my favorite people to work with. And it's definitely Shawn's band. It's his voice that's the focus, and mostly his songs."  There's some tracks on Interiors that, true to the Beatles Abbey Road-ish feel in places, began life on four-track. "'Those Three Words' is a big musical experiment that turned out to be great. It was a jam that Shawn did, where he played this crazy drum pattern and
layed all this stuff over the top of it. We tried to recreate it almost exactly, and we're pretty excited about that one." Gossard also contributes to Brad's songwriting, and he says he doesn't find it confusing which band the prospective songs would be best for;  "We were pretty much done writing the Pearl Jam record when we started this."  He adds that his composition method is a little different than you might imagine; "Usually I have three or
four riffs that I take in the studio and throw ' em out and if whoever I'm playing with responds and wants to sing over 'em, then I'm doing my gig." Gossard branched out a little this time as well, writing some lyrics for Interiors, and though he's fairly new to the word game, it wasn't his first lyrical excursion. "No, I did it on the last Pearl Jam record. He suddenly becomes exaggeratedly animated. "I did my **singing** on the last Pearl Jam
record - don't you remember it?"  Um, oh yeah - "You're like 'Ohhhhhh yeahhh, now I remember' [laughter] Based on that song, you'd think 'Ah maybe he can **kind of** sing and then you'll hear me live and kinda go, 'Now I know why he only sings one song.'  I don't really consider myself a lyricist. Sometimes you write a song and make up a silly lyric, and if it works and somebody enjoys it, it's kinda exciting. **If** someone else is willing to sing
it."  It sounds like the Brad experience has been a lot of fun for Gossard,and you can't help but wonder if Pearl Jam has started to feel like a day job. "No, not at all. I'm very fortunate to be in these two musical situations, and that everyone feels the way I do about it being a good thing to have more things going on. It takes a lot of pressure off the Pearl Jam situation.Tto get all of [Pearl Jam] together in a room to play music, sometimes
means you have to commit to it and have locked in dates, and everyone's got a lot of stuff going on. So Brad's a fun thing to do in between."  Pearl Jam recently opened for the Rolling Stones, playing four nights at the Oakland Coliseum to 50,000 people each show. "Yeah, it was genius! We've done stuff like that before, but it's not always fun, sometimes it's a sound nightmare. But they let us bring our own monitors, and set up our own little stage
in the midst of their gargantuan Vegas thing, and they let us play for an hour. Hanging out with the Stones, and getting your picture taken with them, and seeing them play Star Star, Dancing With Mr D, and Gimme Shelter - you're not gonna get too many more chances to do that." Pearl Jam's new album, Yield, will be released between Gossards visits to New Zealand. Now that the alternative/grunge feeding frenzy has died down, is there less external
pressures on the band to come up with a particular type of record?  "I think we feel more free in general, because I think we're more comfortable with ourselves than we've been in a long time, if not ever.  As you get older, you know what you wanna do, and everyone's taking steps to further their own writing skills and get more confidence on that level, so we've got a lot more musically to say. So I'm excited about the future of both bands, for sure,
I feel blessed." 



~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~




01/05/98

Album Preview: Pearl Jam
                                     Slam It With Yield

                                     Band delivers
                                     punk rockin'
                                     masterpiece.

                                     Addicted To
                                     Noise's G.
                                     Kaufman & M.
                                     Goldberg report :
                                     For Pearl Jam
                                     die-hards, Yield
                                     (Feb. 3) will likely
                                     feel a bit like coming home again.
The
                                     Seattle rock quintet's fifth album
is packed
                                     with heavy ebb-and-flow arena
anthems,
                                     hard, fast punk rockers and even a
few
                                     mellow ballads.

                                     It is a stunning work from a group
clearly at
                                     the top of its game.

                                     With Yield, Pearl Jam manage the
difficult
                                     feat of delivering an album that
both echoes
                                     the sound that made us fans in the
first place
                                     (think Ten and Vs.), yet continues
the
                                     group's musical evolution (think No
Code).

                                     Pearl Jam has always been a band
that's
                                     made a big noise and had something
to say.
                                     Here lyricist Eddie Vedder manages
to mix
                                     the personal with the political.
The album
                                     includes songs of social commentary
("Do
                                     the Evolution") and songs that are
extremely
                                     personal ("Faithful"). At times
Vedder
                                     manages to mix the two as in "Wish
List" and
                                     "No Way," the latter of which finds
him
                                     reflecting in a most personal way
on his very
                                     commitment to activism.

                                     Yield was recorded with long-time
PJ
                                     producer Brendan O'Brien at
guitarist Stone
                                     Gossard's Seattle-based Studio
Litho, as
                                     well at Bad Animals studio (also in
Seattle). It
                                     leads off with the galloping "Brain
of J,"
                                     which the band has been playing
live for
                                     some time (it was most recently
road-tested
                                     during their stint opening for the
Rolling
                                     Stones in Oakland). The album
opener
                                     immediately establishes that, as
promised,
                                     this 13-track effort is a return to
Pearl Jam's
                                     more hard-rock and punk roots. Over
Jack
                                     Irons' pounding drums and a
Zeppelin-like
                                     guitar riff, Vedder passionately
wonders,
                                     "Whose got the brain of JFK?/
What's it
                                     mean to us now?" He delivers a
brilliant
                                     vocal performance, his voice rising
and
                                     falling between a grunt and a
falsetto. Like
                                     several of the other tracks
("Faithful," "Given
                                     to Fly"), "Brain of J" makes
repeated use of
                                     PJ's signature ebb-and-flow style,
raving up
                                     to almost punk speeds one minute,
only to
                                     break into a slow, melodic dirge
the next.

                                     Yes, this is a rock 'n' roll album.
But that
                                     doesn't mean the band has abandoned
the
                                     Beatlesque studio tricks they've
learned
                                     along the way. "Faithful" opens
with some
                                     mellow, lounge-style drums and
features
                                     eerie-by-way-of-the-echo-chamber
backing
                                     vocals, multi-layered guitars and
radio
                                     interference; "No Way" is haunted
by a low,
                                     buzzy guitar hum; "Low Light"
includes an
                                     out-of-tune barroom piano riff and
the
                                     untitled eighth track is a
one-minute world
                                     beat drum 'n' mantra special
effects jam as
                                     abstract as anything PJ have
released to
                                     date.

                                     While the songs are filled with the
elliptical,
                                     hard-to-unravel word play that
Vedder is
                                     known for, they also appear to
offer a
                                     glimpse into his psyche. "We're
faithful/ We
                                     all believe/ We all believe it," he
sings in the
                                     classic arena rock number,
"Faithful."

                                     But in the same song, Vedder also
grinds
                                     his way through this couplet:
"Believe in the
                                     game controls/ That keeps us in our
box of
                                     fears/ We never listen to the voice
inside/ So
                                     drowned out, so drowned/ You are,
you are,
                                     you are a furry thing/ And
everything is you
                                     me, you, me you/ It's all related/
What's a
                                     boy to do?"

                                     The song ends with the dedication:
"Faithful
                                     to you."

                                     Then, apparently commenting on his
                                     reputation as a recluse, in the
very next song
                                     -- the slow-burn, countryish "No
Way" --
                                     Vedder sings, "There's a token of
my
                                     openness/ Of my need to not
disappear... I
                                     just need someone to be there for
me/ I just
                                     want someone to be there for me."

                                     In what at first seems like a
reversal of the
                                     band's righteous reputation, Vedder

                                     confesses, over a funky wah-wah
guitar,
                                     "Cuz I've stopped trying to make a
                                     difference/ I'm not trying to make
a
                                     difference."

                                     But moments later he blows that lie
to bits:
                                     "I've stopped trying to make a
difference --
                                     no way."

                                     "No Way" is one of several songs
that show
                                     just how important drummer Jack
Irons is to
                                     this band. But don't misunderstand.
Irons
                                     isn't the only one that has raised
the stakes.
                                     He and bassist Jeff Ament have
become
                                     one of rock's great rhythm
sections. And
                                     guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike
                                     McCready deliver numerous high
points,
                                     including the groovy riff that
kicks in during
                                     the chorus of "Pilate," and the
delicate
                                     melody that opens "Given To Fly."

                                     The band is at its most mellow on
the wistful
                                     "Wish List," a mid-tempo song with
a spare
                                     backing track and a surf-styled
guitar solo.
                                     Vedder delivers the lyrics with
such sincerity
                                     that what would seem wimpy or
maudlin in
                                     the hands of a lesser singer, comes
across
                                     as a powerful personal statement:
"I wish I
                                     was a neutron bomb," he sings. "For
once I
                                     could go off/ I wish I was a
sacrifice, but
                                     somehow still lived on." In what
sounds like a
                                     playful dig at his rock star
lifestyle, the singer
                                     also wishes, "I was as fortunate/
As fortunate
                                     as me."

                                     The album reaches its emotional and

                                     musical apex with the sixth and
seventh
                                     songs, "Pilate" and the searing,
hard punk
                                     "Do the Evolution." The aggressive,
thrusting
                                     "Pilate" evokes an Everybody Knows
This
                                     is Nowhere-era Neil Young track,
with it's
                                     enigmatic, spiritual lyrics and the
mix of
                                     electric and acoustic guitars.

                                     "Evolution" gets going at a hyper
pace, with
                                     furious guitars and the sound of
Vedder
                                     wailing. Grunting and nearly
shouting his
                                     vocals over punkabilly guitars and
bashing
                                     drums, the singer sounds unhinged
as he
                                     spits the lyrics "I can kill cuz in
god I trust"
                                     and "I'm a thief/ I'm a liar/
There's my church/
                                     I sing in the choir," as falsetto
backing vocals
                                     mimic the sound of a boys choir.

                                     The second half of the album coasts
to a
                                     mellow denouement with the
up-and-down,
                                     Neil Young-influenced arena rock of
"MFC,"
                                     and the instant classic
lighter-flicking epic
                                     rock ballads "Low Light," and "In
Hiding."

                                     Eerily, in light of the recent
trial of a teenager
                                     who claimed he was inspired to
classroom
                                     violence by the video for "Jeremy,"
the
                                     chaotic, experimental track "Push
Me Pull
                                     Me" opens with the sound of a radio

                                     breaking down and a gunshot, with
Vedder
                                     evoking the sexually-charged poetry
of The
                                     Doors' Jim Morrison as he recites
the
                                     spoken-word couplet: "I had a false
belief/ I
                                     thought I came here to stay/ We're
all just
                                     visiting/ All just breaking like
waves/ The
                                     oceans made me/ But who came up
with
                                     love."

                                     Yield closes with the low-key,
Beatlesque
                                     "All Those Yesterdays," a
steady-climb
                                     ballad that builds to a crescendo
on the back
                                     of muted horns and
call-and-response
                                     vocals. [Mon., Jan. 5, 1998, 9 a.m.
PST]


------
1/10/98

"Refreshed, Pearl Jam yields crop of new performances"
by Bradley Bambarger (Billboard)
taken from the "Asbury Park Press" in New Jersey page B3 in Panorama section
Saturday, January 10th, 1998
Typed by Brian SaenzDeViteri (CrnBread11@aol.com)

After Pearl Jam's mega-platinum early success and its enshrinement as a
cultural icon,
the band has worked hard to step back from the limelight.  The group has
followed an
experimental muse on its records and generally eschewed the press, videos and
(after the
quixotic bout with Ticketmaster) large-scale touring.

The biggest result of this path has been that Pearl Jam's sales numbers have
fallen with
each new album, from 8 million copies for 1992's "Ten" to 1.3 million for last
year's "no
Code", according to SoundScan.  But the low-key ethos was partially borne out
of
necessity, according to the band.  Without such an approach, Pearl Jam's
striking new
Epic album, "Yield", due Feb. 3, may not have come out at all.

Guitarist Stone Gossard says the fact that Pearl Jam still even exists is
thanks to the
quintet's taking itself out of the "machine...Being able to pull back from all
that pressure
helped give us the space to figure out our internal problems, within the band
and within
us as individuals.  We gave each other some time off from each other. 
Actually, it's like
we broke up but still made records."

And with the recent dissolution of Seattle-sound pioneers Soundgarden, Pearl
Jam's
struggle for space seems even more vital.  "Soundgarden breaking up bummed me
out
because they were such a great band and that last album was my favorite,"
Gossard says. 
"But it also reminded me of the pressures of keeping a band together, which are
almost
always interpersonal and rarely musical.  Trying to produce an art project with
five
people - especially when your all tripping about whatever you're tripping about
when
you're in your late 20s - can be difficult, to say the least."

"Now, though, we're more relaxed with each other in the studio.  Everyone is
able to 'get
their's' without worrying too much.  Really, our band unity has never been
better. 
Everyone contributed more to making the record than ever, and after just
opening for the
Stones and getting to see them play so well after all these years, we're
hungrier than ever
to get out there and play the new songs and the old songs."

From events just before Christmas, it seems that modern rock audience is hungry
to hear
Pearl Jam music, too - perhaps more than many industry pundits thought. 
Several radio
stations leaked advanced copies of the first single, "Given to Fly", before it
officially
went to radio in late December.  WKRL in Syracuse, N.Y., even played an advance
of
"Yield" in its entirety, which precipitated the illicit Internet circulation of
high-fidelity
audio files produced from a tape of the broadcast - much to the consternation
of band
management, Epic, and the Recording Industry Association of America.

Hardly contrite, WKRL program director/morning host Fatman says the new Pearl
Jam
tracks were widely popular among his listeners, with calls afterward voluminous
and
"totally, overwhelmingly" positive.

Although KJEE Santa Babara, Calif., resisted jumping on "Given to Fly" early,
program
director Eddie Gutierrez says he thinks the emotive, anthemic ballad is going
to be "a
smash," despite the fact that light ska-pop has dominated his playlist rather
than hard
rock in the past year.

"We've been playing some of these new rock bands like Days Of The New and
Creed,"
Gutierrez adds, "but my attitude is why play pale imitations of great groups
like Pearl
Jam and Soundgarden when you can play the real thing when you have it."

Beyond standard airplay, Pearl Jam will distribute one of its occasional,
free-form
"Monkey Wrench" radio programs Jan. 31 to any station that wants to air it. 
The four
hour show features live performances from the band - Gossard, vocalist Eddie
Vedder,
guitarist Mike McCready, bassist Jeff Ament, and drummer Jack Irons - along
with some
special guests.

But if radio is a lock for the new Pearl Jam, MTV isn't - the band hasn't shot
a video for
"Given to Fly".  Gossard says the band filmed live footage over the past three
years and
shot some "Yield" rehearsals.  Yet while a longform video may be culled from
the
material for issue later this year, it also may just turn out to be Pearl Jam's
"version of
'The Kids Are Alright' in 10 years," says the band's Seattle-based manager,
Kelly Curtis,
referring to the Who documentary.

On Feb. 20 Pearl Jam kicks off its '98 tour with a show in Maui, Hawaii.  A
late
February/March tour of Australia and New Zealand follows.  An indication of the
band's
pull Down Under: Tickets for the three early March shows at the 12,000 capacity
Melbourne Park sold out in 17 minutes.  Some 40 summer dates are planned for
U.S.
arenas and sheds; according to Curtis, Pearl Jam will try to avoid Ticketmaster
venues in
general, and stadiums particular ("The band doesn't have a lemon," jokes Curtis
in a
reference to U2's extravaganza.)

The songs of "Yield" seems especially suited for live shows, including some of
the most
immediate material of Pearl Jam's career as well as some of the hardest
rocking.  The
raucous "Do The Evolution" is a highlight, with Vedder pushing his voice to
extremes in
a very musical fashion.  Producer Brendan O'Brien says he's continually
impressed by
Vedder's expressive talent: "Eddie appeals to people on a lot of different
levels, but he is
undeniably a great singer, one of the best.  And on this new record, he really
shines."

O'Brien - who has helmed each of Pearl Jam's records since 1993's "Vs." -
points out that
unlike "Vitalogy", which was prepared on the road, and "No Code", which was
concocted
on the spot in the studio, "Yield" reflects considerable advance songwritting
by each
member of the band.  Aside from "Given to Fly" and "Do The Evolution", the
disc's
crowd-pleasers include the melodious raver "Brain Of J", the soaring "In
Hiding" (a good
bet for the second single), and the Beatlesque closer "All Those Yesterdays".

Beyond "Yield", a new, nonablum Pearl Jam song will be available on the spring
soundtrack to the indie film "Chicago Cab", released by Gossard's Loose Groove
label. 
Other bands on the soundtrack include Supergrass and Epic recording act Brad,
Gossard's
side project with Satchel's Shawn Smith.

Also, Pearl Jam recorded Irons' tune "Happy When I'm Crying" for a 7-inch split
single
with R.E.M., which was a Christmas gift not only to the 65,000 members of its
fan club
but to R.E.M.'s club, too.

Here is part one of the conversation Eddie had with Adam Yauch of the 
Beastie Boys for Milarepa. We feel this is an important issue and if you 
listen to or read what they had to say, you could make a difference. 
Please do. They talked about a few upcoming events along with a few 
other topics and we ended up feeling as if we were eavesdropping on a 
private conversation because it had such an intimate quality to it. 



[ Index ]





Echo of a conversation with Eddie and Adam Yauch for Milarepa, 
December, 1997 
Transcription credit: Kathy Davis

Adam Yauch: So how ya doin'? 
Eddie: I'm just great, Adam. (chuckles) I got on, like Rolling Stones 
time. 
Adam: Wow, yeah. We were gonna try and get them to play the next concert 
in D.C. but I don't know what their schedule looks like exactly. 
Eddie: Yeah, I think...I actually think they're gonna be playing live 
until next August as far as I...what I was told. I had to admit it, I, 
we're getting a little shit for that. It's amazing for the sense of 
commitment for some of these bigger bands that do that; I'm just amazed 
and... 
Adam: Uh huh... 
Eddie: I'm way locked in to normal...living a normal life and... 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: ...about four weeks at a time is good. It keeps playing music to 
a point where it's something you get really excited to do and not really 
an obligation. 
Adam: Yeah. I hear that, keep it fresh. 
Eddie: Yeah, that's the way. 
Adam: Mmm hmm. 
Eddie: We figured out we needed to do it for ourselves, but... and we're 
also doing...we're planning on doing something on the radio which is we 
send up a satellite feed and it's open for anyone who wants to get it, 
and our broadcast is non-commercial and there'll be a few live bands 
playing and we did it a few years ago and... We're doing it again in 
February and I'll be playing a track or two and talking about these 
concerts and what's been happening and what's gonna happen. 
Adam: Mmm, cool. 
Eddie: Yeah, it's really an excellent opportunity so the radio stations 
just pick it up, whoever wants it, they can pick it up on their own; 
there's no kind of formal limitations or parameters so they can really 
kinda do whatever they want. 
Adam: That's so cool; so you're like playing a gig and you're out of 
your house and then they just broadcast it? 
Eddie: Yeah. You just send it out and I think they even picked it up in 
Russia on short wave and... 
Adam: Wow. I wonder if they can get it in Tibet? 
Eddie: Yeah, that'll be interesting. 
Adam: A lot of them got short wave radios up there. 
Eddie: Maybe, if so, that's something to look into. I'm gonna write that 
on my list. 
Adam: There's these crazy pictures of like nomads in the mountains in 
the Himalayas in Tibet wearing, like, you know, Yak fur coats, and 
sitting there with these crazy old like 1950's looking short wave 
radios. 
Eddie: Getting their culture. 
Adam: (laughs) Just communicating. I think that a lot of, for the people 
who live in the mountains and the hills...I think that sometimes that's 
how they, it's kind of like...instead of telephones they can communicate 
like that, and they can pick up radio signals a lot of times from 
outside of Tibet. Also there's actually...I think that - that the 
concert, the Tibetan Freedom Concert was broadcast on short wave and a 
lot of the Tibetans were listening to it...it was being broadcast from 
outside of China... 
Eddie: Hmmm. 
Adam: ...into Tibet and it's just interesting to think that they're 
sitting there listening illegally. 
Eddie: Yeah, and that was kind of, that was one of the interesting 
things about the concerts 'cause...you know, the concerts themselves 
were... I think I was reading that the Dalai Lama was saying this 
is...it reminded him of picnics that they would have, you know, where 
music would be played and people would gather, and found it interesting 
that, you know, people were out there kind of reveling or you were able 
to kind of show what, you know, something that we take for 
granted...going out and listening to music and walking around with 
friends and seeing a lot of other people and watching bands, that that 
was something we take for granted was, you know, absolutely stripped 
from them. 
Adam: Yeah, exactly. I think about that sometimes, and like...like even 
just the way we're having a conversation right now and the things that 
we're saying or talking about Tibet being free, that it's hard to 
imagine not even having that freedom to just have a conversation and say 
what you like, or be looking over your shoulder wondering if...if 
somebody might be spying on you and inform on you and you might get 
arrested and tortured for just speaking your mind. 
Eddie: No, it's absolutely impossible to imagine. 
Adam: Yeah. 
Eddie: And I know how I feel, you know, I'm guarded myself just with the 
few inconveniences, you know. 
Adam: Mmm hmm. 
Eddie: ...that are imposed, and I'm always kind of fighting to keep, you 
know, those from constricting me. 
Adam: Mmm hmm. So any memories, specific memories from the concert? I 
know that originally I remember talking to you on the phone beforehand 
and asking you about the band playing and I know it didn't quite work 
into the schedule or whatever but then you came out and, I knew you just 
wanted to help out and you came out and actually went out with a 
petition and went around the audience and people didn't know who you 
were, and you were just going around getting signatures on the letter to 
Clinton. I just wondered if you had any memories from doing that. 
Eddie: It was the first thing in the morning. I tried to get there 
before people were actually let in, so...it was definitely seeing the 
event, at least the show dates from the ground up, and I remember myself 
kinda being out there in, you know, a pair of Vans and a pair of shorts 
and a T-shirt, and feeling kinda vulnerable and everyone was really 
respectful of my space and I was amazed at how everyone was really open 
to listen. It's always kind of a touchy thing when you want to suggest 
to someone some, an issue to think about. It shouldn't be...but it is. 
You know, people are always trying to soak people's brains with myths 
and lies, and here's something that's really true and yet you don't want 
to be a part of the other...all the other air pollution that's out 
there. 
Adam: Yeah... 
Eddie: And they were...everyone I talked to was really responsive and 
open and you know they might have been there to, I think the main thing 
was to see their favorite bands or see what was gonna happen musically 
that day, but everyone was really open and that was encouraging. It was 
nice to see it standing on the grass with them, you know, talking to 
'em, looking right in their eyes rather than kind of wondering how it 
was going from like, just standing on the stage or something and looking 
out and not really knowing, that was...I was thrilled to have that 
experience, you know. It gave me a lot of hope and a lot of faith that 
this certainly ain't the slacker generation that it's painted out to be. 
Adam: Umm hmmm. So then what inspired you and Mike to wanna play? 
Eddie: That would be the beginning of day two; I think seeing everything 
that happened the day before and then Mike and I hooked up late that 
night and just sat in a room and went over a couple songs, just seeing 
if we could pull something together and participate musically and, 
because it was just another way to contribute. At that point you see... 
I mean really when you see issues this big and you just want to do 
whatever you can, so... it's to create a little excitement or you know, 
you got to put a song or two in the atmosphere to add with all the rest 
of 'em so... too good of an opportunity to pass up. 
Adam: Yeah, I was pretty psyched. That was definitely cool. 
Eddie: And my other memory is that Pavement was so nice letting us use 
their...use their guitars. 
Adam: (laughs) Yeah (laughs) that's cool. It'd be hard to imagine 'em at 
an event like that being like 'No! MY guitar'... 
Eddie: (laughs heartily) But, ah...at another event, that could happen. 
Adam: Yeah, true, most concerts they're like 'well, I don't know, if you 
break a string or...' (laughs) 
Eddie: Yeah, or some kind of union, something happen with the, you know, 
the union something, something, having... having our own union guy to 
change that string... 
Adam: (laughs) Yeah 
Eddie: ...or some shit. There's some funny... some funny rules out 
there...even within our freedoms. 
Adam: Yeah. So did you get a copy of the CD? Did you get to check it 
out? 
Eddie: I sure did. And the first thing I noticed was the...it's a great 
package as far as the information in there and how it's delivered, and 
the quotes from the artists, and then - bottom line...the music. You 
know I always think of record packages as being like cereal boxes that 
you...you know, the cereal box you read when you eat your cereal as a 
kid or whatever, and that if you read this while you're listening to it, 
I think you'd get a real whole experience...and a kind of nice way to 
educate yourself on the issue. 
Adam: Yeah. Yeah, listening to it are there any things that stand out to 
you, like things you remember off of the record? 
Eddie: It's just great that every, every artist is represented in such a 
great way, whether it's Lee "Scratch" Perry, which is one of the things 
I remembered most from the concert to the set that Sonic Youth 
played...and the beginning of the monks, and actually, disc 2 which is 
the one that we're on it. It's almost, it might even be in order of the 
bands, so it's really umm... 
Adam: Mmm hmm, Yeah it is, they're both in chronological order. 
Eddie: Yeaaah. So it's really a great simulation of the actual concert, 
and I've always been into, since I was...started buying bootleg Who 
records, like live concerts on vinyl. I must have been, like 16 or 
something. I've always been into live concerts and closing my eyes and 
listening to 'em on the headphones, and kind of imagining what it was 
like to be there, and it seems that you could do that with this record. 
Adam: Yeah. 
Eddie: ...really easily. And then...you know, open your eyes quick 
enough to read bits of information... 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: ...and it was pretty special, the whole concert and again, the 
thing of everyone coming together and it's a great place to meet these 
musicians that you wouldn't ordinarily bump into. A lot of them, we knew 
before, you know... Ben Harper, the people from U2, and R.E.M. and Sonic 
Youth and stuff but there was quite a few bands that I had never seen 
even before. That was the first time I saw Pavement... 
Adam: Mmm Hmmm... 
Eddie: Since then they've become my favorite band, so... 
Adam: Yeah, they're an amazing live band too, we toured with them for a 
little while. 
Eddie: And that's another great thing not only about the concerts, but 
about the record too...is that you know someone will, someone will pick 
it up to hear one particular artist or maybe a Pearl Jam fan or 
something will buy it because we're on it and figure out who Lee 
"Scratch" Perry is, and listen to some, you know Patti Smith - and that 
happened to me in 1981 or '82 or something I bought a record that Pete 
Towns...uh...Peter Gabriel had put out called World of Music and Rhythm 
(it's actually World of Music and Dance) and it had you know, Balinese 
monkey chants on it, and... 
Adam: Cool, (laughs) 
Eddie: uh, Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn. 
Adam: Oh, wow. 
Eddie: And that's where I heard him for the first time, and you know I 
bought that record because Pete Townshend was on it, and then all of a 
sudden I started opening to all these other things, and all these other 
types of music, and it changed my musical tastes and also kinda opened 
me up to be interested in geography, and find out where this music was 
coming from and what the cultures were like there. 
Adam: Mm-hmm. 
Eddie: And...and then you know it comes full circle where 15 years 
later, 14 years later, I was actually having the opportunity to sing 
with Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, so you never know what can happen. 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: Maybe someone will pick this up and end up producing 
Radiohead...in 15 years. You know they'll still be making records. 
Adam: Yep. 
Eddie: Hopefully, upon learning these different things that are going on 
in this part of the world, maybe people will be inspired to act, even in 
small ways or, even in ways as far as people being consumers and making, 
you know, voting with their dollar. 
Adam: Yeah. Indeed. 
Eddie: But, it's...in general it seems, if people were educated and 
really just put a little pressure, as a whole, as the numbers of people 
get bigger, that have a clear stance on this issue that when future 
issues come up, with whether we're doing certain amounts of business 
with China, or how we react when the head of China comes over to the 
United States to meet with the President and, things like that, and 
people kind of put pressure on them and, kind of go out front and 
petition in front of the buildings where these meetings are... I mean 
that stuff doesn't go unnoticed. 
Adam: Yeah, Yeah I totally agree. 

Eddie: And already, and I think you've had a big part of that, at least 
speaking to youth culture, is that, you know, the Dalai Lama is no 
longer, kind of a funny looking guy in a robe, which might have been the 
case, might have been the interpretation four years ago. People are kind 
of getting used to seeing him and used to kind of listening to him, 
instead of just looking at him and making a decision, and he has so many 
important things to say. 
You know, I can't necessarily relate because I haven't been in quite 
such an extreme situation at all. I'm fortunate to have not grown up in 
that kind of atmosphere, but I do know what it's like to have certain 
freedoms taken away, and you know, I know that there's...we've all had 
times in our lives when we've needed help...or needed to ask someone for 
help...and this is - sometimes, you don't have a voice, and there's 
really no one out there to help ya, there's really nothing you can do. 
And then...this is one of those situations, I feel and if we can help, 
if we are indeed this powerful nation, and a responsible nation and a 
nation to be looked up to, we...if we think we're that good, then we can 
take care of these kind of issues, we should be the ones on the 
forefront. 
Adam: Yeah. It's really...it's like everybody's responsibility I really 
loved your...like what you said to me when we first talked and I asked 
you if you wanted to come play at the concert and you couldn't pull it 
together at that time to play, but then you said, I'm down to do 
whatever, I'll come out and lick envelopes or whatever, whatever it 
takes I'd like to help out, and I think that's such an important 
attitude for people to have, because I think a lot of people look at 
this stuff and they're kinda like, "oh yeah well, I'm not in a position 
to really do anything to help out...and I think every one of us in the 
world is in a position to do things to help out in one way or another 
whether it's like just going to demonstrations or writing letters or 
whatever it is, I don't know I just thought that it was real cool that 
you took that approach. 
Eddie: Well, I..to be honest I've always felt a little 
uncomfortable...uh...I'm much more comfortable doing things like that 
because...I just feel like it's on a....I've always been a little wary, 
it seems contradictory, because...I've always been wary, speaking from a 
some kind of a podium as a singer in a rock band. First of all I think 
it's ridiculous that it should be left to the singers in rock bands to 
have to bring up these issues. (laughs) 
Adam: True. (laughs) Yep. 
Eddie: But then again, you know the arts are always gonna reflect 
society, and I...there could be a responsibility there. But in the old 
days, you know just being out on the front lines, petitioning for a 
pro-choice issue, or licking stamps and stuffing envelopes, and getting 
petitions signed...you know I'm used to doing that and I feel very 
comfortable doing that, just making umm... I didn't say that very well 
at all. (laughs) 
Adam: (laughs) I caught the gist. 
Eddie: But, no, it seems what I wanted to say is contradictory about it 
is that I listen to people, musicians and artists and playwrights, I 
mean I was...I didn't do so well in school after a certain point when my 
family kind of split up. You know, I was a decent student until things 
started kind of falling apart at home, and it seemed like my education 
started to come a little bit more from music and there was some 
interesting information being delivered there, and I respected these 
people...respected them to lead me in a responsible direction...and they 
did for the most part. I still have philosophies that began...from 
hearing a line in a song or something like that. So that's why I think I 
might contradict myself sometimes, 'cause I know I got a lot from the 
artists that I was listening to, but somehow I'm a little wary of being 
that artist sometimes. 
Adam: Yeah. I feel both ways about it too sometimes, like a line in a 
song and artist can be so moving, but then other times you see somebody 
do something and it doesn't feel quite right, and you just 
think....well, I don't ever wanna go out like that... I don't know, that 
made me real afraid to wanna do stuff with music for a while, like 
trying to do something positive or whatever, because I was afraid of 
being corny or something like that, but... 
Eddie: Yeah 
Adam: Whatever, if there's a chance to do something positive, I figure 
it's worth the risk. 
Eddie: Well, I have to say that I put my... Personally, you take a risk, 
because it's...I kind of react to things from the heart, and I'm not 
college-educated, and I haven't taken political science like I would 
like to, at least I haven't yet. So, but I feel like that's as important 
a place as any to come from...just from your heart on a pure level, you 
know in regards to humanity and what's going on out there. I wish I 
could...had enough...maybe someday I will, have a little more hard-edged 
education where I can actually go on This Week in Washington and go up 
against Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts (laughs)...but right now I feel 
like they would uh...well, but they can't chew me out because, 
look...you're so...you're coming from the heart. 
Adam: That's it, yeah I agree with that... 
Eddie: That's it? 
Adam: Yeah you just speak your mind and then do your best. And it comes 
through. 
Eddie: And some of those things when you...when you really, when you 
keep up with those issues in that way, by watching This Week in 
Washington and you hear 'em talk about one issue and another and it goes 
from you know, what's happening in China with businesses and Hong Kong 
going back...away from British rule, and you know, to the curve of the 
president's penis...you know... [Adam is laughing] the next issue, and 
you realize...their jobs are just talking circles around these issues, 
and you know there's people's freedoms and people's lives at stake here, 
and people are being tortured, can we just get in and, can we really do 
something about it? At this point I really don't care that much about 
campaign financing, it happens...all they...there's all kind of things 
that happen as far as that goes....and every president's done it. Reagan 
had the Reagan Eagles, Bush had the Bush Team 100, which is anyone who 
gave him $100,000 or more that they had coffees, and meetings with. 
Let's really get beyond this kind of stuff. They're arguing over each 
other, and they're supposed to be serving the public in a bigger way, 
you know, they're part of the world, umm... 
Adam: Yeah, what we... 
Eddie: And I just have to wonder, that if there was something that we 
needed from Tibet, let's say some oil, or some other natural 
resource...that we would have been in there immediately. 
Adam: Mmm hmm. 
Eddie: ...But they actually fund the war...in a place where there is 
natural resources, and they do that under the name of democracy. It's 
kind of a big lie, and it would be nice if...if they kind of made good, 
if it wasn't the democracy, and human rights...it'd be nice if they kind 
of put their money where their mouth is and...what was coming out of 
their mouth wasn't a lie. 
Adam: (laughs) Yeah, indeed. Hey, did you...you got to see the film 
right? Didn't we send you...we sent you out a rough cut of it I think. 
Eddie: Sure did. That was one of the things that really inspired me to 
make sure I was there. 
Adam: Yeah, we're trying to work out the distribution for that now, so 
hopefully the film will be coming out soon. 
Eddie: Fantastic. Did the uh...I actually was gonna call ya right around 
the time of the premiere, I kept my invitation out so I could kind of... 
Adam: Oh, 
Eddie: ...give a call and wish everyone luck. I was...practicing or 
something, but... 
Adam: Uh-huh. Yeah the premiere went well...but...so the title is "Free 
Tibet" for the film, but I guess you know that if you have the 
invitation. 
Eddie: Yeah. 
Adam: But I just thought I'd say it so the folks at home would know. 
(laughs) 
Eddie: No, it's a...there's some powerful performances, and some 
powerful information coming direct from the source. This stuff, you have 
to wonder why it's not on the nightly news, five days a week. 
Adam: Yeah...well...hopefully more and more people will get involved and 
go to demonstrations and write letters and just get more involved...and 
start new chapters of Students for a Free Tibet, or join the chapters 
that already exist in their schools, and I think the more that people 
start rallying together around it, the more we'll start to see it. 
Eddie: Now with my invitation, Adam, I got a...I got the response from 
President Clinton.. 
Adam: Oh yeah (laughs). 
Eddie: uhh, it was also part of what I received, and it didn't 
seem...didn't seem as if he really...all that work and all those 
signatures... 
Adam: The good news, and the bad news... 
Eddie: I don't know if he maybe uh... read it. 
Adam: Yeah, he didn't read the letter, that's pretty much the way it 
comes across, he definitely...he wrote his response to some other
 letter. (laughs) 
Eddie: Yeah, that's right (laughs). Or that is the response that he 
sends to every letter having to do with that issue. 
Adam: Yeah, well I think we just gotta stay on it, we gotta keep putting 
pressure on. But that's...yeah, that's the perfect symbol of what we're 
up against here. The amount of beauracracy and the lack of caring that's 
coming from the Clinton administration, and I think that...a lot of 
people had high hopes when Clinton was elected into office, that he was 
gonna really be, have a sincere interest in human rights, and I think 
he's really proven to be doing just the opposite of that. And so, I 
think that all this pressure is really important, I think Clinton will 
come around to it, if enough pressure is put on him. 
Eddie: Yeah, at this point it seems like the objective is just to get 
enough volume of letters and signatures to actually get him to just read 
a letter. 
Adam: (laughs) Yeah, right. 
Eddie: And, umm...but it's gonna be...I think it's an important time. 
The millenium to me, this year 2000 means absolutely nothing...because 
of the figure, I mean...we've been on the earth as walking crawling 
humans for three million years; we kind of observe the last 20,000, 
and...we're gonna get terribly drunk on...celebrating the year 2000 
so... maybe starting the next day, maybe the number will actually mean 
something...just in that there'll be an atmosphere of change. I know 
that you said...you passed on a quote to me in one of our conversations 
that the Dalai Lama had high hopes just with the advent of technology 
and the the amount of ways that you could communicate. That we could 
resolve these issues by communication and words, and not weapons and 
war. 
Adam: Mmm hmm. I think he said the last century was a century 
of...trying to resolve problems through violence, and that he hopes that 
the next century will be one of trying to resolve problems through 
dialogue. 
Eddie: Exactly. So I...I'm in total agreement there, and have equal 
hope. 
Adam: Yeah...A lot of ways... I was talking to Thom Yorke from Radiohead 
earlier, in a different... in another interview thing, and...I don't 
know I think we were just saying that, I think the Tibet issue has 
become really symbolic of that...line of thinking, of a non-violent line 
of thinking. So it's kind of symbolic for everyone that if this problem 
has a positive outcome, that it'll affect everyone in a positive way. 
It'll really change the way all of us think about resolving conflict. 
Eddie: Mmmm. Yeah. War is crazy. 
Adam: Yeah. Alright. Well, I'll let you go. 
Eddie: Oh yeah, well, there's gotta be something more I needed to say... 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: I'll think about it at like four in the morning, can I call you 
at four, you gonna be there at the ...station.? 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: That's really when I get warmed up (laughs). 
Adam: So hopefully, we'll see you at the concert next year too. You 
gonna come and get some petitions signed? 
Eddie: Well, you know I'll be there for that. Maybe...tearing tickets at 
the door... 
Adam: (laughs) We'll look out for you in the top secret Clousseau 
disguises. 
Eddie: (laughs heartily) No...we actually are working on trying to be 
able to be available for that show, and I think it's in June? 
Adam: Cool. Yeah, I hope you guys play. That'll be incredible. 
Eddie: Yeah, and plus it'll be in Washington, and even making sure we 
have more petitions, and really encouraging a large amount of pressure; 
again, not only in the year 2000, you have this... wave of change that I 
would be...I think quite a few people are hoping for, but you also have 
an election, and...this is a time when a lot of companies are going in 
to do business with China, and so...if we take advantage of that 
opportunity...like we'll only work with them if there's...certain rules 
put in place, that they have to start treating their people a little bit 
better. And there's been three films...put out this year... 
Adam: Did you see...any of those yet? 
Eddie: I haven't seen them...I've heard the music from Kundun. I hear 
there's still movies, that they can't necessarily get too hardcore on 
the issues...there might be some...they kind of soften a few edges and 
corners here and there. But I have to be excited that at least the issue 
is being tapped into and delivered to people. 
Adam: Yeah. 
Eddie: It brings up an example of Scorcese's film, Kundun. You've got 
Disney....they wanna build a Disneyland, I believe, in China, and yet 
their still gonna try to release this movie. It's a good example, 
because...I saw the guy speak, I think his name is Michael Eisner, and 
he really kind of...was right on the fence, you know... (speaking as 
Eisner) 'I facilitate these films being made, but I really don't have 
any responsibility towards people' is what it came down to. 
Adam: (laughs) He's got himself pretty precariously up there on the 
fence with that. 
Eddie: Yeah. And so, that's when you get a few people to...tip him over, 
push him on the one side. Say, "You know, look. You really have to take 
a stance." Because here's a very powerful man, as far as the amount of 
money that he's controlling, and the amount of industry that he 
controls. And so, all you're asking is that they be responsible. You're 
not asking them to stop their business. You're not asking him to give 
things away for free. You're just asking them to be responsible. We try 
to do that in our band, be responsible towards every element involved, 
that's all. Just be responsible. 
Adam: Yeah, and you really can't say that. You can't say that something 
is not political, or that it doesn't involve anything, because 
everything we do affects the rest of the world, and especially with a 
huge corporation like that. 
Eddie: And so it seems very insane, doesn't it? To see someone...we can 
make small differences, but someone who could make a much bigger
 difference...it gets a little frustrating when they can't act a little 
bit more responsibly, and it seems it would be very fulfilling to do 
that, to make a difference. I know what it is on a certain level to make 
a difference, or I knew what it felt like fourteen years ago to stand on 
a picket line and feel like you were making a difference. It's a really 
positive thing...it's one of the great things you can do in your life. I 
just can't imagine why they wouldn't find it more exciting. 
Adam: And like Scorcese said about the film, he definitely said you 
should go see it in the first week it's out, because he doesn't know how 
long it's even going to be out. It's unclear...Disney kinda got backed 
into a corner where they have to put it out, because China went and 
publicly demanded that they not put it out, so they would have really 
been the bad guys if they kowtowed to China, so they had to kind of go 
the other way. But there's been some suspicion that Disney may not 
really push the film that significantly, or that they may not keep it in 
the theatres that long. I don't know exactly what's gonna happen with 
that, but I think that everyone should keep a close eye on Disney and 
exactly how they're approaching this film and the promotion of it, and 
how long they keep it in the theatres. People should definitely try to 
see it quick, too. 
Eddie: Yeah....it doesn't seem smart. I'm sure they're just gonna want 
it to go away, and so...again...people just would...if they have any 
spare time, which I don't know how many people do, if you do, or if 
you're young and looking for something to do, and don't have homework 
that weekend, write a few letters, or send the letter that's in the 
record. Keep up on the issue, or ask your parents about it, bring it up 
to your Dad, see what he says. And then umm...move out if he doesn't 
agree. (laughs) 
Adam: (laughs) 
Eddie: Or you know, put a little bit of pressure on Dad too...it's 
amazing how every little bit seems to...it's like planting seeds, you 
know. It turns into something else, and you can't get too frustrated or 
feel like you can't do anything because, again you plant a few seeds and 
you'll be amazed at what can come out of it. 
Adam: Yeah. 
Eddie: Alright...Adam, well I'll talk to you before the radio show. Our 
radio show is on January 31st. Maybe there's a soundbite or something 
that I can even take off this, that I can add in there. 
Adam: Okay. That sounds good. 
Eddie: That's kinda what the whole night is about...air time to put out 
what we want to put out and..basically it's music, spin a few records, 
and then, umm...maybe put a couple issues in the mix. 
Adam: That'd be great. And also, yeah if you get a chance to let people 
know about the CD too, that's real cool, because I just feel like not 
enough people are even aware that the thing's out there... 
Eddie: Right. 
Adam: or how good it sounds, how cool it is. It just seems like it 
hasn't really been out there in a big enough way, so that's partly why 
we're doing this thing, so anything that you can do to help let people 
know that thing's out there. 
Eddie: Well it's such a good record and there's so many different bands 
on there, you can kind of buy that record, and not really worry about 
listening to any others for like, a couple months. It's pretty much a 
whole record collection right there. It's a great piece of work, so. 
Congratulations, Adam, it's really great. 
Adam: Aw, thanks. I don't know why I'm saying thanks, like I really had 
anything to do with it. 
Eddie: Well, it was your idea. 
Adam: I don't know about that but...I'm just one of Santa's elves. 
Eddie: Yeah, well... you're a good one. No doubt. 
Adam: Alright. 
Eddie: Okay, well good luck with everything, and I'll talk to you again 
in January. Have a great Christmas. 
Adam: Okay, you too. 
Eddie: Alright. 
Adam: Take care. 
Eddie: See ya. 


1/17/98

Hello :)

I'm still in shock. A good PJ interview in a UK magazine/newspaper. (And
BTW this one goes into a few things I've never seen them talk about before.
Interesting stuff...)

Enjoy :)

Martin

---------------------------8<-----------------------8<----------------------

Since the whole stalking thing kicked off, the whole spokesman for a
generation thing, the whole someone trying to kill you because they love
you too much thing... all /that/ old business, Eddie's been keeping himself
pretty much to himself. His shutters closed. His hat down over his eyes.

He's been out, mine. In fact, he was in a room just down the road from this
one in Seattle's Four Seasons Hotel just the other week: a social Guinness
with Ron Wood from The Rolling Stones, as you would. Then there was the
Stereolab gig the other week, and he was at that one for ages, because
Eddie quite likes a bit of Mouse On Mars, and they were supporting. But he
knows the nutters are still out there somewhere, so he's learned a few tricks.

"Really, it's the ability to run," he murmurs, oh-so-very-slowly. "Someone
drops something really heavy on you, and then you just say something like
(Pulls 'forced grin' face), 'Yes! I'd really love an omelette!' and run."

He stops and pauses, the first of this afternoon's very long pauses before
deciding: "And it's not because they don't like the music. If that was the
case, I could almost understand it. But whatever reputation I might have,
my reaction is still, 'This is the most fucked thing', that it's absolute
insanity to have to worry about your state of well-being, that someone
might take your life. It seems a ridiculous situation to be in."

Eddie Vedder has had what he calls 'episodes', and likes to keep a low
profile to keep them at bay. He goes out, but only to one or two big shows
a month. He still goes to basketball games, but he goes to them in low-key
disguise. He occasionally spends periods of up to three or four days in
isolation in his house, as a kind of cleansing process, so that when he
comes out again, "the sky, that maybe you took for granted before, seems a
little bluer". What Eddie Vedder doe is keep his eyes open, but his head down.

His reputation has helped. He hates the stardom that has brought him
wealth. He bites the hand that feeds him. He is depressed, morose and
unstable.

"Everyone knows about /that/, don't they?"

He grin.

"I don't mind 'morose' and I don't mind 'unstable', but the thing I resent
is 'unappreciative' - I always wanted to play music. But I don't mind the
rest of it," he chuckles, "because it meant people left me alone."

Alone. To think about larger issues. The world outside, outside.

What you see first is apparently a hat that smokes heavily. Perched on a
Windsor chair in his hotel suite, his legs tucked under him, Eddie Vedder
passes tea with no milk under the shadow cast by the brim of his bushman's
hat, where it disappears with a small slurp, in between puffs on a
cigarette. Given a cultivated hauteur by the mushrooming cloud of blue
smoke, the impression he gives off is of Transatlantic Man on cultural
business. What he is not, is simply rock. To his right, however, is Jeff
Ament, the bass player in Pearl Jam, and he is wearing a baseball cap
back-to-front. Though it is December, Jeff is wearing the obligatory Big
Shorts. Jeff, you see, is simply rock.

And they sit uncomfortably and talk guardedly, part of a band that has been
assailed by problems but struggled to make a difference. They are returned
with what you might call muted triumph: they have a new single, 'Given To
Fly', and an album, 'Yield', that extends again their brief from the
caustic grunge of 'Vitalogy' and the mellowed cushion-rock of 'No Code',
but they do not return with jubilation, rather with the mixture of
reluctance and overbearing duty you associate with trench warfare. They
know what happens when you put your head over the top for too long.

The band has been burned too many times before. The only real survivors
from a Seattle scene that dissolved into death and drug addiction, vilified
in the aftermath of Kurt Cobain's suicide by Courtney Love, portrayed
frequently as whining lackeys of the corporate machine, Pearl Jam have
nonetheless striven to be a rigidly principled organisation. They feuded
(albeit unsuccessfully) with the huge Ticketmaster corporation in a
campaign for fairer ticket prices. Released their 'Vitalogy' album on vinyl
a week before its CD release in a good-spirited, if Luddite, punk rock
gesture. Performed at benefits for the Pro-Choice organisation and on
behalf of surfers seeking cleaner oceans. Known by their actions rather
than by their words, Pearl Jam are a band loathe to fuel the publicity
machine that takes their lives from out of their control, and hateful of
being misconstrued. They have become the Hermits Of Rock.

"We've had the luxury of writing our own job description," says Eddie, "and
that description has basically been cut down to just one line: make music.
And after that, I just don't think we're as enthusiastic. It's hard to get
inspired by all the other stuff like awards shows and being interviewed
every day. Some of the experiences can be great... but selling yourself
every day like you're part of some travelling medicine show - we have the
luxury of not having to do that. It's preserved our sanity, that's for sure."

Are you not angry about what's been written about you in the past, then?

"I'm not really angered by anything that /trivial/," Eddie sneers. "I
direct my thoughts onto much larger issues, none of which are really to do
with music. But if you do happen to bump into anything that bothered you in
the past, like if I'm cleaning out the drawers, it's interesting. I keep
the negative articles because they're funnier. And as I've learned about
these larger issues, that other stuff gets so small to the point where it
doesn't even exist at all."

There follows some extravagant stretching of arms. What this curious
exercise is aiming to determine is the size of Pearl Jam in relation to
these unspecified 'larger issues'.

Their point is recontextualisation. Thrown immediately to huge fame after
their debut album '10' and the subsequent 'Vs' album, and then stung by the
machinations of the industry and the operations of fame that provoked
'Vitalogy', Pearl Jam have not only physically withdrawn but simultaneously
begun to follow more obscure creative paths. 'Yield' is almost homely in
it's simplicity, untouched by the need for grand statement, and has been
made by a band in thrall simply to music rather than weighed down by
responsibility. The arm gestures cease. With a vaguely spiritual calm,
Pearl Jam, it is decided, are pretty small.

"It's not important to me to kind of outdo Donald Trump, or the guy that
owns Blockbuster," says Jeff. "People going out there and stamping their
ego over everything. All we can try and do is make our community more...
harmonious."

"You can put a Baind-Aid on a few things," continues Eddie, "like we've
done stuff for the Pro-Choice campaign over here, so you do come out of
your cocoon, but you couldn't do that stuff and have your own life be shit.
You can't tell people to recycle and be a conspicuous consumer at home."

The idea of a cocoon, though, makes fame sound all bad. Was there never a
time when you thought it was all going to be brilliant?

"Things started pretty quickly after our first record," Eddie explains. "We
couldn't have imagined... it kind of throws you for a loop, and when you
realise what's happening you start to try and control it. Like, 'I don't
wanna go down this path', or, 'Maybe this ain't so cool'.

"It'd be good if you could put it on at weekends or something, like you
needed a table in a restaurant, you could put on your fame suit and walk
in. That'd be great, but it's not like that. For every positive, there's a
negative. And if the positives get really big," says Eddie dolefully, "then
the negatives get really big in proportion."

The disenchantment grew with every industry handshake and every
misinterpreted word. There's a song by The Who to which Eddie refers, and
it's called 'How Many Friends Have I Really Got?', where Pete Townshend
sits in a bar and wonders whether people like him for who he is, or because
he's the guitarist in The Who, and this, he feels, is what it was like:
that at the heart of the business in which he was involved there was only
arrogance and money and long-term career projections.

Because what they feel is just the music, man, and there is an earnestness
and a singlemindedness about this attitude that inspires total respect. At
one point, Jeff Ament leans forward and confides, "The music we make is
much bigger than any one of us." Nobody laughs.

>From this lack of ironic detachment, a reputation - stormings-out,
ungratefullness - has been built. Still grateful for the opportunity to
make music, Pearl Jam simply withdrew from having an interest in everything
that got in its way or annoyed them about its interpretation. Born out of
an instinct for self-preservation and huge personal resourcefullness, they
have huddled against the blast of the media hurricane rather than be swept
along by its force.

The reputation, though, still speaks of arrogance, when their chief
strength is humility, while around their work - let us not forget, angsty,
periodically tortured - there is an air of the bogus. With their Seattle
contemporaries, Layne Staley of Alice In Chains and Scott Weiland of Stone
Temple Pilots, commuting between rehab and heroin addiction, and Kurt
Cobain dead in the face of compromised ideals, Pearl Jam's continued
stability either speaks of inner fortitude or informs on men acting the
roles of tortured individuals. Was it luck that got them through?

"I wish it was luck to which I could attribute getting through some of
those periods," says Eddie, slowly.

"Some of that stuff I understand, and some I don't. Life is..."

Eddie ruminates.

"I hate to say that I can relate to the needle, that I could condone it. I
can't condone it, because it becomes a little harder to understand when you
have someone who could follow much more positive paths to get through; like
drink juice or do yoga. They actually have the options to create any life
that they want. And they can even quit, and never play music again or play
music in their homes for themselves or for their friends. Learn to
basketweave..."

Long, long pause.

"...underwater, or anything, and then it becomes harder to understand why
people choose the paths they do. It's hard to have sympathy.

"I have to admit, Kurt was the exception, because I did feel sympathetic to
his situation, because it was a little more intense than the other two. But
I think there was more to thata than meets the eye in that situation, and
I'm not going to refer any more to it. But I just don't relate that much to
those things, and I feel it's inherently dishonest.

"You know, it's weird to meet someone and to have a conversation with them
and to find out afterwards that they weren't even... there or something. It
makes you feel like you've been lied to."

Did you never think you might go that way?

"I was spending a lot of time alone," says Eddie. "I just wasn't exposed to
that kind of stuff. It's not glamorous. It's not something I'm intrigued by
and I'm thankful for that. I like a good smoke, whatever, it's just a
little more balanced. But I have options, and none of those options are
going to threaten my control over my life. I'm very excited by the idea of
being able to play music and live at the same time."

Does your ongoing solidarity not make you bogus, then?

"It's a romantic, albeit tragic ending to a very dramatic story," Eddie
says with Zen-like detachment. "It's hard to listen to songs, be they Jeff
Buckley or whoever, or read a writer's last book knowing it was the last
thing they wrote. But what would be bogus... there's still issues raised in
our songs, examining society, but it seems to me there's a positive way to
come out of it, rather than just screaming, 'Fuck you! Fuck you!' And if we
were doing that because it was the musical style we started off in, then
that would be bogus.

"We've evolved, our thoughts have matured. Being negative and saying, 'This
is a problem, this is a problem'...

"Krist Novoselic, actually, we've had long conversations about local
political issues, and it was so negative, we said, 'Man, we've got to
really try hard to pring positives to the table next time'."

Not unlike a hippy, Eddie recalls their resolution.

"We said, 'We've got to find the start. We've got to find the seed.'"

The other day, a friend of Eddie's asked him what the title of the new
Pearl Jam album was going to be. Eddie told him, and the friend said, 'Wow,
in two albums you've gone from 'Vs' to 'Yield'! He hadn't thought about it
like that previously, but the more he mulled it over, the more Eddie
thought it made sense: the cover shot of a long deserted road with an
anomalous 'Yield' sign standing by its side when really there's nothing in
sight to give way to. The word's other meaning is 'harvest'. What
'Yield'was coming to represent was the concrete foundationof the group: the
notion that here were the fruits of their philosophy of letting business
take care of itself. The sound of a group making its way along the path of
least resistance.

The record, like the group, sits in a kind of isolation, away from the main
drag, and the calm you find in one is reflected in the other. Filled with
loosely religious imagery - there's plenty of climbing towards the light -
there's an abiding sense of spirituality and relaxation, as there was in
their work with Pakistani singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. There's even a song
called 'In Hiding' which seems to acocunt for Eddie's own reclusive
tendencies. But this is not the case.

"I had a lot of stories," he begins, "and one was about trying to find
(American novelist) JD Salinger's house. But then I thought, 'Why not make
it about trying to find God's house?' Like if he was a recluse or
something: you find his house, open his mailbox, and find it's full of junk
mail."

Clearly deep in thought, it appears we have stumbled into the arena where
Eddie contemplates the 'larger issues'. Is this prevailing mood of calm,
then, down to some kind of spiritual awakening? Has he got religion?

"No, I've been thinking more about..."

He stops.

"There's..."

A contemplative drag on his cigarette.

"I've been reading a lot..."

Almost there.

"I don't mind touching on spirituality in the songs," he says finally, "but
going it conversationally... especially when it's going to be published...
I'm not able to just /quote/ /off/, so I'm going to take the Fifth."

Ah. Then...

"It's an individual thing: I've been open to some interesting theories, and
I don't really consider it... the word 'religion' has such bad connotations
for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way
at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have
to wonder what we did on this planet before religion."

Still mindful of his territory, Eddie stalks around his intellectual
property, a thick layer of verbiage his perimeter fence. Slowly, he lets us
in.

"But I don't mind talking about this. You can look back, and this is in the
record, and all you can see is the arrogance of man: that we see our
history as being the last 20,000 years, and we're about to celebrate the
year 2000 which is going to be this momentous, drunk occasion, which means
we're going to wake up on the first day of the new millenium with an
incredible hangover. It's analogous to what we're doing ourselves. If we
wake up the next morning and purify ourselves as one might after a really
deep binge, remains to be seen.

"I think the number 2000 means precisely Jack shit," he continues, "but if
there's some kind of refletion because of it, then great. Man has been
around for three million years, and where did religion come in? I don't
really think religion is worth commenting on. I think there's something
much bigger going on.

"And that," says Eddie with some finality, "is what I've been thinking about."

One day, Eddie was sitting in his house, just sitting down in front of the
television, watching some lightweight sitcom, the shutters closed, when he
heard something on the TV that made him freak out. He's not paying much
attention, and then suddenly there it was: "Blah blah blah blah EDDIE
VEDDER blah blah blah." And suddenly it dawns on him that normality of any
kind in his life is impossible.

"It was like some sort of Pink Floyd acid trip," he remembers, horrified.
"Like /The/ /Wall/ or something - you're watching TV and it starts talking
to you. When you can't avoid yourself like that, that's when it becomes
impossible to attain the myth that it's not happening to you."

Before even the stalkers or the namechecks in /The/ /Brady/ /Bunch/ /Movie/
("That girl? She's harder to get into than a Pearl Jam concert."), it had
been a change that Eddie had been able to see coming. Something to do with
the way Pearl Jam played. When they first started out, he recalls, when
Pearl Jam played he would do anything to get the crowd's attention, the
pace was relentless, no discourse with the crowd, no time to let the
applause die down.

"Maybe to make up for the attention I didn't get as a child," he recalls,
"or to recreate the attention I did get. I'd throw a bottle or a mike
stand, jump on you, anything...

"But then about a year later the meaning of a concert to me became, like,
'Wow, what if there was silence between the songs?' Then if I did say
anything, then maybe the crowd could /hear/ /it/. Like Michael Stipe tells
me that he goes to a Tori Amos show and people are moshing. It's like, 'Uh,
OK, next'. Because that seems to be a misunderstanding or a retardation for
that kind of thing to happen. And I like what Beck said, y'know: 'Well,
we've kind of donw the moshing thing, now we're heading up to the next
millenium, maybe it's time to tighten up our moves a little'. I was at
home, raising my fist going, 'Right on!'"

And then a dilemma that Eddie is all too aware of presents itself. He
doesn't want simply to rock, to be a good-time member of a god-time band,
but to extend his and Pearl Jam's range, to say something. It's just that
this is the very thing that brings on misunderstandings, the stalkers, and
keeps hsi windows locked at night. There's a song on the new album called
'No Way' containing the refrain, 'I'm not trying to make a difference/No
way' that's his problem in a nutshell. He wants to be different, but
doesn't want the responsibility for it.

Eddie shrugs.

"I'm probably asking for cake, and wanting to eat it," he decides. "I'm
amazed that people, especially with the first record, that anyone could
relate to anything that was in there, it was a surprise then, and a
surprise now. I would hate people to think that I had some kind of
demographic study delivered to my door, and I saw what the issues of today
were, to make sure I can write a song.

"I don't mean to be a cop-out," he continues, "but I do think that music
can be all things to all people, but not me personally Like Stone
(/Gossard/, /PJ/ /guitarist/) wrote a lyric here and there, and it might be
kind of nice, when a stalker comes to my door, to maybe..."

A small twinkle appears in Eddie Vedder's eye as he gathers his cigarettes
and gets up to go and meet his friends. A solution of a kind to his hermit
lifestyle may be just around the corner.

"...give them his address."

He walks down the hotel corridor, his burden a little lighter. Somewhere in
Seattle, Stone Gossard sighs and bolts his door.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

1/21/98

from atn:

-start-
Eddie Vedder Slams Stardom,
                      Drugs And 'Religion' 

                      Tells British music
                      journal he fears for his
                      life as a rock star and
                      so prefers to keep to
                      himself. 

                      Addicted To Noise
                      Senior Writer Gil
                      Kaufman reports :
                      Though he'd love
                      nothing more than to
                      read up on Eddie Vedder
                      every day, Pearl Jam fan
                      Andy Gems said he
                      understands what the
                      band's singer is all about when it comes to keeping
out of
                      the public eye and he is satisfied just to have his
music. 

                      "I think it's easy as a fan to peg the artist as being
                      ungrateful," said Gems, of San Francisco, who has been
                      following the band since 1992, and who recently caught
                      wind of the ever-elusive, often reclusive Vedder's
                      comments in the current issue of England's New Musical
                      Express. "But if you take a minute and step back from
the
                      situation, we're pretty lucky to get the music." 

                      In the wide-ranging interview, Vedder spoke most
                      pointedly about aggressive fans, some of whom have
                      practically stalked him in the past, he said. "This
is the
                      most fucked thing; that it's absolute insanity to
have to
                      worry about your state of well-being, that someone might
                      take your life. It seems a ridiculous situation to be
in." 

                      Vedder, who touches on his own mortality, that of his
                      peers, drugs, fame and the spiritual themes of the
band's
                      upcoming album, Yield (Feb. 3), doesn't have much to
                      answer for on the personal security front as far as
Gems,
                      30, is concerned. "It must be so tough," said Gems, who
                      surfs the Web for Yahoo. "I personally think it's [the
                      stalking problem] bad news because obviously I think it
                      ends up creating an environment where artists will
                      withdraw." 

                      Part of the band's strategy, in addition to avoiding
video
                      production and not touring due to an on-going battle
with
                      ticketing giant Ticketmaster, has been a reluctance
to do
                      interviews, which Vedder addressed by saying, "We've
                      had the luxury of writing our own job description,
and that
                      description has basically been cut down to just one
line:
                      make music." The singer said that after completing that
                      task, the group is simply not as enthusiastic or
inspired by
                      "stuff like awards shows and being interviewed every
day.
                      Some of those experiences can be great ... but selling
                      yourself every day like you're part of some traveling
                      medicine show -- we have the luxury of not having to do
                      that. It's preserved our sanity, that's for sure." 

                      The distance that the band keeps coupled with Vedder's
                      evocative lyrics has helped keep fans interested and
                      intrigued by PJ, Gems said. 

                      A topic that has set Pearl Jam fans buzzing lately, said
                      Gems, is the recent grumbling that PJ have become a
                      "new Christian band," due to the possible spiritual
                      references in Yield songs such as the first single
"Given
                      to Fly" (RealAudio excerpt) and single "Pilate"
                      (RealAudio excerpt). "One guy wrote that the line about
                      being 'stripped/then he was stabbed,' was a reference to
                      Jesus," said Gems, "but I think the mistake people make
                      is equating spirituality with Christianity." 

                      One of the new songs, "In Hiding," is actually about
God,
                      Vedder told the NME, but not in the way you'd expect. "I
                      had a lot of stories and one was about trying to find
                      [Catcher in the Rye author] JD Salinger's house," said
                      Vedder. "But then I thought, 'Why not make it about
trying
                      to find God's house?' Like if he was a recluse or
                      something; you find his house, open his mailbox and find
                      it's full of junk mail." 

                      Vedder explains in the interview that he "doesn't mind
                      touching on spirituality in the songs," but that it's
really "an
                      individual thing; I've been open to some interesting
                      theories, and I don't really consider it ... the word
'religion'
                      has such bad connotations for me, that it's been
                      responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at
all, it's
                      just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to
me. I
                      have to wonder what we did on this planet before
religion."

                      On the subject of drugs and how he and the band have
                      managed to survive when friends and contemporaries
                      such as Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, Scott
Weiland of
                      Stone Temple Pilots and the late Kurt Cobain of Nirvana
                      have struggled, Vedder said, "I wish it was luck to
which I
                      could attribute getting through some of those periods.
                      Some of that stuff I understand, and some I don't." 

                      The singer offers that while he hates to say that he can
                      relate to "the needle [heroin], that I could condone
it. I can't
                      condone it, because it becomes a little harder to
                      understand when you have someone who could follow
                      much more positive paths to get through; like drink
juice
                      or do yoga. They actually have the options to create any
                      life that they want. And they can even quit, and
never play
                      music again or play music in their homes for themselves
                      or for their friends. Learn to basketweave...
underwater, or
                      anything, and then it becomes harder to understand why
                      people choose the paths they do. It's hard to have
                      sympathy." [Wed., Jan. 21, 1998, 9 a.m. PST] 
-end-
--

1/22/98

Ok here goes...Massive is an aussie hard rock mag and in this month's issue..
they have a PJ special (with eddie on the cover and shit). This answers some
INTERESTING questions posed on this ng.

They started talkin about yield....

We started working on it about 4 or 5 months ago..McCready says of the albums
time frame. "Prior to that we had done a bunch of demos. Each guy had about 
ten songs and we narrowed it down when we got into the studio. It took us about
2 months to do it altogether. We worked on it pretty hard".

Did you approach it diferently to No Code?

No Code I think was more of a jamming record. this time we would sit down and
actually take the songs apart and rehearse them over and over until we got
a really good take. We haven't reallt done that before. We usually do it in
the first cppl of takes. This time we were more conscious of putting it 
together".

What were you listening to at the time?

Me specially, I was listening to a lot of Zepplin and stuff, a lot of 
Stones but mostly going thru this crazy Led Zepplin phase so maybe some of 
that hopefully came out

Actually the first single sounds like Zepplins "GTC"?

Oh Cool! he laughs It's probably some sort of rip off of it I'm sure he 
chuckles.  Whether its conscious or unconscious but that was definately one
of the songs I was listening to for sure. Zeppelin was definately an influence
on that. {Interesting???}

Did you record any covers?

Not this time. We talked about doing some but we never really got around to it.

What were you bouncing around?

We were talking about dfoing the stones "Sway". I love that song. but we never
really seemed to get it going. We were kind of working more on our own stuff.

How do you view No Code now?

I like the record. I think I like playing the songs live better than I 
actually like the record itself. I think we did those songs better live than
we did on that record. I think we kind of rushed it a little bit. I'm still
proud of it but I think i'm more excited for this new one. {woo hoo!}

Minutes after speaking to McCready, fellow guitarist and band lynch pin, Stone
gossard was on the line.

It feels like a real band record says Gossard, and it feels like a record that
has a variety of kinds of songs on it and it feels like us. It feels new and
we experiment some on it but it also feels like kind of classic too and that's 
good. I like it. We demoed like 30 ideas nad we probably finished 16 and 12
made the record.

What is that trippy instrumental thing?

Actually the song is called "The Colour Red". Its a Jack Irons song and the
line is "war, Im crazy, war Im crazy, Im war"

The next single perhaps?

Its actually the first single if i had my was he joked. Im going to re-release
it too as the second single.

I can hear all sort of things on this record from Captain Beefheart to the
Jefferson Airplane?..

I think its mostly memory based. I think thats the kind of fun thing about
human sampling as oppsed to electronic sampling. I love electronic 
sampling too by the way. But you can store in your brain all these different 
songs from your childhood and all these things and when you kind of pull them
backout theyre never quite the same as they really were on the record. Then
you get in with someone elses sampler going and he puts his little idea down
and somebody else puts their and suddenly it becomes something new. Thats a fun
part about being in a band playing music together.

It also gets around legal problems?...

Yeah plus you dont need to worry anout ripping anybody off for real. Its so
grey and hazy they cant really charge you with it in a court of law.
 
THERE YA GO...sheesh my hands dead :)

Some interesting points include the Zeppelin influence was a part of GTF and
the untitled track is called The Colour Red. Also..someone spoke about how
stone said how much effort they put into No Code. Well Mike says otherwise.
Guess thats personal choice.

Anyway guys. Just thought Id spread the jam as they say..so enjoy..

Cheers big ears...

1/22/98

Pearl Jam Yield Webmasters Defy
Orders To Close Shop 

Just weeks after RIAA
threatens
downloadable music
sites with lawsuits,
newones are back. 

Addicted To Noise
Staff Writer Chris
Nelson reports : When
Pearl Jam fan Paul
Andersen contemplated
whether to create a
website with files of every
song from the band's
upcoming Yield album, he knew that he might raise the
ire of a music industry that had recently forced a number
of similar sites to shut down or face lawsuits for copyright
infringement. 

Still, in apparent defiance of the industry, in particular the
Recording Industry Association of America -- the
organization that represents U.S. record labels and that
leads the move to put an end to Yield sites -- Andersen
and a number of other webmasters have gone ahead
and created new sites with unreleased PJ music for
downloading. 

"I know RIAA and all them when they find out, they're
going to flip, but I'll deal with that then," Andersen said
Thursday from his Sausalito, Calif., home. "It is a huge
issue that's going to have to come up at some point. So
let's push it a little. Great things didn't happen by people
being timid. Eventually the record companies are going
to be selling these albums over the Internet anyway, so
why not deal with it now instead of later." 

Above all, Andersen, 30, said he was out to satisfy Pearl
Jam fans who he knew were desperate to hear Yield,
adding that in the broader scope of things, music fans in
general find themselves at a unique point in history,
where a band's most ardent supporters are drawing new
boundaries of what is available to whom and when. 

On Wednesday, after securing a tape of the album
through a connection on a Pearl Jam newsgroup,
Andersen posted all 13 Yield cuts in RealAudio format
(which allows users to download the songs for listening)
on his "Pearl Jam Yield Archive" site, almost two weeks
before the album is set to reach stores on Feb. 3. 

Meanwhile, the RIAA has vowed to pursue sites that it
says are engaging in copyright infringement. 

"It continues to be an infringement of our member
companies' rights, and it's a very serious one given that
it's recordings that have not even been released into the
marketplace," said Steve D'Onofrio, executive vice
president and director of anti-piracy for the RIAA. Since
December, the RIAA has sent cease and desist orders
that resulted in the removal of Yield files from nearly a
dozen sites. 

Whether one views the relentless proliferation of Yield
tracks on the Net like a weed that can't be killed or like a
dog whose undying loyalty ensures its return, one thing
seems certain: Despite persistent action by the RIAA to
shut them down, the Yield sites are not disappearing. 

"There are probably a hundred [sites] now, with MP3
[sound files] and RealAudio [of Yield songs]," said Josh
Wardell, the 19-year-old Syracuse University student who
was one of the first fans to post song clips from the Yield
album back in December. After being contacted by Pearl
Jam's label, Epic Records, Wardell agreed to remove
the files. 

Most sites with Yield song files, Wardell said, use file
transfer protocol (FTP) technology, which is accessible
through the World Wide Web but is more easily
concealed than standard web pages. "They're up one
day and down the other," he said. "They're not easy to
find, unless you go into a chat room and somebody says,
'They're here now, go get them.' " 

The Yield sites have been so persistent that they've even
prompted a backlash from some fans who apparently
believe people should wait to hear the album in its
officially released form. 

Visitors to Kevin O'Connor's "Go It Alone" site are led to
believe they are downloading tracks from Yield, only to
hear instead a spoken-word clip from Pearl Jam singer
Eddie Vedder saying, "The joke's on them, because this
is not for them." 

"There was just so much hysteria" concerning Yield files
on the Net, said O'Connor, a 19-year-old student at
Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. "You'd go on
the Net and type in 'Yield' or 'Pearl Jam' and everyone
would have their own Yield section. I thought it would be
good to do just the opposite and make people think twice
about what they're doing." 

Perhaps surprisingly, Yield's availability seems to be of
little concern to many in the Pearl Jam camp. In
December, guitarist Stone Gossard told Australia's
Triple J radio station that he was "flattered" that fans had
posted "Given To Fly," the album's first single, on the Net.
Andersen said he took that remark as a "green light" to
create his Yield page. 

Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis said he had received
e-mail on Thursday concerning Yield sites. "I'm not
spending too much time on it since the record's going to
be out in a week," he said. "I really haven't talked to
anybody [in the band] about it." 

Andersen said he did weigh ethical and artistic
considerations before deciding to post the Yield
material, and added that he plans to remove the files
after the album is available in stores. He contends that
sites such as his will actually generate more interest in
the album. "I'm not doing it to stunt the growth of the
album in any shape or form," he said. "It's a brilliant
album in my estimation. If anything, my mind is that it will
help promote the album." 

Asked if he agreed with Andersen's assertion, Curtis
said, "I don't disagree. I don't know. It's all new to me."
[Thurs., Jan. 22, 1998, 6 p.m. PST]


1/23/98

From Allstar:

allstar grump-a-saurus Jay W.
Babcock has delivered us yet
another eye-raising  editorial: Pearl Jam vs.
 Led Zeppelin. Here goes: In 1987, Kingdom
Come scored an AOR  hit with "Get It On," a
song so blatantly derivative of Led
Zeppelin that the band was nicknamed
"Kingdom Clone," a  moniker it was never
 able to shake. While Pearl Jam's new single,
"Given to Fly" does not approach Kingdom
Come's level of stylistic theft, the song (whose
 music is credited to PJ  guitarist Mike
 McCready) is attracting attention for
 its arguably startling melodic similarity to
 Zep's 1971 song  "Going to California,"
which can of course be found on Led Zeppelin
 IV. The Usenet has been afire with flame
wars between Page/Plant and Pearl
Jam partisans since the single's release several
weeks ago, and allstar  has received reports of
classic rock DJs across North America playing
the two songs back- to- back and soliciting
 listener comments.
Strangely, almost all major print and Web
magazines -- with the admirable exception of
Entertainment Weekly -- have positively
reviewed the single with nary a mention of
its similarity to a song off the [again,
arguably] most popular album ever recorded by
the biggest hard rock band of all time. And
given the extent of the apparent theft -- the
entire lengthy verse melody and vocal
phrasing of the two songs are almost
 identical -- it also seems odd that there's
 been no word yet ofany impending legal
action by the Led Zeppelin camp. Or
 maybe it's not so shocking after all.
Perhaps when you've gone to the river as
many times as Jimmy Page did (lawsuits from
the estate of Willie Dixon come to mind),
you lose the moral upper hand when it
comes to protecting your own
compositions from possible plagiarists. Or
perhaps in this brave new po-mo pop
 kingdom ruled by the likes of Puffy Combs
 and revivalist/preservationists of all
 music genre persuasions, brazen
theft is not only permitted, it's
 encouraged and indeed rewarded.
======



1/26/98

Subj:	 LR: Yield review
Date:	98-01-26 03:31:14 EST
From:	joacohen@indiana.edu (jonathan aaron cohen)
Sender:	owner-longroad-l@iastate.edu
Reply-to:	joacohen@indiana.edu (jonathan aaron cohen)
To:	longroad-l@iastate.edu


   hey all..
   what follows is my review of "Yield" which is running in Cleveland
Scene magazine and the Indiana Daily Student newspaper next week. excuse
the formatting delineations that i left in.  JC

   --------------
    
	Pearl Jam
	YIELD
	Epic
 
	For the most part, the rock music industry has lost its ambition.
In an era when "alternative" radio and its flavor-of-the-month bands stand
little chance of mattering beyond the proverbial fifteen minutes of fame,
welcome is the group that cares about making music that strives to stand
above the groups that have nothing to say. Welcome is the group that still
believes in rock's undeniable exhilarating power.
	It's quite ironic, then, that the band with the most ambition to
prove rock music as the ultimate means of expression has spent its entire
career shunning its celebrity status, touring infrequently, refusing to
release videos or promote its albums and attempting to topple corporate
monoliths like TicketMaster.
	But time heals all wounds, and especially since 1996's NO CODE,
Pearl Jam has been making some of the only rock music that means ITAL
anything ENDITAL; sidestepping cliches and the scores of imitators that
latched on and cashed in when "grunge" was a term that even the PTA and
the local newscaster was using.
	YIELD, the band's fifth album, is the smile-enducing sound of five
guys who absolutely love what they're doing and who've emerged from the
throws of superstardom with their integrity and their sense of purpose
intact. The message is conveyed in a variety of ways, ranging from earnest
confessionals like the low-key "Wish List" (ITAL I wish I was a messenger
and all the news was good ENDITAL, frontman Eddie Vedder sings in his best
Springsteen rasp) to the churning, sexy grind of "No Way," where Vedder
firmly pronounces ITAL I'll stop trying to make a difference/I'm not
trying to make a difference, no way ENDITAL.
	Rocking just as hard, if not more so, than 1994's scathing
VITALOGY while retaining the adventurous feel and spiritual overtones of
NO CODE, YIELD works on all of its many levels, be it in the abrasive,
Fugazi-tinged throttle of opener "Brain Of J" or the focused thrash of the
check-yourself "Do The Evolution;" the splendid balladry of "Lowlight" and
the WHITE ALBUM-era Beatles-ish "All The Yesterdays;" the locked-in,
dead-on rock of the soaring "In Hiding," "Faithful" and similarly lofty
epic "Given To Fly."
	In fact, YIELD is nothing short of a spiritual experience. Imagery
of angels and redemption pervade the record, manifested most notably on
first single "Given To Fly." Vedder narrates the tale of a Messianic youth
who possesses but is distracted from utilizing ITAL the key to the lock on
the chains he saw everywhere ENDITAL. The uplifting, cathartic chorus
sends chills down the spine. "Pilate" approaches redemption from a
different angle, curiously likening the wayward narrator with Pontius
Pilate and in the process ends up as one of Pearl Jam's most musically
interesting songs in recent memory. Quiet, strummy verses talk of ITAL
circles ENDITAL and ITAL making angels in the dirt ENDITAL and build in
intensity as the song boils over into a rumbling, bottom-heavy chorus:
ITAL like Pilate/I have a dog ENDITAL.
	YIELD is also about conformity, namely the band and its singer's
lack thereof. Vedder ruminates about the future in the dark, driving
chorus of "Brain Of J" with the line ITAL the whole world will be
different soon ENDITAL while offering a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the
band's own staying power in the emphatic "Faithful": ITAL we're
faithful/we all believe/we all believe it ENDITAL. You bet your life we
believe it.
	Elsewhere, Vedder is uncharacteristically vulnerable (ITAL I just
need someone to be there for .. me ENDITAL, he declares in "No Way") and
awestruck ("Many Fast Cars" casts the hustle and bustle of Rome traffic as
a context for the narrator to reminisce about good times gone by). Here,
Vedder isn't lecturing to arenas full of disaffected youths - he's
relating to the listener on an uncommon level.
	Musically, YIELD bears the collaborative stamp and ever-present
influence of seminal rock acts such as The Who and Neil Young. Indeed,
Pearl Jam's songwriting has become consistently more challenging and
intricate, with a much greater influence on structure and individual
parts. Examples: "No Way" is temporarily sucked into a bizarre, angular
breakdown before bursting back into the room with a head-nodding chorus,
while "Push Me, Pull Me" is a disorienting jolt whose tape loops,
belt-busting bass and ponderous lyrics seem equal parts Beck and Hendrix.
	"In Hiding" and "Many Fast Cars" are quintessential Pearl Jam
rock, the former with its unmistakably Vedder chorus and the latter with
deadly riffing from guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. Drummer
Jack Irons is clearly the inspiration for the sixty-second,
tempo-out-the-window tribal lark "The Color Red," which somehow comforts
despite ITAL war/all crazy ENDITAL as its only, oft-repeated lyric.
	Irons' contributions to the band's overall sound are evident in
nearly every song on YIELD. The drummer has roughened up an already
aggressive band without coming off contrived. On "Brain Of J" and "Do The
Evolution," he's heard pounding the shit out of his drums like there's no
tomorrow. But instead of attempting to lead the more ballad-oriented songs
into tough-guy territory, Irons hammers out a steady, sturdy pace for his
bandmates to navigate.
	Having long since outlived and outclassed its grunge
contemporaries, Pearl Jam is one of the only successful, currently active
groups that continues to evolve and experiment with each new release.
Better than any rock album of the past five years, YIELD fully realizes an
inspiring ambition and passion.


1/27/98

Subject: detroit on yield
From: +----kRiShNa----+ <skink@sympatico.ca.spam>
Date: Tue, Jan 27, 1998 15:22 EST
Message-id: <34CE4209.7260@sympatico.ca.spam>

oops- if any of you are interested HERE is a review from detriot

-- 
Pearl Jam unleashes another epic -- and the angst is getting easier

January 25, 1998

Pearl Jam
"Yield" (Epic)
 4stars

For those about to rock -- those of you still left, anyway -- Pearl Jam
salutes you.

If you're fretting over the health of rock 'n' roll in this day of spicy
dance-pop rainbows, climb into the first track of Pearl Jam's new album 
and
strap in tight: "Brain of J," a longtime live staple, is a dizzying, 
lurching
ride down the roller-coaster rails of such vertigo-inducing attacks as 
"Habit"
and "Spin the Black Circle." Guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard 
thrust
nasty, squalling licks around an incessant descending riff, easing up
only for a subdued bridge before leaping into a shower of firework 
soloing.
It's mainstream rock that's not afraid to rock. And in January 1998, that
alone makes it notable.

Pearl Jam's thick fifth album, recorded with longtime studio collaborator
Brendan O'Brien, comes with enough meaty riffs and full-bodied hooks to 
make
it familiar to longtime fans. "Yield" definitely isn't "No Code," the
exploratory 1996 album with a nebulous aura and plain old weirdness that 
left
it inaccessible to many ears.

But if you're still waiting for "Ten II," quit holding your breath. Yes,
"Yield" is packed with arena-worthy choruses and infectious riffs, and 
for the
first time in three albums, the songs are delivered with more sonic 
bravado
than brittleness. But it's not the straight-ahead hard rock that casual 
fans
have sought since 1991's debut. There's too much quirkiness tucked into 
the
nooks and crannies: the just-dissonant swaths of piano and guitar in "Low
Light," the precise "Abbey Road" layering of "All Those Yesterdays," the
obtuse lyrics ("Like Pilate/ I have a dog" on the Jeff Ament-penned 
"Pilate").

"Yield" does continue to reveal the band's classic-rock fetish: "Given to 
Fly"
swipes guitar tones and martial beats straight off Rush's "2112," 
borrowing a
vocal melody from Led Zep's "Going to California." An untitled gibberish 
track
pops up midway through the disc, a la the Beatles' White Album. "In 
Hiding,"
the album's top song, is vintage "Who's Next," with a powerful dichotomy
between sparkling, triumphant chords and lyrics of desperate,
self-wrought isolation.

There are quieter moments: "Wishlist" -- with words and music by Eddie 
Vedder
and featuring a good old-fashioned fade-out -- is a melodic masterpiece
drenched in maudlin metaphor ("I wish I was a sentimental ornament you 
hung on
the Christmas tree"). The words are self-consciously sappy, delivered 
with
genuine passion, and they wind up working.

Gossard and Ament both contribute lyrics, but Vedder's pensive texts, 
which
here include snide looks at human progress ("Do the Evolution" and
"Faithful"), are the ones fans most want to deconstruct. As for his 
emotional
condition, the source of that urgent vocal tremble you either adore or 
reject
as whining, it's safe to say Vedder is still seeking catharsis. Only now 
you
get the feeling he's learned to rub the edge off the pain. Seven years 
after
baring his inner demons to the world, Vedder hints he's at least 
discovered
the folly of beating himself up: "It's been about three days now since 
I've
been aground," he sings of a tortured spell on "In Hiding." "No longer
overwhelmed, and it seems so simple now."

Vinyl in stores Tuesday; CD and cassette in stores Feb. 3.

By Brian McCollum


1/29/98

CFNY 102.1 THE EDGE:
YIELD ALBUM PREMIERE AND INTERVIEW WITH JEFF AMENT AND EDDIE VEDDER
HOST: KNEALE MANN, Program Director of Toronto's 102.1 The Edge
TRANSCRIPTION: Shanil Virani

Preamble: snippets of various tracks from the preceding 4 albums with random
	  Eddie quotes like "this is a big interview" and "music is healing"...

Kneale Mann: When historians write the definitive retrospectives about this
	decade, music will be the subject of many of their books. However,
	who will they include? What events will stand up as the most important?
	U2 are arguably the band of the '80s. Certainly, I think it is safe to
	say, that Pearl Jam are in the running for the crown of the '90s. When
	those historians write their musical histories of this decade, it is
	not certain where Pearl Jam will be in the pecking order, but I am 
	willing to bet they will have their chapter. Hi, I'm Kneale Mann and 
	over the next 90 minutes, hey, perhaps we can add to that chapter. I 
	had the chance to sit down with Jeff and Eddie back in November, the 
	"Yield" album was done, the world was waiting, and to put a finer point
	on it, their critics were certainly waiting with their collective arms
	folded almost expecting the band to falter. Well, the waiting is over 
	and now it is your chance to decide for yourself (GTF in background)...
	This is the North American premiere of "Yield" from Pearl Jam.

				<Given To Fly>
				<Push Me Pull Me>

Kneale:	This is the North American premiere of "Yield" which is in stores on
	Tuesday, February 3rd, I'm Kneale Mann. That's a song called "Push Me
	Pull Me", we also heard "Given To Fly". Well, all over the continent,
	the release parties continue, the discussions continue, and of course,
	the predictions begin. Soome of the questions I've heard already, uhm,
	"Is it like "Ten"?", "Do people still care about Pearl Jam?", "Will it
	sell like "VS."?", which sold close to a million copies in its first
	week. Well, those questions have nothing to do with Pearl Jam. What's
	important to this band? That's simple, its the music. In the early 
	'90's, when Seattle was the focal point  of the entire music industry,
	"grunge" was the buzzword of the day, Pearl Jam was right there in the
	eye of the storm despite their reluctance to participate. The death of
	Kurt Cobain in April of 1994 was to some like the passing of John 
	Lennon, Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley. What was left was a bunch of bands
	that had to look inwards to the real reasons why they were in this 
	thing. In Pearl Jam's case, it was clear. I suspect they were almost
	relieved to watch the spotlight leave them for awhile. They are 5 very
	smart guys. We've got Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Jack Irons, Jeff
	Ament, and Eddie Vedder. They continue to play music for the love of
	music and sharing it with their fans and friends. Its one of those 
	bands that break all the rules -- they don't put out videos and they
	remain one of the most vital bands in the world. Oh yeah, and they 
	don't do many interviews either. I had the pleasure of sitting down
	with Eddie and Jeff to talk about the new album and about, well, why
	they don't do this kind of thing to often.

Kneale:	You guys have been burned, uh, pretty badly in the past with the press,
	and with interviews, and stuff. Why do you feel a little bit better
	about doing this kind of stuff now? You know, just starting to do a 
	little more.

Eddie:	Do we? You know...

Jeff;	We just haven't done it in awhile so...

Kneale:	Well, maybe that's what part of the interview is... you can explain 
	why.

Jeff:	ah, I've actually used this analogy for a bunch of different things but
	I was saying how every 4 or 5 years, I'll go out and drink way too much
	and partake in other abnormal substances...

Eddie:	forms of encouragement...

Jeff:	and, uh, I'll feel it for like 3 or 4 days and its mainly to remind
	myself for why I don't do it... so maybe that's what we're doing 
	here... <laughs> humour, doing to remind ourselves <laughs>

Eddie:	Without being, uh, you know, I'm trying to say something without any
	tinge of being high and mighty, or anything. Really, its pretty 
	exciting to put your music out there and see what it does on its own.
	Uh, that way, if there's good things that happen, then it was due to 
	the music. And, uhm, you know if negative come about, you know it 
	wasn't about interviews or wasn't about... videos, or anything besides
	the music. And then if there's bad things said about the music, then 
	you know at the time you put it out, you thought it was the best record
	you were making and you're pretty secure about it... its a way of 
	keeping the process real and not about hype and formulas and all that
	kind of stuff. Now we're pretty fortunate enough to be able to test 
	that, you know, and just put it out and we're really not, we don't base
	our art on sales and things like that by any means and that's a 
	priviledged position to be in, you know, we don't make any decisions in
	our lives based on the need for, uh, the money. So, uh, its kind of of
	exciting. And then I think if L7 didn't have to interviews, or didn't
	feel like they needed to, they wouldn't. And that's just one of a 
	myriad bands and its a great opportunity to take advantage of...
	
				<Brain of J>

Kneale Mann discussing various PJ news such as SPR2, fan club, and fan club 
singles, etc.

				<Happy When I'm Crying>

Kneale asks on helping new bands...

Eddie:	We've tried to little things, like you know, very little things, like
	your own radio station out of the parking lot or something to play,
	something that people wouldn't ordinarily get their hands on, or you 
	ask them to be the opening band or something. There's little, you know,
	we do our little bit... I know that for awhile, when it felt a little
	strange to be selling a lot of records and hearing records that you
	appreciate even more than yours.. which is difficult because I don't
	think our records will ever be, you know, my favourite just because, I
	dunno, of all bands, I don't think my records will be on my top 10 list
	of all time <Jeff laughs> because I just appreciate, I, I know too much
	or something... but, uh, actually, that would be a good goal, to make
	a record that would be on my top 10 <Jeff: "yeah"> but of course, it
	would probably be an instrumental record...

				<Wish List> -- a song I love to death!!

Kneale:	I finally had a chance to listen to the album this morning and it just
	seems to come out of the speakers easier then the last three albums and
	I mean that, not song structure, it just seems to, I hate using the
	word "feel" and "flow", but it come together that easy? over the 
	last...

Eddie:	Probably not...

Kneale:	Was it a tough record to make?		

Eddie:	Uh, I mean they are not tough, music again, we just all love playing
	music so I don't think its, uh, maybe like, to use an over used term
	like "labour of love" or something. I dunno, you just like playing
	music, you like playing it with certain people, or if you come up with
	a song there's pretty much nobody... on the planet you'd rather play it
	with than these certain people. You've built up not just a love of 
	musicianship but a relationship where you don't necessarily have to
	explain everything but... it just kind of happens... so, actually, I'm
	sure it was easy. I think what I'm thinking was, uh, difficult was just
	the amount of, uhm, so many things came out at once that it was the
	pairing down of ideas and the focussing on a certain amount of them
	that was the hard part. It was like making a film and filming a 150
	miles worth of footage and then having to pick ou the best to make an
	hour piece or something... so that's probably the hardest...

				<track 8 -- untitled>

Kneale asking them on their influences...

Eddie:	I've always had this closed minded opinion of people <laughs>. If 
	people heard in records actually what they say they listened to... 
	actually, and so if somebody listens to Talking Heads all the time,
	they'll say "wow, really there's a lot of songs that sounds like the
	Talking Heads on there" you know, basically because its music with
	guitars and drums. But in your case, I actually know exactly what
	you're tlkaing about as far as a certain guitar sound that could be
	Adrian Bluen. I've never thought about that before but I know exactly
	what you're talking about. I don't think we go in with a, uhm... I 
	think it might be an interesting way to make records and like say, "man
	here's a guitar sound I have in mind and actually here's a song by
	another band that you can kind of hear, this is what I'm going for".
	We've never really done that but I think that would be an interesting
	way to make music if, especially, if you ran out of your own ideas.
	<laughs>

				<do the evolution>

Kneale on band history and stuff. Then asks about what's with all the side
projects?

Jeff:	I think anytime you can go outside of a relationship and have 
	conversations and have interaction, I think it will give you, you know,
	new perspectives. For me, I think it really made me at times, maybe I
	wasn't appreciating,... you know, everybody in this band, I think it
	made me appreciate what I had you know... when you can get away from
	it and have somebody tell you, like, you know, or actually, if you're
	working with another group of people and you're really struggling, you
	know, you work for 4 or 5 days and maybe you come up with one song
	and its pretty cool but its so much work, and its so hard to connect
	and its so hard for some people to give things up and to achieve that
	chemistry. I think these sorts of situations uh, I dunno...

Eddie:	You come back and you appreciate what it is... to get in a situation
	where you've actually put in all that work or just naturally over a
	period of time, it just seems a lot easier... last year in December,
	I was in Italy and felt like playing music so I started a little 3
	piece and we played for a week and played a couple of shows, and you
	know, they were great musicians and they didn't speak English so...
	I mean that really made me appreciate (Jeff and Shanil laughs! :)), uh
	just the fact that the rest of the band knows english is pretty neat...

Kneale:	well, music is the international language but not in all cases...

Eddie:	Well, actually, it is true, it was just the first, I think we'd just
	started practising and I'd just met them, and we started playing at 6
	and actually you're right because by midnight things... things were
	pretty good. You know, it went beyond kind of the,... you know, trying
	to get the drummer to play what I only can describe as a picture...
	instead of a beat... and you know, once you start playing, it kind of
	gets beyond that...
 	
about signing with the biggest music label in the world:

Eddie:	We've probably visit the NY offices about once a year...we basically
	deliver our art work... I mean we have a pretty good relationship. I
	feel priviledged to you know, they let us live in Seattle and we just
	do things from here... I mean, distribution is done by a major label, 
	to answer that question, but everything else is done from, you know,
	from little shacks out here in the woods comparatively...

Kneale:	Does that help you keep real? Stay real? keep sanity?

Jeff:	Yeah, sure

Eddie:	Without a doubt

Kneale:	Living around with chrome and fancy chairs, and fancy offices, that's
	not rock'n'roll is it?

Eddie:	There might be someone who might be able to define it as that and pull
	it off, but that's not where we're coming from. I mean, I think we had
	the opportunity to get into that world and its just not our, uh, the
	temperature of the water ain't right for us...

				<Pilate>

- ------end part 1------


1/29/98

Subject: Interesting Review
From: andy.selig@horton.ednet.ns.ca (Andy Selig)
Date: Thu, Jan 29, 1998 10:24 EST
Message-id: <34d09f1f.14478574@news1.ns.sympatico.ca>

MUSIC REVIEW: The return of Pearl Jam 


Copyright (c) 1998 Nando.net
Copyright (c) 1998 Scripps Howard 


(January 29, 1998 00:43 a.m. EST http://www.nando.net) -- Does Pearl
Jam still matter? That's the question many music fans are asking as
Pearl Jam prepares to release its fifth album, "Yield," on Tuesday.

The Seattle grunge rock quintet remains the best-selling rock band of
the 1990s, but most of its success came in the first half of the
decade.

Grunge rock's mix of angst, fuzz-soaked guitars, and flannel shirts is
no longer a dominant force, and Pearl Jam is the last vestige of the
Seattle scene that spawned such powerhouse groups as Nirvana,
Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains.

Pearl Jam's midas touch has lost some of its sheen. Its 1996 release,
"No Code," was a moody, rambling effort that debuted at No. 1 on the
Billboard album chart but fell off rapidly. Its sales were far below
Pearl Jam's previous multi-platinum numbers.

Meanwhile, Pearl Jam refuses to play at venues that have exclusive
deals with Ticketmaster. The band believes the computer-ticketing
behemoth charges unfair fees for its services and is fighting to keep
ticket prices as low as possible for its army of young fans.

That battle of wills has forced Pearl Jam to cancel some concerts, and
the few shows it does put on are scattered across the map.

The public's attention span is notoriously short, and Pearl Jam, which
also avoids making music videos, has been out of sight more than most
major rock bands.

Does that mean Pearl Jam is passe?

No way.

Grunge may be dead and Pearl Jam may be losing its battle with
Ticketmaster, but an advance copy of "Yield" shows the band has come
through mightily where it counts most -- in the music.

Guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard span the spectrum from
delicate acoustic backdrops to roaring, slashing assaults, and bassist
Jeff Ament and drummer Jack Irons keep the rhythms churning with
alternate grace and thunderous force.

Frontman Ed Vedder has matured as a singer and interpreter of song --
brooding less and looking more honestly into the full range of human
emotion.

The words of "Yield" are still shot through with cynicism, but they're
cryptic enough to leave room for interpretation. And they're delivered
with a sense of bemusement rather than anger. Reluctant acceptance,
not rebellion. On the shuffling rocker "No Way," Vedder repeats the
chorus over and over: "I'm not trying to make a difference. ... no
way." The edgy guitar riffs of "Do the Evolution" are as razor-sharp
as the lyrics that jab both Darwin's theory and the church.

"Brain of J," the album opener, is a propulsive rocker that kicks in
with a twin blast of guitar power, Gossard and McCready bouncing off
each other's riveting rhythms as Vedder, in a near-howl, vocalizes
above and around the molten beat.

But it's the restrained delivery of songs like "Wishlist" that show
how far Pearl Jam has come. The tune is built with jangly guitar
rhythms and swooping lead riffs as Vedder recites lyrics of personal
intensity and insight. "I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could
go off."

This reflective side of Pearl Jam sharpens the contrast against its
patented brute-strength attacks.

"Black Pilate" is another magnificent display of balance, alternating
between sweetly drifting verses and crashing choruses.

It doesn't matter what the prevailing trends might be, "Yield" is a
sign that Pearl Jam is on the right track.

By DAVID YONKE, Toledo Blade. Distributed by Scripps Howard News
Service.)========

1/29/98

From: Chris Mansfield <mansfiel@drizzle.com>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 17:30:13 -0800
Subject: LR: today's Seattle P-I article

now my hands are cold from typing so long.  this has mostly the same stuff
every article has been saying lately but there are some good quotes.  i
especially got a kick out of the part about the guitars.  :)

the article is accompanied by a huge (takes up the whole top half of the
front page) color, letterboxed recent photo of the band members' faces, and
a smaller picture of the album cover and a yield sign appear below that.

:)  Chris


Seattle Post-Intelligencer
January 29, 1998

THERE'S NO STOPPING PEARL JAM
'Yield' puts Seattle's biggest band back on the road

by Gene Stout
P-I Pop Music Critic

Pearl Jam is about to "yield" to its fans.

After being out of sight and out of mind for more than a year, the Seattle rock
group returns to the world stage with a new album, "Yield," as well as tours of
Australia, New Zealand and the United States.  Pearl Jam, one of the most
popular rock bands of the '90s, will likely get an enthusiastic reception.

"I think if we put on the kind of shows we put on in the past, people are going
to be happy to see us," says guitarist Stone Gossard.

"Yield," Pearl Jam's first album since 1996's "No Code," goes on sale Tuesday.
The album's first single, the anthemic ballad "Given to Fly," was released in
December and is already a No. 1 hit on rock radio.

This weekend, the group -- Gossard, singer Eddie Vedder, guitarist Mike
McCready,
bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Jack Irons -- will distribute another in a series
of free-form "Monkey Wrench" radio programs to any station that wants to air it.

A two-month tour of Australia and New Zealand will follow a show Feb. 20 on the
Hawaiian island of Maui.  A 40-date U.S. tour, including a possible Seattle
show, will follow in the summer.  Tickets will be sold through independent
companies and not Ticketmaster, with whom the group has been feuding over
service charges since the mid-'90s.

Though no decision has been made, the band is talking about putting together a
"home video" with filmmaker and longtime friend Cameron Crowe, who directed
the movies "Singles" and "Jerry Maguire."

Gossard and McCready recently met with me at a Seattle hotel to talk about the
new album and events of the last year and a half, including the fight with
Ticketmaster; the band's influential new drummer, Irons; and a controversial
Rolling Stone cover story on Vedder that ran more than a year ago.

The two guitarists were in good spirits -- and quick to make fun of themselves.
Over a room-service lunch of BLT sandwiches and smoked salmon, they joked about
being fired from the band for buying a pair of ostentatious but collectible
Gibsob Flying V guitars, originally introduced in the late '50s to show that
electric solid-body guitars could take just about any shape.

McCready's guitar technician had spotted a Flying V -- a very un-Pearl Jam
kid of instrument -- at a Seattle guitar shop and talked McCready and Gossard
into taking a look.

"We were like kids in a candy store," Gossard said gleefully.  "Mike had been
looking for one.  And they brought down two and I grabbed one and Mike grabbed
the other and we both yelled, 'Yes!  Flying V's!'"

"(Eddie) was kind of looking at us funny," McCready said with a grin.  "We may
or may not still be in the band.  We're not sure."

McCready and Gossard have threatened to play the guitars on the group's
upcoming tour.

"We're going to see how much we can get away with," Gossard said.  "It would
be such a thrill.  I mean, to have stereo V's on stage would just be
ridiculous.  There'd be a lot of smiles.  Within the band, there'd be a lot of
smiles."

There mere presence of Flying V's at a Pearl Jam show may indicate the group
has shaken off some of the brooding seriousness often associated with the band
during the mid-'90s.  At least McCready and Gossard can laugh like frat boys
about the possibilities of losing their jobs over a pair of guitars.

Humor has helped the group survive the challenges of the past few years,
particularly the nasty feud with Ticketmaster over service charges that made
it difficult to tour and tested the loyalty of fans.

Being one of the most popular rock bands on the planet for several years didn't
help either.  Media attention reached critical mass in late 1996 when Rolling
Stone magazine ran an unflattering article on Vedder that quoted unnamed
sources and portrayed the former high school actor as "a tireless hustler."

"The scenario was that Rolling Stone was going to write a story on Eddie's
childhood, and they interviewed all his friends and all these other people,
and they wanted us to do an interview to augment that story," Gossard
explained.

"And we said, 'We're not really interested in doing a story about Eddie's
childhood.  We're interested in doing a story about the band and about our
new record.'

"Eddie's a very private person and he really didn't want to talk about his
childhood.  So we said, 'Fine, do whatever story you want to do.  We're not
going to have anything to do with it.'"

The further the media strayed from Pearl Jam's music, the more frustrated the
band became.

"We're just a rock band and if someone builds you up so big, eventually
someone's
going to say, 'You know, they're not that great,'" Gossard said.

"A lot of the articles were focused on things that don't have anything to do
with (the music).  People are going to get tired of you."

Gossard admitted band members may have grown tired of each other.  He and
McCready credited Irons with reducing tensions that had been building for years.
Irons, who replaced Dave Abbruzzese, had been the drummer in Southern
California band Eleven.

"Having Jack in the band is definitely a big part of why we're all able to sit
in a room together," Gossard said.  "If Jack has something to say, he calls it
out.  He's a verbal lubricant.  He keeps everyone talking."

"I think we've all communicated more since Jack's been around," McCready added.

Irons has also contributed musically.  For the new album, he wrote the
untitled eighth track, on which he sings with Vedder.  Pearl Jam also recorded
Irons' song "Happy When I'm Crying" for a 7-inch "split single" with R.E.M.
that was sent to members of both bands' fan clubs as a Christmas gift.

"Jack definitely had a huge impact on this record," Gossard said.  "He's a
huge part of the band now, in terms of the songwriting and a lot of other
things.  If you get him excited, it's easy for everyone else to get excited."

While Irons may be a peacemaker behind the scenes, Vedder is still the band's
undisputed leader.

"Ed is definitely the leader of the band in terms of musical direction,"
Gossard said.  "That's who we look to onstage.  That's who everyone's looking
at.  That's who we're queuing off of."

The group collaborated more on "Yield" than on "No Code," one of Pearl Jam's
poorest-selling albums at 1.3 million copies.  The new record reflects the
hard work that band members put into their songwriting.

"Everyone got into everyone else's songs and really tried to make them happen,"
Gossard said.  "That's what makes for more original sounding stuff."

"Mike wrote two or three great songs.  Jeff wrote some really great songs.  I
got to do a lot of writing.  So everyone really got their hand in the pot and
there's a lot of individual efforts, which is nice.  You can really hear the
individual personalities."

The album was recorded during three nearly month-long sessions over seven
months last year -- some at Gossard's Studio Litho and some at Bad Animals/
Seattle.

As with previous albums, fans will puzzle over Pearl Jam's latest batch of
song lyrics.

In the fanciful "Wishlist," Vedder sings, "I wish I was a neutron bomb... for
once I could go off... I wish I was a sacrifice... but somehow still lived on."

"Sometimes our lyrics are meant to be taken literally," Gossard said.  "And
some are definitely laced with a certain sarcasm and cynicism.  There are so
many layers.  They're definitely worth a multiple listening."

Gossard insisted there's no theme to the album.  "That's way too high concept
for us," he said with a laugh.

"But these songs kind of represent something about what we're all going
through.  There's probably a throughline in there for someone to talk about
and figure out."

Though "Given to Fly" is already a hit, it isn't the only radio-friendly song
on the album.  "Do the Evolution" -- written by Gossard, with lyrics by
Vedder -- could be a slam-dunk hit.  Vedder's vocals, pushed to the edge, are
especially interesting.

Other songs likely to be popular are the melodic "Brain of J," "In Hiding" and
"Push Me, Pull Me."

Produced by Brendan O'Brien, who has produced all of Pearl Jam's albums since
1993, "Yield" is a solid album on which to base a tour.

"I think they're great rock song," Gossard said.  "A couple of years ago,
maybe we would have been a little more self-conscious about playing something
that was more of a traditional rock song.  I think there was a time when we
were a little bit embarrassed by that and we were trying to be more punk or
arty or whatever."

Pearl Jam recently opened for the Rolling Stones, whetting the band's appetite
for the shows that lie ahead.  The challenge has been finding non-Ticketmaster
venues and ticket agents.

"Based on our advanced scouting, it's going to be easier for us to tour
without Ticketmaster than it was about three years ago," Gossard said.

"There are more independent ticketing companies than there were before.  But
Ticketmaster definitely has a hold on some cities."

The situation has forced the band to be creative.

"It's a challenge," Gossard said, "but we're a band that like to have our
backs against the wall a little bit."==========

1/29/98

Subject: san diego review of yield
From: longbourne@aol.com (Longbourne)
Date: Thu, Jan 29, 1998 23:37 EST
Message-id: <19980130043700.XAA09932@ladder02.news.aol.com>

The San Diego Union-Tribune reviewed Yield in Thursday's paper. Gave it four
stars.

"As Good As It Gets: Pearl Jam strikes a bold chord in triumphant 'Yield'"
by Karla Peterson, Arts Writer
San Diego Union-Tribune, January 29, 1998, Night & Day p. 9

With its blast of storm-front guitars and waves of body-slamming drums, "Brain
of J" opens Pearl Jam's latest album (due in stores on Tuesday) with the
reassuring promise that the Seattle band is back and badder than ever.

Then Eddie Vedder opens is mouth, and Pearl Jam's cover is shot to hell.

The whole world will be different soon/ the whole world will be relieved,
Vedder sings in a falsetto that vibrates with barely suppressed hope. And
between the cracks in his voice, you can see something that looks suspiciously
like the sun shining through.

If 1996's "No Code" was Pearl Jam's collective wig-out, "Yield" is the relative
calm after the psychic squall. Warm of heart and generous of spirit, "Yield" is
Pearl Jam's most consistent effort since "Vs." and the group's most emotionally
engaging effort yet. 

Thanks to Vedder's confessional lyrics and the band's visceral sound, Pearl Jam
has always been the rock 'n' roll equivalent to an exposed nerve. From the
wounded roar of 1991's "Jeremy" through the grave introspection of 1996's "Who
You Are," Pearl Jam has a knack for turning vulnerable, human music into
populist hits. But while Vedder and the band have never been less than open ,
"Yield" marks the first time the group has sounded truly approachable.

I just want someone to be there for me, Vedder sings on "No Way," a simple
request made universal by Vedder's no-frills delivery and the bold swipe of
Mike McCready and Stone Gossard's prowling guitars. It's a combination repeated
throughout "Yield," as Pearl Jam sidesteps arena-sized statements in favor of
small-type messages you could slip into your pocket like a fortune-cookie
strip.

There is the soaring single "Given to Fly," which gets its warmblooded power
from Jack Irons' gently rolling drums, Vedder's rapt vocals and the dizzying
vision of a man in flight. There is "Wishlist," which sacrifices any semblance
of cool to a lullaby melody and such endearing confessions as, I wish I was a
messenger and all the news was good/ I wish I was the full moon shining off
your Camaro's hood. 

Its unsteady nerves bolstered by Jeff Ament's surging bass, "Faithful" blooms
into a surprisingly soulful love song (Just be, darling/And I will be,
too/Faithful to you). And while the brooding "In Hiding" starts out on the
defensive (I shut and lock the front door, no way in or out), McCready and
Gossard's expansive playing rips the song off its hinges, giving Vedder's
anthem to self-liberation exhilirating room to breathe.

In addition to featuring the band's most confident ballads, "Yield" sports the
best Pearl Jam rocker since 1993's "Rearviewmirror."  With its muscular guitars
and lithe rhythms, "MFC" manages to be both beefy and buoyant, taking Vedder's
shadowy lyrics (There's a lot to be said for nowhere) and yanking them into
exorcising daylight.

"Yield" is Pearl Jam's fifth album (not counting "Mirror Ball," the group's
1995 collaboration with Neil Young), and a few band eccentricities are still
with us. There is the usual ration of indulgent goof (Irons' untitled
instrumental, Ament's bewildering "Pilate"), but the chaotic "Push Me, Pull Me"
is a deadpan hoot, thanks to the band's nutty-professor noodlings and Vedder's
self-mocking philosophizing.

They have been off the media radar for almost two years now, and the break has
done the band members a world of good. After looking inward for so long, Vedder
is venturing out, and the guarded optimism of his songs is matched by the
band's sweeping music. And the whole uplifting package comes together
beautifully on Gossard's "All Those Yesterdays," which closes the album with a
tender plea for redemption and reconciliation. 

I'm through with screaming, Vedder sings on "Faithful," which is not the same
as being through with being heard. On "Yield," Pearl Jam still makes a mighty
rock noise, but beneath the ring and roar, you can hear the faint rustle of
fists unclenching, hearts unfolding and eyes turning toward the sun. It sounds
like a whisper, but it feels like a victory.

(end of review)

So there ya go. If the album is this good, what else do we need?

Typing "MFC" makes me crave fried chicken,

Laura=========

1/29/98

From: Shanil Virani <svirani@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 05:15:15 -0500 (EST)
Subject: LR: Hungry for some new Jam? 

  This message is in MIME format.  The first part should be readable text,
  while the remaining parts are likely unreadable without MIME-aware tools.
  Send mail to mime@docserver.cac.washington.edu for more info.

- --------------4CDC2BA12CE6
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=us-ascii
Content-ID: <Pine.SOL.3.95.980130051243.27066D@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>

from yesterday's toronto sun:

                                  GO TO TODAY'S MUSIC NEWS

                 Thursday, January 29, 1998

                 Hungry for some new Jam?

                 With Seattle scene mostly packed up and gone, band may
 More on         face uphill battle
 Pearl Jam
 in the Jam!                  By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun
 Music
 Database        Nirvana's long gone.                              [Image]

                 Alice In Chains and Screaming Trees are missing
 Inside Jam      in action.

 Search Jam!     Soundgarden and The Presidents Of The United States
 Music           packed it in last year.

                 And the once mighty and ultra cool Seattle-based Sub-Pop
 Album           label recently closed its Canadian office and laid off
 Reviews         several long-time employees at its headquarters.

                 Heck, even Courtney Love put her Lake Washington digs up
 Clive           for sale last year -- after restoring the house to its
                 original state and bulldozing the greenhouse where hubby
                 Kurt Cobain shot himself -- and moved to L.A.
 Jam! Music
                 The pioneers of the Emerald City's once-vibrant music
                 scene of the early '90s have all vanished, formed new
 Jam! Movies     groups like Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters, or gone solo a la
                 Soundgarden's Chris Cornell.

                 Except for Pearl Jam, who appear to be the sole surviving
 Jam! TV         Seattle supergroup with a highly anticipated new album,
                 Yield, in stores Tuesday. (My review will appear in this
                 Sunday's Flipside.)
 Jam!
 Country         Not only is Yield the first major album release of 1998
                 -- beating new Madonna and Eric Clapton records by a full
                 month -- it's also the first major rock album of the
 Jam! Video      year.

                 Since 1997 wasn't a great year for rock -- such veterans
 Jam! Books      as the Rolling Stones and U2 sold out stadiums but were
                 unable to get as many fans to buy their new releases --
                 everyone will be watching to see how Yield does.
 Jam!
 Theatre         Pearl Jam's 1996 album, the Eastern-influenced No Code,
                 didn't exactly fly out of record stores, selling 1.3
                 million copies in the U.S. and 300,000 copies in Canada.
 CMT Canada
                 The big question is will the band be able to find an
                 audience when people are currently listening to such
 Jam!            bubblegum popsters as Spice Girls and Hanson and more
 Session         substantial rap acts like Puff Daddy and The Notorious
                 B.I.G.

 Help            Entertainment Weekly cited Yield as one of the 10 biggest
                 gambles of 1998 because "the musical landscape has been
                 re-drawn. The only avenue for these alt-rock standard
 [Image]         bearers is to pitch themselves as the premier
                 classic-rock band."

                 Laugh if you will, but '70s act Fleetwood Mac did
                 extremely well last year with their reunion disc, The
                 Dance, and tour.

                 Speaking of road trips, Pearl Jam will launch their world
                 trek in Maui on Feb. 20 and 21 before heading to
                 Australia and New Zealand for dates in March. The
                 speculation is that they will begin playing North
                 America, including Toronto, in late May or early June.
              [Image]
                 Meanwhile, Yield, co-produced by Pearl Jam and longtime
                 collaborator Brendan O'Brien and recorded in Seattle and
                 Atlanta, is being shipped platinum-plus (more than
                 100,000 copies) in Canada and is expected to be shipped
                 similarly in the U.S.

                 The encouraging news is that early Yield reviews have
                 been positive.

                 "Impressive from beginning to end," said US of the album.

                 "There's a lightness to the music, something almost
                 entirely absent from the Bigfoot rock of Pearl Jam's
                 past," said Details.

                 It would certainly help the band's cause if they did an
                 about-face on their "no interviews or videos" policy.

                 Currently, there are no plans for any videos for Yield,
                 although a long form video may be in the offing.

                 As for talking, guitarist Stone Gossard told the Jan. 10
                 issue of Billboard that by taking itself out of the
                 publicity machine, Pearl Jam has managed to stay
                 together.

                 "Being able to pull back from all that pressure helped
                 give us the space to figure out our internal problems,"
                 he said.

                 Apparently backing up the Stones for four dates in
                 Oakland last November also revitalized the group.

                 "Really, our band unity has never been better," Gossard
                 said. "And after just opening for the Stones and getting
                 to see them play so well after all these years, we're
                 hungrier than ever."

                 But are Pearl Jam fans still hungry, and to what degree?

                 link:Pearl Jam rocks hard on new album

                         --------------------------------------------

                 Today's Jam! Music Headlines
                 Madonna tops spring releases
                 Bootleg Madonna already out on Net
                 Chantal Kreviazuk a Canadian success
                 Titanic steams past competition
                 Aqua holds No.1 spot on MuchMusic charts
                 Our Lady Peace tops new videos this week
                 Nazareth: Ex-Black Panther coming to town
                 Sax moosic from Swinging Bovines
                 Local Celtic quartet explores primal beats
                 Review: Blue Rodeo shows musical versatility
                 Review: Bran Van simply amaze
                 Review: Burgess lacking style

                 The latest Canadian Concert Announcements
                 The week's 10 coolest tunes: The Anti-Hit List
                 Exclusive: SoundScan charts for Canada
                 Get the goods with: Jam!'s Chart Talk
                 Jam! Music's: Photo Galleries
                 Brand new Presidents Of The U.S.A.: "Video Killed The
                 Radio Star ('98)" (295K)
                 Backwards Marilyn Manson!: "The Beautiful People" (308K)
                 Make a new friend (or enemy) in Jam! Session


- ------------------
Shanil Virani                        shanil@yorku.ca
Dept. of Physics & Astronomy         http://aries.phys.yorku.ca/~svirani
York University, 4700 Keele St.      FAX: 416-736-5516 
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3 Canada      416-736-2100 ext. 66391

	I wish I was a silhouette, someone who waited for me
	I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me
	I wish I was a messenger and all the news good
			-- "Wish List", Pearl Jam
		

1/29/98

From: Shanil Virani <svirani@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 14:51:37 -0500 (EST)
Subject: [none]

here's actually an interesting one from the boston phoenix...

                                     True believers

                            Pearl Jam keep the faith on Yield

                                     by Matt Ashare

                  Pearl Jam may be the first              [Pearl Jam]
                  commercially thriving band in the
                  history of rock ever to have engaged in a prolonged
                  concerted effort to become less popular. Plenty of
                  artists have unwittingly achieved the same effect
                  with stunning ease -- the Gin Blossoms, Spin Doctors,
                  and Seven Mary Three are some recent examples.
                  Others, like Neil Young and Lou Reed, may enjoy
                  taking calculated risks by putting out challenging
                  albums with a limited appeal from time to time. But
                  for Pearl Jam, a band whose enormously popular first
                  album was a crucial landmark in the triumph of
                  alternative rock, bucking success has been a
                  monumental and near-continuous five-year struggle --
                  a struggle that has at times taken on Sisyphean
                  dimensions for the group's surfer-turned-singer,
                  Eddie Vedder.

                  Vedder sailed into the limelight with remarkable ease
                  back in '92, and he's been struggling ever since to
                  push his band back onto some hard-to-reach ridge
                  overlooking the mythical American mainstream. Till
                  now it's been an uphill battle. As hard as they've
                  tried to hold back -- by refusing to make videos,
                  touring irregularly at best, avoiding interviews, and
                  keeping the production on their CDs rough and raw --
                  Pearl Jam just can't help writing anthemic songs that
                  bridge the lucrative gap between classic and
                  alternative rock.

                  But with the new Yield, their fifth Epic album (in
                  stores this Tuesday), Vedder and his crew may be
                  settling into the first comfortable space, both
                  commercially and artistically, they've occupied since
                  "Jeremy" entered the MTV Buzz Bin. Not that Yield
                  will immediately strike most fans as much of a
                  departure from what the band have been doing since
                  they eschewed the reverb-drenched grandeur of Ten on
                  '93's Vs. (Epic). The formula is still aggressive
                  chug-and-churn riff rock with the occasional
                  unplugged acoustic respite, topped off with Vedder's
                  earnest, deep-chested, soul-baring croon, and
                  carefully produced (by Brendan O'Brien) to
                  approximate the austere, rough-around-the-edges feel
                  of a bunch of buddies bashing around a few tunes in
                  an acoustically sound garage.

                  If this was retro five years ago, then it's a full-on
                  anachronism in 1998. But that's what Pearl Jam have
                  come to stand for: celebrating vinyl LPs (Vitalogy's
                  "Spin the Black Circle"), reviving the brash rock
                  operatics of the '70s Who, burning incense and
                  candles on stage, and remembering the glory days of
                  rock before video, digital sampling, and $100 concert
                  tickets. As Vedder intones on the proud chorus of
                  "Faithful," "We're faithful/We all believe in . . . a
                  place that hasn't been stepped on is rare." More than
                  ever, Vedder shares Bono's faith in activist rock --
                  "Soon the whole world will be different," he intones
                  on the cryptic "Brain of J.," and against the dirty
                  wah-wah-choked guitars of "No Way" he chants "I
                  stopped trying to make a difference" in a voice that
                  suggests he'll never actually stop trying. But it's
                  the ability of bassist Jeff Ament and guitarists Mike
                  McCready and Stone Gossard to avoid contemporary
                  active-rock clich�s (i.e., the turgid Stone Temple
                  Pilotisms of Days of the New) in favor of deep,
                  elasticky grooves that lends weight to Vedder's
                  ruminations and gives the singer the psychic space he
                  needs to bare his soul in songs like the power ballad
                  "In Hiding."

                  So there really hasn't been much change in what Pearl
                  Jam do, but Yield seems to reflect a difference in
                  the band's -- or at least in Vedder's -- attitude
                  about doing it. Back when Ten exploded, there was
                  much written and said about Pearl Jam's lack of
                  authenticity, about riding Nirvana's coattails, about
                  Seattle hype. And some of those words must have
                  stung. Vedder, in particular, abandoned the openness
                  of Ten tunes like "Black" and "Alive," turning inward
                  and even a bit surly on the discs that followed,
                  tightening his voice into a defensively flexed
                  muscle, making music that felt more like a hair shirt
                  than second-hand flannel. Yield has its share of the
                  kind of punk-inspired discord that's never suited
                  Pearl Jam terribly well, but less of it than on the
                  last three discs. Vedder and the rest of the band are
                  reaching out again, letting more melody creep in
                  around the jagged guitars, not straining quite so
                  hard to be difficult or challenging in ways that
                  never seemed natural for Pearl Jam, because Pearl Jam
                  aren't Fugazi or Sonic Youth or Nirvana.

                  Yield couldn't have come a better time. Last year the
                  pop of Hanson, the Spice Girls, Celine, and Mariah,
                  along with Puff Daddy's hip-hop and the cosmopolitan
                  country of Garth, Shania, and LeAnn, just about froze
                  alternative guitar rock out of the Top 10 positions
                  on Billboard's album sales charts. Labels are
                  thinking twice before signing new alternative-rock
                  acts. No, Pearl Jam are never going to be the kind of
                  "underground" band Vedder may idolize. But having
                  challenged the monolithic Ticketmaster and lost, the
                  band are closer than ever before to being the next
                  best thing -- underdogs. Suddenly a new Pearl Jam CD
                  doesn't seem like such a sure thing. And that could
                  be the best thing that's ever happened to the band.


1/30/98

From: Shanil Virani <svirani@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 14:47:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: LR: Yield Album Review...

Thought perhaps some of you may be interested in yet another review... :) this
time from ATN:

 			-------------------------------------

                                       Music That Fingers The Jagged
                                       Edge Of Pain

              Pearl Jam, "Brain Of J"  By Chris Nelson
                  (45 second excerpt)
       [Play Stereo MPEG]      1.09MB       Ever since Pearl Jam
       [Play Mono MPEG]         547k   catapulted from Seattle clubs to
                                       superstardom in 1991, much has
       [Play Mono Ulaw]         364k   been made of the band's debt to
       [Play RealAudio 3.0]     3.0    rock forebears such as the Who,
       [Play RealAudio 28.8k]  28.8k   Neil Young and Led Zeppelin. Few
             [Click to buy this CD!]   people, however, have explored
                                       the group's relationship to the
                                       revolutionary '80s punk trio,
                                       the Minutemen. Whether the
                                       personal friendship between PJ
                                       singer Eddie Vedder and
                                       Minutemen bassist Mike Watt has
                                       ever produced any clear artistic
                                       influence makes for an
                                       intriguing question, not only in
                                       terms of PJ's new album, Yield,
                                       but for the band's whole
                                       aesthetic.

                                       At times, Pearl Jam's ambiguous
                                       lyrics seem miles apart from the
                                       work of the Minutemen, whose
                                       every album outlined a clear
                                       artistic and political mission.
                                       And yet, like the Minutemen --
                                       who honed some of their best
                                       work down to a single lyric or
                                       song title -- Pearl Jam often
                                       invite listeners into their
                                       world through enticing pinpricks
                                       of clarity. Such has been the
                                       case throughout the band's
                                       career, and it remains true with
                                       Yield.

                                       Rather than opening their
                                       windows wide, Pearl Jam prefer
                                       to inch the frames up just a
                                       crack, allowing fans enough
                                       space to find their own means
                                       for pushing further into the
                                       open air and light. Of course
                                       each listener finds cracks in
                                       different places; and once such
                                       openings are discovered, they
                                       often require effort from the
                                       listener before they fully
                                       relinquish their treasures.

                                       Those who apply the effort on
                                       Yield are duly rewarded. To be
                                       sure, Yield's music mines what
        Pearl Jam, "Do The Evolution"  has become familiar territory to
                  (45 second excerpt)  fans, as Pearl Jam rely both on
       [Play Stereo MPEG]      1.09MB  the larger-than-life rock idioms
                                       that defined Ten, Vs. and
       [Play Mono MPEG]         544k   Vitalogy, as well as on the
       [Play Mono Ulaw]         362k   quieter meditations that marked
       [Play RealAudio 3.0]     3.0    their last album, the more
       [Play RealAudio 28.8k]  28.8k   experimental No Code (1996).
                                       Yield's lyrics are a tougher nut
             [Click to buy this CD!]   to crack, but at least as
                                       fruitful. At their best, each of
                                       the album's lines opens portals
                                       to understanding another, like a
                                       domino chain of doorways opening
                                       to reveal corridors of
                                       exhaustion, skepticism and
                                       escape.

                                       Pearl Jam have long shown a
                                       penchant for lyrical enigmas, so
                                       perhaps I should have guessed
                                       that I might discover my own
                                       entryway into Yield where I'd
                                       least expected it, in the aptly
                                       titled "Wish List." The song is,
                                       in fact, a straight catalogue of
                                       one-line fantasies. The
                                       registry-like structure of its
                                       lyrics -- each line begins, "I
                                       wish ... " -- is complemented by
                                       the song's delicate musical
                                       foundation. Guitarist Mike
                                       McCready brings the track
                                       full-circle with a guitar solo
                                       that climbs as high as the
                                       clouds where dreamers lose
                                       themselves in thoughts such as
                                       "I wish I was the full moon
                                       shining off your Camaro's hood."

                                       But it wasn't until the singer
                                       utters what I at first thought
                                       was a bothersome wish -- to be
                                       "a sacrifice that somehow still
                                       lived on" -- that I stumbled
                                       upon my own cracked window. To
                                       be a sacrifice that remains is,
                                       of course, a paradox; and among
                                       the more carefully crafted
                                       wishes in the song, this line
                                       came across as too
                                       self-conscious, as if it were
                                       banally generating perplexity
                                       for its own sake -- that is,
                                       unless it were intended not as a
                                       paradox at all.

                                       Historically, and figuratively,
                                       sacrifices have long lived on,
                                       from Martin Luther King Jr. to
                                       Jesus Christ (appropriate
                                       touchstones in light of the
                                       angels, prayers, choirs and sins
        "Pearl Jam creates soaring     that pervade Yield). Perhaps
     anthems from grief; they render   such immortality is the singer's
           floating dreams from        goal when he wishes to be "the
             introspection."           evidence ... for 50 million
                                       hands upraised and open toward
                                       the sky." Still, even though MLK
                                       and Jesus were willing to be
                                       sacrifices, they were by no
                                       means wishing to go.

                                       And then, in the lyric just
                                       before the Camaro line, it all
                                       began to make sense. "I wish I
                                       was the messenger and all the
                                       news was good," says the singer.
                                       Even Jesus knew that his good
                                       news also involved pain -- and
                                       that is precisely what the
                                       singer wants so desperately to
                                       avoid. "Wish List," then, is a
                                       catalog of escape. The singer
                                       here isn't immature -- he's
                                       exhausted.

                                       Exhausted by what he doesn't
                                       say, but an obsession to
                                       introspect is probably not too
                                       off-base, as other Yield tracks
                                       offer similar revelations. For
                                       example, after exploring his
                                       mind and finding it "so
                                       revealing" and "too clear," a
                                       singer on the verge of collapse
                                       chants, "I'll stop trying to
                                       make a difference" in guitarist
                                       Stone Gossard's "No Way."

                                       Bouts of existential exhaustion
                                       are fortunately not enough to
                                       kill Yield's curiosity or
                Pearl Jam, "Wishlist"  skepticism. Indeed, "Push Me
                  (45 second excerpt)  Pull Me," a warped piece of
       [Play Stereo MPEG]      1.09MB  sonic chaos undergirded by Jeff
       [Play Mono MPEG]         542k   Ament's throbbing bass, asks the
       [Play Mono Ulaw]                biggest question of them all,
                                361k   observing that, "The oceans made
       [Play RealAudio 3.0]     3.0    me, but who came up with love?"
       [Play RealAudio 28.8k]  28.8k   (Meanwhile, on the cathartic and
             [Click to buy this CD!]   boastful romp "Do The
                                       Evolution," the singer curses a
                                       human race that, having risen
                                       from the oceans, has become
                                       dangerously self-centered.)

                                       Skepticism is allowed its most
                                       forceful airing on the album's
                                       second track, "Faithful," which,
                                       along with "In Hiding" and
                                       "Given To Fly," portrays a band
                                       ready to resume its tenure as
                                       masters of arena-sized rock
                                       anthems. But like the rock
                                       anthem "Born In The U.S.A.,"
                                       "Faithful" hides its distrust
                                       between the lines of a rallying
                                       chorus. Any time a writer as
                                       individualistic as Vedder offers
                                       an absolute such as "We all
                                       believe," the lyric should not
                                       be trusted. Here, the singer
                                       damns communal myths that blind
                                       us to self-awareness and swears
                                       off prayers "that nobody hears."
                                       In the end, he pledges himself
                                       faithful only to the individual
                                       soul and spirit.

                                       Of course we've already seen how
                                       such self-awareness can be
                                       fatiguing, and on several songs
                                       the band searches for escape
                                       from the exhaustion. In "Push Me
                                       Pull Me" the singer readies
                                       himself for the ultimate retreat
                                       in death and actually looks
                                       forward to the calm it will
                                       bring. "Like a cloud dropping
                                       rain," he says, "I'm discarding
                                       all thought."

                                       With that, Pearl Jam pave the
                                       way for Yield's positively
                                       Beatlesesque closing song, "All
                                       Those Yesterdays." "Don't you
                                       think you oughtta rest?" Vedder
                                       asks with lullaby gentleness.
                                       After all, with sleep comes a
                                       new tomorrow, and perhaps a
                                       clean slate. As the track fades
                                       to a close, the band promises,
                                       "It's no crime to escape."

                                       And that is precisely what Pearl
                                       Jam do on Yield, and what
                                       they've done in the past as
                                       well: escape through the music.
                                       Pearl Jam creates soaring
                                       anthems from grief; they render
                                       floating dreams from
                                       introspection. Their gift may
                                       just be a variation on Ralph
                                       Ellison's definition of the
                                       blues: "music that fingers the
                                       jagged edge of pain and
                                       transcends it." Whether they're
                                       proffering anthems such as
                                       "Faithful" or meditations such
                                       as "Wish List," Pearl Jam are
                                       never as confrontational as the
                                       best blues -- but, as they prove
                                       on Yield, invariably they do
                                       transcend.

- ------------------


1/31/98

Subject: Yield - Rollingstone Review
From: Matt <wfm@prodigy.net>
Date: Sat, Jan 31, 1998 01:09 EST
Message-id: <34D2C024.FD1D89DC@prodigy.net>

Here is the yield review from Rolling Stone. Four out of five stars...
here is the scale ****=excellent!

good review...Sheffield occasionaly throws in some unwelcome comments
and forgets he is reviewing an album and not discussing the history of
seattly rock. I enjoyed the Addicted to Noise review better.
----------------------------------------
Reviews
* * * *
Yield
Pearl Jam
Epic

                              As rock stars, Pearl Jam had to learn on
the job.
                              They got turned into icons before they
ever got
                              to come on as human beings, and they were
                              stuck in the role of grunge poster boys
before
                              they had a chance to get their own voices
                              together. From the beginning, Pearl Jam
knew
                              how to whip up a big, blustery rock sound.
But
                              they sounded confused about what to do
with it.
                              They never had much knack for high-speed
         punk-rock riffs, and their songwriting got bogged down in
overblown,
         chest-beating angst. For all Eddie Vedder's sincerity, he was
always
         auditioning too hard for the Troubled Childhood All-Stars. Like
the rest
         of the band, he seemed stiff, as though he was afraid no one
would take
         him seriously if he got caught having fun. Eddie wasn't only
the Low
         Self-Esteem Club president; he was also a client.

         But Pearl Jam started to lighten up on 1994's "Vitalogy" and
1996's "No
         Code," and "Yield" is the payoff. They want you to hear "Yield"
as an
         album rather than as a pop-culture event, distancing themselves
even
         further from their anthem-mongering, trauma-sharing,
flannel-flaunting
         youth. Pearl Jam might not be the generational spokesmodels
they used
         to be, but they've grown up to be a looser, livelier band,
writing sharper
         tunes to fit their dense, intricate guitar fuzz. Before, the
band's best
         songs were the change-of-pace ballads: the brawny acoustic
strumming
         of "Daughter," "Nothingman" and "Elderly Woman Behind the
Counter
         in a Small Town." "Yield" marks the first time Pearl Jam have
managed
         to sustain that mood for a whole album.

         There's not much bluster on "Yield," and even the rockers have
an
         uncommonly easy touch that's new to Pearl Jam. Ever since they
         hooked up with ex-Chili Pepper drummer Jack Irons on their
excellent
         Neil Young collaboration, "Mirror Ball," they've gotten more
nimble at
         revving up the tempo. Rave-ups like "Brain of J" pile on the
         guitar-magazine effects without overpowering the power chords.
But
         the ballads are the real attention getters on Yield:
Slow-motion melodies
         like "Low Light" and "In Hiding" give Vedder a chance to
luxuriate in
         the nooks and crannies of his ruggedly handsome voice, the
band's
         trump card. "Given to Fly" even takes its tune straight from
the ultimate
         album-rock radio ballad, Led Zeppelin's "Going to California,"
an
         audacious bit of pop recycling as clever as a prime Puffy
sample.

         As you'd expect, Eddie Vedder is still the star of the show,
and "Yield"
         offers plenty of new chapters in the ongoing story of Eddie and
his
         tortured soul. The big difference in these songs is that Vedder
is singing
         more frankly than ever about his life as an adult. He's always
been one
         of the few males on the radio who can sing about women without
         coming off like a jerk, and on "Yield" he even tries to sing a
few earnest
         love songs. The amazing "Faithful" begins as a fairly
conventional
         critique of religion and turns into passionate testifying about
a marriage.
         The gentle power-pop nugget "Wishlist," a silly love song that
Vedder
         composed solo, might be the simplest song Pearl Jam have ever
done.
         But it's also the most moving. As the guitars buzz and hum
around him,
         Eddie rolls out some outrageously playful valentine couplets:
"I wish I
         was the souvenir you kept your house key on/I wish I was the
pedal
         brake that you depended on."

         Pearl Jam's old-school audience might not forgive them for
wanting to
         grow up. "No Code" was a relative commercial flop, suggesting
that lots
         of their fans were waiting for "Jeremy Part II," "The Wrath of
Jeremy,"
         "Jeremy Goes to College" and "Jeremy Takes Manhattan."
         New-jack-grunge merchants like Live and the Verve Pipe have
been
         only too happy to move in on the hell-is-for-children market.
If Pearl
         Jam's smaller place in the universe bothers them, though, you
wouldn't
         know it from the confidently graceful craft of "Yield." They've
always
         conducted an uneasy public dance with their audience,
desperately
         building up their pop myth when they aren't desperately backing
away
         from it. By stripping down their mammoth riffs on "Yield," they
show
         that they're smart enough to remember what happened to windbags
like
         the Alarm and Big Country. But "Yield" also shows that Pearl
Jam have
         made the most out of growing up in public, and that they're
leaving
         lumberjack chic behind. (RS 780)

         ROB SHEFFIELD



         Copyright (c) 1997 by Straight Arrow Publishers Company, L.P. All
rights reserved.

1/31/98

Subject: O.C. Register Review
Date: Sat, Jan 31, 1998 00:27 EST
From: PattenDar
Message-id: <19980131052700.AAA06635@ladder03.news.aol.com>

On the cover "teaser" of the review it says "New Pearl Jam Album is a
 Gem" but the review doesn't exactly match the title.  By the way, the
 review includes a new picture taken from the same photo shoot as the
 others we've seen lately.  Ed's kind of crouching down on a rock with
 his hands lifted up behind his back (you'd have to see it).
 
 -Darlene
 
 ******************
 Pearl Jam tries to Rock in Yield
"Yield", Epic (3 1/2 checks out of 5)

 The advance word on this, Pearl Jam's fifth album, is just a tad ahead
 of itself.  "Yield" (in stores Tuesday) is not the mighty Seattle
 rockers' cranking, scorching, mind-blowing return to grunge-glory
 form, following the gauzy and meandering "No Code" (1996).  Neither is
 it as out there as that last record, nor as radical a departure from
 the band's bedrock blood-and-grime approach.
 
 Bluntly, "Yield" wants to rock.  It wants to shake loose the tedium
 and confusion and bang its head.  And when it does --- as on the
 opening "Brain of J" -- it rocks hard.  Very hard.  Guitarists Stone
 Gossard and Mike McCready have rarely laid down chunkier riffing,
 while the limber licks of rhythm aces Jeff Amendt and Jack Irons never
 miss, whether the tune is straight-ahead ("Faithful") or experimental
 ("Push Me Pull You").
 
 But this isn't "Ten Part II".  Nothing here smacks you in the solar
 plexus the way "Even Flow" did (still does).  "Yield" kicks out the
 jams only intermittently, and why shouldn't it?  Pearl Jam is past
 ready to let nuance and soulfulness connect with its otherwise
 charging aesthetic.
 
 That's where the band's head is at, but will it cause further
 alienation?  More than any other band's following, Pearl Jam's many
 fanatics (and more numerous casual fans) refuse to let Eddie Vedder
 --- excuse me, that's Ed Vedder, according to this disc's liner notes
 --- and pals expand and grow.  Brain-rattling rock, the sort that
 fuels something like "Spin the Black Circle" is only one weapon in the
 band's arsenal.  It's capable of much more.
 
 For the most part on "Yield", Pearl Jam proves it.  Most of the best
 moments here are built out of the same volcano-erupting dynamics of
 the earlier "Not for You" --- slow-burning tension giving way to rage.
 Only, Vedder's anger isn't so unbridled anymore.  If "No Code" proved
 anything it was that Vedder can use introspection not just to find
 complaints but also to heal himself.  "Yield" more so than any
 previous Pearl Jam effort, discovers its cure for the post-modern
 blues in spirituality.
 
 The band is clearly on a quest, and its not just born out of Vedder's
 tough-love soul-searching.  From the first single, "Given to Fly"
 (which in its verses echoes the hippie wistfulness of Led Zeppelin's
 "Going to California") to the absurb "Pilate", from the ruminative
 "Low Light" to the self-forgiving "All Those Yesterdays" ("let them
 wash away", Vedder sings), "Yield" unfurls a new side not just of
 Pearl Jam but of 90's rock.  If "Alive" was existentialism dressed up
 as teen angst, cuts such as "Wishlist" and "In Hiding" are hopefully
 humanistic and almost Hindu in their sensibility.
 
 Still, the album is flawed.  Vedder's voice is consistently buried in
 the mix.  Occasionally that intrigues, but more often it grates and
 potentially speaks to a lack of conviction in the material's religious
 overtones.  On the other hand, when Vedder is loud and clear, he goes
 overboard, as on the frantic, Talking Heads-ish "Do the Evolution" or
 the avant-garde "Push Me Pull You."
 
 "Yield" almost seems to suggest a kind of lives-out-of-balance theme,
 something Pearl Jam seems destined to examine more deeply, but it
 doesn't quite pull it off here, its slightly unfinished feel
 subtracting from a fully resonant experience.
 
 Nevertheless, it has guts and power, and Vedder may be the last of his
 class who's unwilling to accept success for happiness.  ("I wish I was
 as fortunate.....as fortunate as me", he sings on "Wishlist.")  In
 that sense of commitment, "Yield" is a remarkable album.  It is not,
 as many publications inevitably will claim, the first great album of
 1998.  It's worthy of praise but likely will have little to do with
 where music is going this year.
 
 Rather, it's the right album for Pearl Jam to make right now --- a
 strong leap forward toward crystallizing its ambitions vision, still
 an arm's length out of reach.
 
 You might enjoy it if you like:
 Pearl Jam's "Vitalogy" and "No Code", the riskier moments of The Who's
 "Quadrophenia," Soundgarden's last two albums, Nirvana's "In Utero".
 
 By BEN  WENER/The Register
 
 THE CHECK LIST
 
 +++++   Drop what you're doing and buy it now
 ++++     Finish what you're doing but buy it soon
 +++       Put it on your list of music to buy
 ++         Buy only if you're a die-hard fan
 +           Ignore 



1/31/98

Subject: SF Chronicle Yield Review
From: evelynr@aol.com (EvelynR)
Date: Sat, Jan 31, 1998 14:13 EST
Message-id: <19980131191301.OAA11810@ladder02.news.aol.com>

By Phil Hamilton:

Rating: 8 out of 10***

Pearl Jam have set out to promote their much anticipated new release, 
Yield, like a band possessed. Billboards, posters, even television 
commercials -- all from a band who refused to make videos for their last 
three albums and whose battles with Ticketmaster over ticket prices and 
service charges are now legendary. With Yield, Pearl Jam will actually 
release a video (directed by Cameron Crowe of Jerry Maguire and Singles
 fame) and set out for a lengthy worldwide tour kicking off in Hawaii at 
the end of February. Diehard fans of the band might be worried that all 
of the fuss is to make up for a lackluster album.Well, don't fret. With 
Yield, Pearl Jam re-establishes their place among rock's elite. 
The album kicks off with the excellent Brain Of J, a pulsating number 
reminiscent of rearviewmirror from the band's second release, Vs. Given 
To Fly, the album's first single, is a safe choice. Eddie Vedder's voice 
is in fine form and the song is quintessential Pearl Jam.

The lyrics, as is the case of most of the songs on Yield, are quite 
poetic. "And he still gives his love, he just gives it away / and the 
love he receives is the love that is saved / and sometimes is seen a 
strange spot in the sky / a human being that was given to fly." While 
appearing beautiful on paper, they are even more touching when sung by 
the powerful Vedder.

The album flows nicely -- from the haunting beauty of In Hiding to the 
psychedelic, spoken word drama of Push Me Pull Me, which is an 
interesting look at death ("I had a false belief / I thought that I came 
here to stay / we're all just visiting / all just breaking like 
waves.").

There is one clunker that brings the pace of Yield to a screeching halt, 
and that is the folksy Low Light. While sounding more like Crosby, 
Stills and Nash than Pearl Jam, this tune had me flashing back to that 
fateful afternoon a few years ago when Neil Young sat in for an ailing 
Eddie Vedder at Golden Gate Park. But that album is packed with enough 
strong tunes to ignore that slight bump in the road. MFC features a 
rhythmic pace that dangles the listener at the edge of a threshold 
without ever crossing the line. And Wishlist, featuring simple messages 
of hope, is a slow burning number that would seem as natural sung by a 
campfire as in any concert hall. 

Can Pearl Jam save rock music? With Yield, it seems as though they 
decided to attack the trends that are dominating radio airwaves today 
and release a bunch of tunes that together make up a great album. While 
there is no song as poignant as Black (perhaps the most powerful anthem 
of the 90's) or even as heartwrenching as Better Man, Yield is a solid 
album that ranks up there with the best that Pearl Jam has to offer.



1/31/98

From ATN >>

Pearl Jam's New Day Rising




America's most misunderstood rock band is
back with the album of its career, a rockin'
gem called Yield. Rock critic Dave
Marsh met up with all five bandmembers in
Seattle to find out what makes these 
idiosyncratic rockers tick. Or something like
that.


By Dave Marsh


You might imagine that life in one cage is quite like life in any other 
cage, but this is not at all the case. -- Daniel Quinn, "Ishmael" 

SEATTLE -- On the flight from New York to Seattle, it was hard not to 
wonder why I'd agreed to spend a December day interviewing the five 
members of Pearl Jam. Interview assignments have made me apprehensive 
for 30 years, and I hadn't tried to cram this many interviews into one 
day in a long time. But that wasn't the real problem, nor was the fact 
that I'd agreed to develop the interview material for the band's own 
use. (They'd distribute it on CD to radio and fans, and make a big chunk 
of the transcript available to journalists.) 

What this was about, I guess, was how many years it had been since there 
was a rock band I'd really wanted to interview. The last one had been -- 
what -- Soul Asylum? The perfect irony, since Eddie Vedder was the most 
obvious target of Dave Pirner's assault on grunge "drama queens" in Soul 
Asylum's "Misery." 



Pearl Jam, "Wishlist"
(45 second excerpt) 

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Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: Yield-cd 


But Pearl Jam -- guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, bassist 
Jeff Ament, drummer Jack Irons and singer Eddie -- never struck me as 
miserable (not that sounding miserable is any disqualification for 
making great rock 'n' roll). To me, Pearl Jam is more like the Who and 
the MC5, bands whose live shows were exciting, affirmative, joyous in 
particularly physical ways. 

No denying that the band is moody and that its public life has been 
tumultuous from the moment of its first refusal of the star-making 
machinery: when it declined to do any videos after "Jeremy." 

Hell, if Pearl Jam had sold one-tenth as many albums -- well, maybe 
one-hundredth as many -- the group would be heroes for exposing the 
Ticketmaster stranglehold on concert venues, rather than being regarded 
as carping failures because the Clinton Justice Dept. refused to 
acknowledge Ticketmaster's true role in blockading competition. 

If Pearl Jam were performing in 500 seat clubs and its lead singer got 
food poisoning and a legend like Neil Young stepped in and took over the 
show, the gig might have been seen as a triumph. But, of course, that 
happened in front of 50,000 people (in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park 
in the summer of '95), and rather than being excited over getting to see 
Neil Young with the band with whom he had just made Mirror Ball (in my 
opinion, Neil's best album in almost a decade), the crowd and the media 
continued with its program of making Eddie the whole show, when in fact 
what's so great about him is that he has found a way to be a part of a 
band, first among equals, rather than a star dragging some sidemen 
around. I guess they should have called themselves Smashing Assumptions. 



"I think we were burned out," bassist Jeff Ament said.


As far as I'm concerned, Pearl Jam has yet to make its first mediocre 
album, even if Vitalogy and No Code are, to say the least, quirky. 
Yield, the new one, is as good as anything the band has ever done. In 
certain ways -- the spaciousness of its sound, the multiplicity of 
perspectives that come from Jeff and Stone making strong writing 
contributions as lyricists as well as riff inventors, the number of 
memorable tracks ("Do the Evolution," "Wish List," "Pilate," "Brain of 
J," "Given to Fly," "Low Light") -- you could argue that it is the 
band's very best. The Pearl Jam of Yield don't sound moody or 
disaffected.They sound like a rock band raring to go, and judging from 
their "warm-up" dates opening for the Stones at the Oakland-Alameda 
County (California) Coliseum Complex in December, that's just what they 
are. 


Click to view an image (Photo by Frank Micelotta):
Pearl_Jam: red_pearl-fm 


Which is kinda strange, I gotta admit. After its 1996 U.S. tour 
disintegrated in the wake of the food poisoning show in San Francisco, 
I'd expected Pearl Jam either to break up or to become something like a 
contemporary Steely Dan ("Don't ever say that," Stone Gossard responded 
in mock horror), making records regularly, touring rarely -- if ever. 



Pearl Jam, "Brain Of J"
(45 second excerpt) 

1.09MB
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I love the records, but Pearl Jam's true existence is where a rock band 
of this kind's ought to be, onstage. I've traveled distances to see 
Pearl Jam -- as a fan, not a pro -- that I haven't done for any band 
since the Who and the MC5. I know some of the guys in the band a little 
bit -- Eddie from the time of the 1992 Lollapalooza show in New York, 
when he became the first rock star ever to call me "Mr." (he now claims 
this was because I had written not just articles but books, but it still 
left me feeling like the 2,000-Year-Old Rock Critic), Stone and Jeff 
from the Congressional hearing on Ticketmaster, where I also testified 
against its "monopoly." (Which is what the goddamn thing is, let's face 
it, no matter what the Justice Dept. Anti-Trust Division says. If you 
don't believe me, try booking a show of any size in New York or Los 
Angeles without going through them; Pearl Jam can't.)

[EDITOR'S NOTE -- Ticketmaster denies that it monopolizes the 
ticket-selling business.] 

So maybe part of my apprehension, this time, was simply shock that the 
band has survived -- like finding out that someone else's rocky marriage 
has produced an uproarious new baby. You'd be delighted to know that it 
had worked out that way and still not necessarily all that eager to go 
over for a chat. 

"I think we were burned out, and we would hit those walls emotionally 
within the band, always," Jeff said the next morning in my hotel room. 

He arrived at the most un-rock-star-like hour of 10 a.m., but that's not 
surprising. Jeff Ament, dressed perpetually in windbreaker and shorts 
(that's what he wore to the Congressional hearing), is as much athlete 
as musician, a dedicated basketball player (he played for a while at the 
University of Montana) and snowboarder, as well as rock 'n' roll's 
high-jumping champion, successor to the Who's Pete Townshend. 


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Pearl Jam, "No Way"
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"So I think we kinda decided that unless everybody really wanted to go 
out and play some shows and felt excited to [we wouldn't]. I feel like I 
need to go out and play 20 or 25 shows. Somewhere after 10 shows, you 
start to get a rhythm and everybody starts to play really well together. 
That's when it's fun, that's when it's like you're on a cloud. 

"When we started making this record [Yield], the conversations about 
touring were pretty dismal," Jeff continued. "I don't think anybody 
wanted to tour. The more that we started to hang out with each, though, 
the more we started to realize that we liked each other. At that point, 
people started getting excited about the idea of getting together and 
going out and playing some shows." 

Throughout the day -- talking with Jeff at the hotel, with Stone, Mike 
and Jack in the Curtis Management offices through the afternoon, and 
then that evening with Eddie in the band's warehouse/clubhouse -- that 
was the theme. The group seemed united on two issues: their reaffirmed 
affection for one another and that the first five years of recording and 
touring, of being stars and resisting the worst of what that meant, had 
burned them out. 

BREAKING THE CODE 


"I think the only way we could get to the place where we could ... have 
a little bit of excitement about getting together and writing songs, was 
to say, 'We can't tour anymore; we can't do any interviews; we can't 
make five videos for this record,' " Ament said.


For people who believe that Pearl Jam is Eddie Vedder, this may come as 
a surprise. But to anyone who has really followed the band, or who has 
had the opportunity to get to know the members at all, it has been 
pretty clear that while Eddie may lead, he's not taking any of these 
guys anyplace they don't want to go. Jeff, in particular, is at least as 
singular and powerful a personality as Eddie. His disenchantment with 
all the things that typically go with being in a successful band, or at 
least the degree of them, was revealing to me. 

Jeff sat comfortably in the overstuffed chair, and he talked readily but 
with great intensity. "I think our only way of getting through those 
times was to control it," Jeff said straightforwardly. 


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He qualifies almost every statement with "I think," but it's clear that 
he is being polite, not timid, talking fact as much as opinion. "I think 
the only way we could get to the place where we could all go home and 
then not do anything for a little while and then have a little bit of 
excitement about getting together and writing songs, was to say, 'We 
can't tour anymore; we can't do any interviews; we can't make five 
videos for this record.' 



Pearl Jam, "Do The Evolution"
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"That's all the stuff that just tries you," he said. "It's a lot of 
sitting around and waiting around and just being frustrated and maybe 
putting the creative control in other people's hands and maybe feeling 
like you're not being represented the way that you want to be. So the 
way that things happened for us and the way that initially everybody 
kind of wanted a piecejust being frustrated and maybe putting the 
creative control in other people's hands and maybe feeling like yo

"It was about being burned, too. About somebody saying, 'Oh yeah, I'm 
your friend, and I'm gonna do all this,' and then a year later, finding 
out that they're collecting stories to write a book about you," Jeff 
said, with more weariness than anger.

"That sort of stuff is kind of harsh. I read something a couple days 
ago, and they were talking about these books of photographs from the 
'60s. They were saying how it was so great to look at these pictures 
because the photographers were allowed total freedom; they could go into 
the dressing rooms and the homes of all these people. How, now, it's so 
much more controlled, and there's schedules, and the artist has complete 
control over what pictures end up coming out, or whatever. In this 
article, they were almost blaming the artists. I thought, man, the 
photojournalists have to take a little bit of responsibility for that, 
too. Because there's nowhere to go to kind of get out of that when 
you're in the light -- when you're in the limelight, the whole Princess 
Di thing, or whatever. 

"And then there's aspects of it that there's no way you could be ready 
for," Jeff said. "There's no way that you could be ready for being in a 
grocery store at 10 in the morning and having a bunch of people run up 
to you and ask you for your autograph. Especially if you've been in this 
neighborhood for 10 years, and to have that happen all of a sudden one 
morning. You're just like, 'What was that? What happened over the last 
two months that changed? Was it all the magazine covers or videos or 
what?'" 



Pearl Jam, "Rearviewmirror"
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COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN 

Jeff left to begin his day, and I adjourned to the Curtis Management 
offices. Manager Kelly Curtis was in San Francisco, doing advance work 
for the band's gig later that week, opening for the Rolling Stones, so I 
commandeered his office, located in one of those inevitably ramshackle 
buildings where all countercultural enterprises -- rock band management 
companies, rock magazines, graphics companies -- seem to locate. 

I sat on a couch and, over the course of the afternoon, put the various 
band members behind Kelly's desk. It was a little like an amateur-hour 
"60 Minutes" setup, not that I really meant to grill anybody -- they had 
more surprises for me than I had for them. 

In the early afternoon, Stone Gossard, musical hipster and master of the 
sardonic aside, took the chair. He has let his hair grow out a little 
bit and wears his eyeglasses more often now, but he's still rail thin, 
superficially laid-back and, under any kind of questioning, immediately 
alert and intent. 

Stone said he thought that the group's united resistance to playing the 
media game had brought them together and facilitated their ability to 
communicate with one another (and if you've seen a few bands that can't 
communicate internally, you know there's no way such a group can speak 
coherently to the rest of the world). 


The Pearl Jam of Yield don't sound moody or disaffected. They sound like 
a rock band raring to go, and judging from their "warm-up" dates opening 
for the Stones in December, that's just what they are.


"I think we all felt like we really wanted to get better [musically] and 
to feel like we deserved this sort of attention," said Stone, trying to 
explain the initial impact of Ten's enormous success (U.S. sales of 8.1 
million, to date). "But at the same time, we weren't really 
communicating very well. And I don't know how much we really were 
enjoying being around each other. I don't know whether it was just the 
pressure we'd kind of created around all this. I don't know exactly what 
the causes and effects were. It felt like a real adolescent period of 
time in the band, in terms of the kinds of things that we were having 
disagreements about, or not communicating well with each other [about]. 


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"But I feel like we went through the fire -- especially after we stopped 
doing press and stopped doing videos -- and things started to settle 
down. Everyone [started] feeling like, 'God, we're not doing that stuff, 
and everything's still fine. We can still make records, and we might not 
be selling as many records, but everything seems fine.' 



Pearl Jam, "Red Mosquito"
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"We're gonna go out for this next record, and we'll probably tour a 
couple of months in the States -- maybe 40 or 50 shows -- and 20 or 30, 
maybe not even that much, 15, in AStates -- maybe 40 or 50 shows -- and 
20 or 30, maybe not even that much, 15, in Australia," he said. "I'm not 
sure we'll make it over to Europe this record. So in a lot of ways, we 
have decided that going on tour for a year is not what the band's 
priority is. And that takes a l

"'Cause I know at the end of that record, I don't necessarily have to go 
out and go on a media blitz and a year-and-a-half-long tour. Which is 
kind of standard fare for bands that are in our position in terms of 
record sales and sort of where they're at. So in a way, we have kind of 
deprioritized touring compared to the first record, which was, you know, 
go out on the road for 200 dates the first year that the record came 
out. We definitely don't exist in that head space anymore. I don't think 
you'd be getting very good shows, after 40 or 50 shows."

Somewhere in those numbers and plans, there's a median that keeps 
everyone, if not happy, at least less ... miserable. It's typical that 
Jeff and Stone represent the polar positions -- although they've played 
with each other for longer than anyone else in the band, they're about 
as alike as a kumquat and a banana. Jeff is the plain-spoken kid from 
small-town Montana; Stone is the master urban ironist always at home in 
the world, even when he's not in Seattle. "My first four or five years 
out here, Stone just completely confused me," Jeff said. "I didn't know 
if he was serious. And sometimes it would really piss me off. I'd be 
like, 'You makin' fun of me?'" 



Pearl Jam, "Satan's Bed"
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Stone isn't entirely the distanced onlooker his persona suggests. Every 
summer he spends several weeks on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near 
Rapid City, South Dakota, working with the Red Feather Development Group 
(http://www.redfeather.org). "You go out and actually sleep in a tent in 
South Dakota, which is incredibly gorgeous country," said Stone. "That 
whole area is just so beautiful. And you work your ass off, trying to 
learn how to roof or put up plasterboard or give somebody a hand in 
electrical wiring. So that's cool. I enjoy that. When I get done with 
that, I usually feel pretty good." 


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That may sound like typical West Coast do-gooder babble, but when 
pressed, Stone reveals a deeper grasp of the politics of the situation. 
"The guy that runs that thing, Robert Young, just kind of started it 
based on the fact that he had visited the Oglala reservation, which is 
one of the seven Dakota tribes, in South Dakota, which is a very 
significant tribe historically. I mean, they were basically the last 
holdouts in terms of submitting to the U.S. government, and Crazy Horse 
and a lot of big characters came out of that area. 

"It's one of the poorest places in the United States," Stone explained. 
"It probably is the poorest place in the United States in terms of its 
levels of diabetes, levels of alcoholism. The average [age] of death is 
40 years old or something like that. Plenty of people living in houses 
with no heat or electricity, with seven or eight people in one room, 
three of which might be alcoholics. Just really extreme conditions there 
in the winter, where a lotta people die every year of exposure. 

"Robert Young's theory was just basically to get out there and sort of 
get involved in the community. His way of doing that was by building 
houses for native elders, especially ones that still had retained some 
of the language and some of the cultural information. I think that 
cultural information will be important in the long run for the survival 
of those natives there. That somehow, by kinda finding out about your 
past, that's gonna be the inspirational spark to motivate you." 

In the whole day of talking to the band, the closest anyone else comes 
to this kind of inspirational thing is Jeff telling me the story of 
going as a child to see the Harlem Globetrotters. "We actually lived in 
town; it was a town of 800 people. But 35 miles away, there was a little 
college town of 15,000 people. And that's where the culture was; that's 
where the Globetrotters came. 


No denying that the band is moody and that its public life has been 
tumultuous from the moment of its first refusal of the star-making 
machinery.


"Somehow, I kind of got infected by that," he said. "I just remember 
meeting Geese Osby and Curly Neal after the game, we got to go and get 
autographs. I just remember them shaking my hands, and it was like ... 
I'd never seen an African-American before, in my entire life. So when I 
was 7 years old, to actually put a real African-American to the cartoons 
-- the Harlem Globetrotters cartoons, the Jackson Five cartoons -- and 
from that point on, I wanted to be a basketball player. 


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"Meeting Geese Osby was like, 'OK, that's what I'm gonna do. I want to 
be just like that guy.' What they did was totally incredible to me. They 
were entertainers and amazing athletes, and it was more their 
personalities than anything, I think. Just completely infectious. 
Actually, Ed and I, one of the first few conversations we had, we talked 
about the Jackson Five, the spin moves, and watching the cartoons." 



Pearl Jam, "Smile"
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The connection may not be clear to anyone less steeped in 
African-American culture -- in fact, the Globetrotters' on-court 
choreography bears a direct relationship to the Globetrotters' on-court 
choreography bears a d

Jeff also is a guy who had to stop playing basketball in college because 
of the tension among the other jocks over his long hair and earring. He 
fell in with Stone a couple years later, when he had come to Seattle to 
pursue his twin passions for punk rock and the graphic arts. Mike, then 
in a metal band called Shadow, remembers Stone as "kind of the sarcastic 
kid that hung around" before Stone teamed up with Jeff, first in Green 
River, then in Mother Love Bone and finally in Pearl Jam, which was 
originally called Mookie Blaylock. [Mookie Blaylock is a New Jersey Nets 
basketball player.] (They're all huge roundball fans, as far as I can 
tell.)

After all this time, Jeff acknowledges that he and Stone are extremely 
close, "but I think it's the closeness of two brothers who are living in 
the same room. One brother likes to get up early in the morning and go 
running, and the other brother likes to stay out late and party. Their 
schedules are conflicting, and they're constantly rubbing each other a 
little bit raw. There's a competitive spirit there, too, or there was 
for a long time -- there definitely still is, to some extent. It was 
like, 'Oh, here's this song I wrote,' and I'd go, 'Here's this piece of 
art I did.'" (Jeff still works on all the Pearl Jam artwork, from album 
covers to T-shirts.) 

"I think we pushed each other, and it drove us to be better at what we 
did," Jeff continued. "That was really great for probably the first 
seven or eight years. After that, it probably wasn't so great, but we 
were probably still doing it. Now I'm completely at a point, and I know 
he is, where we're doing what we always wanted to do. We're playing 
music together. We're being artists together. Let's get to know each 
other as friends, and let's enjoy this. Let's enjoy what we've worked 
for. So I'm excited about that. There's something about just even saying 
that, that makes my shoulders drop. It feels like there's just not that 
underlying tension in your life." 



Pearl Jam, "Sometimes"
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This is the Jeff Ament who wrote the raging "Pilate" (with Eddie) and 
the doomy "Low Light." What he makes of Stone and Eddie's ironic rave-up 
on "(Do the) Evolution," it's hard to say. 

GIVE THE DRUMMER SOME 

The other members of Pearl Jam are even harder-core outsiders. Mike 
McCready is one of those pure musicians, a guy who lives to make music 
and is interested in damned little else. His contributions to Yield -- 
all musical, meaning none lyrical -- have a brightness and clarity that 
had been missing before. Mike probably had fewer problems with the 
band's success than any of the other surviving members. "I like my job. 
I'm very glad I've got it," Mike said. "A lot of the fame and all that 
is kinda silly at times, but I wouldn't want to do anything else. This 
is what I've always wanted to do, so I guess I got pretty lucky." 

Either that, I offer, or you're good. "Yeah, that, too," Mike 
acknowledged, which is some kind of relief after having to walk the 
minefields of Stone's insecurity an hour before. 

"You know, when you sell that many records, I wanna be a great band," 
Stone had said. "And some nights I think we're pretty good, and some 
nights we may be better than that, and some nights we suck, and that's 
all kinda stuff to keep in perspective. But I'm the first person to 
start complaining if everybody's not like kinda working hard at trying 
to get better and feeling motivated about it." 


Eddie was the first rock star ever to call me "Mr." (he now claims this 
was because I had written not just articles but books, but it still left 
me feeling like the 2,000-Year-Old Rock Critic).


Stone's the taskmaster, he admits. Not that Mike is complacent, but he's 
a rocker. He looks more like a rock musician of the old school than 
anybody else in the band; he has some size to him, and his hair drifts 
toward hair-band shag. Much more comfortable with music than words and 
troubled by a recent illness, he nevertheless answered questions with 
ready insight, although there were lots of issues in which he just 
wasn't particularly interested. 


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For example, to Mike, the stress point in the band's career was the 
Ticketmaster ruckus, because it distracted the band from being creative. 
We find a mutual area of agreement, however, while talking about AC/DC 
and other bands we like but are not supposed to -- at least we're not 
supposed to like them in the alterna-universe that I despise quite 
openly and Mike cordially ignores. "I was way into Kiss," Mike said. 
"Not so much punk rock. I'm not a huge alternative fan, whatever that 
is. I like the old stuff, and that's kinda where I go back to, to steal 
from. When we do records, I kinda listen to only the Stones and Zeppelin 
and stuff like that, to get ideas. Don't listen to a lot of new stuff. 
It just seemed like a label to me, 'alternative.' It didn't make a lotta 
sense to me. It seemed like some radio marketing gimmick. I didn't 
really pay a whole lot of attention to it." 



Pearl Jam, "Yellow Ledbetter"
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Which is probably at the core both of Pearl Jam's success -- its lush 
meld of quasi-alternative ideas and metallic classic rock riffs -- and 
of the disdain for it among alternatypes. To them, mingling with such 
low stuff as metal puts the band beyond the pale of "purity." Yet if 
Pearl Jam stands a chance -- a better chance than any of its brethren of 
the past decade, in my opinion, Nirvana having fallen by the wayside -- 
of redefining rock, it's because the group has that scope.

To the extent that rock still belongs to ordinary listeners rather than 
to princeling alterna-experts, Mike's attitude is right on -- don't make 
no difference what the likes of Steve Albini want, anyhow; history will 
be written by the victors, for good or ill. One reason I don't like the 
alternacrowd is that, like most entrenched hipster sets, they work off 
disdain for the popular and by browbeating those who disagree, as if 
they held some magic secret of "integrity," which, when you peel back a 
couple of layers, usually winds up being exposed as just another way of 
asserting some kind of elitist privilege. 

Thus, the members of Pearl Jam could have made Fugazi millionaires who 
get butt-kissed hourly on CNN, or converted the music industry as a 
whole to anarchy and not dissuaded a single snob of the fundamental 
worthlessness of their musical and cultural efforts, so long as metal 
noises remained near the center of the group's sound. Not because that's 
not good music -- sometimes, it's great fucking music, and it almost 
always has a store of energy missing from whatever's hipper at the 
moment, and anyhow, what do snobs care about musical values? -- but 
because it attracts low-class attention and in alternaworld, that is 
Just Not Done. (An attitude which, as I've pointed out before, can in 
many ways be thanked for the absence of Kurt Cobain from this sphere of 
existence.) 



Pearl Jam, "Happy When I'm Crying"
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In my humble opinion, I should, of course, hasten to add -- but instead 
will compound the insult by saying -- that this makes Mike, 
instrumentally speaking, for me the heartbeat of the band. With him 
around, it's never gonna sound like Stereolab, the group Eddie was 
touting that week. (I had to listen to the interview tape three times to 
make myself comprehend that he hadn't said "Space Monkeys." The Space 
Monkeys are pretty good; Stereolab are French, obtuse, a theory in 
search of music.) 

Now that Jack Irons sits in Pearl Jam's drummer's chair, only a fool 
would bet against anything developing, no matter how radical. Jack's 
public tenure in the group began when Pearl Jam played a Washington, 
D.C., abortion rights benefit with Neil Young in January 1995. They 
played about two numbers and stopped. "I don't know what anybody out 
there thinks," Eddie said defensively, concerned about a backlash in 
favor of the departed Dave Abbruzzese (who was asked to leave after the 
completion of Vitalogy ). "But let me tell you somethin': Jack Irons 
saved the life of this band." 

Before the set was over, the statement was credible, and with the 
release of No Code, it became impossible to disagree. 

I've never met a Pearl Jam fan who would have anticipated another change 
in drummers [Pearl Jam's original drummer, Dave Krusen, left the group 
in 1991, shortly after the release of Ten, and was replaced that same 
year by Abbruzzese]; no one I knew thought the band had a rhythm section 
problem. 


"Initially everybody kind of wanted a piece of us," Ament said. 
"[Because of that] I think we had to say no a lot, initially. And that 
probably did come across as being control freaks."


But Stone indicated that there were some musical problems. "Certainly, 
Dave Abbruzzese could play great drums," Stone said. "Now, whether Dave 
and Jeff were really connected in a sense, like they really were loving 
each other and wanting to play together -- that's kind of where maybe 
some of the issues were, where there were certain problems. If your bass 
player and your drummer are not loving and trusting each other, then 
you're having problems." 


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That's odd, anyway, because the story that has been told in the past was 
that Jack was added because he was friends with Eddie, who had known 
Jack while still living in San Diego. (In fact, Eddie was introduced to 
Jeff, Stone and Mike by Jack.) Not that either reason is mutually 
exclusive, but in most bands interested in talking up one angle and 
playing down the other, it would have been the story about musical 
compatibility -- by which I do not mean competence; Abbruzzese is a 
great drummer, to my ear -- that got told. The truth is, anyway, that 
Jack has delivered completely, freeing the band's sound, letting the 
group swing a little bit, creating space where none before had existed. 



Pearl Jam, "Present Tense"
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Certainly, Jeff notices and has benefited: "I feel I'm approaching the 
new songs way differently, so it makes me excited to be playing bass 
again," he said. "And then the old songs, I feel like Jack's given some 
of the old songs a lot more space. So all of a sudden, a song like 
'Evenflow' -- which I knew was a great song all along, and I felt on the 
first record that it was the best song on the record, that we got the 
worst take of. I mean, we beat that thing; there was a hundred takes of 
that song, and we just never nailed it. And all of a sudden, Jack starts 
playing it, and it's like, Wow! That's how it was supposed to be played. 
Like, leaving a big space there and a little space here, and all of a 
sudden the song opens up and it swings."

And if Jack came because, in some sense, he had Eddie's back, it's also 
true that he had been the group's first choice as a drummer anyway. In 
1990, Stone and Jeff traveled to Los Angeles to talk to him in the 
months when they were rehearsing at Stone's parents' house. (Jack, a 
veteran of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, had already put together a band of 
his own, called Eleven.) At the end of that meeting, they gave Jack a 
tape of the songs they'd been working on and said they were looking for 
a lyricist and lead singer. Jack sent Eddie the tape, and you know the 
rest of that story 

As a member of Pearl Jam, Jack has played a crucial role in keeping the 
band together. "He's a powerhouse," said Mike. "Even more so than 
musically, communicationwise; we all have opened up and started talking 
a lot more than I think we ever have before. Confronting each other on 
issues, having arguments, whatever. If there's a problem, Jack will 
bring that up. Whereas before, we might have iced over a situation and 
just kinda walked on eggshells. Jack won't let that happen." 

Jack, who is the band's consummate loner, not even living in Seattle but 
remaining in California with his wife and two kids, shrugs most of this 
off. Or at least I think he does. He had a cold the day I spoke with him 
(Eddie and Mike were also under the weather), and anyway, Irons tends to 
speak obliquely on all subjects. 


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Asked how the band had changed since he joined, the slight, almost elfin 
drummer answered somewhat cryptically, "You know, it's certainly 
different, but it's kind of been an evolutionary matter in a sense, over 
a few years, so it's hard for me. In other words, if I had the same 
perspective I have now when I first joined the band, then I might be 
able to understand it. When I first joined the band, I had whatever 
perspective I had then, so I can't. Now, it just seems like we grew to 
this record. The first record together was the first record together. 
And this one just seems to be more gelled." 

Asked about the perception held by myself and others that No Code was 
more or less built around what he had brought to the group, Jack said, 
"I might have had a point of view, like I was trying to do something. 
That's why this record's better, because I don't think anyone was 
totally trying to do something. We just are what we are together. In the 
beginning, I might have had some notions about what a drummer ought to 
be or do, or stuff like that. That was just my immaturity, so to speak. 
I've learned a lot more since then." 

Well, sure, and you've just passed the audition to serve as Bob Dylan's 
translator, too. 

YOUNG MAN'S BLUES 



Pearl Jam, "Rats"
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The first time I met Eddie Vedder was in early 1992, when I went to 
Seattle at the request of the local chapter of the American Civil 
Liberties Union to make a speech about censorship. Pearl Jam had asked 
for a permit to play in a local park, in order to do a free concert 
celebrating the success of Ten. That very day, the city fathers 
announced that the permit was denied on the grounds that too many people 
would probably show up (which is about as gross a violation of the First 
Amendment as you could find). 


Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: Pearl_Jam-cd 


At my lecture, a lengthy discussion ensued, with some very intelligent 
questions being asked by a young woman sitting with an equally young man 
halfway back in the auditorium. As the session drew to a close, the guy 
spoke for the first time. "I'm Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam," he said in 
his resonant baritone and thanked us all for thinking about the problem. 
He promised that the band would find a way to play the show (and it did 
take place, on Sept. 20, 1992, at Warren G. Magnuson Park in Seattle). 


"I feel like we went through the fire -- especially after we stopped 
doing press and stopped doing videos -- and things started to settle 
down," guitarist Stone Gossard said.


The woman, of course, was Eddie's girlfriend, now wife, Beth Liebling, 
then working as a journalist, now in the band Hovercraft. 

We ran into each other again that summer, backstage at a Bruce 
Springsteen show in New Jersey. My daughter and her boyfriend were with 
me when Eddie walked into the dressing room. They had seen him the day 
before at Lollapalooza, the famous show at which he climbed the band's 
speaker column and sung from 50 feet up in the air while the heart of 
every onlooker sat in their throat. That was the day Eddie left me 
feeling like the 2,000-Year-Old Rock Critic, but, in fact, we had a good 
discussion among the four of us, and manager Kelly Curtis, about 
Lollapalooza, Pearl Jam, Bruce and our shared passion for the Who.

What impressed me most, though, was what happened the next day: Eddie 
knew that my daughter's boyfriend worked as a secretary at Epic and 
sought him out while he was in the company's offices, not to impress 
anyone, just to say hello. 

Eddie wasn't around for the Ticketmaster hearing (that was Jeff and 
Stone's show, mainly Jeff's, though Eddie and Stone were also militant 
on the issue), but we bumped into each other a few more times. We had 
planned to take a bus ride through the Southwest during the '95 tour, 
but for various reasons, that didn't happen. And now here we were. 

It was a classic Seattle night, cold and a little misty after a bright, 
warm day, and Eddie walked into the band's warehouse so bundled up that 
I at first didn't recognize him. I think I was still taking in the room, 
a cavernous space with wooden floors and stacks of equipment (though it 
had been largely cleared out for the Oakland Stones shows), a couple of 
sitting areas with couches and chairs, refrigerator and pantry, a couple 
of desks and business machines for the fan club. It was more like a 
clubhouse than a place of business, a reminder that rock bands are, to 
the end, the product of the dreams of young boys. 


Click to view an image (Photo by Jay Blakesberg):
Pearl_Jam: eddie_holding_photo-jb 


Probably Eddie wasn't all that recognizable because, like most people 
with charisma, he can switch it off when he needs to. He'd been out in 
the car, he had the sniffles, as I recall he hadn't shaved in a day or 
three, he wore what he always wears, which is basic thrift shop gear, 
not even thrift shop deluxe. Plus Eddie's a small man with a large 
presence, which means that at every encounter, you're reminded of this 
again, because he looms larger in mind and memory. I knew who it was, 
finally, when he opened his mouth. You can't mistake that voice. 

Soon enough, we were seated for our interview, back in the fan club 
area, a perfectly pleasant place if you could ignore the harsh 
fluorescent light. 

Eddie slouched in a stuffed chair; I spread my stuff out on the coffee 
table and sat on the couch. We had our feet up, which seemed ideal, my 
idea of these things being that they should proceed as much as possible 
like conversations. Of course, there is typically machinery (a tape 
recorder) around that can inhibit that, and I do have some kind of 
agenda in the way of a list of questions. But such sessions are not 
Watergate interrogations, and shouldn't and needn't be treated that way. 
If you're nosy enough to be a journalist, you ought to be shrewd or 
sensitive enough to figure out that making your subject comfortable is 
the first step in finding out the things you need to know. 


"It was about being burned, too," Ament said. "About somebody saying, 
'Oh yeah, I'm your friend and I'm gonna do all this,' and then a year 
later, find out that they're collecting stories to write a book about 
you."


I don't know if Eddie had an agenda of his own, really, other than maybe 
to get the record company and management to stop bugging him about doing 
some press for the new album. "I think I'm gonna make you work. Because 
I'm not good at this kind of thing," he said at the outset. "I've been 
through a lot, I've remembered everything I've seen, I've got opinions 
on it all. If you just help me get it out in some kind of decent 
fashion." 


Click to view an image (Photo by Frank Micelotta):
Pearl_Jam: look_over-fm 


Well, agenda or not, no one sits down to talk with another human being 
without expectations, and the funny thing is, I expect that ours were 
rather mutual. Eddie is a huge Pete Townshend fan, and in my checkered 
past is a rather notorious series of psychodrama sessions with Pete. 
This started out to be a little like that. 



Pearl Jam, "Even Flow"
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But Eddie is American, not English, and though he's committedly skittish 
about the press, he dives deeper, quicker. I actually tried to talk 
about Yield, in particular, the song "Wish List," which I love: the 
trembling opening riff, the self assured rhythm, the choked-up vocal, 
the way the verses build to a fully emotive yelp, the beautiful 
psychedelic guitar that serves as a bridge between verses, and 
especially the lyrics, a series of wishful aphorisms. "I wish I was a 
messenger and all the news was good," Eddie sings. "I wish I was a 
sacrifice and somehow still lived on ... I wish I was as fortunate, as 
fortunate as me ... I wish I was the full moon shining off your Camaro's 
hood. " The song ends (I swear you can hear this just as the tune 
fades), "I wish I was a radio song, the one that you turn on ..." 

But that wasn't really what Eddie wanted to talk about, and I'll never 
know whether that was because those wishes cut too close to his heart -- 
a lot of them seem to be vows that speak directly to his marriage -- or 
to mine.

I do know this: When you're interviewing someone who wants the 
conversation to go in a certain direction, or, for that matter, doesn't 
want it to go there, you're a fool to try to steer. 

The next thing I knew, Eddie and I were talking about the very stuff I 
figured he'd be most reluctant to deal with -- his tempestuous relations 
with the press and all the other apparatus of stardom, the pressure, the 
drive for control, the constant exploitation. All this in perhaps five 
minutes (it takes up only five pages of transcript). He spoke openly, 
without a shred of bitterness and only a smidgen of the frustration I 
imagined he must have felt as his behavior was misinterpreted, mocked, 
maligned. 

"I think people don't understand -- 'Well, what's he so upset about' -- 
because I kind of shy away from being out in the public," Eddie said. 
"Or I've heard a younger band or something say, 'I don't know what that 
guy's problem is, 'cause we're up and coming, and I'm just diggin' it. 
This is the best thing, and we just love it all, and I'll do every 
interview, and I'll be on TV as many times as you want. Give it to me, 
I'm ready.' And the second someone threatens your own personal 
well-being, that kind of changes. 


Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: ticket-95_11_04 


"It probably doesn't have everything to do with being in people's living 
rooms. But that changes everything," Eddie said. "Everything that you've 
ever worked for, really hard, and put everything into, now all of a 
sudden it's changed. You've been honest with these emotions, and now 
people who are not all together threaten your well-being, and it really 
changes you. I don't know if it's the right use of the word 'ironic,' 
but it seems really strange that by being so open, you're having to 
build walls." 

Not that Eddie never hesitated as he spoke. In fact, he sometimes 
fumbled for just the right expression: "I just knew that some of the 
people that get things from you -- the more they get from you, the 
better it is for them, and there's a lot ... I'm not saying ... I'm just 
saying it's natural. People that you like ask you for things, and you 
want to give them to them. 

"But you're asked for a lot. And ... and ... and you really wanna do 
right by everyone and really wanna be the realest person, prove that 
nothing's gone to your head. I didn't understand it then, but there's no 
real need to prove that. And I was always the same person." 

He even confessed to having read the famous 1997 Rolling Stone cover 
story in which all his supposed dear friends from high school were 
interviewed and dutifully painted him as a careerist. 

I do many foolish things with my time, but reading hatchet jobs (about 
people other than myself) is not one of them, so I have to take Ed's 
word for it that "it was good because I was actually thinking that it 
was worse. But anything they said that made it seem that hard work was 
..." 

"Well, are you against hard work?" I asked. I asked it lightly, but I 
meant it seriously. Eddie got the point. 



Pearl Jam, "Leatherman"
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"Man, I think hard work is the ... There's a great other end to hard 
work. You know?" he said, almost cheerfully. "And if you're not gonna 
work hard when you're 16 to 26 or 36, or whatever it takes, when are ya? 
It's just great to get on the other end of it and feel pretty secure." 


Click to view an image (Photo by Jay Blakesberg):
Pearl_Jam: gold_one-jb 


We talked then about the crisis in the band -- the fact that it had been 
a bandwide crisis, that Jeff and Stone and even Mike had felt the 
tensions, too. "It was a Pearl Jam crisis, it was a Nirvana crisis, it 
was the whole city," he said. "It was a SubPop crisis, people workin' in 
the office there. It got weird for a lotta people. It got really weird 
there for everybody ... Something had to give. 

"I just thought that you didn't have to do that. You didn't have to be 
so extreme," he said. "That when you made a record, you didn't have to 
tour the whole world. And then take another year off, because you've 
spent a year and a half with these people and you can't stand another 
minute, you know, with the guitar player's voice in your ear or 
something. 


"We're gonna go out for this next record and we'll probably tour a 
couple of months in the States," Gossard said.


"Because records are important. Records are there for everyone, any 
time, whenever they want, in whatever mood, whoever wants them, whoever 
doesn't. It's all in their control; it's an offering.

"Live, you really have to be there," he explained. "You know, you are 
there. It takes a lot to get there. The playing is great. It's just 
getting there and the ... the lists. But paring down tours to where 
you've made a record, you've played some shows, in this country, in 
another country -- a reasonable amount, maybe two blocks of five weeks 
at a time. None of this -- what Henry Rollins and Mike Watt do, and I've 
done it with 'em. It's admirable and it's somethin' else, and it makes 
for a great story. In our case, where we were and what we were dealin' 
with, [if we had toured nonstop] somethin' woulda happened, somethin' 
really bad woulda happened, you know." 

Maybe, I supposed, the best thing that could have happened, then, would 
have been the breakup of the band. "That's true," said Eddie. "And I 
don't think we would've broken up the band. So it would have been up to 
someone's departing the ethe band. "That's true," said Eddie. "And I 
don't think we 


Click to view an image (Photo by lyzzy mercier):
Pearl_Jam: Pearly_Colour-lm 


This was great stuff -- touching, revealing. But having heard Yield
 enough to love it and to know that it was the result of conquering such 
problems -- and having been around long enough to appreciate the utter 
rarity of such conquests on the part of one person, let alone a whole 
band -- I pushed to move on, to talk about the present and the future, 
not so much about the past. 

But for Eddie, the story of his art is, for now, burdened heavily by a 
past that still requires a great deal of examination and, perhaps, 
explanation. If he were not an essentially shy person, he could probably 
get a lot of this out of his system by doing more interviews. But as 
forthcoming as he is when you finally wrestle him down to sit for an 
interview, Eddie is shy -- or maybe that's the wrong word for someone 
who spends a fair portion of his time communicating with the great 
anonymous wad of us out here in the non-MTV version of the Real World. 
Let's say, instead, that Eddie Vedder is exceptionally private. 

In a lot of ways, what troubles him is what troubles the others. "When 
it [Ten] got to be a double-digit platinum-selling record, there's 
serious guilt involved there," he said. "Because you're seeing [another] 
band that made a better record than you did, or for whatever taste, you 
liked theirs better: Like, 'Wow, I can really rock out to this.' You'd 
see them in a club, and they'd had their record out for a year, and 
they'd sold 15,000 copies or something. 


"I was way into Kiss," guitarist Mike McCready said. "Not so much punk 
rock ... I'm not a huge alternative fan, whatever that is. I like the 
old stuff and that's kinda where I go back to, to steal from."


"The disparity's too huge. And you're not responsible for it, 
completely, but so ... I don't know, you do things. You start radio 
stations and do a radio broadcast and invite them on. You do things. And 
not out of guilt. Not out of guilt in this sense, doing these types of 
things. Just saying, Look, if we have the attention, let's use it, and 
like, wave to everybody and then pull back. Here's a great band. Here's 
another great band. Here's a better band." 


Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: Vitalogy-cd 


Before I flew to Seattle, two people close to the band had told me, in 
almost identical language, that Pearl Jam was now free to tour again, 
maybe to even make more-accessible music, because with No Code, the 
scale of their success had become much more manageable. Eddie said the 
same: "No Code was regular. It was heard, it was out there, and it was a 
record, and it wasn't 'Independence Day II.' It just wasn't the thing. 
And that was great. That was real. 



Pearl Jam, "Gremmie Out Of Control"
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"The fact is you can only hear from so many people in a day, or so many 
people that you meet in a year," he said. "So I heard about that record 
as many times as I heard about Ten probably. So it was a good record, 
and I heard as many good things, and it affected people in certain ways. 
I enjoyed playing the songs live. I played it recently in a car, on a 
drive -- just by myself. I thought it could have been a little more 
up-tempo, for me." 

Still, he remains vastly interested in the things that have gone wrong, 
the things that he and his bandmates have failed to perfect, or maybe 
failed to control. "I think I was fine with the pace of things for the 
most part," he said. "But I don't know. The exploitation factor of it 
just gets a little weird. Or when people start -- when they start making 
jokes, or it's all parody. I would have handled it better if it was 
parody of something that I didn't take seriously. Maybe that was my 
problem or something. 'Cause I took what I did seriously, I meant it, 
and this shit comin' out of my throat every night, I meant it, every 
night, I really did."

It is not just the heavy metal-descended riffs that make hipsters 
mistrust Pearl Jam, then. It's this: Eddie Vedder means every syllable 
he sings. He is committed to the foolish -- the undeniably foolish -- 
pursuit of rock 'n' roll as dream and vision. Such an attitude has never 
been very fashionable, although it has sometimes been respectable; and 
it has never been less fashionable, or respectable, than it is right 
now, when cool and cynical (and their boon companions, dull and boring) 
rule the day. 

I asked if any of that had changed. "No," Eddie said. Paused. Perhaps he 
gulped. "Well, it doesn't ... I can't." He laughed a little. 

No one who gets into this part of the rock 'n' roll game -- the part 
that is embarrassingly sincere, that reveals that, once upon a time, you 
were a lost and lonely kid who didn't think that survival was very 
likely and then you heard this ... stuff ... floating in the air and 
were, let's face it, redeemed -- can seem to escape a sense of yearning 
and sadness. 


Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: merkinball 


It's there in so many of Eddie's vocals, from "Hunger Strike" to 
"Daughter," and it's all over the new album, in "Wish List" and in 
"Given to Fly," with its tremendous last verse that beautifully sums up 
what I can only call the surprise of existence, and in "Pilate." 

And the sheer exultation of "(Do the) Evolution," a dance song that is 
almost a ritual invocation of some desperate last hope for the future. I 
think that's what it is, anyhow. It's one of the few songs from the new 
album Eddie mentioned in the course of our talk, and it connected up to 
his one attempt to summarize his recent path. 

"There's some big questions out there, so when I'm at my saddest, yeah, 
that's 'cause I'm thinking more about ... this whole thing," he said. 
"And even if you've found an answer for yourself, that doesn't mean 
you're no longer gonna be sad, because now you have this thing where 
you're thinking, 'No one will ever believe this as a collective 
conscious.' 

"Things have changed so much in the last 30 years. And even in the last 
five, with technology. And what's gonna happen in the next 20, I don't 
think we can quite grasp. So I'm nervous, and I think, I'm getting into 
some kind of spiritual path here, but ... This Daniel Quinn book, 
Ishmael... I've never recommended a book before, but I would actually, 
in an interview, recommend it to everyone. I think recommending books is 
a little pretentious, because they take time to read, and this one is 
maybe two or three days or something. It's a little more of an 
investment than a candy bar. 

"But this book, it's kind of the book of my ... My whole year has been 
kind of with these thoughts in mind. And on an evolutionary level, that 
man has been on this planet for 3 million years, so that you have this 
number line that goes like this [hands wide apart]. And that we're about 
to celebrate the year 2000, which is this [holds hands less than one 
inch apart]. 



Pearl Jam, "Pilate"
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"So here's this number line; here's what we know and celebrate. This 
book is a conversation with a man and an ape. And the ape really has it 
all together. He kinda knows the differences between him and the man, 
and points out how slight they are, and it creates an easy analogy for 
what man has done, thinking that they were the end-all. That man is the 
end-all thing on this earth. That the earth was around even so much 
longer before the 3 million years. Fifty million years of sharks and all 
these living things. Then man comes out of the muck, and 3 million years 
later he's standing, and now he's controlling everything and killing it. 
Just in the last hundred! Which is just a speck on this line. So what 
are we doin' here? 


Click to view an image (Photo by Jay Blakesberg):
Pearl_Jam: drummer_violet-jb 


"This is just a good reminder," he added. "And I'm anxious to see what 
happens. You know, I've got a good seat for whatever happens next. It'll 
be interesting." 

So we talked all over the place -- I talked too much -- and never really 
boiled it down, though I got Eddie to give it one try. "How would you 
characterize what this record's about?" I asked at one point. 


"The second someone threatens your own personal well-being, that kind of 
changes [everything]," Eddie Vedder said.


"Now it's just movin' on and just bein' a band and just doin' what we 
do," Eddie said. "We've kind of established what we do. And we're not 
gonna defend what we do. If someone doesn't like it, fuck off. I really 
don't have time to hear it. I'm doin' somethin' pretty good with my 
life, and I challenge them to do the same."

The challenge is out there, as well, I think, for those of us who do 
love and admire what Pearl Jam does. That challenge is to do what great 
bands that preceded them have done -- you have your list, I have mine, 
and their intersection is the history rock 'n' roll has made. I often 
have thought that the best rock 'n' roll bands and singers of each 
generation move the story forward just a little, figure out a fraction 
more of how to survive this crazy world with a patch of dignity and some 
sense of human connection. 


Click to view an image:
Pearl_Jam: Given-cvr 


There was nothing about that day in December that made me rethink Pearl 
Jam's place in that story. Nothing at all. And, of course, the real 
payoff came after the tape recorder was turned off, when we went out 
into the parking lot and talked a few minutes, shivering, before 
splitting up. 



Pearl Jam, "Given To Fly cd"
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It was not a moonlit night, but there were enough arc lights in the 
parking lot to bounce some beams. Eddie started to get into an old, 
fairly nondescript vehicle. Then he stopped and said, "Oh yeah. This is 
it. That Camaro." Remembering my passion for "Wish List." It's Beth's 
car. 

He didn't fly away, though. He drove.
02/01/98

Subject: Toronto Sun's Yield Review
From: "Jennifer" <jennifer@nospam.com>
Date: Sun, Feb 1, 1998 17:37 EST
Message-id: <01bd2f60$dac8cac0$44afd4c7@muskoka.com.Jennifer>

February 1, 1998 

PEARL JAM'S YIELD TUNES INTO SOME FUN

By JANE STEVENSON -- Toronto Sun

PEARL JAM 
 Yield (Epic) 
 4 (out of five) 

 Yes, there are huge expectations of the new Pearl Jam album, in stores
Tuesday, given the decline of the Seattle music scene and the popularity of
rock music in general. 
 But anyone expecting this particular supergroup -- who have sold 30
million albums worldwide -- to emerge as some sort of rock saviors in 1998
may be disappointed by this otherwise wonderfully varied collection of
well-written and executed songs. 
 As lead singer Eddie Vedder himself sings on one of Yield's standout
tracks, No Way: "I'm not trying to make a difference." 
 It is music after all, not religion -- although some people often get
those two things confused. 
 Anyway, after a heck of a kickstart with the album opener, Brain Of J,
featuring Vedder's trademark howl over the guitar attack of Mike McCready
and Stone Gossard, the band moves into mid-tempo territory with Faithful,
No Way and the strong first single, Given To Fly. 
 But Vedder really finds his muse on more melodic tracks like the poppier
Wishlist, singing: "I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off, I
wish I was a sacrifice that somehow still hung on." 
 Other standouts are the folk anthem Low Light and the rock ballad All
Those Yesterdays. 
 Do The Evolution is another refreshing change of pace, the album's
punkiest song by far, that begins with Vedder crowing (if I'm not mistaken)
before delivering some Stooges-like distorted vocals: "I am ahead, I am
advanced, I am the first mammal to wear pants. I'm at peace with my lust, I
can kill 'cause in God I trust." 
 The band has obviously not completely abandoned the experimentation of
their last album, No Code, judging from the untitled eighth song, a plain
crazy steel drum concoction that features skinsman Jack Irons playing at
home. 
 Then there's Vedder's Jim Morrison-like spoken word ramblings on the
art-rock number Push Me, Pull Me, not to mention the bonus track, a
quizzical instrumental full of clapping and bells that's appropriate for
belly dancing, if nothing else. 
 At least the rock band that's always been accused of taking itself too
seriously is finally managing to have some fun. 
 

02/01/98

Subject: SF Examiner Yield review
From: Laurie Hester <fundnat@earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, Feb 1, 1998 21:02 EST
Message-id: <34D52950.9444BD24@earthlink.net>

Here's one for the conspiracy theorists: The brain of JFK will rescue
rock music from its current doldrums.

Absurd, sure, but it just might prove to be true.  The lead track on
Pearl Jam's fifth album, "Yield" - bearing a title abbreviated to "Brain
of J," despite a lyric that refers explicitly to the late president's
gray matter - opens with a two-chord false start, followed by five
seconds of timeless, lip-curling guitar riffing and an absolute torrent
of crashing drums.

What ensues is a thrilling little joyride, a hell-for-leather blitz
almost completely devoid of moderation.  The song, notably, is exactly
three minutes long - the mythic length of the quintessential,
soul-saving pop song.

With sampling pervading nearly every style of pop music and bubble gum
making a triumphant comeback, the news about stright-up hard rock is not
good at all.  Recent albums by fleeting superstars Live, Everclear,
Collective Soul and others have struggled badly.  In Seattle, the hub of
the early '90s guitar renaissance, Nirvana is long gone, Soundgarden
broke up last spring and Mudhoney has seemingly retreated underground.

That leaves Pearl Jam, a band that has always been uncomfortable
upholding rock's fist-pumping tradition - even as its music continually
flirts with the feverish highs of classic rock at its most grandiose.

With "Yield," Pearl Jam seems to be shucking the protective shell the
band donned for its third and fourth albums, "Vitalogy" and "No Code,"
each of which buried moments of supreme songwriting confidence amid a
few too many cerebral studio experiments.  It's as though this
notoriously reticent group of musicians has finally resolved to face up
to its "burden" of having to entertain the hard-rock mainstream.

"I wish I was a messenger and all the news was good/ I wish I was a full
moon shining off a Camaro's hood," Eddie Vedder sings on "Wishlist," a
song that neatly reconciles his tender, introverted inclinations with
his band's ongoing status as the tape-deck soundtrack of choice for
those very Camaro owners.

"Yield" includes just a pair of songs on which the group consciously
seeks art-house credibility - the untitled eighth track, a manipulated
steel-drum beat coupled with throwaway falsetto vocals, and a "hidden"
track (also untitled), a playful electric-guitar version of
belly-dancing music.

Otherwise, the band is in full anthem mode.  Songs like "Wishlist" and
the album's first radio offering, "Given to Fly," build steadily from
supple Vedder vocals to the trademark twin guitar thrash of Stone
Gossard and Mike McCready.  (Some listeners have groused that the melody
of the latter song, written by McCready, is too close for comfort to Led
Zeppelin's "Going to California," but that's a bit of a stretch.)

Vedder buries the VU meters with his frenzied bellowing on "Do the
Evolution," and he seems to address those who distrust his spiritual
curiosity (including collaborations with the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan
and an appearance with McCready at last year's Tibetan Freedom concert)
with barbed lines from "No Way": "I'll stop trying to make a
difference," he taunts - "no way."

That song and several others actually swing, a remarkable feat for a
band supposedly playing music for cavemen.  Pearl Jam's drummer of three
years, Jack Irons (ex-Red Hot Chili Pepper), is locked in tightly with
bassist Jeff Ament from the album's opening notes, and the results are
consistently exciting.

Starting off as another of Vedder's album-closing lullabies, the last
track, "All Those Yesterdays" (actually written by Gossard), is soon
buoyed by Ament's chubby, almost tuba-like melody, which suggests a
comical Paul McCartney bass line from one of "Abbey Road's" looser
sessions.  With its gang-vocal chorus and Irons' majestic drum
flourishes, the whole song beats Oasis at its own game of ripping off
the Fab Four.

Such moments bode well for the future of this band, often rumored to be
on its last legs.  Still, chances are good that this record will receive
plenty of tepid notices written by observers content to review Vedder's
persona rather than the songs that make up the record.  Chances are also
good that the record will sell "only" a million copies or so, a figure
that was once a marvel in the music industry but has been rendered
mediocre by bands like Pearl Jam.

To those who still can't get past the suffocating feeling of the
original Pearl Jam hype - that's your business.  The band, at least, has
managed to do just that.

James Sullivan


02/01/98

Subject: one more review
Date: Sun, Feb 1, 1998 23:34 EST
From: Kathy11041
Message-id: <19980202043401.XAA05118@ladder02.news.aol.com>

I apologize in advance for any typos! =)

from Long Island Newsday:

Pearl Jam Pounding, Angst Intact
by Letta Tayler

  In a rare interview with Spin magazine last year, Eddie Vedder, the reclusive, angst-ridden leader of Pearl Jam, rhetorically asked how many members of his band it takes to change a light bulb.
  "Change? Change? We're not going to change for anyone!" the grungemeister replied to his own joke. "Do you hear me? Not for anyone!"
  The Seattle-based band keeps that promise on "Yield", its fifth album, which will be released Tuesday on the Epic label (both on disc and, in the band's proud tradition, vinyl). Although less sprawling and brawny than early Pearl Jam, "Yield" finds the band as traumatized as ever.
  All that angst ought to be tiresome by now; it's been nearly seven years since Pearl Jam burst onto the agony scene with "Jeremy" and "Alive". Ditto for Mike McCready's drenching power hooks and Jeff Ament's brooding bass lines.
  But for all its familiar distress, "Yield" is a beautifully crafted, impressively cohesive album, justifying the band's if-it-ain't-broke-don't-fix-it attitude.
  The first track, "Brain of J", is vintage Pearl Jam, hitting listeners over the head with a buzzsaw guitar charge and a paranoid query about who stole John F. Kennedy's brain. The rocking "Do The Evolution", a bristling commentary on Social Darwinism, keeps up the crashing pace. So does "Push Me Pull Me", which swirls with distortion, a macabre overvoice and pounding beats from drummer Jack Irons.
  But much of the album is more muted, in keeping with the sound on the band's last LP "No Code", from 1996. On the slowly pulsating "No Way" and the hauntingly melodic single "Given To Fly", Pearl Jam surges and swells, starting out small before building to churning crescendos.
  If anything, "Yield" conveys even more despair than "No Code", in which the band allowed a few rays of optimism to shine through tracks such as "Around The Bend". It seems that almost nothing---with the possible exception of love---will deliver Vedder from his existential anguish. 
  "I wish I was a neutron bomb for once I could go off / I wish I was a sacrifice but somehow still lived on", he chants hoarsely over a monotonal guitar strum in the chiming "Wishlist". In a knowing jab at his obsessive dissatisfaction, he adds: "I wish I was as fortunate, as fortunate as me".
  On "In Hiding" Vedder declares that after emerging "empowered" from four days of retreating from the world, "the first human face you see will knock you back fifty percent".
  "Given To Fly", the band's messianic first single and a perfect vehicle for Vedder's soft moans and primal screams, is one of the few tracks to contain any glimmer of hope for frail humankind. But even its message about love's potential to triumph over civilization's ills is laced with references to suffering.
  Despite the gloom, "Yield"'s one purely celebratory track is among the album's highlights. A meandering, exotic instrumental with undulating rhythms and delicate guitar flourishes, it revs into a whirling frenzy that conjures images of dancers cavorting around a blazing fire. But the song is untitled and hidden at the end of the final track, as if the band's ability to enjoy itself is an insider's secret.
  On the topic of secrets, the band gives no clue about the title of the album. But one thing Pearl Jam hasn't done on this album is yield to pressure to change its style. It was the right choice.


02/01/98

Subject: Another Review
Date: Sun, Feb 1, 1998 15:56 EST
From: KJ1NYR
Message-id: <19980201205600.PAA19917@ladder02.news.aol.com>

If you aren't all tired of it yet, here's another review of the album.  Please forgive the typos.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A review of Yield
by David Yonke
As printed in the Arizona Republic, from the Toledo Blade

Pearl Jam's 'Yield': A new Album
Grunge Kings Come Through Mightily: Seattle's bestselling rock band, Pearl Jam, including frontman Ed Vedder, is on the right track with its new album, Yield.

Does Pearl Jam still matter?

That's the question many music fans are asking as Pearl Jam prepares to release its fifth album, Yield, on Tuesday.

The Seattle grunge rock quintet remains the bestselling rock band of the 90's, but most of its success came in the first half of the decade.

Grunge rock's mix of angst, fuzz-soaked guitars and flannel shirts is no longer a dominant force, and Pearl Jam is the last vestige of the Seattle scene that spawned such powerhouse groups as Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains.

Pearl Jam's midas touch has lost some of its sheen.  Its 1996 release, No Code, was a moody, rambling effort that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard album chart but fell off rapidly.  Its sales were far below Pearl Jam's previous multiplatinum numbers.

Meanwhile, Pearl Jam refuses to play at venues that have exclusive deals with Ticketmaster.  The band believes the computer-ticketing behemoth charges unfair fees for its services and is fighting to keep ticket prices as low as possible for its army of young fans.

That battle of wills has forced Pearl Jam to cancel some concerts, and the few shows it does put on are scattered across the map.

The public's attention span is notoriously short, and Pearl Jam, which avoids making music videos, has been out of sight more than most major rock bands.

Does that mean Pearl Jam is passe?

No Way.

Grunge may be dead and Pearl Jam may be losing its battle with Ticketmaster, but an advance copy of Yield shows the band has come through mightily where it counts most - in the music.

Guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard span the spectrum from delicate acoustic backdrops to roaring, slashing assaults, and bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Jack Irons keep the rhythms churning with alternate grace and thunderous force.  Frontman Ed Vedder has matured as a singer and interpreter of song, brooding less and looking more honestly into the full range of human emotion.

The words of Yield are still shot through with cynicism, but they're cryptic enough to leave room for interpretation.  They're also delivered with a sense of bemusement rather than anger.  Reluctant acceptance, not rebellion.

On the shuffling rocker "No Way", Vedder repeats the chorus over and over:  "I'm not trying to make a difference . . . no way."

The edgy guitar riffs of "Do the Evolution" are as razor-sharp as the lyrics that jab both Darwin's theory and the church.

"Brain of J", the album opener, is a propulsive rocker that kicks in with a twin blast of guitar power, Gossard and McCready bouncing off each other's riveting rhythms as Vedder, in a near-howl, vocalizes above and around the molten beat.

But it's the restrained delivery of songs like "Wishlist" that show how far Pearl Jam has come.  The tune is built with jangly guitar rhythms and swooping lead riffs as Vedder recites lyrics of personal intensity and insight:  "I wish I was a neutron bomb, for once I could go off."

This reflective side of Pearl Jam sharpens the contrast against its patented brute-strength attacks.

"Black Pilate"  <huh ???>  is another magnificent display of balance, alternating between sweetly drifting verses and crashing choruses.

It doesn't matter what the prevailing trends might be, Yield is a sign that Pearl Jam is on the right track.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
There it is.  More of the same but it's nice to see the rest of the band getting some recognition.  Have a great day everyone!

Luv ya.... bye.

KJ


From: "Fowles, Nicole (PTG-ni1fowl)" <Nicole.Fowles@pactel.COM>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 11:53:36 -0800
Subject: LR: I thought this review sort of optimized how i saw yield

from wall of sound.
 
    Pearl Jam: Yield
    Epic
    Alternative
    Rating: 87

    Early on Pearl Jam's fifth album, Eddie
    Vedder-the Seattle quintet's frontman
    and reluctant Voice of a Generation-tells
    us, "I'm through with screaming, and
    echoes that nobody hears." This is one
    song before he declares, "I've stopped
    trying to make a difference." Like hell. But
    a little bit of frustration and
    disenchantment is allowed here. Pearl
    Jam has hoed a tougher road than any of
    its peers, often by creating its own
    obstacles-the Ticketmaster boycott, the
    media shyness, the simple high standards
    of a band that wants its music to grow and
    evolve rather than recasting "Jeremy" and "Alive" ad nauseum. 

    They've paid a price for that, too. The group's first two albums
    established them as the alternative nation's �berband with a wicked
    guitar attack, striking dynamics, and angst-filled lyrics that
proved
    empathetic with a mainstream audience. But as Pearl Jam pushed its
    musical ambitions into new territories of mood and texture on
Vitalogy
    and No Code, the multi-million sales figures dropped off and a
quiet, but
    palpable, backlash set in. 

    As a result, the eagerly awaited Yield is dogged by a kind of
do-or-die
    anticipation that's neither accurate nor warranted. If you haven't
gotten
    the message by now, it's everyone else who's worried about Pearl Jam
    returning to the pinnacle it reached with Ten and Vs. If sales were
the
    goal, we'd see videos, band photos on album covers, and tour stops
at
    every major arena. Rest assured you'll be watching plenty of MTV
    before you see Eddie Vedder dancing with Puff Daddy. 

    But Yield is hardly inaccessible; in fact, it's a consolidation of
sorts,
    blending the user-friendly rock assault on which Pearl Jam staked
its
    fame with the more challenging sonic vistas of its last two albums.
The
    result is a compelling and accomplished work that shows passion need
    not be sacrificed amidst polish and maturity. 

    Across Yield's fourteen tracks (including a hidden, Eastern-flavored
    instrumental), Pearl Jam has constructed a broad-reaching tableau of
    approaches that complement each other with their diversity. The
group
    can still kick out punky guitar rock like "Brain of J." and the
    Stooges-like "Do the Evolution," and they sound all the more
powerful
    next to the delicately restrained "Wishlist" or the spacious,
romantic
    waltz "Low Light." The jazzy ebb and flow of "Faithful" recalls-but
    doesn't simply repeat-the feel of the group's 1994 smash "Daughter,"
    while "No Way" cruises on a sturdy, but gentle, groove that builds
to a
    grungy center section. Vedder's spoken-word delivery rides atop an
    industrial instrumental churn on "Push Me Pull Me," and "All Those
    Yesterdays" is a melancholy rumination in which Jeff Ament's bass
    burps like a brass band's tuba. 

    Despite his early-album protestations, Vedder actually spends much
of
    Yield contented, finding comfort in adulthood and relationships, and
in
    being free from some of the emotional tumult that's such a willful
part of
    the teen and twenty-something experience. His searching has become
    a bit less painful, and on "Wishlist"-which, as its title implies,
catalogs
    his hopes and desires-the singer reaches the conclusion that such an
    exercise "never stops." 

    As much as it challenges, Yield makes for a powerful listen, and
still
    has plenty of choruses you'll be humming after the first hearing.
Rather
    than expecting Pearl Jam to return to what it was, it's time to hop
back
    on the bandwagon and enjoy what the band has become. --Gary Graff


From: AJAY JOSHI <joshia@medlib.iaims.georgetown.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 15:48:44 -0500 (EST)
Subject: LR: Yield review from USA Today

Hey all,
Here's the Yeild review from today's USA Today. The writer is one who has
been very supportive of Pearl Jam in the past and this review is no
exception. Sorry about the formatting, if it is to hard to read you can
find it on their website under the life section.
Hope you enjoy,
Ajay

		Pearl Jam's latest a 'Yield' of maturity

                 On his wistful Wishlist, singer Eddie Vedder pines, "I
		wish I was a
                 messenger and all the news was good." 

                 Consider it done. Pearl Jam's fifth album, out today,
		brings glad tidings
                 indeed for fans who worried that rock's purifying power
		would
                 dissipate before the next millennium. On Yield (3.5  out
		of four), the
                 Seattle band reasserts itself as the only grunge force to
		outlive that
                 genre, expand musical boundaries and still embody the
		original spirit of
                 rock 'n' roll. 

                 Those forces push and pull in soaring first single Given
		to Fly, a
                 majestic yet rugged tune that bears unmistakable
		similarities to Led
                 Zeppelin's Going to California (sparking Internet debate
		about
                 whether the kinship is homage or theft). 

                 While not a wildfire, Yield crackles with energy and
		smolders with
                 passion. Once the flannel-swaddled mascot for disaffected
                 twentysomethings, Vedder has abandoned self-pity and
		self-conscious
                 angst to emerge as a self-assured adult capable of
		relishing life's
                 sweeter gifts while confronting its bitter truths. 

                 His voice oozes awe and vulnerability on Faithful, then
		puts a playful
                 spin on the adventurous Do the Evolution, which wryly and
		defiantly
                 questions the value of human progress: "I am ahead, I am
		advanced, I
                 am the first mammal to wear pants." 

                 Despite his charismatic vocal command, Vedder is no
		one-man band.
                 Pearl Jam's talents jell as never before in these 13
		acoustic plaints and
                 ebullient rockers. 

                 On Brain of J and MFC, drummer Jack Irons and bassist
		Jeff Ament
                 provide a sturdy rhythmic platform for the riff outbursts
		of guitarists
                 Stone Gossard and Mike McCready. 

                 Thanks to its unity, candor and fervor, Yield proves that
		rock retains
                 unyielding authority and relevance in the '90s. 

                 By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY 

2/3/98

From: Tony Buechler <tb8@evansville.edu>
Date: Tue, 3 Feb 1998 21:09:05 -0600 (CST)
Subject: LR: From Allstar.com

Chicago Cab To Feature New Songs From Pearl Jam, Supergrass 

 As previously reported in allstar, Pearl Jam will contribute two tracks
(one previously unreleased) to the next John Cusack film, Chicago Cab,
based on the play Hellcab. 
   The soundtrack is due in early June on Loosegroove Records, the label
run by Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. Besides Pearl Jam, it also
features previously unreleased tracks from Supergrass, Critters Buggin',
Page Hamilton of Helmet, and Hi-Fi Killers, plus tracks from Gossard's
other band Brad, Hovercraft (featuring Eddie Vedder's wife, Beth
Liebling), Sparklehorse, the Grifters, Joey Altruda, and Fu Manchu. This
will be Loosegroove's first soundtrack. 
   The two Pearl Jam tracks are "Who You Are," which appeared on the No
Code album, and the previously unreleased "Hard to Imagine." 
   Here is the Chicago Cab soundtrack track listing: Pearl Jam, "Hard to
Imagine"; Pearl Jam, "Who You Are"; Supergrass, "Don't Be Cruel"; Brad,
"Secret Girl"; Hovercraft, "Halopariodol"; the Grifters, "Radio City
Suicide"; Fu Manchu, "Swami's Last Command"; Critters Buggin',
"Brainstorm"; Page Hamilton, "Underscore"; Sparklehorse, "Hammering the
Cramps"; and Joey Altruda, "Cha Cha #69." 
   The movie, which is a Green Light Film and Television production, stars
Cusack, Paul Dillon, Gillian Anderson of The X-Files, Julianne Moore
(Boogie Nights, Nine Months), and Laurie Metcalf of Roseanne fame.

2/4/98

From: S Beuke <sbeuke@netdirect.net>
Date: Tue, 03 Feb 1998 21:35:07 -0500
Subject: LR: Re: god, i love addicted to noise: Fans line up at midnight for pearl jam's yield

Fowles, Nicole (PTG-ni1fowl) wrote:
 
 Music News Of The World
 
       -- Feb 03, 1998 --
 
        Edited by Michael Goldberg
 
 Fans Line Up At Midnight For
 Pearl Jam's Yield
 
 Say Internet leaks just
 'piqued' their interest for
 the band's new album.
 
 Addicted To Noise
 Staff Writer Chris Nelson
 reports :
 Seventeen-year-old
 Guillermo Letona walked
 anxiously around the Tower
 Records in Rockville, Md.
 on Monday night. Though it
 was quite dark outside,
 inside the store was abuzz with fluorescent light, as Letona
 bounced from the sales counter to the new releases
 section and back.
 
 Letona, a diehard Pearl Jam fan, was eagerly waiting for
 the first-day sale of the band's new Yield album to begin at
 midnight -- and it couldn't happen a moment too soon.
 
 "This is the second biggest thing in my life next to school
 right now," said Letona, a Rockville resident and one of a
 dozen fans who showed up to be the first on their block to
 buy Yield.
 
 Rockville store manager Selessia Kimbrough predicted
 that the album will sell well, but said her outlet is taking a
 wait-and-see approach to Yield. So far, the store has
 ordered 210 copies, an average number for a band of
 Pearl Jam's stature Kimbrough said, although far fewer
 than the 700 that Rockville ordered for Prodigy's The Fat
 Of The Land album last year. Thirteen copies of Yield sold
 in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
 
 "I think it will sell better than their last one," Kimbrough
 said, referring to Peal Jam's 1996 release No Code,
 which moved over 1 million copies in the U. S. "It's their
 first release in a long time." (No Code was released in the
 fall of 1996.)
 
 Tower's outlet on Chicago's Clark Street reported a much
 larger turn-out for its midnight sale. "We sold 78 copies,"
 said manager Joe Kvidera, "which is pretty remarkable
 without advertising. I hope it will be a big release. They're
 getting the word out about it, so maybe it will expand
 beyond just the Pearl Jam fanatics."
 
Several of the fans who turned out for the midnight sale in
 Rockville had already previewed Yield on the Internet,
 where for the past two months much of the album has been
 available as MP3 and RealAudio files against the wishes
 of Epic Records and the Recording Industry Association of
 America.
 
 "If anything, [the Internet leaks] are a positive," said Kevin
 Gandel, 22, of College Park, Md. "It gets the music out
 there and creates a buzz. But I don't think that the record
company anticipated that once it got out to a radio station
 that that was it -- then it was worldwide through the Net."
 
 Ernie Padilla, 21, of Wheaton, Md., agreed. "I can't wait to
 get the album," Padilla said before the sale started. "I've
 been hearing about this album for a year, and I heard
 blurbs that it's a 'hard rocking' album. Now I've heard about
half of it through the Internet. I think it's a positive thing. For
 the most part the MP3s were just 30-second snippets, and
 they piqued my curiosity."
 
 Much of the music industry is humming with speculation
 about where a guitar band like Pearl Jam fits in among
 new electronic acts like Prodigy, and whether Yield will
 return the group to the multi-million selling ranks they
 occupied with their first three albums.

 Padilla said such benchmarks don't matter to him. "In the
 early '90s, Pearl Jam got a lot of flack for being 'America's
 favorite band.' It's kind of cool that the audience is
 dwindling down. There's not like a zillion other people who
 like Pearl Jam anymore."
 
 Perhaps these days Pearl Jam's core fan base is defined
 less by people who treasure the band's nine-times
 platinum debut album Ten, and more by people like Jamie
 Melser, who said she was "very excited" after walking
 away from the sales counter with Yield in hand.
 
 "I saw a commercial [for the album] on TV, and I was like,
 'Yeah!,'" said the 20-year-old Melser, of Rockville. "I like all
 their albums. They're different every time. It's always a new
 ride." [Tues., Feb. 3, 1998, 9 a.m. PST]
 
                Copyright (c) 1997 Addicted To Noise. All rights reserved.
                Please do not reprint entire Addicted To Noise news
 stories without written permission from Addicted To
                Noise. If you excerpt, rewrite, or in some way make use
 of portions of our news, attribute to: Addicted To
                Noise, the on-line rock & roll magazine -
 http://www.addict.com/
 
 


2/4/98

Subject: Chgo Sun-Times Yield Review & other article
From: "JZ" <jzamudio@worldnet.att.net>
Date: Mon, May 4, 1998 09:46 EDT
Message-id: <6bags1$e69@bgtnsc02.worldnet.att.net>

Reprinted w/o permission

http://www.suntimes.com/output/show/lead03.htm

Pearl Jam's latest hasn't much to say 

February 3, 1998

BY JIM DEROGATIS POP MUSIC CRITIC 

Anyone surprised by the similarities between Pearl Jam's new single,
``Given to Fly,'' and Led Zeppelin's ``Going to California'' hasn't been
paying attention to Eddie Vedder and Company the past few years.

Despite their constant flirtation with the indie-rock underground, the
Seattle superstars always have been classic rockers at heart. They're prone
to the sort of larger-than-life gestures and dramatic guitar textures that
fuel heroes like Zep and the Who. The problem is that they've never made an
album as start-to-finish good as ``Led Zeppelin IV'' or ``Who's Next.''

``Yield,'' which arrives in stores today, is the third Pearl Jam album to
be released since it decided to challenge alternative rock's status quo in
1994.

The group's principled stand on concert ticket pricing and its decision to
bypass the hype machines of MTV, modern-rock radio and glossy rock
magazines are well-known. But as a result, it has functioned virtually in
exile, since its only connection to fans has been via recordings and a few
scattered gigs.

``Vitalogy'' (1994), ``No Code'' (1996) and especially ``Yield'' feel like
albums recorded in a vacuum. Sure, some of the songs connect (though rarely
with the intensity of ``Evenflow'' or ``Jeremy'' from 1991's ``Ten''). But
too many seem dashed off and self-indulgent. These are the kind of numbers
that might have ``sounded like a good idea at the time,'' Vedder has said,
but which fall flat outside the sterile environment of the recording
studio.

New tunes such as ``Low Light,'' ``Faithful'' and ``In Hiding'' are languid
mid-tempo mood pieces. These failed experiments might have been hammered
into shape with a few performances before paying customers. But the band
never made the effort.

Singer, primary lyricist and former Evanston homeboy Vedder is a little
slicker this time in his attempts to sound important without really saying
anything. But there's no hope for a tune like ``Pilate,'' one of the
dopiest ditties the quintet has ever recorded. The punchy chorus, written
by bassist Jeff Ament, consists of the line ``Like Pilate I have a dog''
repeated over and over again.

What the heck does that mean? Not a thing, but invoking ol' Pontius sure
makes it seem significant.

The album kicks off with the rollicking ``Brain of J,'' which is about
pathologists preserving the brain of J.F.K. Vedder is apparently trying to
invoke the spirit of Camelot lost. ``Soon the whole world will be
different/Soon the whole world will be relieved,'' he sings, pronouncing
the last word ``relieve-ed'' in one of his more annoying vocal mannerisms.

A few songs later, in ``No Way,'' Vedder croons, ``I'm not trying to make a
difference/I'll stop trying to make a difference.''

In other words, Pearl Jam wants to change the world. Or maybe it doesn't.
It's still trying to decide.

Meanwhile, we rock fans would be happy if the band would just give us a
song as good as ``Black Dog'' or ``Won't Get Fooled Again.''

Rating for ``Yield'': 1/41/4

____________________________________________
http://www.suntimes.com/output/show/jam04i.htm

Pearl Jam's `Yield' is no sign of surrender 

February 4, 1998

NEWS ANALYSIS BY JIM DEROGATIS POP MUSIC CRITIC 

Although it's the best-selling rock band of the '90s, Pearl Jam is better
known for the principled stand it took against business as usual in the
concert industry, playing Don Quixote to the giant, immovable windmill of
Ticketmaster.

So what are we to make of the band's calling its just-released fifth album
``Yield''?

In 1995, the band challenged nation-wide giant Ticketmaster, charging that
it was a monopoly that was driving prices up for concert fans.

The quintet will announce a compromise next week when it unveils plans for
40 shows in the United States. Whenever possible, it will play in
non-Ticketmaster sites. When it's faced with the choice of doing business
with Ticketmaster or not playing at all, it will deal with the ticketing
giant.

``We haven't lost anything, because we've learned from the experience,''
Pearl Jam singer and Evanston native Eddie Vedder says of the band's
three-year battle. The interview will be published next month in Guitar
World magazine, and it's one of several recently granted by the reticent
rock star.

``There is no way that we, personally, could have lost,'' Vedder adds. ``It
wasn't a chess game. It was basically a case of our trying to be
responsible to the people who come see the shows. ... It's showing respect
to the fans.''

It's an older and wiser Pearl Jam that is throwing in the towel. There are
plenty of critics who will call the Seattle superstars hypocrites for
reversing their position, while others will wonder why the band didn't stop
``whining'' sooner and start enjoying its position as rock stars.

Both of these are short-sighted views that ignore the facts about how this
group has operated. Pearl Jam holds a unique position in the alternative
era as a band that has refused to let the bottom line dictate its every
move. With that in mind, it's well worth reviewing how the group got to
this yield sign and the fork in the road in the first place.

The former Eddie Mueller left Chicago and his job as a waiter in his late
teens. He moved to the West Coast and adopted his mother's maiden name,
Vedder, with the hope of joining a band, and he connected beyond his
wildest dreams.

Powered by hard-hitting anthems such as ``Alive,'' ``Jeremy'' and
``Evenflow,'' Pearl Jam's 1991 debut ``Ten'' sold more than 5 million
copies. The group found itself side by side with Nirvana as standard
bearers of a sound that was dubbed ``grunge.''

Vedder and his bandmates watched in horror as their Seattle neighbor Kurt
Cobain paid a very real price for the sudden and disorienting rush of fame.
They were equally sickened by groups that were like Journey or Toto in
alternative drag--slick session musicians out to make a quick buck on the
thousands of young fans filling stadiums for Lollapalooza and making
modern-rock the fastest growing format in radio.

``This is not for you,'' the band declared on its second multiplatinum
album, trying to keep the trendies at bay.

Pearl Jam fell into the role of crusaders by accident. The group was
touring in support of ``Vs.'' It performed a powerful show at Chicago
Stadium on March 10, 1994, then did a surprise gig the next night for fan
club members at the Regal Theatre.

The musicians wanted to keep ticket prices under $20. They were outraged
when they discovered that Ticketmaster had tacked a $3.50 service fee onto
$18 tickets, bringing the total cost for their fans to $21.50. The company
had done this without the band's approval.

The fight was never about the extra cost. It so happened that the federal
government was simultaneously investigating whether Ticketmaster held a
monopoly in the concert field, and Pearl Jam thought that it did.

Ticketmaster signs exclusive contracts with major venues in most cities.
Artists can't perform at those halls without using the ticket broker and
allowing it to charge service fees ranging from $3 to $7 or more. In
Chicago, bands can't play the Rosemont Horizon, the United Center, the New
World Music Theatre and most other venues unless they work with
Ticketmaster.

The Justice Department asked Pearl Jam to file a memo about its
experiences. Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament soon found
themselves testifying before an investigative committee on Capitol Hill,
alongside representatives of R.E.M. and Aerosmith. But those bands
continued working with Ticketmaster, and Pearl Jam did not.

It's important to remember that the government went to Pearl Jam, not the
other way around. But the media covered the story as a personal crusade by
Vedder, especially after the Justice Department dropped its investigation
without pressing charges.

Pearl Jam's decision not to work with Ticketmaster had serious
repercussions: With a handful of exceptions--including a show at Soldier
Field on July 11, 1995--the group has been unable to perform in the United
States for three years.

In part, it welcomed the break. Band members also stopped making videos,
giving interviews and releasing official singles. It retreated to Seattle
and regrouped.

``We were just moving too fast,'' Vedder tells Guitar World. ``What were we
doing [during the break]? We were playing music. That's the one activity
you do as a band--not all of these peripheral things.''

There's no question that the band suffered both artistically and
commercially by withdrawing from the public arena. The three albums it has
made since ``Vs.''--``Vitalogy,'' ``No Code'' and the new ``Yield''--all
suffer from the sterility and self-indulgence of a group that hasn't
ventured out of the recording studio nearly as often as it should have.

Industry observers have been quick to note the declining album sales.
Cynics will say that Pearl Jam is yielding because it wants to revisit past
commercial peaks. But if that was what really mattered to the group, it
could have compromised its principles long ago and embarked on lucrative
tours charging $50 or $75 a seat, just like the Rolling Stones and the
Eagles.

Anyone who's tempted to call Pearl Jam poseurs ought to ask themselves if
they'd throw away millions of dollars just to make a point.

And Pearl Jam did, indeed, make some points. It proved that a rock band
that isn't comprised of greedheads can play Soldier Field-sized venues and
not milk the audience for every last dime. It showed that groups don't have
to feed the relentless hype machine. And it indicated that idealism is not
the sole province of those '60s bands enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall
of Fame.

``If Pearl Jam is more active promotionally--whether it's a tour or video
or both--it will make a difference,'' said Alex Luke, program director at
WKQX-FM (Q101).

Pearl Jam took over Q101 and a dozen other modern-rock radio stations for
four hours on Saturday night, broadcasting its live ``Monkeywrench Radio''
program from its Seattle hideout. The band performed live and hosted
showcases by friends like Mudhoney.

In between, Vedder interviewed feminist godmother Gloria Steinem about what
can be done to prevent violence at abortion clinics, and he spoke to
members of the all-girl band Sleater-Kinney about how young women can learn
to defend themselves in case they're attacked.

It was some of the best radio I've ever heard--and it was evidence that
these quixotic rockers aren't about to stop charging at windmills.

02/04/98

From: Nicole.Fowles@pactel.COM
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 09:14:00 -0800
Subject: LR: official confirmation: Wall of sound

Tuesday, February 3, 1998

    Pearl Jam Set for Letterman
    Landmark

    Sometimes America's favorite gap-toothed dweeb just needs to rock.
    Spin Radio reports that David Letterman has convinced Pearl Jam to
    perform on his 1000th Late Show on May 1. The rare national
    television appearance comes in time to whet fans' appetites for the
    band's tour, which is set to kick off sometime in June. 

    Fans who tuned into Pearl Jam's "Monkeywrench Radio" broadcast
    last Saturday got a taste of their latest album, Yield, which hit
store
    shelves Tuesday. Eddie and the boys performed several tracks from
    the disc, and invited some fellow hometown rockers to play their
    music during the four-hour broadcast. Pearl guitarist Stone
Gossard's
    side band Brad played live, as did R.E.M. guitarist Peter Buck's
    auxiliary gig Tuatara. Seattle favorites Mudhoney also rocked the
    program, which was made available to millions of listeners via
    satellite and the Internet. 

02/04/98

From: Jasparina Mahyat <jsparina@po.pacific.net.sg>
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 02:57:16 +0800 (SGT)
Subject: LR: Re: Yield photo locations ... 

> This is a long shot and I dont really know much about Rome but could it
> be that Rome has a Chinatown and this photo was actually taken in
> Italy?? Im not too sure if Rome does have a Chinatown or not ..but I
> know most places I`ve travelled have all had one. (well I know
> Singapore,LONDON,Melbourne,Sydney and Brisbane do anyways :-)..that one
> is just a thought ...

Well, can't really tell it's Chinatown, Singapore, doesn't look like it.
When the band was here in '95, for some reason, the concert organiser
decided to put them on an island called 'Sentosa' instead of the mainland
Singapore. The island has some nice beaches, maybe that's the reason but too
bad there are no big waves for Eddie to surf :) so he just swam and together
with Mark Arm, rode bikes around the island. I don't think they went to the
city and explore Singapore, besides, on the day of the concert, Eddie told a
reporter that Beth was sick and that he'd been taking care of her and
staying in the hotel writing his journal. My guess is that the picture could
be taken in Thailand or the Phillipines.

Speaking of Singapore, the newspaper here did a feature story on Pearl Jam
and a review of 'Yield', here they are, happy reading! (it's looooong! :)

Will it Jam or Yield under the test of time? 

Despite changing music trends, an unexpected air of excitement has greeted
the release of a new album by Pearl Jam. PAUL ZACH wonders whether the
Seattle quintet is The Last of the Great Rock Bands.

ON A Friday night on March 3, 1995, the Singapore Indoor Stadium witnessed the
kind of eruption of adulation for a rock band rarely seen since the days of
the Beatles. After its fellow Seattle group Mudhoney finished an opening
set, the members of Pearl Jam walked out nonchalantly. There was none of the
special effects and fireworks used to pump up crowds artificially at Michael
Jackson concerts. 

None was necessary. The crowd of about 5,000 were already clawing at every chair
and barrier that separated them from their heroes. Stadium officials
insisted the show would not go on until the chairs were back in place and
everyone was seated. The band's charismatic leader, Eddie Vedder, appealed
for calm and order. But it was too late to turn back. The authorities
realised that and allowed the crowd to deposit the few remaining chairs on
either side of the stage, and remain standing. 

Then Pearl Jam ripped into Animal. The multitude went into a paroxysm of
fervour and fanaticism more intense than the kind one sees at
religious-revival meetings. Crowd-surfing created a steady stream of bodies
that were passed head-over-heels to the stage. Vedder shook the hand of each
fan obligingly as security guards ushered him or her off stage left. But one
man managed to break free and give the stunned vocalist a bear-hug. 

Watching that Singapore audience bond with the band was a classic rock concert
moment. Bucking the trend NEARLY three years later, the average lifespan of
new rock bands seems to be decreasing even though the rest of humanity is
living longer than ever. This year's Matchbox 20 is next year's Hootie And
The Blowfish. Only Pearl Jam seems to be bucking the trend. 

Today, it is releasing a new album, Yield, worldwide. But in order to beat
parallel imports to Orchard Road, Sony Music treated the ears of the group's
faithful here to its new music yesterday. 

Yield is the fifth full-length studio album the band has released since it
helped revive rock with its debut Ten. It came out in 1991, a year after
bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard, formerly with two seminal
Seattle bands Green River and later Mother Love Bone, hooked up with
guitarist Mike McCready and vocalist Eddie Vedder. 

The group went through two drummers named Dave -- Krusen and Abbruzzese --
before later settling down with rock-steady Jack Irons. When this decade
dawned, Seattle was the capital of the music world. Ten was an album that
appealed to both young and old; here was a band of young men tackling
contemporary concerns just like the artistes that ageing rock fans grew up
with once did. And they had a sound as big and bracing as Led Zeppelin. 

Pearl Jam's triumph was that it used its youthful energy to deliver music
for the ages. Ten vaulted the group into the spotlight. But Vedder,
especially, has spent an inordinate amount of energy trying to stay In
Hiding -- as the title of one of the loveliest tracks on the new album goes
- -- ever since. 

The more famous Pearl Jam became, the more its members craved anonymity. They
refused to promote their albums, give interviews and pose for videos, photo
shoots and fashion layouts. They even fought to keep ticket prices for their
concerts low and filed suit -- unsuccessfully -- against the monopolistic
Ticketmaster ticket-selling group in the United States for inflating them. 

Prices for their concert here were S$70 at a time when lesser artistes were
charging S$120 and up. In the United States, they kept them as low as US$15
(S$26). As for the music, the so-called grunge genre that spawned the band
has passed into the rock chronicles. But even as Ten was going on to sell 10
million copies, Pearl Jam was moving beyond the angst-ridden
self-involvement of grunge. 

The key track on its second album, Vs., in 1993, was Daughter, one of the
most poignant statements about child abuse ever penned: Don't call me
daughter/not fit to/a picture kept will remind me, Vedder sings, the emotion
in his voice almost palpable. 

Gone are the brooding electric guitars and the disaffected youth of the group's
gut-wrenching Jeremy from Ten, who breaks his silence in school with the
barrel of a gun. Instead, Daughter gives us Gossard and McCready's ringing
acoustic guitars, which hint that the young girl will "rise" loudly and
triumphantly -- without violence. Very much alive

JUST months before Kurt Cobain killed himself and grunge, Pearl Jam was
making it loud and clear that it was very much alive. The band's music and
lyrics continued to mature and explore old themes and concerns in new ways
through 1994's Vitalogy and No Code in 1996. 

These albums show Pearl Jam exhibiting the simmering creative spark and growing
confidence in its craft that can be heard in the evolving work of groups
from the Beatles to The Who and Led Zeppelin to U2 and REM. 

Interestingly, like many of those bands, Pearl Jam's musical journeys have
led it to the sounds and philosophies of the East. Vedder's work with
Pakistan's legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on the Dead Man Walking
soundtrack in 1996 was one of the most successful artistic meetings ever of
East and West. 

Ament too infused a 1996 album by his side project, Three Fish, with
oriental sounds and symbols, arguably with less success. After No Code,
Pearl Jam took a breather. The band went Downtown to dance under a mirror
ball with Neil Young; Gossard designed Interiors with his side project,
Brad. The break seems to have done them a world of good. 

No Code chalked up disappointing sales, by Pearl Jam's measure, perhaps
because it lacked focus and such landmark tracks as Daughter and Jeremy. The
new album, Yield, lacks nothing. It is the band's most cohesive and
fully-formed yet. 

Brain of J opens it with the kind of cataclysmic creative burst that gives
birth to solar systems and life. Vedder considers the mysterious
disappearance of John F. Kennedy's brain during the autopsy that followed
his assassination. He sums up society's increasing paranoia as a new
millennium approaches. 

At 31, his wizened voice sounds at least 60 and is now THE voice of rock.
Gossard and McCready have been playing guitar together so long, their
fingers know each other's moves as well as long-time lovers. And Ament and
Irons have grown into one of music's most solid and soulful rhythm sections. 

Midway through Yield, Pearl Jam rolls out Do The Evolution. The track is as
fitful, raw and clumsy as any life form, social system -- or rock band --
which is lurching one step forward as it tries to keep from falling two steps. 

The album's Jeremy and Daughter is the first single, Given To Fly, which
this time sees youth leaving the classroom behind and looking much higher
for truth. 
And just as the universe will someday go out with a wistful whimper, and
perhaps a sigh, Pearl Jam brings Yield to a close with All Those Yesterdays. 

There may not be a future for mankind, but no one can take away its past, Vedder
seems to be saying in his typically elliptical way. Yield is Pearl Jam is
being Pearl Jam. There is no faux ska. There is no drum 'n' bass. There is
no guest vocal by the Spice Girls. Like all great bands, the group sets
trends; it does not follow them. It remains to be seen whether Yield will
stand the test of time and emerge as Pearl Jam's Revolver, Led Zeppelin IV,
Who's Next or REM's Out Of Time. 

But even if it does not join those hallowed ranks and proves to be the
band's last jam, at least it is going out with a pearl of an album. 

WE HAD TO SAY NO A LOT, INITIALLY 

PEARL JAM'S members spoke with respected American music writer Dave Marsh as
part of the release of new album Yield. Here is what they said about success,
Ticketmaster, the monopolistic ticket-selling group in the US, the Big
Picture and smaller topics. 

On making Yield
- ----------------
     
Jeff Ament (bass): We approached this record so differently. I think it's
the first time that almost everybody came to the sessions with demos of
complete songs or partial songs or ideas. I mean, everybody had a tape. So,
I think from that end of it, we were just a lot more together. Ed actually
gave a lot of us the confidence to do that. And that was huge. 

Mike McCready (guitar): I came up with a lot of ideas, and Ed liked them, so he
started putting vocals over them. Once that happens, that's pretty much in
the bag that the song's going to happen. 

Eddie Vedder (vocals): The first time Jack and I played Low Light with Jeff,
I sang over the guitar and the drums and got chills. Part of it was knowing
Jeff wrote it. It sounded good, and I really enjoyed what he had written. It
sounds lovey-dovey, but it was a great moment. 

Jack Irons (drums): We made a conscious effort to take our time, to go and
record songs and then walk away from them and then gain perspective out of
the recording environment and listening and coming back and making
appropriate changes. Maybe dropping a song, coming back to another song,
re-recording a song. You know, we weren't just trying to get it done. We
definitely staggered it over a period of time so we could do that. So the
creativity could flow more natural ... 

On struggling with stardom
- --------------------------

Ament: The way that things happened for us and the way that initially
everybody kind of wanted a piece of us, I think we had to say no a lot,
initially. And that probably did come across as being control freaks. 

Stone Gossard (guitar): I tend to fight trying to control things too much
personally. At some point, you have to just say: 'I'm in a rock band, and
this is kinda part of the gig, going out and doing a few interviews, and
it's nice to sell records and it's nice for people to know your records
coming out, and it's nice to make records, and it's nice to have a
relatively balanced relationship with your record company.' 

On No Code 
- ----------

Vedder: No Code was regular. It was heard, it was out there, it was a
record, and it wasn't Independence Day II. That was real. You can only hear
from so many people in a day. So I heard about No Code as many times as I
heard about Ten probably. So, it was a good record, and I heard it affected
people. 

On In Hiding
- ------------

Irons: I can't say that it sums the album up, in a sense. But I liked the
way it went down. We were all of us in a room, we just kind of did it. I
believe it was one of the first takes after we rehearsed it a bunch of
times. And we finally got it. There was a feel of a band there that I really
enjoyed. 

His favourite track on Yield
- ----------------------------

Vedder: Do The Evolution. It's the song I can get most excited about. I just
like it. It's a dance. It's the Evolution, baby! 

On the war with Ticketmaster
- ----------------------------

Gossard: Ticketmaster still charges two or three bucks to get into the Holocaust
Museum, which is supposed to be free. It's a company that doesn't really
have a lot of uh ... moral fibre. 

Vedder: If we're going to pay the fare on the bus, we want to drive it. What
the hell! You know? We got this far. And if that was being seen as being
difficult, you could also see it as: We cared. 

On not promoting records
- ------------------------

Vedder: There's a lot in the records and the liner notes. I think interviews
would be great, a few here and there. When it gets to the point of the Hit
Parader all-Pearl Jam issue, that's when it's rape. I'm not willing to go
that far. 

On Neil Young
- -------------

McCready: He's just like a wise sage or something like that. Very cool guy. Very
mellow. It was one of the funnest times I've ever had, going on tour, just
playing his songs, 'cause I love his songs, first of all. Just getting to be
part of it. Playing Cortez or whatever, it was just magnificent. I wouldn't
have traded that for anything. 

On the Big Picture
- ------------------

Vedder: On an evolutionary level, man has been on this planet for three
million years, so that you have this number line that goes like this (hands
wide apart). And that we're about to celebrate the year 2000, which is this
(holds hands an eighth of an inch apart.) Fifty million years of sharks and
all these living things. Then man comes out of the muck, and three million
years later, he's standing, and now he's controlling everything and killing
it. Just in the last hundred! Just a speck on this line! So what are we
doin' here? Where are we going? ... And why are we rushing? 

- ----------------------------------------------------------

Long layoff yields great new album for Pearl Jam 

YIELD 
Pearl Jam (Epic) 
****1/2 

AFTER almost two years of cringing at the sound of such cut-rate aberrations
as Days Of The New and Seven Mary Three, it is more refreshing than ever to
hear the real thing again. 

Many people apparently feel the same way. The first single from the new album by
Pearl Jam -- Given To Fly -- rocketed to the top of Billboard's Mainstream
and Modern Rock charts almost before it was released by Sony's Epic label
last month. 

Listeners are so starved for meaty music that matters that an unofficial
advance copy of the track found its way onto the Internet in November. Radio
stations around the world downloaded it and started airing it. 

Other Internet sites have time-clocks which are counting down the day, hour,
minute and second till the release of the Seattle band's fifth full-length
album, Yield, its first since 1996's under-rated No Code. And Singaporeans
will be able to buy it before anyone else in the world. Sony will release
the album here on Monday, a full day before it hits the stores elsewhere. 

Make sure you buy your copy as soon as possible. Yield is so good that it is
bound to disappear from record store shelves as quickly as the Titanic
soundtrack, another Sony release. 

Yield opens with a false start, then explodes into Brain Of J, sounding, no
doubt, as invigorating and life-giving as the big bang that created the
universe. 

Pearl Jam has been performing the track during a stint on the Rolling
Stones' Bridges To Babylon tour. A cross between the group's own Spin The
Black Circle and Led Zeppelin's Communication Breakdown, it asserts boldly
that anyone who thinks rock is dead must be in need of a respirator. 

Stone Gossard and Mike McCready deliver stunning guitar figures, but it is
Jack Irons' drumming that drives them to it. Meanwhile, Eddie Vedder's voice
seems to be ageing better than wine. He even sounds legendary as he ponders
the kind of enigmatic question that only he could: Whose got the brain of
JFK?/What's it mean to us now? Yet Brain serves as merely the preface for a
trio of tracks that is as strong as anything in the entire canon of rock.
Vedder's vocals carry all three -- Faithful, No Way and the single, Given To
Fly -- to the kind of heights that made Alive and Daughter classics. 

As the music ebbs and flows in Pearl Jam's trademark style -- mellow and
soothing one minute, then swelling into fierce and bracing realms the next
- -- Vedder considers the human condition. As much as we all want to believe
in ourselves, the doubts remain as he sings "We're faithful/We all
believe/We all believe it" (this one should be for United States President
Bill Clinton). Here, Jeff Ament's deep bass grooves anchor the track. 

On No Way, Vedder admits his own self-doubt singing: "I've stopped trying to
make a difference/I'm not trying to make a difference," but then comes the
wry punch line: "I've stopped trying to make a difference -- no way." This
trilogy reaches its emotional and musical summit in Given To Fly. Its theme
- -- a young boy reaches for something higher than the disappointing
non-answers offered by his teachers and peers -- echoes the anthemic Jeremy. 

After such a shattering start, Pearl Jam provides a breather with the
comparatively wistful Wish List. Then, over a chunky throwaway riff, Pilate
comes across as humorous relief; you can almost see Vedder laughing off the
assumption that he is terminally dour as he spits out the chorus "Like
Pilate/ I have a dog". 

Even more raw and punky is Do The Evolution, harking back to the album's
apocalyptic opening both in sound and theme. The band makes a sarcastic
statement about mankind's past and future -- and, self-effacingly, its own
- -- as the track winds down to the sound of its members making music like a
church choir. 

Pearl Jam crosses a brief untitled, utterly abstract bridge, a crazy snippet
straight out of The Cabinet Of Caligari. It gets back on track with a second
trilogy of songs which are similar in form and content -- the brief MFC, and
the lilting Lowlight and In Hiding. 

Long-time producer Brendan O'Brien contributes a haunting piano backdrop on this
grouping's centrepiece Lowlight. But just as you decide it is easily one of
Pearl Jam's finest ballads, along comes In Hiding, and you realise it is a
toss-up. 

Before reaching the end of an all-too-short road, Yield detours through one
more tour de force with Push Me Pull Me, replete with sound effects and a
manic Vedder vocal. 

Pearl Jam brings the curtain down on the album with the reflective All Those
Yesterdays. It evokes the spirit of the dearly departed gently, from the
Beatles to the late Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, with whom Vedder paired for one
of the most moving songs of the 90's, The Long Road, from the film Dead Man
Walking. 

Yield is simply the sound of one rock's greatest-ever bands cutting no slack. 
- -- PAUL ZACH 

Jasparina
- --reporting from Singapore :)


02/04/98

From: Nicole.Fowles@pactel.COM
Date: Wed, 4 Feb 1998 11:33:08 -0800
Subject: LR: MTV: PJ talks about New Approach to "Yield"

for those of you who missed it...

          2.04.98 14:00 EDT 
Pearl Jam Talks About New Approach To "Yield" 
                Pearl Jam
          "Given To Fly" Live
           1MB QuickTime 

Pearl Jam's "Yield" arrived in record stores this week, and the
album marks a slight philosophical departure from the band's
way of approaching albums in the past.

Before the group put together its "Monkey Wrench Radio"
last weekend in Seattle, Pearl Jam sat down with MTV News
for an exclusive on-camera interview and talked about the
follow up to 1996's rather low-key "No Code."

"I think the last couple records, Eddie (Vedder) has really
been at the helm of those records," bassist Jeff Ament told
MTV News. "I remember at the end of the last record, he
said, 'Y'know, this was really a lot of work for me, and next
time, it would be great if I didn't have to work so hard on the
arrangements, and if people came in with more complete
ideas, and even more complete songs, that would really help
me out a lot,' and I think everybody took that to heart."

Vedder himself agreed, observing, "Stone (Gossard, guitarist)
was writing music and lyrics. Jeff had music and lyrics. I had
music and lyrics... we were able to team up, y'know. Have a
partnership there and team up and write together on this one."

In addition to lightening the creative load on Vedder, the new
approach to songwriting had another by-product as well.

"I think the fact that everybody had so much input into the
record, like everybody really got a little bit of their say on the
record, and I think because of that, everybody feels like
they're an integral part of the band," Ament observed.

"When you come in with a demo," Gossard said, "you kind of
already have an idea of, a rough version that everyone can get
excited about to start with. Then you give it another one or
two chances of really taking that song to the next level, and
you end up sort of contouring it a bit more, and sort of honing
it, so I think there's a little more of that going on this record."

Apparently the communal approach to "Yield" worked as the
group is split over which track is the strongest.

"'Evolution' is my favorite song," Vedder noted. "I can listen
to like it's some band that just came out of nowhere. I just like
the song. I was able to listen to it as an outside observer and
just really play it over and over. Maybe because I was singing
it from a third person so it didn't really feel like me singing."

Guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Jack Irons both
found "In Hiding" to be a personal favorite on the album.

"I like 'In Hiding' a lot," Irons said. "It's like a band track. It
sounds like five guys just played a track together and I think
that's pretty much what happened."

"Just something about it that strikes me," McCready said of
"In Hiding."

"Even in the earlier demo stages when I heard it I knew it was
something that had to happen."

Overall, Vedder said he still feels the album works as a
whole, complete work.

"I think every record we've tried to make a linear experience,"
Vedder said. "I think we think of the records the same way
we think of the set lists when you play live. There's builds, and
ups and downs, and something at the end, which the last two
records seemed to have lullabies at the end. So you're looking
at it as a piece. It's not an opera, yet... that's slated for 2001,
but it's still a complete piece I think."

Of course, Pearl Jam have long been outspoken supporters of
the endangered vinyl medium, and "Yield" is available on
vinyl, though you may have to hunt for it.

Pearl Jam launches a world tour February 20 in Maui, then
goes on to play the Far East before returning to the U.S. in
late spring or summer.

The new issue of "Performance" magazine reports that the
band is looking for a supporting act to take on the road from
June 19 to July 19, and then from August 17 to September
20. Before that, the band will play dates in Hawaii and
Australia, and the band's official Pearl Jam Rumor Pit reports
that the band has added a show in the Aussie town of Perth
after a petition bearing more than 12,000 signatures was
delivered to Gossard requesting the show.

MTV News will have much more of its exclusive Pearl Jam
interview on "MTV News 1515" this Friday at 8 p.m., and
Saturday and Sunday at 7:30 p.m.



02/04/98

From: Nicole.Fowles@pactel.COM
Date: Thu, 5 Feb 1998 08:45:05 -0800
Subject: LR: And speaking of sales, MTV reports...PJ's Yield rolling out of st ores

            2.5.98 7:55 EDT 
Pearl Jam's "Yield" Rolling Out Of Stores 
              Eddie Vedder

Pearl Jam released its new album "Yield" on Tuesday, and
while it's too early to tell how first week and long range sales
will go, first day reports from across the country seem very
encouraging.

Spokespeople for the Tower Records chain said fans began
lining up outside some stores late Monday night, and that
"Yield" was easily their top seller on Tuesday. Reps for the
Virgin Megastore in New York City's Times Square say sales
were, "phenomenal."

The Best Buy chain, with 284 stores nationwide, says "Yield"
sold an average of 100 copies per store and may replace the
"Titanic" soundtrack as this week's top seller.

Other outlets, like Sam Goody in Chicago, also report strong
sales.

While the members of Pearl Jam have never been ones to
base their success on their standing on the charts, the good
sales news should come as a bit of a relief for the band after it
departed from its usual creative process when writing "Yield"
(see "Pearl Jam Talks About New Approach To 'Yield'"
in the MTV News Gallery).

MTV News will have much more of its exclusive on-camera
Pearl Jam interview this weekend in "MTV News 1515."

For more on Pearl Jam, check out the MTV News
Gallery.


02/04/98

From: Gayle Katz <gkatz@bu.edu>
Date: Wed, 04 Feb 1998 08:20:05 -0800
Subject: LR: article...nothing too special

By JIM SULLIVAN
.c 1998, The Boston Globe

Pearl Jam's upcoming CD ''Yield'' (Epic, out Tuesday) does not sound
like a Major Statement made by an Important Band. This is good. And
''Yield,'' where the charms are unveiled, onionlike, with repeated
listenings, is a very good album.

It opens with a bang: a churning, squalling, guitar-stoked rocker with
Eddie Vedder singing ''Who's got the brain of JFK?/What's it mean to us
now?'' But that song is something of a feint. ''Yield,'' produced by
Brendan O'Brien and the band, is the least overtly hard-rocking or
''grungiest'' of the band's efforts, and while the charter inhabitants
of Pearl Jam Nation may grumble (again), they have a lot of second- and
third-generation bands still stirring those embers, furtively fanning
those old flames.

Pearl Jam has other things on its mind. (The credits range all over the
place. Vedder has eight writing or co-writing credits. Guitarist Mike
McCready has four; guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament have
three each.)

If ever there was a rock band that obstinately fought against the fame
it ostensibly once sought, it would be Pearl Jam. It limited its MTV
exposure; it put the lid on interviews; it fought with Ticketmaster and
curtailed its tour. With Vedder its most public/non-public face, Pearl
Jam was the most reluctant of rock stars.

It was born in 199O, as two musicians from the defunct Mother Love Bone
plus Vedder and McCready and short-term drummer Dave Krusen. They hit it
big right out of the starting gate in 1991, with the songs ''Alive'' and
''Jeremy'' from their debut CD, ''Ten.'' They were a a rough-hewn but
straight-ahead rock band dressed down in grunge clothing, but
arena-groomed even when they were playing small clubs. They were an
alternative rock band that Middle America could and would embrace. They
were brooding at times, but nowhere near as careening, desperate, and
dangerous as fellow Seattle-ites Nirvana. In those days, the boys in
Nirvana scorned the relative slicksters in Pearl Jam. Early on, the late
Kurt Cobain predicted Pearl Jam would be ''the ones responsible for this
corporate/alternative macho fusion.'' Fans could choose sides. Some
folks were reminded of the Rolling Stones/Beatles rivalry of the 1960s.

Over time, beginning with 1994's ''Vitalogy'' and continuing on 1996's
''No Code,'' Pearl Jam has moved away from the rock anthems and power
ballads of yore to a sound that's less obvious. The advance single,
''Given to Fly,'' already a big radio hit, is representative of Pearl
Jam's current direction. The song bears a marked resemblance to Led
Zeppelin's ''Goin' To California,'' from Zep's so-called ''ZOSO'' album,
the record that signaled there might be more to Zep than hard blues and
lemon squeezing. It was a harbinger of Zep's shift toward progressive
rock.

Pearl Jam's always owed more to Led Zeppelin than to, say, the Sex
Pistols. ''Given to Fly'' follows several arcs - delicacy to crunch time
and back again. It's an impressionistic mood piece,
salvation-by-the-sea, a la The Who's ''Quadrophenia.'' (One of Vedder's
favorite albums, by the way.) Sings Vedder: ''The love he receives is
the love that is saved ... and sometimes is seen a strange spot in the
sky ... a human being given to fly.'' The final song, ''All Those
Yesterdays'' is similarly reflective, boasting a George Harrison-esque
guitar coda. (Techically, it's not the last song. The unlisted, delayed
14th track is an instrumental, Latin-flavored romp.)

It wouldn't be Pearl Jam if there weren't unresolved anxiety:
Vedder's ''I just want someone to be there for me'' set to a
creepy-crawly, guitar-scrape of a song, ''No Fly.'' ''Do the Evolution''
features a hurtling pace and a neat, squawking guitar riff. It's also
got some humor (yay!) with Vedder exclaiming, ''I am ahead/I am
advanced/I am the first mammal to wear pants/With my lust I can kill
'cause in God I trust.'' Runner-up for best introductory lyrics is
''Wishlist'': ''I wish I was a neutron bomb - for once I could go off/I
wish I was a sacrifice but somehow still lived on.'' Supressed rage,
submission, perseverance, all in one couplet.

Much of Pearl Jam's appeal lies in the rugged, sexy, and supple voice of
Vedder, and he's at the center of this disc, navigating the sonic
contours with precision and passion. With ''Yield,'' Pearl Jam continues
on its journey, making grown-up rock that's more about nooks and
crevices than about big pictures.


02/07/98

Subject: NYT Article Transcript
Date: Sat, Feb 7, 1998 13:40 EST
From: MindyCY1
Message-id: <19980207184000.NAA16164@ladder03.news.aol.com>

Hi all.

I get delivery of the Times, and they always include most of the Sunday sections including Arts and Leisure on Saturdays.  Here's the complete transcript...my fingers are always completely gone, lol.  There are a couple of photos, rehearsing in the studio, including a large, promo COLOR photo on the front page of the A&L section...the one w/ them standing on the rocks near a beach, etc.  If you're planning to shell out $3 for the Sunday Times just for this article, it's not really worth it for a couple of photos.  They'll probably have those photos up at the Times website anyway, if you want to check it out... www.nytimes.com.  I made the parts I felt were esp.
important BOLD for added drama, so forgive me for highlighting the article.

------------------

Edging Off Rock's High Road

by Jon Pareles

Eddie Vedder, Pearl Jam's leader, watches his words these days.  He is so wary of being misunderstood or of seeming presumptous, that he hesitates even to assign any meaning to the title of his band's new album, "Yield," which was released on Tuesday.

But he doesn't have to spell it out.  For much of the 1990's Pearl Jam has been famously unyielding as it had tried, quixotically, to make million-selling rock while keeping a clear conscience.  If there has been an iconic 1990's rocker, it was Mr. Vedder circa 1993: brooding, earnest and increasingly uneasy with his own popularity.  It was around then that the band stopped making video clips and doing interviews.  It made a kamikaze run against
Ticketmaster, which controls ticket sales at most big halls; in protest against the company's service charges, the band stopped performing at Ticketmaster halls and ended up barely touring America at all.  It discovered that integrity has no fixed boundaries and that the struggle to maintain it presents endless pitfalls.

With "Yield," the band members say, Pearl Jam has decided to concentrate on music -- recording and performing -- while yieding to the realities of the music business in the 1990's.  The group is likely to play shows at a few Ticketmaster halls in cities without nearby alternatives, [I can already see people picking this apart in here and in ampj, lol. -m.] and it's thinking about releasing a music video.  More important, the band has recharge its
music.  "Yield," its fifth album, is as strong as the band's best previous one, "Vs.," from 1993.

"Let's say that hypothetically speaking, the title does mean something," Mr. Vedder says with a crooked smile.  A week before the album's release, he shows up at Pearl Jam's headquarters, a warehouse in downtown Seattle, where the band has begun rehearsals for a world tour.  "You can fight so much, and then you have to think, ''What are the real battles?'  'What's important?'  You get to a certain point, and it's really hard to remember what music
is and to remember what drives you."

Not that he thinks Pearl Jam's business choices, including its feud with Ticketmaster, have been misguided. "We've made decisions based on morals and ehtics because we've got them," Mr. Vedder says. "That's our choice, and we're going to live by it.  We reserve the right to screw up -- not that we have yet, but we will."

At least since the 1960's, rockers have had an uneasy relationship with the demands of show business. While rock presents itself as the voice of idealism and rebellion, it also strives for mass popularity, which entails mass marketing.  The trick to sell records and sell out concerts without appearing to sell out the fans.

Pearl Jam, which has sold some 30 million albums worldwide, is at once a musical ensemble, a profit center, an object of media interest and a source of that elusive but prized quality, credibility.  Rockers worry about crediblity in ways other pop-culture figures can ignore.  Nobody cares, for instance, that Pierce Brosnan as James Bond endorses everything from liquor to cars to telephone service.  But particularly in the 1990's, when
promotional ploys are everywhere, it's hard to specify what constitues a sellout.  Punk-rock bands play tours sponsored by show companies; 1960's hippie rockers ell beloved song for laxative commercials; the Rolling Stones now allow Sprint to put a straight pin through the band's lolling-tongue logo.  There are subtler sellout too, from ego temptations of an ever-hungry celebrity culture to the business practices of an industry that calls music
"product."

While Pearl Jam's profitability gives the band clout, it also multiplies the stakes on every small business decision, like setting the price of a souvenir T-shirt or the service charge on a ticket.  The band keeps altering business as usual; for instance, after its 1991 debut album, "10," Pearl Jam took full conrol of its CD packaging, switching to paper instead of plastic.  And true to its own song "Spin the Black Circle," it has insisted
that its albums be relased on LP's as well as CD's significantly boosting vinyl sales.  Most rockers find themselves somewhere on the spectrum between the Spice Girls, a brand name with tunes attached, and Fugazi, the paragon of uncompromising virtue that insists on staying on an independent lable and keeping both CD and concert prices under $10.  But Fugazi plays clubs and measures album sales in the thousand; Pearl Jam is on a major label, Epic,
and plays the worldwide arena circuit.  In the wake of punl-rock, which questioned the whole idea that bigger is better, Pearl Jam sometimes felt guilty about its own blockbluster popularity.

"Are we five great musicians?" says the guitarist Stone Gossard.  "No.  We're just an average kind of white-boy rock band that could play pretty well together and had some ideas for some songs.  We have something sepcial, and we have a great singer, but there was a long time in the band of feeling insecure about the fact that we had sold so many records."

Pearl Jam arrived decisively with "10," which sold nine million copies in the United States. Along with Nirvana, the band found itself leading Seattle's grunge invasion, and from the beginning its music combined muscle with misgivings.  The brawny guitar riffs and Mr. Vedder's husky baritone were close to meat-and-potatoes hard rock, particularly on the band's first and most conventional album.  That record sounded less radical than the
manic-depressive songs of Nirvana, and it reached commercial radio station that were still playing socalled classic rock.

Yet the lyrics, and the troubled tone of Mr. Vedder's singing, traded hard rock's fantasies of power for uncertainty and self-doubt, expressed in tales of abused children and people desperate to find a purpose.  As Pearl Jam grew more confident on its next albums, "Vs." (1993) and "Vitalogy" (1994), the music added scrappy crosscurrents: hard-rock riffs, psychedelic jamming and folk-rock delicacy.

The songs were simultaneously heroic and insecure, and they were taken to heart by young listeners who were torn, like Mr. Vedder's lyrics, between self-righteousness and doubt.  While Nirvana self-destructed, Pearl Jam persisted, and soon its sound was everywhere. For most of the 1990's, rock radio stations have filled their air time with Pearl Jam and imitators like the Stone Tempe Pilots, Seven Mary Three, Bush and Creed.

Mr. Vedder quickly learned the drawbacks of having his face on television shows and magazine covers; he found himself beseiged.  Fans mobbed him when he went to a baseball or basketball game.  One troubled fan drove her car straight at his house at 60 miles per hour.  So Pearl Jam, contrary to 1990's routine, stopped making music videos and, until now, has also kept its distance from the usual round of print interviews and television appearances.  In
a way, the band was trying to return to the pre-MTV era, when most rock bands were audio presences, not celebrities.  The band may have sacrificed the sales that exposure on MTV would have provided, but it was willing to make that trade-off.

"I don't know exactly how to say this," Mr. Vedder muses on his days of mass-media exposure.  "But in a way, I felt like a cop.  Every time I met someone, I had to judge if someone was being honest with me or not.  It's too much work to analyze every person that comes up to you to see if they have an agenda.  It's not healthy."

Mr. Vedder prefers to have the music speak for itself. "I want this things that doesn't exist," he says, "where you can project anything you want on the songs, just leave me out of it.  That's why, not being in a video or something, you become less of a face.  In a video, you're more important than the song, and I never want that.  I'm not, and I never will be."

Mr. Vedder has also been reluctant to be interviewed because he feel inarticulate; he knows he's no sound-bite dispenser.  "I'm not that comfortable doing interviews because I would rather write it down, sit with it for a week and change a few lines before I put it out," he says.  When an interviewer's tape recorder clicks to a stop, Mr. Vedder removes the cassette, carefully pops out the record-protect tab and write on the label, "under protest."  

Bono, the leader of U2, the Irish band that was the essence of high-mindedness in he 80's, finds kindred spirits in Pearl Jam; U2 is carrying its extravagant Popmart tour around the world without a corporate sponsor.  "There is nothing more rebellious that being yourself, and maybe nothing harder, and I think Pearl Jam are doing that," Bono says.  "When I see them, it's like it's us 10 years ago.  There are a lot of similarties, not so much in the
music, but in their attempts to keep themselves clean.  We were ducking and diving; we were running as fast as we could away from what we thought was the filthy lucre, and spending an incredible amounf of energy doing so.  In the end, the music was suffering."

"The other thing that I respect with them," Bono adds, "is that when things happened so fast, that rather than getting carried way, they decided to just jump off and put the brakes on their career and take it at their own pace.  I thought that took a lot of guts."

"No Code," an album released in 1996, marked a commercial downturn for the band; it sold 1.3 million copies, a steep drop from the 5 million sold by its predecessor, "Vitalogy."  The album's music was enervated; PEarl Jam was just getting used to a new drummer, Jack Irons, and it was trying to write songs collaboratively in the studio.

But sales were also diminished because Pearl Jam had got off the promotional treadmill.  Band members appeared before the House subcommitee on Information, Justice, Transportation and Agriculture in Washington to testify that Ticketmaster was monopolistic, and the band canceled a 1994 tour.  Its 1995 tour collapsed partway through, largely because of the pressure of trying to build a non-Ticketmaster tour curcuit from scratch.  After an exhausted Mr.
Vedder cut short a San Francisco show because he was unable to sing, Pearl Jam considerd disbanding.  "We got together and asked ourselves, 'Do we still want to be aband?' " says the guitarist Mike McCready.  "The answer was yes, but we decided we needed to get off the road and figure out our priorites."  (Mr. Vedder notes that eventually the band made up all the canceled shows it had sol tickets for.)

Off the road and invisble to televison, without a world-beating radio hit, Pearl Jam fell back on an audience of loyalists for "No Code."  But it did have more than a million of them.  "People who talk about numbers say it was disappointing," Mr. Vedder says.  "But that's only because they're talking about the numbers they projected.  Is it disappointing if you start at zero and it sells a million?  That's kind of exciting.  And it seems like if you
don't spend a lot of money on promotion and you don't make million-dollar videos, then it should everybody happy if you sell a million records."

Pearl Jam insists now that what looked like a setback was actually a relief,. "Because the last record didn't sell as well, they feel the weight's lifted," says Kelly Curtis, Pearl Jam's manager.  "They're out from under the microscope, and they can be a band now and open up a bit more.  They hysteria's gone."

Danny Goldberg, chairman of the Mercury Records Group and Nirvana former manager, says: "What may have been counterproductive in terms of short-term business may have been exactly the right thing to do in terms of emotional growth for the artist.  They are certainly not the first artists to feel that they have to step away in order to recharge their batteries."

"With Yield," Pearl Jam is reaching out again; the songs sound bolder and more confident, even whe they invoke private crises.  The music spans rowdy punk-rock, pensive ballads, a Beatles homage and a shifty studio experiment, "Push Me Pull Me."  Through the album, the lyrics swing between a search for faith and a longing for isolation.  The album's first single, "Given to Fly" merges Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" with Peter Gabriel's,
"Solsbury Hill."  In Mr. Vedder's lyrics, a loner is suddenly given the power to fly; trying to share his revelation, he is attacked by "faceless men," but he's determined to give his love away.  It could be a religious allegory; it could be a parable about a rock star's sudden success. Other songs, like "In Hiding" are about escaping the outside world, and in "No Way," Mr. Vedder belts, "I'm not trying to make a difference!"

That song was written by Mr. Gossard, and it's part of a sea [of] change on "Yield.": For the first time, Mr. Vedder sings lyrics that he didn't write.  On past albums, Mr. Vedder wrote his own songs and put lyrics and melodies to other band members' music, a process that pressured him to finish albums when the rest of the band was done.  After "No Code," band members say, he urged them to start writing full-fledged songs.  "That energized
everybody's creativity," says bassist Jeff Ament, who wrote two of the album's more enigmatic songs, "Lowlight" and "Pilate."  Mr. Vedder admits that while he yielded some songwriting he still has final say.  "They know I wouldn't sing anything if I didn't want to," he says.

In public, Pearl Jam is also being less intransigent than before.  Mr. Curtis says Pearl Jam has planned a full-scale tour, with 40 shows in the United States that would put fans' convenience first.  "We're going to avoid Ticketmaster wherever we can," he says.  "But we haven't played Los Angeles in five years."  In New York City, he says, "We're going to play a real arena," implying Madison Square Garden, a Ticketmaster hall.

"It's one night, let's just do it," Mr. Vedder says.  "I think we've made a point, and our point is that we're running the business side of what we do the way we think it should be done.  No one can really question that; that's just what we do.  But why take this stuff to your grave?  In the big picture, it's just not that important."

As for videos, the band still shies away from making a fancy conceptual video clip.  Reports that it would promote "Given to Fly" with a video clip were, Mr. Vedder says, "wishful thinking on somebody's part."  But the band did allow Cameron Crowe (who directed "Jerry Maguire") and Mark Pellington (who has directed many MTV clips) to film the band recording and rehearsing, probably for eventual release as a home video.  Television advertisements,
based on the album cover and not showing the band, have been running on network stations.

At the warehouse, the band's equipment is set up in a circle.  A Portuguese flag hangs over the guitar amplifier, and a clay rooster sits atop Mr. Ament's bass amplifier.  Mr. Irons's drum set includes a garbage-can lid mounted like a cymbal.  Stray power chords hae started to blare across the warehouse as assistants set up equipment, and Mr. Vedder would clearly prefer to be done talking.

"I really don't want any issue out there; I really just want to play music," he says, looking toward the guitars.  "I'm going to walk out there and there's a P.A. setup, there's loud volume, and it sounds pretty good.  It feels good.  This is going to be the highlight of my day."

A few minutes later, he's hooting and howling through the punky "Do The Evolution" and roaring through the surging rocker "MFC."  About to go public again, Mr. Vedder broadcasts his ambivalence as the guitars seethe.  "They said timing was everything / made him want to be everywhere," he sings.  "There's a lot to be said for nowhere."


02/08/98

Subject: Re: PJ Philadelphia Inquirer
Date: Sun, Feb 8, 1998 10:26 EST
From: DigitalKat
Message-id: <19980208152600.KAA10333@ladder03.news.aol.com>

Here it is.  :)


Calling off the crusades 

                     Pearl Jam has toned down the attitude, even stopped tilting
                    with Ticketmaster. Now, as it takes a thoughtful new album on
                        tour, the group is willing -- even happy -- to talk it up. 

                                         By Tom Moon
                                     INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC


                    The lyrics of "No Way" are so blunt, so open, so downright un-Pearl
                    Jam.

                    "I just want someone to be there for."

                    Then comes the chorus: "I'm not trying to make a difference, I'll stop
                    trying to make a difference."

                    Is something wrong? Has the prototypical more-alternative-than-thou
                    rock band grown disillusioned? Have those crusading champions of
                    the common kid stopped fighting? 

                    Once their scowling songs brought new seriousness to rock. They
                    were passionate, moody. Yet, at the same time, they captured the
                    slump-shouldered indifference of the plaid-flannel brigade. Now
                    they've abandoned the posturing to focus on more basic themes.
                    Has Pearl Jam actually learned to . . . yield?

                    "Why is that so hard to believe?" lead singer Eddie Vedder wonders
                    testily, apparently tired of talking about the changes that led to
                    Yield, the band's fifth album. The cagily titled 13-song collection,
                    which just arrived in stores, reflects a new state of mind for the
                    storied Seattle quintet, which previously avoided music-industry
                    marketing devices such as interviews and music videos.

                    They're proud of the record, "happy" to do interviews about it,
                    Vedder says from a Seattle rehearsal space. The making of Yield
                    has been chronicled in a long-form video, the first time the band has
                    allowed a filmmaker in its midst. More significantly, Pearl Jam will
                    play a world tour with dozens of dates in the United States, some in
                    venues han dled exclusively by Ticketmaster, the corporation with
                    whom the band went to war in 1994 on the issue of service charges.
                    The U.S. leg of the tour will begin in the West in late spring.

                    "We're not the same people we were five years ago," says Vedder,
                    31, trying to characterize the band's move away from grunge-era
                    nihilism. "There's 'cool' and 'cynical,' which to me is dull and boring.
                    It's a perfect way to get to youth -- you know, being sarcastic and
                    saying everything sucks. At this point I'd have to fake it to do that.

                    "I'm a little more positive about the whole trip now," says the singer
                    and guitarist, whose personal traumas (he learned his mother's
                    husband was not his father only after his real father died) seem to
                    have receded since he married Hovercraft bassist Beth Liebling in
                    1994. "We've had time to count some blessings. I'm in a tremendous
                    position, being in a band and making music. I'd be an idiot not to
                    enjoy the opportunity."


                    Ready for fun


                    As they return to active duty, Vedder and his cohorts -- guitarists
                    Mike McCready and Stone Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, and
                    drummer Jack Irons -- seem determined to have fun. 

                    Getting away for a few years -- and devoting energy to a
                    constellation of side projects, including Brad, Three Fish and Mad
                    Season -- "has been like a break in the storm," Gossard says.
                    During the Ticketmaster uproar, say band members, everything was
                    put under the media microscope, from the sales of commercially
                    disappointing experiments such as No Code (1996), to the group's
                    T-shirt prices and, most obviously, its touring strategy.

                    Vedder doesn't have any regrets about the battle with Ticketmaster,
                    which led to a Justice Department probe of charges that the ticketing
                    giant's exclusive contracts prevent competitors from staging shows
                    in most arenas. But last year, he says, the band concluded that
                    going with an alternate system just to avoid high service charges
                    was a no-win situation.

                    "The Justice Department said there was no monopoly, but we're still
                    not able to play [ any large venues in ] Philadelphia and New York
                    and Chicago" without Ticketmaster. "Hopefully, our audience
                    understood why we weren't playing. It's too bad if it was damaging
                    for us. When you make a stand, there's always going to be a
                    sacrifice. If it makes people think when they look at that [
                    Ticketmaster service charge ] , then we did what we could do."

                    Pearl Jam's more relaxed state of mind doesn't guarantee smooth
                    sailing, however, and the band members find themselves in an
                    unenviable position. The kids they galvanized with "Jeremy" and
                    other songs from 1991's astonishing breakthrough, Ten, which has
                    sold more than 9 million copies, have grown up. The alt-rock world
                    has devolved into a parody of sneering distortion-mongers and
                    overweeningly sensitive males. And because Pearl Jam has been so
                    scarce -- its test of wills with Ticketmaster limited the band to a
                    handful of dates, most well outside urban centers, to promote its last
                    two albums -- the quintet is in a kind of limbo.

                    "I think the pressure is finally off them," says longtime manager Kelly
                    Curtis, who believes that Yield presents an opportunity for Pearl Jam
                    to reposition itself. "They can go be a rock band, be pure about
                    music. They're more concerned with playing now than fighting the
                    system."


                    Hard-won wisdom


                    Still, the wisdom gleaned from fighting the good fight runs
                    throughout Yield. Pearl Jam has transformed its frustrations of the
                    last few years into elegant, rousing, thoughtful music. "No Way,"
                    penned by Gossard, is the collection's most overtly autobiographical
                    statement, but other songs comment on the loss of innocence and
                    the nature of trust, topics these five musicians thought a lot about as
                    they sat on the sidelines. In one song, Vedder portrays exile as a
                    journey inward, with lines such as "There's a lot to be said for
                    nowhere." In another, he yearns to be a simple servant, the "pedal
                    brake that you depend upon."

                    Throughout, there's a sense that this outfit, once hampered by its
                    studied idealism, is ready to move on.

                    That's what Gossard wanted to convey in "No Way," he says. "The
                    chorus ended up saying maybe you, maybe we all need to just live
                    life and quit trying to prove something. For me, the funnest part is
                    the fact that Eddie's singing the line about not making a difference. .
                    . . I think he gets off on not being responsible for it."

                    "My out is, 'Stone wrote it,' " Vedder says, chuckling. "The way I can
                    sing it is changing his idea slightly, by saying 'I'll stop trying -- no
                    way.' So it works from either perspective."

                    The very fact that others, not just Vedder, contributed complete
                    songs as vital and imaginative as "No Way" is one explanation for
                    the richness of Yield. In the past, the band worked up rhythm tracks,
                    then left Vedder alone to craft the lyrics, an arrangement he
                    preferred. But sometimes Vedder became overwhelmed, says
                    Ament. 

                    "Ed's typically the guy who finishes off the songs, and that was
                    working well enough," recalls the bassist. "But by the end of No
                    Code, he was so burnt, it was so much work for him. I remember him
                    saying it would be great if other people could come in with ideas. So
                    we all went home and wrote a bunch of songs."

                    Ament remembers early rehearsals for Yield as somewhat
                    "nerve-wracking," because, though they had written for their side
                    projects, the band members had never shared lyrics with one
                    another. "It's hard to approach Eddie and say, 'Uh, I've got these
                    words' when he's such a master of words. But that moment in the
                    studio where he was so receiving of what we were doing was a huge
                    turning point. For him to feel these were good songs he wanted to
                    sing really opened things up, made everybody energized about their
                    place in the band."

                    Though he says that the songwriting input gives him more time to
                    "make furniture," Vedder is hardly absent from Yield. Perhaps taking
                    a cue from his less word-obsessed bandmates, he's written concise,
                    penetratingly simple rock songs. One, "Wishlist," is an inventory of
                    things Vedder wants to be -- "a radio song, the one that you turned
                    up," "the full moon shining off a Camaro's hood" -- culled from a list
                    of 120 or so extended metaphors he compiled.

                    Vedder mentions the thrashing, sarcastic "Do the Evolution," a riff
                    on human arrogance, as one of his favorites: "That song is all about
                    someone who's drunk with technology, who thinks they're the
                    controlling living being on this planet. It's another one I'm not singing
                    as myself."

                    He explains that the theme for the majestic "In Hiding" came after a
                    four-day "speech fast" he did last year. "If you don't eat for a long
                    time, food tastes better," Vedder says. "The song was about taking
                    a fast from life, doing anything to get yourself back in touch with
                    something real. Abstinence from anything is cool, because the
                    normalcy of life is deceptive: It's enjoyable for a while, and there are
                    good moments, but sometimes that's not enough. You start
                    questioning what's the point. By not opening my mouth I was able to
                    get into that state. Jack called me at the end of it; he couldn't
                    understand what I was saying. It took a minute to get my speech
                    back."

                    Then there's "Given to Fly," a soaring, U2-esque anthem about a
                    human blessed with the ability to fly. The man returns to Earth to
                    share "the key to the locks on the chains he saw everywhere," but is
                    greeted with violence. He continues to try to give away what he's
                    learned. 

                    Vedder imagined the song as a children's book, "a 20-page
                    cardboard book with a line on each page and a picture to go with it.
                    It's a fable, that's all. The music almost gives you this feeling of
                    flight, and I really love singing the part at the end, which is about
                    rising above anybody's comments about what you do and still giving
                    your love away. You know -- not becoming bitter and reclusive, not
                    condemning the whole world because of the actions of a few."

                    Which is, of course, exactly the kind of strategy Pearl Jam is
                    employing this time around. Rather than fighting futile battles and
                    standing on principle until the point is lost, it has chosen to yield, to
                    move forward and offer something of value to what's left of its
                    audience. It still wants to make a difference, but no longer needs to
                    shout sanctimoniously from the rooftops. Its methods are more
                    subtle, more humble. More grown-up.

                    "I think there have been times over the last five years when we all
                    have wondered, individually and collectively, whether we were doing
                    this for the right reasons," Gossard says. "It's like a young NBA
                    rookie getting thrown into the fray, scrapping, making tons of
                    mistakes, doing things the veterans didn't like. That was us. 

                    "In the long run, we stayed around. The mere fact that we survived
                    made us stronger. We care for each other more, we trust more
                    because we have had to, to endure. And, I think, maybe for the first
                    time we're playing up to our potential."
02/09/98

From: Shanil Virani <svirani@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>
Date: Sat, 7 Feb 1998 20:56:32 -0500 (EST)
Subject: LR: for those who care: Pearl Jam's Yield selling well across Canada

from today's toronto sun:

                  Saturday, February 7, 1998

                  Pearl Jam's Yield selling well across Canada

                                    By By KAREN BLISS
                                       Jam! Music

                   Though it's off to a solid start, Pearl     [Image]
                  Jam's new album, Yield, didn't appear to
                  draw the kind of opening-day lineups that some of the
                  band's previous releases inspired.

                   Despite the immediate response at rock radio to the
                  Seattle band's "Given To Fly" single, major Canadian
                  music retailers report steady but not spectacular
                  sales of the album on Tuesday, when it first hit
                  stores, and into the weekend.

                   "I didn't see any lineups, but that doesn't mean the
                  album isn't going to be a big sensation," says Kelley
                  Jackson, manager of Sam The Record Man's flagship
                  store in Toronto.

                   "Some times it can take a week or two before even a
                  major release gets a lineup, unless you're literally
                  giving something away free, like a T-shirt or a
                  sticker with the album."

                   Just down the street, the HMV megastore didn't have
                  any lineups either, but they weren't expecting any,
                  either, according to main floor manager Michelle
                  Brown.

                   "It's pretty much a standard new release day for
                  us," she said. "There weren't lineups or anything
                  like that, but we sold a considerable amount the
                  first day and it's done pretty much standard sales
                  the whole week so far."

                   In the same downtown Toronto core, Tower Records pop
                  manager Ryan D'Cunha says, "there was a lot of hype
                  at the beginning but once it came out,
                  disappointingly, it wasn't flying off the shelves.
                  Sales have been very moderate. We expected a lot
                  more. There was no line-up. Right now, 'Titanic' is
                  still outselling it. It's still probably in our top
                  three for the week's biggest sellers. We're expecting
                  this weekend to be a lot more rushed. People will be
                  a lot more aware of it."

                   On the East Coast, both Halifax's main Sam's and HMV
                  store both report relatively swift sales, especially
                  on the first day. Andy McDaniel, a buyer at Sam's
                  Barrington, says the store moved 70 pieces, "picking
                  up the slack" when the neighborhood HMV sold out of
                  its 75.

                   "We re-ordered and had it the next day, but we're
                  not sold out of those yet," says HMV Halifax store
                  manager Duane Free.
                [I  ge]
                   Meanwhile, Montreal record stores also claim brisk
                  sales of Yield. Jessica Sbardi, supervisor at HMV on
                  St. Catherine's, says about 20 customers waited
                  outside on Tuesay morning to purchase the album, and
                  sales have been "steady" ever since.

                   "The true fans were waiting for the album to come
                  out and other people will see how the album is,
                  considering that, after 'Ten', the albums weren't
                  phenomenally outstanding."

                   Marc Melanson, the pop buyer at Archambault, also on
                  St. Catherine's in Montreal, says 'Yield' has done
                  "surprisingly well", considering the follow-up to
                  1991's debut, Ten, which went 6X platinum (600,000
                  copies) in Canada. While 'Vs.' and 'Vitalogy' also
                  went multi-platinum, Pearl Jam's previous release,
                  'No Code', experienced a significant drop in sales.

                   "No Code wasn't heralded as a major release by Pearl
                  Jam," explains Melanson. "There was no video to
                  accompany it; there was no hoopla. It just came into
                  the store and the loyal fans picked it up, some
                  turned away. Somehow, this one, without a video also
                  -- although they were promising one -- has been
                  flying out of the store."

                   In Vancouver, at the HMV on Robson, store manager
                  Dave Morris, surmises that Pearl Jam simply hasn't
                  "progressed with the times" and that interest in the
                  former "grunge" band has waned. To put it in
                  perspective, he says, first-day sales of Sarah
                  McLachlan's 'Surfacing' album outpaced the new Pearl
                  Jam by five to one.

                   "We sold a fair amount the first day and the second
                  two days added together don't equal the first day,"
                  Morris said. "It's about a third of it. So we're not
                  selling huge numbers. "The last one (No Code), out of
                  the box, did very very well for us, particularly the
                  first 30 days. I've read one review of 'Yield' that
                  was positive, but I think overall people are a little
                  tired of them. And this time of year, as well, with
                  very little out there to compare with it, you'd
                  expect it to do better."

cheers,
shanil


02/09/98

February 8, 1998
    Front page    [ ]                                                    [ ]
                     [Image]
    Sports
    Metro
                                  Calling off the crusades
    Suburban
    National         Pearl Jam has toned down the attitude, even stopped
                        tilting with Ticketmaster. Now, as it takes a
    International     thoughtful new album on tour, the group is willing
    Opinion                    -- even happy -- to talk it up.
    Business
                                         By Tom Moon
    LifeStyle                       INQUIRER MUSIC CRITIC
    Entertainment
    Obituaries
                     The lyrics of "No Way" are so blunt, so open, so
    Food: Wed | Sun  downright un-Pearl Jam.
    Books
                     "I just want someone to be there for."
    Travel
    tech.life        Then comes the chorus: "I'm not trying to make a
    Weekend          difference, I'll stop trying to make a difference."
    Real Estate      Is something wrong? Has the prototypical
    Home & Design    more-alternative-than-thou rock band grown
    Health & Science disillusioned? Have those crusading champions of
                     the common kid stopped fighting?
    Arts &
    Entertainment[ ] Once their scowling songs brought new seriousness
                     to rock. They were passionate, moody. Yet, at the
    Sunday Review    same time, they captured the slump-shouldered
    Sunday Magazine  indifference of the plaid-flannel brigade. Now
    [Daily News]     they've abandoned the posturing to focus on more
                     basic themes. Has Pearl Jam actually learned to . .
    [Image]          . yield?
           [PhillyLife!]
    [Image]          "Why is that so hard to believe?" lead singer Eddie
    [The Headbone ZonVedder wonders testily, apparently tired of talking
                     about the changes that led to Yield, the band's
    [Image]          fifth album. The cagily titled 13-song collection,
             [Comics]which just arrived in stores, reflects a new state
                     of mind for the storied Seattle quintet, which
                     previously avoided music-industry marketing devices
                     such as interviews and music videos.

                     They're proud of the record, "happy" to do
                     interviews about it, Vedder says from a Seattle
                     rehearsal space. The making of Yield has been
                     chronicled in a long-form video, the first time the
                     band has allowed a filmmaker in its midst. More
                     significantly, Pearl Jam will play a world tour
                     with dozens of dates in the United States, some in
                     venues han dled exclusively by Ticketmaster, the
                     corporation with whom the band went to war in 1994
                     on the issue of service charges. The U.S. leg of
                     the tour will begin in the West in late spring.

                     "We're not the same people we were five years ago,"
                     says Vedder, 31, trying to characterize the band's
                     move away from grunge-era nihilism. "There's 'cool'
                     and 'cynical,' which to me is dull and boring. It's
                     a perfect way to get to youth -- you know, being
                     sarcastic and saying everything sucks. At this
                     point I'd have to fake it to do that.

                     "I'm a little more positive about the whole trip
                     now," says the singer and guitarist, whose personal
                     traumas (he learned his mother's husband was not
                     his father only after his real father died) seem to
                     have receded since he married Hovercraft bassist
                     Beth Liebling in 1994. "We've had time to count
                     some blessings. I'm in a tremendous position, being
                     in a band and making music. I'd be an idiot not to
                     enjoy the opportunity."

                     ----------------------------------------------------
                     Ready for fun
                     ----------------------------------------------------

                     As they return to active duty, Vedder and his
                     cohorts -- guitarists Mike McCready and Stone
                     Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, and drummer Jack Irons
                     -- seem determined to have fun.

                     Getting away for a few years -- and devoting energy
                     to a constellation of side projects, including
                     Brad, Three Fish and Mad Season -- "has been like a
                     break in the storm," Gossard says. During the
                     Ticketmaster uproar, say band members, everything
                     was put under the media microscope, from the sales
                     of commercially disappointing experiments such as
                     No Code (1996), to the group's T-shirt prices and,
                     most obviously, its touring strategy.

                     Vedder doesn't have any regrets about the battle
                     with Ticketmaster, which led to a Justice
                     Department probe of charges that the ticketing
                     giant's exclusive contracts prevent competitors
                     from staging shows in most arenas. But last year,
                     he says, the band concluded that going with an
                     alternate system just to avoid high service charges
                     was a no-win situation.

                     "The Justice Department said there was no monopoly,
                     but we're still not able to play [ any large venues
                     in ] Philadelphia and New York and Chicago" without
                     Ticketmaster. "Hopefully, our audience understood
                     why we weren't playing. It's too bad if it was
                     damaging for us. When you make a stand, there's
                     always going to be a sacrifice. If it makes people
                     think when they look at that [ Ticketmaster service
                     charge ] , then we did what we could do."

                     Pearl Jam's more relaxed state of mind doesn't
                     guarantee smooth sailing, however, and the band
                     members find themselves in an unenviable position.
                     The kids they galvanized with "Jeremy" and other
                     songs from 1991's astonishing breakthrough, Ten,
                     which has sold more than 9 million copies, have
                     grown up. The alt-rock world has devolved into a
                     parody of sneering distortion-mongers and
                     overweeningly sensitive males. And because Pearl
                     Jam has been so scarce -- its test of wills with
                     Ticketmaster limited the band to a handful of
                     dates, most well outside urban centers, to promote
                     its last two albums -- the quintet is in a kind of
                     limbo.

                     "I think the pressure is finally off them," says
                     longtime manager Kelly Curtis, who believes that
                     Yield presents an opportunity for Pearl Jam to
                     reposition itself. "They can go be a rock band, be
                     pure about music. They're more concerned with
                     playing now than fighting the system."

                     ----------------------------------------------------
                     Hard-won wisdom
                     ----------------------------------------------------

                     Still, the wisdom gleaned from fighting the good
                     fight runs throughout Yield. Pearl Jam has
                     transformed its frustrations of the last few years
                     into elegant, rousing, thoughtful music. "No Way,"
                     penned by Gossard, is the collection's most overtly
                     autobiographical statement, but other songs comment
                     on the loss of innocence and the nature of trust,
                     topics these five musicians thought a lot about as
                     they sat on the sidelines. In one song, Vedder
                     portrays exile as a journey inward, with lines such
                     as "There's a lot to be said for nowhere." In
                     another, he yearns to be a simple servant, the
                     "pedal brake that you depend upon."

                     Throughout, there's a sense that this outfit, once
                     hampered by its studied idealism, is ready to move
                     on.

                     That's what Gossard wanted to convey in "No Way,"
                     he says. "The chorus ended up saying maybe you,
                     maybe we all need to just live life and quit trying
                     to prove something. For me, the funnest part is the
                     fact that Eddie's singing the line about not making
                     a difference. . . . I think he gets off on not
                     being responsible for it."

                     "My out is, 'Stone wrote it,' " Vedder says,
                     chuckling. "The way I can sing it is changing his
                     idea slightly, by saying 'I'll stop trying -- no
                     way.' So it works from either perspective."

                     The very fact that others, not just Vedder,
                     contributed complete songs as vital and imaginative
                     as "No Way" is one explanation for the richness of
                     Yield. In the past, the band worked up rhythm
                     tracks, then left Vedder alone to craft the lyrics,
                     an arrangement he preferred. But sometimes Vedder
                     became overwhelmed, says Ament.

                     "Ed's typically the guy who finishes off the songs,
                     and that was working well enough," recalls the
                     bassist. "But by the end of No Code, he was so
                     burnt, it was so much work for him. I remember him
                     saying it would be great if other people could come
                     in with ideas. So we all went home and wrote a
                     bunch of songs."

                     Ament remembers early rehearsals for Yield as
                     somewhat "nerve-wracking," because, though they had
                     written for their side projects, the band members
                     had never shared lyrics with one another. "It's
                     hard to approach Eddie and say, 'Uh, I've got these
                     words' when he's such a master of words. But that
                     moment in the studio where he was so receiving of
                     what we were doing was a huge turning point. For
                     him to feel these were good songs he wanted to sing
                     really opened things up, made everybody energized
                     about their place in the band."

                     Though he says that the songwriting input gives him
                     more time to "make furniture," Vedder is hardly
                     absent from Yield. Perhaps taking a cue from his
                     less word-obsessed bandmates, he's written concise,
                     penetratingly simple rock songs. One, "Wishlist,"
                     is an inventory of things Vedder wants to be -- "a
                     radio song, the one that you turned up," "the full
                     moon shining off a Camaro's hood" -- culled from a
                     list of 120 or so extended metaphors he compiled.

                     Vedder mentions the thrashing, sarcastic "Do the
                     Evolution," a riff on human arrogance, as one of
                     his favorites: "That song is all about someone
                     who's drunk with technology, who thinks they're the
                     controlling living being on this planet. It's
                     another one I'm not singing as myself."

                     He explains that the theme for the majestic "In
                     Hiding" came after a four-day "speech fast" he did
                     last year. "If you don't eat for a long time, food
                     tastes better," Vedder says. "The song was about
                     taking a fast from life, doing anything to get
                     yourself back in touch with something real.
                     Abstinence from anything is cool, because the
                     normalcy of life is deceptive: It's enjoyable for a
                     while, and there are good moments, but sometimes
                     that's not enough. You start questioning what's the
                     point. By not opening my mouth I was able to get
                     into that state. Jack called me at the end of it;
                     he couldn't understand what I was saying. It took a
                     minute to get my speech back."

                     Then there's "Given to Fly," a soaring, U2-esque
                     anthem about a human blessed with the ability to
                     fly. The man returns to Earth to share "the key to
                     the locks on the chains he saw everywhere," but is
                     greeted with violence. He continues to try to give
                     away what he's learned.

                     Vedder imagined the song as a children's book, "a
                     20-page cardboard book with a line on each page and
                     a picture to go with it. It's a fable, that's all.
                     The music almost gives you this feeling of flight,
                     and I really love singing the part at the end,
                     which is about rising above anybody's comments
                     about what you do and still giving your love away.
                     You know -- not becoming bitter and reclusive, not
                     condemning the whole world because of the actions
                     of a few."

                     Which is, of course, exactly the kind of strategy
                     Pearl Jam is employing this time around. Rather
                     than fighting futile battles and standing on
                     principle until the point is lost, it has chosen to
                     yield, to move forward and offer something of value
                     to what's left of its audience. It still wants to
                     make a difference, but no longer needs to shout
                     sanctimoniously from the rooftops. Its methods are
                     more subtle, more humble. More grown-up.

                     "I think there have been times over the last five
                     years when we all have wondered, individually and
                     collectively, whether we were doing this for the
                     right reasons," Gossard says. "It's like a young
                     NBA rookie getting thrown into the fray, scrapping,
                     making tons of mistakes, doing things the veterans
                     didn't like. That was us.

                     "In the long run, we stayed around. The mere fact
                     that we survived made us stronger. We care for each
                     other more, we trust more because we have had to,
                     to endure. And, I think, maybe for the first time
                     we're playing up to our potential."

cheers,
shanil


02/09/98

From: Shanil Virani <svirani@lhotse.phys.yorku.ca>
Date: Mon, 9 Feb 1998 06:50:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject: LR: EDDIE VEDDER  SPEAKS

Ok, here's the last one I promise! ... for today. ;) I don't know about you
but this guy doesn not speak for me when uses the word 'fan'... from the
chicago tribune...

                    EDDIE VEDDER SPEAKS
          [Music]   After almost falling apart, Pearl      [Interview]
                    Jam is stronger, better and much
      MUSIC HOME    mellower                                       [Image]
                                                           Listen
                    By Gred Kot                            to Eddie
          [Image]   Tribune Rock Critic                    Vedder's
                                                           interview with
                    And now, the story of the incredible   Tribune Rock
                    disappearing Pearl Jam.                Critic Greg
                                                           Kot.
                    Remember them? Biggest band in the
                    world about 1994. Waged a one-band     [Audio]
                    war against business as usual by
                    refusing to play ball with T-shirt     * Sound clip of
                    vendors, promoters and Ticketmaster    "In Hiding off
                    in an effort to keep tickets and       Pearl Jam's new
                    merchandise more affordable for its    album "Yield."
                    fans. Gives the cold shoulder to
                    journalists, MTV and radio
                    programmers by declining to release    [Email story]
                    videos and singles or even to do       Send the text
                    interviews. Acquires a reputation      of this story
                    for being obstinate, self-serious      to someone's
                    and humorless in spite of best         email address
                    efforts to do the right thing.
                                                           [Archives]
                    The band tries to do tours of
                    non-Ticketmaster concert venues in     Browse the
                    1995 and '96, and ends up nearly       Tribune archive
                    breaking up from the strain. The       for other
                    Justice Department, after soliciting   articles
                    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."

cheers,
shanil


02/12/98

Subject: ATN Yield Article
From: evelynr@aol.com (EvelynR)
Date: Thu, Feb 12, 1998 11:26 EST
Message-id: <19980212162601.LAA26965@ladder03.news.aol.com>

Hey, look who got quoted in this article-- Ron -- your 15 minutes of fame have
started!

From ATN:
 In almost any other week, Pearl
 Jam's latest release, Yield, would be second to none. 

 After months of anticipation and early leaks of the
  highly anticipated album's tracks on the Net, about
 360,000 fans flocked to record stores to pick up Pearl
Jam's latest in its first week of release, according to
 SoundScan, the music-industry sales watchdog. With
that many copies sold, Yield would have landed in the
 #1 spot at practically any other time of the year. 

But with the soundtrack to the season's hottest movie
riding its current tidal wave of success, these are not
your average weeks on the Billboard chart. 

 While at first glance it may seem disappointing that
 Yield didn't sink the phenomenally successful Titanic
 soundtrack, retailers and record-industry watchers
report a different story. At Harmony House in
 Birmingham, Mich., Assistant Manager Brad Stern
 said that while Titanic and Yield have both been
 selling extremely well, Pearl Jam's latest sold better
 than he anticipated. 

 "We sold double what I expected to sell," Stern said of
Yield. "We started off with a box of 30 and we sold 20.
 I really only expected to sell 10 in its first week." 

  The expectations were a bit higher at Tower Records
 in Pearl Jam's hometown of Seattle, and according to
  General Manager Stephanie Gendreau, sales for
 Yield matched what she had projected. "It's our #1
 seller of the week," Gendreau said. "We expected it to
do pretty well since [Pearl Jam is] local and it definitely
met our expectations." 

  Jim Kerr, alternative-music editor for the trade
  magazine Radio & Records, said that while PJ's last
album, No Code, may have sold 8,000 copies more
  than Yield in its first week of release in August 1996,
  the group could still count on radio looking favorably
  upon this past week's sales figures. "So many people
  have written off the alternative format and Pearl Jam in
  particular," Kerr said. "But I think that radio will look at
 these numbers and see that they haven't lost their
  fanbase." 

 On the alt.music.pearl-jam newsgroup, a forum for
  fans to exchange opinions and news about the band,
 visitors were quick to discuss Yield's sales figures.
Pearl Jam fan Ron Moskovitz was upset about people
  trying to read something into Yield's sales, which --
  despite being strong at 359,000 albums sold -- fell well
  below the band's second album, Vs., which saw
 950,000 copies fly off shelves in its first week. "For a
 newsgroup that has many people who often claim not
 to give a damn about sales," Moskovitz wrote, "there's
 been an awful lot of angst about first-evening sales,
 first-week sales, can it beat the Titanic, etc." 
=

USA TODAY
02/16/98

Pearl Jam reaps a harmonic 'Yield' 

Anti-stars, corporate adversaries, Gen-X poster boys, grunge mascots, 
chart champions, brooding gurus, rebel idealists. 

How did the title "rock band" get buried under this avalanche of 
sobriquets attached to Pearl Jam? 
On tour
Missoula, Mont. June 20
Salt Lake City June 21
Denver June 23
Rapid City, S.D. June 24
East Troy, Wis. June 26
Chicago June 29
Minneapolis June 30
St. Louis July 2
Kansas City, Mo. July 3
Dallas July 5
Albuquerque July 7
Phoenix July 8
San Diego July 10
Los Angeles July 13
Sacramento July 16
Portland, Ore. July 18
Seattle July 21
Indianapolis Aug. 17
East Lansing, Mich. Aug. 18
Montreal Aug. 20
Toronto Aug. 22
Pittsburgh Aug. 25
Cleveland Aug. 26
Philadelphia Aug. 28
Atlanta Sept. 1
Birmingham, Ala. Sept. 3
Greenville, S.C. Sept. 4
Knoxville, Tenn. Sept. 6
East Rutherford, N.J. Sept. 8
New York Sept. 10
Hartford, Conn. Sept. 13
Boston Sept. 15
Washington Sept. 18

Since forming in 1990, the Seattle group has grown from a flannel-clad 
fraternity of garage musicians to arguably the planet's biggest rock 
sensation, with global sales of 30 million albums. 

"We've all worked very hard to be able to play and record music," says 
singer Eddie Vedder, 31. "That's what we accept as our job description, 
our only job description." 

Yet Pearl Jam's music often relinquished the limelight to matters our 
celebrity culture deemed more fascinating: the band's internal tensions 
and private lives, its discomfort with fame's trappings, its refusal to 
embrace the industry's promotional machinery, its protracted war against 
Ticketmaster. 

With fifth album Yield and an upcoming U.S. tour, Pearl Jam intends to 
bring focus back to the creative strengths that have carried the band 
through rough patches. 

Tensions flared during the making of 1994's Vitalogy, and the group 
considered disbanding in 1995 amid the collapse of an ambitious tour 
undertaken without sworn foe Ticketmaster. 

"Nobody was communicating well at that point," says bassist Jeff Ament, 
34. "It's amazing how incredibly hard it is to speak your mind around 
four people you really care about. You know someone will potentially 
disagree, and you don't want to get shot down. But we're older, and 
we've learned to understand the chaos and break down the barriers and 
work through the rocky times." 

Pearl Jam's chemistry now? "We're all carbon-based life forms," Vedder 
cracks, adding gravely, "Communication is key. We keep our emotions from 
festering or going stale." 

The acclaimed Yield, Pearl Jam's smoothest collaboration to date, 
symphonizes the talents of Vedder, Ament, drummer Jack Irons and 
guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard. It also marks the first time 
Vedder sings lyrics written by his bandmates. 

"It was nerve-racking but one of the greatest experiences of my musical 
life," Ament says about writing tracks Low Light and Pilate. "It was 
exciting to finish a song on my own and play it for my peers and 
friends. In the end, we felt like we made the best possible record we 
could. I don't know if that was the feeling everyone had on the last 
couple records. The whole process was much calmer this time." 

Exhausted after finishing 1996's No Code, Vedder welcomed relief 
pitchers. 

"I'm happy this album represents everyone's feelings and not just one 
well-intentioned but misguided little f - - -," he says with a laugh. 

The shared labor challenges the notion of Pearl Jam as a dictatorship 
run by the charismatic but controlling Vedder. 

Ament insists Pearl Jam is essentially democratic, "though we listen to 
Ed a little bit more and trust his vision for the band. I can't say I 
feel intimidated by him. I respect him as a singer, a songwriter and a 
friend. I prefer to deal with him on those levels rather than the idol 
stuff. I can't relate to that anymore." 

Confronting public expectations and misconceptions "is a negative waste 
of energy," says Vedder, who counters idolatry with excessive humility. 
"I'm just not that important. I'm just a little human being, one of 
billions." 

Rumors of his tyranny are false, the singer says, conceding, "Sure, I'm 
a control freak . . . my name is going on this stuff. It's our name on 
the tickets, so I feel responsible for how security deals with people 
and how much the T-shirts cost. Am I a control freak or someone who 
cares? Which sounds more negative and therefore sells more papers?" 

Vedder also bristles at reports dwelling on the band's declining record 
sales. Pearl Jam's 1991 debut, Ten, has sold 9 million copies. Vs. set a 
record in 1993 after selling 950,378 copies its first seven days, 
followed by Vitalogy's opening-week sales of 877,001 in 1994. 

Yield enters Billboard this week at No. 2 (behind the Titanic 
soundtrack) with sales of about 359,000 copies, 8,000 fewer than the 
launch of No Code, dismissed as an industry disappointment despite 
eventually selling 1.3 million copies. 

"I have a hard time seeing that as a failure," Ament says. Ironically, 
some fans blasted the band earlier for explosive commercial success that 
threatened its mythical underground credibility. 

"It's impossible to have underground credibility," Ament argues. "We're 
making records on a large scale, backed by Sony, a huge company. That's 
the position we chose to put ourselves in. If that's not your goal, then 
you can sit home and sing songs to your family." 

The band also anticipates criticism for ending its feud with 
Ticketmaster. The battle erupted in 1994, when Pearl Jam filed a memo to 
the Justice Department claiming that the giant ticket agency controlled 
a monopoly and levied excessive surcharges. The complaint prompted an 
investigation that stalled 14 months later due to lack of evidence. Now 
the band is reluctantly enlisting the agency to handle tickets for half 
the dates on a summer tour starting June 20. 

"I don't feel like we have a choice," Vedder says. "Ticketmaster has a 
lock on venues in places like Philadelphia and Los Angeles. It's going 
to be strange to see a Ticketmaster stamp on our tickets, but this isn't 
the 'We're Here to Make a Point' tour. It's about playing music and 
sharing a nice night." 

"It's not about mending fences," Ament adds. "There's a little sting 
left by the way Ticketmaster treated us. But we're not going to skip 
cities like Chicago because of a ticketing company, even if people jump 
on our backs and say we didn't stick to our guns. Our views have not 
changed. After this tour, I hope we don't have to talk about it again." 

Despite this compromise, Yield doesn't signal a band yielding to the 
will of the record business. Pearl Jam is mulling a home video release 
but has no plans to service MTV with promotional clips and continues to 
decline photo sessions and most interviews. 

"We won't do anything that's uncomfortable," Vedder says. "We're not 
going to be the coolest rock stars in the world. We're trying to be good 
musicians." 

Ament hopes Pearl Jam follows Neil Young's trajectory with a long career 
of adventurous records. 

"Whenever I've had too many expectations, I've been disappointed," he 
says. "I'm optimistic, but you're looking at five personalities with a 
lot going on in their lives. Any one of us could change the dynamics of 
the band. Unless everyone wants to make a record and tour, it doesn't 
happen. Working on our personal lives always takes priority." 

Vedder sheepishly admits, "Sometimes surfing takes priority over my 
life." 

It's no accident that the first leg of a world tour takes Pearl Jam to 
surf spots in Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand. 

"I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water," 
Vedder says. "What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage 
playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding 
element. Waves don't care who you are." 

By Edna Gunderson, USA TODAY


02/21/98

Honolulu Advertiser - Island Life section - Saturday, February 21, 1998

Pearl Jam Fan
By Deb Aoki

They cross oceans and keep the flame burning via the Net

Being a music fan isn't quite the same since the advent of the Internet:  With the advent of chat rooms and fanzines online, you can share your passion with people thousands of miles away.

And that's a good thing, both for the fans and the band's bottom line, judging from the devoted Pearl Jam fans who have converged on Maui from points far and near to see Eddie Vedder and Co. last night and tonight.

They're coming from Oahu and California and points even farther east, such as Michigan and Missouri.  That's the kind of enduring appeal Pearl Jam has, even as it continues to break the rules of the music business in the '90s.

Taking a trip to see Pearl Jam is nothing new for Diane Tanaka and Grace Mendoza of Southern California.
Tanaka, a 34 year old physician from Los Angeles, will be seeing Pearl Jam for the tenth time.  For Mendoza, a molecular biologist from San Diego, coming to Maui marks her twentieth Pearl Jam concert experience since 1992.

Six other friends from their Pearl Jam e-mail list joined them on Maui yesterday for the first date in the band's spring/summer tour.

The eight friends are but a fraction of a worldwide group of e-mail buddies united by their love of Pearl Jam.  And they are a diverse bunch , too.  The Maui eight include in their ranks an engineer, a college admissions officer, an art supply store cashier and a 40-something mother of two from Michigan who has criss-crossed the continent to see Pearl Jam 26 times.

While e-mail is their primary means of communicating with each other, these folks are far frome the stereotypical computer geeks who interact only with type on a glowing screen.  Besides e-mail, the group makes regular efforts to meet in "RL" (real life) at shows and non-Pearl Jam events.

Many in this small group met at the height of Seattle grunge band mania in the early '90s on a now-defunct e-mail list called "Gardens of Stone", where fans would talk to others, and trade tapes of live shows and news about the band.  Some of the people on the original list decided to meet at shows during the 1995 tour.

Fresno-ite Jennifer Franklin recalls:  "They had fun, and got along, so why wait until PJ tours again to get together?  We started getting together for other shows, and then for birthdays or when someone's business trip coincided with someone else's graduaton or whatever."  While it started as a Pearl Jam fan group, it "turned just into a bunch of friends," recalls Honolulu-based computer programmer Jay Tsukamoto.

The current e-mail list, called "multiple-weirdos," is a private one, where members send their comments, news, gossip and jokes to each other.  Mendoza sums it up this way:  "The bottom line is that our friendships may have started out because of Pearl Jam but they certainly have maintained because we have other things in common."

The Maui eight concede that a lot of the "grunge" buzz has disappeared from the Pearl Jam fan scene, but they think that's a good thing.  "The problem with hype is that a lot of times a band ges lost in it," Said Tsukamoto.  In their opinion, Pearl Jam's ability to rise above the "here today, gone later today" music biz rule is due to the band's insistence on standing aside from the media spotlight.  The members have continued to record outside of
Pearl Jam, if they so desired, spent time away from band activities, and talk to the press only when they choose.

Furthermore, Vedder and Pearl Jam have always been intensely protective of their fans and their own integrity.  They stop concerts if they see fans getting hurt in the mosh pit and they stage free pirate radio shows so fans don't always have to spend money to hear them.  This music-first/fans-first stance has earned them a devoted following that few '90s bands - those that are left - can match.

Even though Pearl Jam is scheduled at venues closer to their Mainland homes later in this tour, the allure of seeing the band on Maui proved too tempting for these Pearl Jam pilgrims.  "This show is at a smallish venue (the Maui site has a capacity of 5,000) - small for Pearl Jam anyway," said Franklin.  "There's no way I could see them anywhere else with less than 10,000 seats in California."

But even in larger places, Pearl Jam's live shows are legendary for their intimacy.  "I saw them in San Jose in Spartan Staium," recalled Tsukamoto.  "(Vedder) would talk to the crowd between songs, and reveal small parts of himself, which is neat, because it's a huge place, but you really feel connected."

Said Franklin:  "The emotion in Eddie's performances is key for me.  I really feel like this guy is for real, and that what he sings comes straight from his heart and it hits mine in a way that no other band has ever done before."

Still, seeing Pearl Jam is only part of the draw, she said:  "We get along with and love each other so much...  If none of my friends were going, I wouldn't either... it would only be half as much fun."

02/22

From:  JProcopi@aol.com
--

Taken from Seattle / Portland's "The Rocket" (Feb. 11-25, 1998 | No. 271) 

Pearl Jam!
New! Improved!

By Charles R. Cross

The Evolution of the Northwest's Biggest Band

Lights, camera, action:  The scene inside Pearl Jam's rehearsal studio looks
more like a movie set than a band hangout.  Blocking the doorway is a guy
on overalls hammering conduit onto the floor.  Inside the warehouse proper,
electricians are stringing wires, carpenters are hammering platforms and
publicists are talking on cell phones.  A half-dozen crew members are either
packing gear (to take on the road during the upcoming tour) or unpacking
gear (to use on Pearl Jam's "Pirate Radio Broadcast," which is the reason 
for the remodeling).  A roadie in the center of the room has just unpacked
a kick drum the size of a kiddie swimming pool, and he pounds on it for good
measure.  Around the corners of the room the five members of Pearl Jam
can be spotted, most of them talking into cellular phones, trying to cover
their ears so they can continue their conversations in this chaos.

	Welcome to Pearl Jam, The Remake.  If this were a movie set, the
film would be a remake of a well-known classic.  Today Eddie Vedder and
crew are being recast in glorious color, complete with a one-day blitzkrieg of
phone interviews with selected journalists.  Doing a press day represents a
major change for Pearl Jam, though they down play and says it's simply their
attempt to get the message out about their new album, Yield, and to tell the
story their way.  Over the next couple hours, the band will make a persuasive
argument that the popular image of Pearl Jam is based on a series of myths,
perpetuated by the media (the directors of the first Pearl Jam story) and
accepted by the public because the band kept quiet.  In exploring and exploding
those myths, the group members will present a decidedly different portrait of
their band.  Call it a kinder, gentler Pearl Jam.

	Even Eddie Vedder - who now goes by "Ed" in yet another recasting -
is here conducting phoners from the media snake pit.  Though he is not on the
Rocket interview schedule - guitarist Mike McCready and bassist Jeff Ament
are - he still ends up in the tableaux.  After finishing his phoner, Vedder walks
into the interview room, tucked in the corner of the warehouse, and shows me
his box of albums for the January 31st "Self Pollution Radio" broadcast.  He's
got a plastic U.S. Postal Service mail bin, overflowing with 80 albums and 40
CDs.  "Feel free to look through these and pick your favorites," he says with a
smile.  In the box is a diverse mix of music - Built To Spill, Soundgarden, Pete
Droge, Elaine Summers, Hovercraft, Wellwater Conspiracy - that even includes
a few Pearl Jam albums.  The group will also play live during the broadcast 
along with guests Mudhoney, Tuatara, Brad and Zeke.  Seeing this massive pile 
of records, I suggest to Vedder that rather than a radio show, he should create 
his own radio station (something he's surreptitiously done several times by
broadcasting from a van in the parking lot of Pearl Jam shows).  He smiles as
if we're both in on a little secret, and walks back into the warehouse to chat 
with the guitarist Stone Gossard and Pearl Jam's drummer Jack Irons.

	It doesn't take long during a conversation with McCready or Ament to
get onto the subject of the "Portrait of Eddie Vedder," that image of Pearl Jam's
frontman that has emerged in the media over the years.  The "Eddie, the tortured
artist" picture is something they both say is completely false, and one-sided, and
one of the many pieces of mythology that the two want to confront today.

	"There are a lot of misconceptions about our band," McCready argues.
"I think that's because we haven't done a lot of press.  So people assume certain
things.  And in the press, they say things like, 'Well, Ed looks this way so he's
always miserable.'  But that's not the case at all."  At least on this day in their
warehouse, Vedder seems positively buoyant.
	
	Ament stresses that the greatest falsehood about Pearl Jam is that the
band members somehow wish they weren't successful.  "I think the main
misperception is that we hate our success and that we hate all the good things
that have happened to us," he says.  "There have been a couple of moments
in our history where things got blown out of proportion - maybe we were a
little confused at the time.  When people are praising you and giving you
accolades, and you've only been in a particular band a little while, it's strange.
But we wouldn't still be doing it, or we wouldn't have done it in the first place,
if we didn't want to."

	Both Ament and McCready agree that the band is still better in
concert on a good night than in the studio.  Ament describes the energy he feels
playing live as being spiritual:  "There is a great rush in doing a big show, where
the people are singing along to your songs.  It's how you imagine it should be
going to church.  The night that it's happening, I don't think there's any place
better to be - it doesn't matter whether you are playing or in the audience."

	On the subject of touring, Pearl Jam are planning a tour of the Far East
and the U.S. (with likely stops in Seattle and Portland).  If possible, they won't
be playing Ticketmaster venues, but this time their rhetoric is a little softer,
particularly from the pragmatic McCready:  "If we don't get so caught up in
the politics of the Ticketmaster situation, we can get out there and play," he
says, almost as if it's a warning to himself.  Ament says that the Ticketmaster
conflict was blown out of proportion by the media, and though he still believes
in the issue, he doesn't want the band to focus on it above all else.  "Even
during the ticketing issue," he says, "we were going through other things at the
time, and we weren't communicating very well."

	If Yield is any indication, and if McCready and Ament are to be
believed, Pearl Jam have conquered that communication breakdown.  The new
album represents several firsts for the group, but perhaps most importantly it
introduces a new style of collaborative writing, where all members are
encouraged to write their own songs.  Ament - who contributed "Pilate" and
"Low Light" - says the collaborative process grew out of the strenuous effort
required to finish No Code, their last album.  "Ed said something to the effect
of how much work it was for him to finish up all the songs," the bassist recalls.
"He asked if we could come in with more complete ideas next time.  Everyone
took that to heart.  The first day that we all met up - early last summer -
everyone had a tape with five songs.  We spent the first three hours playing
songs for each other.  It was a real breakthrough for me in terms of my own
work.  And then to have Ed excited to sing the words that I had wrote was
a huge honor for me."

	Though McCready didn't contribute any lyrics, the guitarist wrote
the music for three tunes, including the single "Given to Fly."  The song has
been well-received, and has become a radio hit, in part fueled by a controversy
about how much it sounds like Led Zeppelin's "Going to California."  Some
stations have taken to airing the two songs back to back.  McCready says
any similarity is unintentional and accidental.  "I never put those two
together," he says.  "Our songs go up and down, while 'Going to California'
is more linear and acoustic.  I had been listening to a lot of Zeppelin so maybe
it sunk in there, but if so, it wasn't a conscious thing."

	The band was also conscious about not getting hooked into an idea
of an anthematic "big" Pearl Jam sound.  "There isn't a typical Pearl Jam song,
or sound, or formula," Ament argues.  "I think that worked to our advantage
because everyone in the band is still growing as song writers."  He also notes
that on several songs he and Gossard switched instruments, marking another
first for a Pearl Jam album.  Ament didn't even play "Evolution," the last song
recorded for the album, and one he now cites as the album's key song.  Irons
also contributed to the songwriting for the first time, bringing in parts he had
written on guitar and eventually crafting both the untitled song and the "hidden"
track ("War, I'm Crazy") that ends the CD.  Ament says the band thought of
the songs as a possible B-side but decided to add it to the album after observing
 that it surprised everyone who heard the studio tapes.
	
	Yield has also been mired by another controversy around the leaking
of the album through a web site and by a New York radio station.  Though the
band's label, Epic, sued to stop any early transmission, the group says it still
supports audio taping of their concerts and will allow a "taper's section" on
the new tour.  "By allowing taping it puts a big dent into the bootleg trade,"
Ament notes.  "If you're a big fan and you start trading tapes, it's a great way
to get to know people.  It's not going to hurt our record sales.  The people into
it are really hardcore fans." [:) !!]

	Another present that the group plans for their hardcore fans is an
upcoming home video.  Tough they don't plan on doing any more commercial
videos ("Look at the last one we did, and what that caused," McCready says,
referring to the runaway hit, "Jeremy"), the home video will include lots of
live footage and show more interaction between band members.

	Though both McCready and Ament are quick to correct some of the
myths of Pearl Jam, they still seem a little puzzled eight years into this band as
to what all the fuss is all about.  Both players - along with Gossard - had deep
roots in the Seattle music scene, and played in numerous struggling bands
before Pearl Jam hit it big.  "We were ingrained in the music scene," Ament
says, "and had been for a long time.  I think the fact that we hit so big and so
quickly, was what might have given to those perceptions of the outside press.
But when people started questioning our integrity and motives, it hurts.  I grew
up in a really small town in rural, eastern Montana, and I don't know if wanting
to be famous has ever been part of me.  In terms of wanting to ride in limos,
date models and do drugs, I can't think of three things that I would rather not
do."  Prior to Pearl Jam, Ament and Gossard were in Green River and Mother
Love Bone, bands that failed commercially, but ultimately contributed to Pearl
Jam's mythology:  "If people remember Mother Love Bone being a great rock
band, then that's what Andy [Wood] would have liked for you to believe.
That's how we played.  But I remember playing shows when nobody was there.
Yet it was fin to feel that we were the biggest band in the whole world, through
Andy's eyes and his vision."

	McCready also played in several earlier bands including Shadow, a
band he helped form when he was only 11.  He reunited with some of his Shadow 
bandmates  -- including Chris and Rick Friel - and has done some recording
recently.  He continues to work with Mad Season, renamed Disinformation,
and now featuring Mark Lanegan as vocalist.  Ament has also done his share
of side projects and hopes to do another album with Three Fish.  Gossard plays
with Brad and his Loosegroove record label, while Vedder stays busy with his
radio subterfuge and occasional guest spots.

	On Pearl Jam's last tour, they made a gesture towards their Northwest
roots by bringing the Fastbacks on the road as their opening band.  Though the
opportunity allowed the long-suffering Fastbacks to play to the biggest crowds
of their 18-year career, it also gave something back to Pearl Jam.  "I had played
shows with them at the Metropolis, a number of years ago," Ament says.  "And
the amazing thing was that they were exactly the same.  Seeing those guys, in
front of 10,000 people in Barcelona, Spain, and seeing them so cranked, I could
feel that kid-like quality and that wonder in their eyes.  Even as distanced as we
are from a lot of the crap that goes on in the music business, we still can get
pretty jaded.  Our crowds are always so big and so great, we begin to expect
certain things.  And sometimes the Fastbacks would come up and go, 'Wow,
what an awesome crowd.  That was the greatest crowd I've ever seen.'  And
they were right."

	With that McCready heads out to the large room of the rehearsal
space, his interview assignments done for the day.  Vedder is standing around
there talking to Gossard, and Irons is working the monster kick drums.  Pearl
Jam are preparing to rehearse.  Ament pauses for a second, to paw through
Ed Vedder's albums, still sitting there in the plastic mail tub.  He picks up an
MC5 album and looks at the backside.  "This is all Ed's stuff," Ament says,
holding the record as if it were some priceless relic.  "But where is he going
to find time to play all this?"


02/23/98


by Tom Phalen 
Special to The Seattle Times 
Concert review: Pearl Jam with Mudhoney, The Maui Arts & Cultural 
Center, Kahului, Maui, Friday and Saturday.
MAUI, Hawaii - Maui is known as the "Valley Isle," the landscape one of 
deep gorges and high peaks, a tense and beautiful result of ancient 
volcanic activity and a pat metaphor for the tour-opening shows of 
Seattle's Pearl Jam. The performances were a fusion of cascading musical 
highs, some dark, dashed lows and at least one unexpected emotional 
explosion. 

The Maui Arts & Cultural Center was a casual, theatrical outdoor 
setting, like Woodland Park framed by palm trees. The weather was balmy 
and both shows sold out the 5,000-capacity venue. 

After Mudhoney's politely received opening set, the three-generation 
crowd greeted Pearl Jam with a thunderous ovation. The band smacked out 
a manic opening with fan favorite "Corduroy," "Hail, Hail" and the new, 
conspiratorial "Brain of J." Lead singer Eddie Vedder looked young, 
Dylan-like. Guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard animatedly traded 
fluid leads. Bassist Jeff Ament and drummer Jack Irons laid down a 
cinderblock foundation. The concert didn't have that out-of-town, 
trial-run feel. It had legs and it was running. 

But about six songs in, it stumbled. "Evenflow," the band's first hit, 
felt like an afterthought, something to be gotten out of the way. "MFC," 
from the new CD "Yield" was given a hard push, but by then Vedder's 
voice was getting ragged. 

"Jeremy," probably the most shouted-for song of the evening, ended in 
tatters. Vedder even acknowledged "it wasn't the best version" of the 
song. "First night, things happen," he said, "but it's nice to be your 
virgin." 

"Given to Fly" and "Daughter" fared better and the house deeply 
applauded "Black" but the band clearly wasn't happy. When the players 
gathered at center stage for an impromptu huddle, Vedder suddenly took a 
noisy slap at Gossard's guitar, then angrily kicked his microphone stand 
over. There was a collective gasp and then the mosh pit began cheering. 

"You're supporting bad behavior," Vedder said, seeming to admonish 
himself more than the audience. "I just wanted tonight to be perfect," 
he continued. "I've been waiting a long, long time for this. We weren't 
half bad, but you guys (the audience) were great. You deserve a hand." 
He applauded and then raged into the set closer, "Do The Evolution," 
lyrically acknowledging that emotional, social and artistic growth 
remain hard-won. 

Saturday night, Pearl Jam continued the theme by opening with "Do The 
Evolution." It was a little more controlled, but no less passionate. 
Vedder's voice started rough but quickly smoothed out. The feral fever 
continued with "Animal" and progressed with "Hail, Hail" and "Brain Of 
J." 

Whatever opening-night jitters the band experienced Friday had 
dissipated. The second show was sharp and focused, the band clearly 
confident and enthusiastic.. 

"Jeremy" was excluded from the set, but "Evenflow" remained. "Daughter" 
was especially well done and well received and the teaming of the newly 
energized "MFC" with "Lukin" was euphorically brutal. The set finished 
with a reaffirming and promising performance of "Alive."