On the Road With Pearl Jam: Calligraphy, a Vacuum and One Wrong Question?
Now on tour in support of its 12th studio effort, Dark Matter, Pearl Jam recently sat down with correspondent Anthony Mason from the band’s gig in Missoula, Montana, for an interview that premiered as part of the new season of CBS News Sunday Morning Sunday, Sept. 22. Backstage at Washington-Grizzly Stadium, Mason and singer Eddie Vedder, who will turn 60 this December, initiate their discussion amid the creature comforts that Vedder brings with him to each location: A dartboard, a Chicago Bears football jersey, and a picture of great Hawaiian surfer, Duke Kahanamoku — this last token not without greater significance.
As Vedder — a veteran surfer from San Diego — sees it, surfing is a metaphor for songwriting. “You put these building blocks together so you can, kind of, shape the perfect wave that has a couple of turns, then a barrel, and then the lyrics come, because the lyrics come from surfing that wave.”
Remembering back to Vedder’s early days, Mason asks about his nascent beginnings as a musician, which the singer traces back to receiving a guitar as a particularly generous gift one year.
“My birthday is Dec. 23, so I begged to have the two gifts put together so I could afford something as extravagant as an electric guitar, which was $115,” he recalls. “I walked [in] Christmas morning, and I could see the silhouette of it, and my heart dropped, and then the lights came on, and it was a vacuum. And then everyone finished opening their presents — and I’m getting little chills — and they said, ‘Oh, one more,’ and they pulled out a guitar case. So that was nice.”
“That’s kind of cruel,” Mason responds, chuckling.
“How about my mom getting ‘lucky’ and getting a vacuum for Christmas?” Vedder retorts.
Vedder has pretty much always viewed music as a lifeline, he says, drawing inspiration from his varied record collection, especially from records by groups like The Who. “We had a babysitter bring over Who’s Next, and left it there,” he remembers. “I didn’t see the sun for about two weeks,” he laughs.
The turning point for Vedder came in 1990. He had heard that a group of Seattle musicians were in need of a singer. They would send him a cassette of instrumental songs to which he would write lyrics and vocal melodies … while surfing. “I remember it being super foggy and one of those days where you think, ‘Maybe I won’t go out,’” he recalls, “but I had the music in my head, the instrumental, and just kind of wrote it and I was still wet when I hit ‘record.’”
Bassist Jeff Ament remembers the immediacy with which he was grabbed by the magic of what Vedder had sent. “I listened to it, and then I left and went and got a coffee, and then I came back, and I listened to it again, and I remember calling Stone [Gossard, guitarist] and I said, ‘You need to come over here right now.’”
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Along with original members Stone Gossard and lead guitarist/songwriter Mike McCready, the band flew Vedder to Seattle for an audition — and all of their suspicions were confirmed. “You felt it,” Vedder says. “You were like, ‘Oh, this is what it is — this is, like, heaven.’”
As ready as the band may have felt to take on the world in that moment, nothing could have prepared its members for what it felt like when their debut album, Ten, rode the wave of the grunge revolution that was taking place in that moment, into the Billboard Top 200 chart. The onslaught of attention was overwhelming. Carried by hits like “Even Flow” and “Jeremy,” the LP would stay on the chart for the next five years.
“It was an avalanche that hit us at the front end of all of that,” Ament recalls. “We were just digging out, trying to survive and sort of regain control, and feel like we were in control of our destiny.”
But taking control of their destiny was a priority, and one over which the band would fight tooth and nail, whether by refusing to make videos upon which their record label insisted, or suing Ticketmaster — one of the earliest salvos taken against the ticketing giant currently under fire for its monopolistic and often-opaque business practices.
It’s a stance that has helped to engender a famous, longstanding loyalty between the band and its devoted fan base. In Missoula, Montana, where Ament has lived since he attended the University of Montana, he hosts a fan fair with local nonprofits before the gig. “You just want to help people. You just want to do more for your community.”
Unlike many bands that will stick to the same setlist night after night, Pearl Jam likes to keep things fresh for its fans and for themselves. Vedder works hard on each night’s set list, drawing from the hundreds of songs in its back catalogue, which he then writes up for his bandmates using calligraphy, a skill he pursued as a hobby to pass the time while enduring the relentlessness of touring.
The subject of touring prompts Mason to ask Vedder and Ament a question that has to weigh heavily on any touring musician who’s been in the game for 35 years: “Do you still enjoy being on the road?”
A long pause follows before the two belly laugh and Vedder replies with, “WRONG QUESTION!”
It may be a longer road than the band members ever anticipated, but they still regard their longevity as both a miracle and a testament to their enduring friendships.