Fifteen years after hitting it massively big, Pearl Jam have lost much of their commercial clout but are still standing and still recording, bruised but not broken by their battles with Sony and Ticketmaster. Brian Boyd gets the grungy truth from Mike McCready and Stone Gossard
IN 2004 Pearl Jam released a greatest hits album. Nothing unusual there. They were once the biggest band in the world and still retain a massive fan base. Also, they were contractually obliged (as most every band is) to release a greatest hits collection at some stage during their recording deal.
Still, there was something unusual in the track listing of Rearviewmirror. The hits were there alright. It's just that it was only the hits. There was no new or previously unreleased material. For Pearl Jam's record company, this was tantamount to an act of sedition. If there were no new songs on the album, why would any Pearl Jam fan buy it? That's the simple but effective marketing trick of a greatest hits album: you need a "previously unreleased" tune so the fans who already have the hits anyway will shell out again for one lousy new song hastily cobbled together for that express purpose.
It was the first time a band of such magnitude had tried this wilfully anti-commercial gesture on. And it was the last time. Learning from the relatively unprofitable Pearl Jam album, most labels now have clauses stating that the a greatest hits album must have some new, or at least previously unrecorded, material.
It's not the first time Pearl Jam have challenged the way the music industry operates. Pick up any Ticketmaster ticket and you'll see the full (unnecessary and exorbitant) service or handling fee printed on it. It's there because, in 1994, Pearl Jam testified in front of a US government subcommittee in an anti-trust investigation by the Justice Department against Ticketmaster.
And on it goes: told by their record company to make sure the name "Pearl Jam" was written in huge letters on a new album release, the band designed an album cover on which it was impossible to find their name anywhere. Told by tour promoters to stick to the big urban centres where the bottom line was higher, they announced tour dates in Wyoming. Told to make videos for MTV, they less than politely declined. Told to do press to promote their releases, they pulled all interviews. Told to sell songs to advertisers, they replied with expletives.
Pearl Jam may not be the most musically interesting band ever, but in terms of challenging, provoking and really, really annoying a rapacious and oft-unprincipled industry, they are the most interesting band of their generation. While others thought that shooting up heroin or doing an Aids benefit gig signified some form of rebellion, Pearl Jam had a go at the time-honoured yet inequitable economic structures that hold up the industry. They fought the law. And the law won.
"I don't know when our so-called 'attitude problem' with the industry started. I think it was there all along," says guitarist Mike McCready, looking back over all the skirmishes that many people still regard as being not much more than tilting at windmills. "Maybe we were just incredible naive. I mean, thinking we could take on Ticketmaster and others on our own. It did come from the right place, I have to stress that.
"When our debut album [1991's Ten] sold over 10 million copies, a lot of the fans who had supported us from the start were simply being priced out of our shows. All of us in the band know what it's like not to have a lot of money and to feel exploited or let down when your favourite band rolls into town and they're charging a small fortune for a ticket.
"Remember, this was happening at the time when this thing called 'grunge' was on the cover of Time magazine and there was all this hoopla about the band. We always insisted on keeping our ticket prices really, really low and were glad to do so. We just found that when Ticketmaster would print the tickets up, the price had escalated because of all these extras they were adding on. It's a very long story, but we ended up testifying against them and trying to do a tour without going through them."
Fellow guitarist Stone Gossard takes up the story: "When we tried to do a non-Ticketmaster tour, we found out that all the main venues, the ones we had always played, the ones everyone played, all had exclusive contracts with Ticketmaster. We couldn't use them. We found ourselves looking at racecourses about 30 or 40 miles away from the city centre to see if we could put the show on there.
"Everything is linked. Ticketmaster linked to venue, venue to Clear Channel, Ticketmaster to Clear Channel. We tried to break the link, but what it meant was us making about 800 phone calls a day to find venues that weren't tied up with Ticketmaster. And then, when we did find a place, the fans would be criticising us for staging the show miles away from anywhere etc."
Once Pearl Jam acted against Ticketmaster, the likes of R.E.M., Neil Young and Aerosmith lent their support. Aerosmith's manager, Tim Collins, testified at the hearings that his band had to use Ticketmaster even though they didn't want to. Rather bizarrely, Collins also read out a letter of support from Aerosmith singer Steve Tyler, who was on tour in Italy at the time. Remember this is post-rehab Steve Tyler. The letter read: "Mussolini may have made trains run on time but not everyone could get a seat on those trains". No, me neither.
The Ticketmaster story is a tortuous one, but eventually the-then attorney general, Janet Reno, dropped the investigation against the ticketing company, saying there was inadequate evidence to proceed.
"No one in the band regrets the action," says Stone Gossard. "As a result of what happened we were able to see the big picture. People make the mistake of associating the battle we had with declining record sales."
Most every Pearl Jam album since Ten has sold less than its predecessor. But then, the band have always talked about how they wanted to "weed out" their fans after that first massive success. "The idea is that people got tired of not being able to see the group live," says Gossard. "But Ticketmaster was not a factor in slowing down the commercial momentum. The level of early success we had simply couldn't be maintained. That was going to happen anyway, with or without the Ticketmaster challenge. We did what was right with Ticketmaster."
You can now buy Pearl Jam tickets through Ticketmaster. Gossard and McCready just look blankly when this is mentioned. The look is one of "we tried and we failed".
Pearl Jam's contract with Sony expired after 2002's Riot Act album. It was expected that they would set up their own label and run themselves independently.
"We drive record labels crazy," admits McCready. "We're the band who go from selling 10 million copies of one album to one million copies of another. We're fine with that. The labels aren't. We pulled back - we're the first to admit that. Whether that be Eddie [ Vedder] not being made available for interviews or simply not doing videos for MTV. For us it was self-preservation. That whole grunge thing got crazy. You saw what happened to some people and we wanted out of that."
This is a not-so-oblique reference to Pearl Jam's Seattle musical neighbours Nirvana. It was a very uneasy relationship from the start and, when both bands broke big at the same time, guarded mistrust was replaced by outright hostility. Kurt Cobain attacked Pearl Jam for being "commercial sell-outs"; at the time, Pearl Jam were easily outselling Nirvana.
In his Journals book, Cobain wrote: "There are a lot of bands who claim to be alternative and they're nothing but stripped down, ex-Sunset Strip hair-farming bands of a few years ago. [Eddie Vedder used to sing in Sunset Strip bar bands.] I would love to be erased from our association with Pearl Jam."
Cobain and Vedder were later reconciled, although you're probably better off not mentioning Pearl Jam anywhere in the vicinity of Ms Courtney Love.
When it came to a new recordingdeal, Pearl Jam decided against setting up their own label.
"We did think about it," says Gossard. "In the end we decided against it because to have your own label you have to sort out distribution. And the more you look around at who distributes what, you realise that down the line they're all more or less owned by the same people and we didn't want to go through that again.
"I don't think our experiences in the past deterred us from setting up our own label, in that some people think we might be feeling bruised and battered and now a bit less idealistic about the business. After the deal with Sony ran out we signed to J Records. They know what they're getting with us. They won't even try to get us to do things they know we just won't do."
The first new label album is eponymously titled. "It's our first storytelling album," says McCready. "We've just let the songs breathe and played to our natural strengths."
Here's the final twist: J Records was set up as an indie by industry veteran Clive Davis, and one of his first signings was Alicia Keys. Her success grew the label and Davis went on to sign Maroon 5 and others before being swallowed up by . . . Sony.
"As we said," notes McCready, "everything is connected."
Pearl Jam is out now. The band play Dublin's Point Theatre on August 23rd, with tickets available from Ticketmaster
