Pearl Jam: Five Against the World
There are two Eddie Vedders. One is quiet, shy, barely audible when he speaks. Loving and loved in return. The other is tortured, a bitter realist, a man capable of pointing out injustice and waging that war on the home front, inside himself. On a warm and windy late-spring day in San Rafael, Calif., it’s easy to see which Eddie Vedder is shooting baskets outside the Site, the recording studio where Pearl Jam are finishing their second album. It is tortured Eddie, the one with the deep crease between his eyebrows.
“Your shot,” calls Jeff Ament, the group’s bassist. He bounces the ball to Vedder, who takes a long outside jumper. It rattles into the basket and rolls away. By the time Ament retrieves the ball, Vedder has already disappeared into the studio. His mind is on a new song, “Rearviewmirror.” This is the last day of recording at the Site, and the track’s fate hangs in the balance. It’s a song about suicide . . . but it’s too “catchy.”
The choice of studio seemed perfect back in February, when the band decided to record the new album here. This idyllic studio compound in the hills outside San Francisco offered privacy and focus. Keith Richards had recorded here; his thank-you note to the studio is framed on the living-room wall. This is gorgeous country, where locals look out at the expansive green horizon and say things like “George Lucas owns everything to the left.” This is where Pearl Jam would face the challenge of following up Ten, one of the most successful debut albums in rock. There was only one problem.
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“I fucking hate it here,” says Vedder, standing in the cool blue room where he is about to sing. “I’ve had a hard time.” He places the lyric sheet on a stand between two turquoise-green guitars. “How do you make a rock record here? Maybe the old rockers, maybe they love this. Maybe they need the comfort and the relaxation. Maybe they need it to make dinner music.”
Frustrated, Vedder shakes his head. He pulls at his black T-shirt, uncomfortable in his own skin. A long moment passes. Finally, producer Brendan O’Brien speaks over the intercom. “Ready to give it a shot?”
“Sure,” Vedder says quietly, turning his back for the vocal. He slips on headphones, and for a long time the only sound in the room is his tapping foot.
“Took a drive today,” he sings. “Time to emancipate/I guess it was the beatings/Made me wise . . .” He holds a shaking hand to his head. “But I’m not about to give thanks . . . or apologize.”
Now listening carefully, his weight shifts from foot to foot. He growls and begins spitting on the floor. “Divided by fear . . .” Louder now. “Forced to endure/What I could not forgive . . .” He’s bellowing now, eyes shut. “Saw things . . .” The room is filled with his anger. “Clearer . . . once you were in my . . .” Eight feet away, a snare drum leaning against the wall starts to shake. “Rearview . . . mirrorrrrrr!”
In another part of the building, Ament, the band’s resident artist, prepares for a group meeting about the new album cover. For months, the unwritten rule had been Don’t talk about it. Just make the record. Forget about the pressures on the other side of that hill. But now decisions must be made, and the band slowly gathers in the kitchen to look at Ament’s ideas.
“I’ve been thinking about windows,” Ament says, fighting nerves, passing his artwork ideas to the other members. Ament’s distinctive hand-scripted style adorns all the group’s T-shirts and record releases. On the table before them is a complex collection of his photos and sketches.
“Cool,” says Vedder softly, just returned from the studio and still hunched from the emotional vocal. Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, the band’s guitarists, study the ideas with growing enthusiasm. Buoyed, Ament continues. He likes the idea of contradiction. Conflicting images. The five members kick the concept around until it sticks. Contradiction. There is the lull that follows a winning idea.
“So are we talking about ‘Daughter’ as the first single?” drummer Dave Abbruzzese asks casually.
Suddenly, all air leaves the room. The other four members dog pile on Abbruzzese. What single? One meeting at a time! What do you mean, single? Abbruzzese shrugs. Perhaps it’s still a little too soon to mention the unmentionable. Soon, the subject returns to the album-cover art. Abbruzzese suggests adding a battered and bolted New York City apartment window to the artwork. The idea is instantly accepted and the meeting ends on an exuberant note. The band disappears to play softball while Brendan O’Brien finishes the mix of “Rearviewmirror.”
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