vitalogy

Pearl Jam wrestled with fame and each other to find the truant tremors of this restless rapture.  During the tour for their sophomore album 'Vs.', the band worked on new material in between shows and recorded at different studios around the US during breaks in performing.  'Vitalogy' was produced by Pearl Jam with Brendan O'Brien at at Bad Animals Studio in Seattle, Washington; Southern Tracks Recording and Doppler in Atlanta, Georgia; and Kingsway Studio in New Orleans, Louisiana.  The sessions featured Dave Abbruzzese on drums;   Jeff Ament on bass guitar, standup, vocals, and black and white photography;   Stone Gossard on guitar, vocals, and mellotron;   Jack Irons on drums for "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me";  Mike McCready on guitar, vocals, and slide guitar;  and Eddie Vedder on vocals, guitar, accordion, book concept, theory of Vitalogy, and typing;   with Brendan O'Brien on pipe organ and Hammond organ;  and Jimmy Shoaf on drums for "Satan's Bed".  

Ament considers: "Probably more so on the 'Vitalogy' or 'No Code' era, I wish I had more time with those songs. Those records, Ed would show us a song and play it twice and that’s sort of what would end up going out there. Luckily you get to play those songs live and there’s lots of pretty good versions of those songs live."
Stone Gossard:   "You can kind of fix your part live if it’s pretty subtle. There’s things you can do to be better for some of those old songs where somebody wouldn’t necessarily pick up on it. But it’s probably about leaving more space, or those songs came pretty quick so you didn’t have a lot of time to hear what was going on. You were flying by the seat of your pants, you know those songs now and can be better for them. I don’t think that we’ve made a perfect Pearl Jam record, like oh there’s not a moment that could be better."

Vedder would expound on their struggles with fame and with the music industry:    "I don't want credit, it's not like I'm trying to claim that. But when they start acting like they own you that they are the reason... that's something that's not true. These attitudes out there that the music is theirs that it's the industry's music... And it's not. It's mine. And it's yours. Whoever's listening to it. It's mine and it's yours. And everybody in between, they're the distributors. I think that something like a music channel can be very powerful. Sometimes they think they're the ones who decide what's heard. I think that's a dangerous situation. And, I think, what's more dangerous is that they think it belongs to them. That's probably what Not For You is about...We didn't know what we were doing at the beginning. People produced it so it came out a little more slick than we would've liked it, whatever. But, we've learnt a little about speaking our minds and having control artistically and using that control. But it's a good example, because I feel there's a lot of text in the songs. They're meaningful songs on certain levels, and another fact that people would say it's all hype, well that's actually completely separate from the music. It's not necessary and, at that point, it was not our fault ...  The only thing that worries me musically is that everything we put out is so under the microscope that it ends up seeping into the songs, and suddenly the music is bombastic just to be able to resist or survive the inspection. There are things on Vitalogy that are definitely not typical, so I'm trying to battle against that. There's two ways: You either give the people what they want, or you become cynical and that protects you...I'm not good at either. We're still just being brutally honest and giving it our best. I'd like to say I don't care what anybody thinks, and that I don't play this music to have it be liked. But I certainly don't put it out so everyone can tear it up, either. Actually, I don't know why I put it out. In the old days, it was a dream to maybe not have to work the midnight shift, and somehow pay your rent by getting a check for your art. And, believe me, the first check I got from a publishing company was an emotional moment for me, because it was given to me for something that came out of my head...A lot of times, music is like a wave, so once it starts, you get caught up in it. And if the sound on the stage is good, I can get lost in whatever we're doing, and I'm fine. But I know for sure, right before you go on or as you're pulling into a town, it starts getting heightened. I'm getting notes backstage from people who are left out in the cold, that couldn't afford the $150 that the scalpers were charging, and how could we be playing if they can't get in...This could be the cause of everything. I'm worried about everybody else, and I'm absolutely just a fucking mess myself. I think I was like this from the beginning. And it's just gotten worse and worse and worse. And now I'm the enabler for a million people. I don't feel like I can survive it right now...Three years ago, this was so new to us. I think that it's almost confidence that enables us to record "Bugs" or confidence in our listeners that they can open up to something like that. Back then I had my mind on the business at hand, and I probably wouldn't have felt so free to take up two hours of studio time working on Eddie's wank-off accordion piece. For a long time after recording it, I was playing it for friends saying it was the best thing we'd ever done. [laughs] We just decided to do something that was fun to listen to and wasn't bombastic and wasn't everything that the band had become...I can definitely listen to every song on the record and get something out of it. "Nothingman" was written in an hour, and so I like listening to that 'cause it just happened and somehow captured a mood there, at least for me in the vocal. Any time I can nail down a song, a thought, in a half hour, that feels really good. We recorded "Tremor Christ" in a very short period, one night in New Orleans, and I remember what that night was like. I can see how the lights were turned down low. I can see the room. And so I like listening to that. I wrote "Better Man" before I could drink -- legally -- on a four-track in my old apartment."

'Vitalogy' was another major success for the band, going to number twenty-eight in Japan; twenty-two in France; seventeen in Switzerland; sixteen in Switzerland; eleven in Spain; eight in Germany; seven in Austria, the Netherlands, and Norway; four in Denmark, Portugal, and the UK; three in Finland; and number one in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Sweden, and the US.  During its first week of release, it was only available on vinyl selling in record amounts for the time.  







http://pearljam.com/

http://www.pearljamonline.it/lyrics/vitalogy.htm









live









'Vitalogy'
full album:
https://myspace.com/pearljam/music/album/vitalogy-17501168





All lyrics written by Eddie Vedder. All music is credited to Pearl Jam with the exceptions as (*). Actual music composers listed below. 


1. "Last Exit"   Abbruzzese, Gossard 2:54
2. "Spin the Black Circle"   Stone Gossard 2:48
3. "Not for You"   Vedder 5:52
4. "Tremor Christ"   Jeff Ament, Mike McCready 4:12
5. "Nothingman" Ament 4:35
6. "Whipping"   Vedder 2:35
7. "Pry, To"   Abbruzzese, Ament, McCready, Gossard, Vedder 1:03
8. "Corduroy"   Vedder 4:37
9. "Bugs"   Vedder 2:45
10. "Satan's Bed" Gossard 3:31
11. "Better Man" Vedder 4:28
12. "Aye Davanita"   Abbruzzese, Ament, McCready, Gossard, Vedder 2:58
13. "Immortality"   Vedder 5:28
14. "Hey Foxymophandlemama, That's Me"  (AKA "Stupid Mop") Ament, Gossard, Jack Irons, McCready, Vedder 7:44

vs.

Pearl Jam took a step back from fame and broadened their sound for this loose and emotional mix of agit folk, funk grooves, soulful meditative mood pieces, and defiant punk.  The monster success of their debut 'Ten' had left the band with a bad taste in their mouths.  They fought with each other, their label, and Ticketmaster over how to proceed with the direction of their sound, making music videos, and how their tickets should be sold.  

Mike McCready recalls:    "The idea of pulling back at the height of our popularity was not exciting to me at the time. I wanted to continue to ride it and play the game, to do videos and go on tour, not throw away this great opportunity. In hindsight it was the right idea.   It happened so fast for all of us out of the blue. It was kind of mind shattering. It was affecting us all in certain different ways and we weren't talking to each other, we were partying too much, Ed was on the cover of Time magazine everything blew up and had we not done that at the time certainly the record label wanted us to not do that. The record company wanted us to do a video for Black, they wanted us to play all the game shows, get on everything they could possibly get on and they fought us for a long time about that and were very pissed about it."

Stone Gossard considers:   "If somebody wants to say, 'You guys used to be my favorite band, but you got too big' -- to me, the problem with getting too big is not, innately, you get too big and all of a sudden you stop playing good music.  The problem is, when you get too big, you stop doing the things you used to do. Just being big doesn't mean you can't go in your basement and write a good song. I think people are capable of being a lot bigger on that rad big scale.  A lot more people are capable of being big out there that just don't give themselves a chance."

The band co-produced 'Vs.' with Brendan O'Brien at  at The Site in Nicasio, California and Potatohead Studio in Seattle, Washington.   The sessions featured Dave Abbruzzese on drums; Jeff Ament on bass guitar; Stone Gossard on rhythm guitar; Mike McCready on lead guitar; and Eddie Vedder on vocals and rhythm guitar on Rearviewmirror and Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town.  The recording process started well with a number of the fast-paced rock songs coming quickly; but Vedder left the Site to wander San Francisco and find his muse.  He ended up sleeping in his van for awhile.   Ament says:   "He needed to get in the space of his songs.  Soon we were back on track...The push and pull is what makes our band ... There's going to be a point where it'll revert back to the way that it was.  We'll get through this whole period right now. We'll get back out there playing. We'll get back to actually being five guys who want to work it out together."

Vedder expressed his disapproval of the rural setting of the Site at the time:   "I fucking hate it here.  I've had a hard time.  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...I had a hard time getting away."

The working title of the album was 'Five Against One'.  Gossard explains:    "For me, that title represented a lot of struggles that you go through trying to make a record.  Your own independence -- your own soul -- versus everybody else's. In this band, and I think in rock in general the art of compromise is almost as important as the art of individual expression. You might have five great artists in the band, but if they can't compromise and work together, you don't have a great band. It might mean something completely different to Eddie. But when I heard that lyric, it made a lot of sense to me ...  I knew everything had gelled on the road where we had transcendent shows. The next record was probably where it felt better recording wise. I saw how it could change and evolve which gave me a lot of inspiration to go ‘we can do ballads, we can do fast stuff, we can do slow stuff, we can do punk stuff.' That was where I realized there were gonna be a lot of places to go with Ed. To have Ed sing on anything, the way he writes lyrics and the way he approaches your material is fantastic. He really loves getting into it, the challenges of all of our songs and the different ways they’re brought into ‘em. He hears things and once he’s onto it he’ll give you such incredible variety in terms of vocal approaches and rhythm and story. He’s so great with different points of view that it’s like going to Disneyland."

Vedder says of the raw sound on the album:   "It was all one take actually. We did many days where we'd play the whole album all the way through. Just every day we'd play the whole record all the way through and then about 12 days we'd pick the best days."

'Vs.' was an instant hit, setting a record for first week sales with almost a million copies in the first five days and making its debut at the top of the US album chart.  It went to number eight in Germany; seven in Austria; two in the UK; and numbe one in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, and the US.  






http://pearljam.com/








'Daughter' only went to number ninety-seven on the US pop chart; but was a number one hit on the US mainstream rock tracks and modern rock charts.  
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O81XzrMv7KI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DwYZKjXxEE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7fmnM1CdFI




Dissident
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-NEC-kM6KM




Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHCE5sw1mTs




Rearviewmirror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFkICEBi8Uw





Indifference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cvGoTWK9WY











  
'Vs.'
full album:



1. "Go"   (Dave Abbruzzese) 3:12
2. "Animal"   (Stone Gossard) 2:49
3. "Daughter"   (Gossard)  3:55
4. "Glorified G"   (Gossard, Mike McCready) 3:26
5. "Dissident"   (Gossard, McCready, Jeff Ament) 3:35
6. "W.M.A."   (Abbruzzese, Ament) 5:59
7. "Blood"   (Gossard, McCready) 2:50
8. "Rearviewmirror"   (Vedder) 4:44
9. "Rats"   Ament 4:15
10. "Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town"   (Vedder) 3:15
11. "Leash"   (Gossard, McCready) 3:09
12. "Indifference"   (Ament, Gossard) 5:02

(all lyrics by Vedder)

who you are

Pearl Jam had a little wow with the worldbeat sound of this meditative single. The song was chosen as the leadoff single for 'No Code' as a "conscious decision" to decrease the size of their audience and bring some sanity back to their lives after their uphill battle against Ticketmaster. Eddie Vedder recalls, "We realized that we had an opportunity to experiment. For instance, everyone has written that 'Who Are You' was obviously inspired by my collaboration with Nusrat, but that's not where it came from". New drummer Jack Irons explains: "I'd been playing that since I was eight. It was inspired by a Max Roach drum solo I heard at a drum shop when I was a little kid." Stone Gossard also contributed to the composition of 'Who You Are' and the rest of the band knew they were onto something. "When I first heard that song, I was totally blown away by it. I thought it was the best song we had ever done!" exclaims Mike McCready. Vedder's lyrics seem to dance around the ideas of fate and free will and how who we are and the part we play in our lives depends on how we are. In the middle of a live performance of the song, he remarked, "It's a long story, and it won't fit . . . in a Rolling Stone." 'Who You Are' only reached number thirty one on the US pop chart; but it was a top five hit around the world, hitting number one on the Billboard Modern Rock Tracks chart and the Canadian RPM Alternative 30.

https://pearljam.com/

Come to send. Not condescend.

Transcendent to consequences.

To transcend where we are.

Who are we? Who we are.

Trampled marks on your souls.

Changes, all you're a part.

Seen it all. Not at all.

Can't defend fucked up men.

Take me for a ride before we leave.

Circumstance. Clapping hands. (Avalanche. Fallin' fast)

A driving winds. Happenstance.

Off the track, in the mud.

That's the marks before mentioned words.

And a little... Wow... And a little...

Just a little time before we leave.

Stop light plays its part so I would say you've got a part.

What's your part? Who you are.

You are who who you are.