Seattle, WA · grunge · rock

Pearl Jam

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The grunge band that turned into a lifelong touring institution — Vedder's baritone over guitars that still sound like 1991 when they want to.

Pearl Jam formed in Seattle in 1990 out of the wreckage of two earlier bands: guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament had played together in Green River and then Mother Love Bone, whose singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose that year. Gossard began writing harder material with local guitarist Mike McCready, and the pair sent a demo tape to Eddie Vedder, then living in San Diego, who wrote lyrics and flew up to join as singer.

Their debut album Ten arrived in 1991 as Seattle's music broke nationally, staying on the Billboard 200 for close to five years and eventually going 13 times platinum. Vedder's baritone and McCready's blues-rooted lead playing carried the songs onto American rock radio, and the albums that followed sold in similar numbers: Vs. broke the record for first-week sales in 1993, and Vitalogy became the second-fastest-selling CD in history the following year.

The band spent much of the following decade deliberately limiting videos and press, and fought a public dispute with Ticketmaster over service charges, eventually suing the company over what they argued was a monopoly on concert ticketing.

Drummers changed several times in the band's early years before Matt Cameron joined in 1998 and stayed for almost three decades; keyboardist Boom Gaspar has toured and recorded with the group since 2002. Pearl Jam has also used its standing to speak on political issues such as abortion rights and opposition to the Bush administration, with Vedder acting as the band's spokesman.

Their reputation now rests heavily on live performance, with long, varied setlists and an extensive programme of official concert recordings; Rolling Stone readers once placed them eighth on a list of the greatest live acts of all time. Pearl Jam was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017, its first year of eligibility, having sold more than 100 million albums worldwide.

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