Pearl Jam Biography

Ed Vedder - Vocals, sometimes guitar-Mike McCready - Lead Guitar-Stone Gossard - Rhythm Guitar-Matt Cameron - Drumer - Jeff Ament - Bass

Pearl Jam, The beginning age of Pearl Jam goes way back into the mid-80's with a Seattle based band called Green River. Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard were members of this band. After the band made an early split, Jeff and Stone went and joined Mother Love Bone along with former Green River guitarist Bruce Fairweather and a guy named Andrew Wood. After Wood past away from a heroin overdose, the band was done. They were set to make it big and was actually the first one to get a major record label from Seattle. After this, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and a good friend of Wood's asked Jeff and Stone if they would like to do a tribute to Wood. They agreed. Stone brought up a school friend named Mike McCready to join in on the project while Cornell invited Matt Cameron of Soundgarden. While recording the Wood tribute, Jeff, Stone, and Mike were recording music of their own on the side. They asked former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons if he would want to join in on the project. He declined because he was in a band called Eleven at the time but passed the demo tapes to a poor dude in San Diego, CA named Eddie Vedder. Eddie wrote lyrics to the songs and created a trilogy out of them. Jeff, Stone, and Mike immediately invited Eddie up to Seattle. Soon, the Wood tribute was complete and Eddie even gave a helping hand on it. The tribute was called Temple Of The Dog. After that, Jeff, Stone, Mike, Eddie, and new member Dave Krusen were now a band called Mookie Blaylock but changed their name to Pearl Jam and got a major label deal with Epic Records. Their first album "Ten" after Mookie Blaylock's jersey number was released in August of 1991. Krusen left the band after the album was released and was replaced on tour by Matt Chamberlin. Chamberlin recommended a more permanent drummer to the band named Dave Abbruzzese and he joined the band. The band's first big break was opening on tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the Smashing Pumpkins, but even bigger was headlining the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. Later on in 1993, Pearl Jam would win Video Of The Year for "Jeremy". In late 1993, Pearl Jam released their second and eagerly anticipated second album called "Vs.". The album broke sales records selling nearly one million copies in a week! The band also refused to make any music videos or promote themselves at all because fame was bringing the band down. In 1994, Pearl Jam did something that no other artist had done before. Pearl Jam filed a non-trust suit against Ticketmaster for not keeping ticket prices low. This cancelled a lot of shows in 1994 and that same year they kind of made up for it with the release of "Vitalogy". It also sold nearly one million copies in its first week of release. Pearl Jam did not tour off that album and in 1995 the band members worked on side projects. The whole band was involved with Neil Young's "Mirror Ball" album. Mike McCready was involved with Alice In Chains' Layne Staley in a side band called Mad Season. Stone Gossard was in Brad and Jeff Ament was in Three Fish. In the summer of 1996, Pearl Jam released "No Code". It did not have as much success as the previous two albums though. It followed with an extensive fall North American Tour without the aid of Ticketmaster. In February of 1998, the band released their fifth album, "Yield". It was followed by an extensive world tour that sold out every show and Pearl Jam was named by the Billboard Music Awards as the "Alternative Band Of The Year". In November of 1998, Pearl Jam released their first live album cleverly titled as "Live On Two Legs". In 1999, Pearl Jam released the single "Last Kiss" which became their highest selling single but they didn't make anything out of it. All the proceeds went to an organization called CARE in benefit for the Kosovar refugees. Besides that, Pearl Jam did little in 1999 together but only 2 concerts. 2000 is expecting a new album called "Binaural" and a huge European and North American tour.

Pearl Jam rose from the ashes of Mother Love Bone to become the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s. After vocalist Andrew Wood overdosed on heroin in 1990, guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament assembled a new band, bringing in Mike McCready on lead guitar and recording a demo with Soundgarden's Matt Cameron on drums. Thanks to future Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons, the demo found its way to a 25-year-old San Diego surfer named Eddie Vedder, who overdubbed vocals and original lyrics and was subsequently invited to join the band (then christened Mookie Blaylock after the NBA player). Dave Krusen was hired as the full-time drummer shortly thereafter, completing the original lineup. Renaming themselves Pearl Jam, the band recorded their debut album, Ten, in the beginning of 1991, although it wasn't released until August; in the meantime, the majority of the band appeared on the Andrew Wood tribute project Temple of the Dog. Ten didn't begin selling in significant numbers until early 1992, after Nirvana made mainstream rock radio receptive to alternative rock acts. Soon, Pearl Jam outsold Nirvana, which wasn't surprising -- Pearl Jam fused the riff-heavy stadium rock of the '70s with the grit and anger of '80s post-punk, without ever neglecting hooks and choruses; "Jeremy," "Evenflow," and "Alive" fit perfectly onto album rock radio stations looking for new blood.

Krusen left the band shortly after the release of Ten; he was replaced by Dave Abbruzzese. Pearl Jam's audience continued to grow during 1992, thanks to a series of radio and MTV hits, as well as successful appearances on the second Lollapalooza tour and the Singles soundtrack (Stone Gossard also embarked on a side project called Brad, which released the album Shame in early 1993). Despite their status as rock & roll superstars, the band refused to succumb to the accepted conventions of the music industry. The group refused to release any videos or singles from their second album, 1993's Vs. Nevertheless, it was another multi-platinum success, debuting at number one and selling nearly a million copies in its first week of release. On their spring 1994 American tour, the band decided not to play the conventional stadiums, choosing to play smaller arenas, including several shows on college campuses. Pearl Jam cancelled their 1994 summer tour, claiming they could not keep ticket prices below 20 dollars because Ticketmaster was pressuring promoters to charge a higher price. The band took Ticketmaster to the Justice Department for unfair business practices; while fighting Ticketmaster, they recorded a new album during the spring and summer of 1994. After the record was completed, the group fired Dave Abbruzzese, replacing him with former Red Hot Chili Peppers and Eleven drummer Jack Irons.

Vitalogy, the band's third album, appeared at the end of 1994. For the first two weeks, the album was only available as a limited vinyl release, but the record charted in the Top 60. Once Vitalogy was available on CD and cassette, the album shot to the top of the charts and quickly went multi-platinum. Pearl Jam continued to battle Ticketmaster in 1995, but the Justice Department eventually ruled in favor of the ticket agency. In early 1995, the band recorded an album with Neil Young. Meanwhile, Vedder toured with his wife Beth's experimental band Hovercraft in the spring of 1994 as Stone Gossard founded an independent record company; Mad Season, Mike McCready's side project with Layne Staley of Alice in Chains, released their first album, Above, in the spring of 1995. Comprised entirely of Neil Young songs, Mirror Ball appeared in the summer under Young's name; although the individual members of the band were credited, the name Pearl Jam did not appear on the cover due to legal complications. Pearl Jam released a single culled from the sessions, titled Merkin Ball and featuring the songs "I Got Id" and "Long Road," in the fall of 1995.

In late summer of 1996, Pearl Jam released their fourth album, No Code. Although the album was greeted with fairly positive reviews and debuted at number one, its weird amalgam of rock, worldbeat, and experimentalism dissatisfied a large portion of their fan base, and it quickly fell down the charts. The record's performance was also hurt by Pearl Jam's inability to launch a full-scale tour, due both to their battle with Ticketmaster and a reluctance to spend months on the road. The band spent most of 1997 out of the spotlight, working on new material; Gossard also released a second album with his side project Brad, titled Interiors. By the end of the year, Pearl Jam had completed a new, harder-rocking record entitled Yield. The album was greeted with enthusiastic reviews upon its February 1998 release, but its commercial fortunes weren't quite as clear cut. While their sizable cult embraced the album, sending it to number two its first week of release, Yield quickly slipped down the charts. Pearl Jam supported the record with a full-scale arena tour in the summer of 1998, issuing the concert LP Live on Two Legs at the end of the year; Jack Irons did not participate due to poor health, and was replaced by ex-Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron. In 1999, Pearl Jam scored an unlikely pop radio smash with their cover of the J. Frank Wilson oldie "Last Kiss," originally released as the seventh in a series of fan-club-only singles which had also featured several incongruous covers in the past. Demand from fans and radio programmers resulted in the nationwide release of "Last Kiss," and it eventually became the band's highest-charting pop hit to date, peaking at number two and going gold. The group returned in 2000 with the Tchad Blake-produced Binaural. In order to circumvent bootleggers, their subsequent European and American tours were recorded in full and released in an unprecedented series of double-CD sets, each of the 72 volumes featuring a complete concert.