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With Eddie Vedder and friends on top of the world--and Seattle's grunge scene setting the rock world alight--Mat Snow met the band whose album Ten had outsold Nirvana's Nevermind and swept the MTV awards. This was his report, published in November 1993.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

For years now, Seattle in Washington State on the USA's upper-left corner has boomed like no other American city. A port now dominating America's trade with the Pacific Rim, Boeing aircraft are based here, while the world's most thriving computer company, Microsoft, has filled this city of a half a million with eager professionals. The many partially employed young people and nine months' annual rainfall have further combined to nurture a now world-renowned rock scene.

A combination of locals and incomers, Pearl Jam sprung from this mulch, starting with the group Green River, the first band on the cultish Sub Pop label. They split up acrimoniously in early 1988 after a show in Los Angeles supporting Jane's Addiction: singer Mark Arm joined Mudhoney while Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament teamed up with "glam-revivalist" singer Andrew Wood (the self-styled L'Andrew The Love Child) in the group Mother Love Bone. After an EP, Shine, and LP, Apple, they came to grief in March 1990 when Wood died of a heroin overdose. In tribute, the remnants of the band teamed up with members of Soundgarden and cut the album Temple Of The Dog, and decided to persist in the search for long-term stability. Stone's old school chum Mike McCready was recruited as co-guitarist, Dave Krusen (since replaced by Dave Abbruzzese) was installed behind the traps, and the band lacked only a singer and a name.

Working the night shift at a San Diego gas station, Eddie Vedder had been singing in such obscure groups as The Butts when word reached him via his friend Jack Irons, then drummer with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, that a Seattle rock group had a vacancy. He traveled north, linked up with the band and they rehearsed solidly for five days, during which time they wrote three new songs. On the sixth day they cut a demo tape.

Jeff: "I was coming out of a period of turmoil and reflection after losing our really close friend Andy, and felt hopeful for me and Stone, and even for Andy and people who check out. The first three songs that Eddie wrote--‘Alive,' ‘Once' and ‘Footsteps'--all delve into the dark side and I think we were both drawn into that at the time. Mother Love Bone was a really happy, fun, tongue-in-cheek rock band: on the surface, anyway. Eddie's whole trip seemed to relate to us in a good way."

Born in December 1966, Eddie Vedder sings and writes with an enigmatic intensity that invites enquiry into his own personal wellsprings. Here, things are vague. The oldest of four boys brought up on the Jackson 5 and The Who's Quadrophenia album in Evanston, Illinois, Eddie did not know his father's true identity (he was a struggling singer) for many years, while the family ran a home for orphans. A high school dropout and subsequent autodidact, later Eddie may or may not have studied music in Boston. A keen surfer, Eddie also shared his new band's enthusiasm for basketball: indeed, for a while they traded under the name Mookie Blaylock after the hoop-meister of the New Jersey Nets (now of the Atlanta Braves) whose picture card had found its way into the demo tape package they sent to their manager Kelly Curtis, also employed by Alice In Chains. After a few weeks, the band traded in the name Mookie Blaylock ("I sent him a gold record," recalls Jeff, "and he sent us a pair of spray-painted tennis shoes") and instead styled themselves Pearl Jam after, apparently, Eddie's great-grandmother and her recipe for hallucinogenic fruit preserve.

Things happened fast for Pearl Jam. Seldom seen outside Seattle, they got a record deal with Epic and cut an album, titled Ten after (what else?) Mookie Blaylock's shirt number. Backed to the hilt by Epic, the single "Alive," in many ways as much a new rock anthem as Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," rocketed chartwards, dragging the album in its wake. Released in December 1991, it currently tallies six million sales in the US alone, having overtaken Nirvana's Nevermind in that country this February. Eddie, however, has not found the pressures and side-effects of success easy to deal with. Shocked by how much it cost to make the video for the single "Jeremy," Vedder pledged to release only live footage to promote records: when he discovered that US radio stations were playing the album ballad ‘Black,' Eddie personally telephoned station managers to make sure that Epic had not released it as a single in defiance of his wishes. Stories of his strenuous efforts to divest himself of his newfound wealth (including the suicidal financing of a giant free festival outside Seattle) abound.

Stone will explain how Eddie's threats to retire into songwriting purdah are sincere but unlikely to eventuate. That Eddie is "the emotional leader" of the band is admitted, but so far he needs the band just as badly as they need him. Too old for the rocker's traditional all-for-one, one-for-all gang solidarity, Pearl Jam are caught in the constant tension of humoring their singer while respecting his creative temperament and high ideals. Kurt Cobain's unprovoked attack, therefore, particularly stung Jeff, but, as leader, Eddie has healed the rift.

"I didn't talk about it to anybody except for my little brother the next day, when we went surfing. But that's all been taken care of." A rapprochement was engineered with Kurt Cobain, Courtney Love and the rest of the Nirvana camp. "It was a sacred moment and I just kind of feel weird talking about it. We slow-danced; everything was fine. It was actually an apology." Pressed, he goes into more detail, describing a tender moment soundtracked by Eric Clapton's "Tears In Heaven" and involving no hankypanky or category A drugs whatsoever.

Problems, problems. Almost worst of all is the tendency of so many fans to look to Eddie to solve their problems. A former problem-teen himself. Eddie used to write back personally until engulfed by the numbers.

"A f***ed up person who's had bad things happen can relate to me because he sees someone else who's f***ed up. But I get out through the music; that's what helps me. That's what helps them too, but then they think that the person it comes from has answers or can help them more. They don't understand that, at bottom level, we're both f***ed up. And whenever you do have answers, it's at 3:30 in the morning, and you're alone--and you can't find a pencil and paper. I can't get to those people one on one, whereas with the music, if they have fresh batteries in their Walkman, they have access to it 24 hours a day: it's always there. But I'm not there for myself all the time. And why aren't I there? Because I'm putting so much into this music thing!

"Everyone says, you've got to expect it, because you put yourself out there. So maybe I won't put myself out there. I like my privacy too much to deal with that. I don't like to be talked about, so what the f*** am I doing? You would think that what I create would be enough. I don't like rock stars yet here I am being turned into one."