Biography
The most classic-rock-sounding band to emerge from the grunge movement of the early '90s, Pearl Jam outlasted all of their peers despite an uncompromising work ethic which often made commercial success harder to achieve. Formed from the ashes of Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam's core-line up of lead vocalist Eddie Vedder, guitarists Mike McCready and Jeff Ament, and bassist Steve Gossard took shape in 1988 and two years later signed to Epic Records. Addressing themes of suicide, depression and loneliness, emotive 1991 debut Ten gradually struck a chord with the mainstream, eventually peaking at No.2. on the Billboard 200 and outselling Seattle neighbors Nirvana's Nevermind in the US with sales of 10 million copies. Despite winning four MTV Video Music Awards in 1993, the group made the decision to avoid making promos for subsequent releases, a move which didn't appear to harm second LP Vs. when it debuted at the top spot with the highest first-week sales in US chart history. The group built a reputation as one of rock's most principled when it waged a war with Ticketmaster over its service charges, boycotting any venue that had a contract with the ticketing giants over the next five years. Inspired by the pressures of fame, 1994's Vitalogy spawned the Grammy-winning single "Spin the Black Circle," and was followed by a pivotal role on Neil Young LP Mirror Ball and a third consecutive chart-topper with 1996's experimental No Code. After going back to basics on 1998's Yield, Pearl Jam scored their biggest hit when a cover of Wayne Cochran's "Last Kiss" peaked at No.2 on the US Hot 100, recorded their first album without long-time producer Brendan O'Brien in nine years with 2000's Binaural and twice broke the Billboard record for the highest number of albums to debut at the same time with a total of 72 different official bootlegs. The band, who had finally settled on a permanent drummer in the shape of Matt Cameron, witnessed tragedy shortly after when nine people were crushed to death during their set at Danish festival Roskilde, an incident which was addressed on 2002's Riot Act, a politically-charged affair which proved to be their final release for Epic. Following a short spell with J Records in which they issued 2006's eponymous LP, the band founded their own Monkeywrench label, unexpectedly embraced new wave and pop on 2009's Backspacer, their first number one album in 13 years, and took their tally of chart-toppers to five with 2013's critically-acclaimed Lightning Bolt.
