30 Years Ago, Pearl Jam Nearly Spun Out of Control on Vitalogy

As Pearl Jam’s beloved third record, Vitalogy, turns 30, we travel back to find this same resolute band on the verge of, as producer Brendan O’Brien described it, “implosion.” By the time they began writing and recording the record in 1993 during soundchecks and breaks from their grueling Vs. Tour, the band had already spent an entire year at the epicenter of the global grunge explosion. Their sophomore album, Vs.—a gritty, funky retreat from the anthemic footsteps of Ten—only intensified an already glaring spotlight as it broke sales records. Trapped in the eye of a whirlwind of relentless fame, soul-crushing depersonalization and the perceived cheapening of their art, the band fought back by limiting press access and refusing to make music videos. But that resistance took its toll. Communication broke down among members, which put mounting pressure on Vedder to shoulder the creative load. Piling on, guitarist Mike McCready’s substance abuse worsened, drummer Dave Abbruzzese was on the outs and the group’s infamous boycott of Ticketmaster only exacerbated tensions and exhaustion. As a result, dropping the needle on Vitalogy today finds listeners lurking like a bug on the wall as Pearl Jam seem doomed to spin out of control.

Vitalogy often gets dubbed as Pearl Jam’s most urgent or immediate album, an observation that doesn’t take long to register. After some studio clunkiness, opener “Last Exit” crashes the gates in desperate defiance of everything that made an album like Ten so popular. It’s stripped down, punkier and prioritizing adrenaline over the larger-than-life shape and expanse of the band’s massive radio hits. Similarly, on lead single “Spin the Black Circle,” Vedder, now firmly at the helm, slams the accelerator down on Stone Gossard’s slower original riff until the song finally pulls the plug on his shredded, mangled urges to drop the needle. These opening tracks, along with a song like “Whipping,” for all their tightness, feel more like cathartic purges than anything else. The band, especially Ament, questioned Vedder’s instincts on these more punk-leaning tracks. In retrospect, we can view much of Vitalogy as the band grasping for a new language—often the most immediate and direct available—to contend with the imminent threat they felt closing in around them.

In that light, Vitalogy spins as an act of defiance or self-preservation. If Vs. captures the band trying to cope with all that success had thrust upon them, Vitalogy finds them now drawing a desperate line in the dirt, at times even snarling through the bars like a caged, endangered species. “No time to question / Why’d nothing last / Grasp and hold on / We’re dyin’ fast,” sings Vedder on “Last Exit.” Whether or not taken as a suicide note, it’s made clear that the band cannot continue down their current path and that time to get off grows short. But what does that exit look like? On “Spin the Black Circle,” we find a declaration of love for the simple purity of art, music and the personal rituals that make us human. The weary, unnerving march of “Tremor Christ”—largely attributed to McCready and Ament—might suggest that salvation lies not in actually surfing the “big, big waves” that slowly erode our souls but simply enduring their constant pummeling. Similarly, on the driving, yet catchy “Corduroy,” Vedder accepts that “everything has chains,” but he remains determined to find a way to live as unshackled as possible.

Several songs on Vitalogy deal directly with the band’s struggles with fame and the commodification of their music. In the liner notes for the scathing “Not for You,” Vedder pits himself as Sisyphus pushing the rock (pun intended?) while the cogs of the record industry turn and stake a controlling claim in the music that he believes belongs to the band and their fans, the youth in particular. It’s difficult to imagine more vitriol in a vocal than when he asserts, “This is not for you / Oh, never was for you / Fuck you!” as the whip literally cracks on Gossard’s manic “Satan’s Bed,” Vedder further rails against temptations to “shake Satan’s hand” (or “suck Satan’s dick”), instead opting for an authentic, self-determined life full of the love already in his grasp. “Immortality” often gets misinterpreted as a song about Kurt Cobain’s suicide. Vedder has long denied these speculations about the ballad but admits that there are similarities. He might be the only other person who can relate to the levels of fame thrust upon the Nirvana frontman during the early ‘90s Seattle hysteria. Listening to the song’s closing words (“Cannot stay long/ Some die just to live”) still adds a heaviness to the desperation heard across Vitalogy—a caution about what can happen when real people are subjected to that type of oppressive, artificial spotlight.

While some have gone as far as to call Vitalogy a loose concept record, a handful of undeniably beautiful outliers extend the band’s mission of self-preservation beyond themselves. The gentle, spare Ament composition “Nothingman” emerges in the wake of the band’s opening aural assault. Vedder’s intimate vocal, ranging from plaintive observations to impassioned belting, tells of the devastation of fucking up a relationship with one who truly loves you. In Vedder’s parlance, it’s a tragic loss that leaves you with “less than nothing, a nothing man.” After past reluctance, Vedder finally consented to recording “Better Man,” a song he wrote as a member of San Diego outfit Bad Radio before joining Pearl Jam. The slow-building, runaway rocker about enduring an abusive relationship came out of nowhere to top the charts as a non-single and remains as synonymous with the band as any song since Ten. The track, which finds Vedder now on guitar (like several other songs on Vitalogy), further cemented the singer as the driving creative force behind Pearl Jam, a burden that would put strain on the band for years to come.

The adjective “eclectic” often gets used by critics to characterize No Code, Pearl Jam’s 1996 follow-up. In that case, we can call some of the oddities scattered across Vitalogy “just plain weird.” In some ways, it makes sense that a band who wrote much of this record during soundchecks and quick jam sessions might include a clunky fragment like “Pry, To,” especially when we strain and hear Vedder chanting the defiant, on-brand mantra “P-R-I-V-A-C-Y is priceless to me.” Similarly, if we so choose, we can turn the singer’s drunken accordion serenade of “Bugs” into an allegory for the encroaching music industry rather than just a meditation on pest control. Even the hypnotic gibberish of rhythmic instrumental “Aya Davanita,” dubbed the “song without words,” sounds less out of place after years of listens turned up almost-hidden vocals across Vitalogy on essential tracks like “Not for You” and “Corduroy.” Apart from ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons officially replacing Abbruzzese behind the kit on “Hey Foxymophandlemama, That’s Me” a.k.a. “Stupid Mop,” the closing collage, which features looped recordings of psychiatric patients, definitely opened the band up to art-rock experimentation on future records, though nothing quite this strange ever again. It’s hard not to tap out after a few minutes of wading into this literal insanity, perhaps not an unfitting sign-off for a band that felt pushed to the brink of their own breakdown.

Jumping back to the present, it’s difficult to imagine one of Pearl Jam’s epic live sets without one or both of the dual thumbprints of Vitalogy, “Corduroy” and “Better Man,” leaving an imprint on the proceedings. As versatile as any other songs in the band’s repertoire, they can act as an opening salvo as well as anchor an encore or lead a mid-set rally. A nearly forgotten third single like “Immortality” now forks nearly the same lightning as an alt-rock classic like “Alive” or “Even Flow,” and cuts like “Last Exit,” “Spin the Black Circle” and “Whipping” fall in and out of the lineup on a regular basis, a testament to both the indelible impact of Vitalogy and the band’s dedication to keeping all of its catalog vital as it further evolves as a live act. Some songs sound much like they did 30 years ago—a time capsule to a fabled era of flannel and Dr. Martens—while others have found new life. In the past, Vedder has talked about how fans have broken the curse of a brutal song like “Alive” and changed its meaning for him. Similarly, “Better Man” feels transformed when 20 or 30 thousand unite to share vocal duties with him during its pin-drop preamble. A song about an abusive relationship now ironically feels less like a sad, hopeless tale and more like a survivor’s victory lap as the band speed off into an extended jam.

Vitalogy would go on to become the second-fastest selling album of all time upon its release in November 1994, a feat that further cemented Pearl Jam’s legacy as one of the most important bands of the ‘90s. It also meant that the pressures on the band would only intensify in the months to come as they contended with personal demons, personnel changes, a one-band battle with a ticketing behemoth and further breakdown of relationships among the five members. In that light, Vitalogy can be an unnerving listen. It’s the sound of a band trying to regain some semblance of control over their art, friendship and lives, and we can hear that palpable anger and desperation at every turn. Luckily, we know how the story ultimately turns out for Pearl Jam and can appreciate the fight, the struggle and the hope that comes from music’s power to not only save us but to help us endure until that salvation finally arrives.