ticketmaster is being watched closely: Pearl Jam at 20: The career in quotes

Pearl Jam at 20: The career in quotes

Pearl Jam will celebrate its 20th anniversary this weekend with two shows at one of its favorite concert venues: the Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis. Here’s a quick look at those two decades through select quotes from my Tribune interviews with band members Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament and Mike McCready, and band manager Kelly Curtis:

Ament, 1991, commenting on the emerging “grunge” scene in Seattle: "I'm at the point that I'm sick of the Seattle tag. If it was up to me we'd move to Sante Fe and not have to deal with it."

Vedder, 1991: “If we sell 40,000 (copies of debut album ‘Ten’) it would be amazing. I don't take it for granted to be able to express myself in music. To be given a stage to do it from, that's an awesome responsibility." The album goes on to sell more than 10 million, one of the biggest commercial successes of the ‘90s.

Vedder, 1995, in the midst of the band’s Ticketmaster-boycott tour: "If it's not fun this time, then it can't be. I really want people to know about that Soldier Field show, that it's not gonna be this big thing. It's gonna be about music." A few days later, the Seattle quintet cancels the remainder of its 15-date tour, blaming "the business problems and controversies surrounding the band's attempt to schedule an alternative tour." It then changes its mind again, and reinstates the Soldier Field show, which turns into a three-hour marathon, one of the best concerts of Pearl Jam’s career.

McCready in 1998, looking back at the tumultuous summer of ’95, when the band nearly broke up: "I thought it could very easily have been over.” A new drummer, Jack Irons, had just joined the band, and "we weren't comfortable with ourselves yet. We were all concerned whether Ed wanted to do this anymore. He was in a van doing his pirate-radio thing (broadcasting underground rock records from various tour stops) and the rest of us were flying to shows. We were on different wavelengths and not communicating well."

Ament, 1996: "We're sick of that (Ticketmaster service fees) being an issue, and it's weird having that be the focus of what we do, but we made a stand and we're going to stick with it. Everything Ticketmaster stands for is what we're fighting against. They're just a small cog in a machine where the artist is at the bottom."

Vedder, 1998: "We got to see up close what it was like to be crushed by a huge corporate giant. That was extremely interesting, educational and disappointing. But it was reality. The surcharge on a ticket was just one more aspect of being a band we wanted to handle in a responsible way, from crowd safety, to sound, to the price of a T-shirt. … (But) the band, and in a broader sense music in general, has always been a place where you're liberated. I always thought of this band as being extraordinarily fortunate for the most part.”

Curtis in 2000, on the band selling its entire tour to concert promoter SFX, instead of continuing to work with indie promoters:  “We're not endorsing anything, we're not selling out. There will be no advertising within sight of the stage. I don't think we did anything wrong or changed the way we do business. They (SFX) just happen to own everything. … We want to go on tour and if we make everything a big fight, all we hurt is our fans. Taking on Ticketmaster just made a lot of people mad at us. We tried to do the right thing, and we gained nothing. The SFX situation is like everything else now. Look at radio. Should we stop sending our songs to radio because they're owned by huge corporations? We want to sell lots of records, sure, but the idea is to pass on the savings to the fans, in the form of lower ticket and T-shirt prices. The causes we're interested in are things like getting people to register to vote, keeping ticket prices low and putting on a good show. If we can cut a better business deal for ourselves and still do all that, it's not a bad thing."

Ament in 2002 on drummer Matt Cameron, who joined Pearl Jam in 1998: "The great thing about him is his consistency and commitment. Every time he sits down you know he's going to bring it all. In the past we've had drummers who were pretty interesting characters, and on a good day it would be great but on a bad day it would be really awful in terms of knowing what we were going to get. Matt is just a rock back there, not just as a drummer but in bringing a new angle to the songwriting."

Vedder in 2002 on his relationship with Nirvana and Kurt Cobain: "Kurt wanted to distance himself from the corporate side of Seattle music, which apparently was us, but it played itself out a lot differently than he might have thought it would have. I felt some of those feelings were dispelled before he died. We had come together with a phone call and then another meeting, so at least between us as people, we hashed over a few things, and it seemed everything was OK and we had each other's support. It turns out we really saw how bad it could get years later, with all the manufactured bands. I don't think we were quite the violator that he thought. On the contrary, I hope he would have been happy with what we ended up doing."

Vedder in 2011 on relating to his angry, disenchanted songs from the Pearl Jam albums of the early ‘90s:  “I had a long talk with Bruce Springsteen on a rooftop during the Vote for Change tour (in 2004). And it boiled down to this: That guy you used to be, he's still in the car. He'll always be in the car. Just don't let him drive. He might be shouting out directions. But whatever you do, don't let him get behind the wheel.” (Complete 2011 interview with Eddie Vedder is HERE.)

greg@gregkot.com

Pearl Jam 20 Festival with the Strokes, Queens of the Stone Age, Mudhoney and more at noon Saturday-Sunday at Alpine Valley Music Theatre in East Troy, Wis., $65 to $115; livenation.com.