As Vedder sings about being alone and out on a limb, where he can get ''a glimpse of my innocence,'' the band builds a spiraling crescendo that's part Bo Diddley, part military paradiddle, part U2 strumming. Another rocker, ''In My Tree,'' brings new intensity to the percussion drive of ''W.M.A.'' (from Pearl Jam's second album, ''Vs.''). In ''Hail, Hail,'' the singer struggles to hold together a troubled romance (''Are we bound out of obligation? Is that all we've got?'') in ''Habit,'' he bitterly watches friends turn into addicts. Only two rockers on ''No Code'' cling to the old Pearl Jam style. 28-29, are sold by Fans Tours and Tickets, not Ticketmaster.) America's most popular rock band had found a way to feel like an underdog anyway.īut it is determined to change its music. (Tickets for its current tour, which comes to Downing Stadium on Sept. But the Justice Department decided not to prosecute, and Pearl Jam's 1995 attempt to tour sites not controlled by Ticketmaster collaped soon afterward. Pearl Jam challenged Ticketmaster, saying that the company had a stranglehold on the concert business and was overcharging fans.
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He devoted much of Pearl Jam's previous album, ''Vitalogy'' (1994), to agonizing over his relationship with the public and the music business, over how to stay honest amid conflicting demands.Īfter that album came a reality check, a reminder of a band's limited power in the business world. No rock star has seemed more publicly burdened by his vocation than Vedder. ''It's all just inadvertent imitation,'' the guitarist Stone Gossard sings in ''Mankind,'' a mocking new wave rocker.
Vedder can hear his most offhand mannerisms reproduced any time he turns on the radio. Around the country, FM radio disk jockeys now happily growl the words ''Pearl Jam'' the way they used to say ''Led Zeppelin.'' Between Pearl Jam albums came imitators: Stone Temple Pilots, Seven Mary Three and even lesser lights. It barely mattered that from the beginning, Vedder proclaimed self-doubt and uncertainty rather than heavy metal's fantasies of invincibility. Since the release of its first album, ''Ten,'' in 1991, Pearl Jam has seen its music become the mass-marketed face of alternative rock, largely because its sturdy power chords and Vedder's brawny baritone sound a lot like good old heavy metal. It's only one of the album's stylistic curveballs. ''Who You Are'' ponders the roles of both the band and its audience, using a quasi-Indian drone instead of typical Pearl Jam power chords. He wants ''to transcend where we are,'' as he sings in ''Who You Are,'' the album's first single. In song after song, Eddie Vedder's lyrics grope for a way to escape a constricting identity. The question is whether it can find something to replace them. On Pearl Jam's fourth album, ''No Code'' (Epic), the band tries desperately to get away from the hard-rock muscle and deep-seated hooks that made it the most influential rock band of the 1990's.
But now, for rockers who have absorbed the underdog mentality of punk and alternative rock, it also means shame: If we're that popular, we must not be taking enough chances. Success in rock always meant increasing pressure from both fans and corporate interests. So are rock bands who worry about becoming too big and too predictable, a parody of their own hits. IN 1996, POLITICIANS AREN'T THE only ones running away from their past records.