Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation by Steven Hyden
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I have just finished Steven Hyden’s Pearl Jam book, a series of personal reflections and essays, very well written and entertaining. Reading the book is like having a conversation with a friend about a shared love; I don’t agree with his opinion on some points, and eras of PJ, but I really enjoyed the debate.

The book is structured as a mixtape with each chapter, loosely, focused on one song, in many cases a live performance of a particular song. Focused is perhaps wrong; the song actually acts as a springboard for a wider discussion of some aspect of the band’s history, recordings and concert tours, their activism and politics, their conscious retreat from stardom. I really enjoyed this way of approaching my relationship with a band who, in most days, remains my favourite.

Hyden maintains the mixtape analogy by dividing the book into two sides. Side A is the’90s - the incredible success of the first three albums, Pearl Jam’s, and particularly Eddie Vedder’s, struggle to cope with it, especially in the wake of the suicide of Kurt Cobain, leader of Nirvana, the band most closely tied to, and setup as rivals to, Pearl Jam by both the music and mainstream press. Side B concentrates on what Hyden considers is Pearl Jam’s second phase when albums became less important than live shows and I do agree with him to a large extent, although some of my favourite PJ songs have come in the 21st century.

A Pearl Jam concert is a unique event though. The band never repeat a setlist. A full-album show is a surprise, one-off event rather than the money spinning world tour that many other acts would do. Hyden is right that Pearl Jam survived, when others didn’t, by putting ‘their mental and physical health above rock stardom’ and by making ‘good decisions, including the ones that looked like bad decisions at the time.’ That ‘difference’ is partly why I saw them three times in the summer of 2022, all three concerts, in London and Italy, being different from each other, and different from any of the times I had seen the band before; its the reason why I, and countless other fans pour over setlists and gladly buy official bootlegs of the concerts to which we have been, and many more to which we wish we had been.

I'm now heading off to listen to every bootleg from the 2000 Binaural tour...

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