Trivia / Pearl Jam

• Ascended Fanon: "Alive" was originally meant to be about the self-existential doubt and angst of a teenager who discovers who his recently-dead biological father is and his mother inappropriately dealing with the grief by committing Parental Incest. Fans instead took it as an inspirational self-affirming life anthem, and Eddie Vedder eventually came to agree in a 2006 interview with VH1.
• Chart Displacement: Their biggest hits on the Hot 100 are "Last Kiss" (a cover of a forgotten 60s tune!), "I Got Id" (because Billboard chose to count the Merkin Ball EP as a single), and "Spin the Black Circle" (helped by Vitalogy not being on CD for two weeks, so listeners went elsewhere). In contrast, "Jeremy" peaked at only 79 (in 1995, three years after its original release) while "Alive" and "Even Flow" never even charted on the Hot 100.
• Colbert Bump: Around the Bend from No Code became popular after the final episode of the web series ONE used a Cover Version of it.
• Creator Backlash: While he doesn't hate the music on the album, Vedder has said that Vs. was his least favorite record to work on, and that he finds it difficult to revisit without bad memories coming up.
• Creator Breakdown:
  • Vitalogy is a dark album, with frequent allusions to suicide ("Last Exit", "Immortality"), written in response to the pressures of stardom and the death of Kurt Cobain (though Eddie Vedder has repeatedly denied that "Immortality" is about the latter subject).
  • A milder example is Binaural, written in the aftermath of Eddie's divorce from his first wife, with him suffering from writer's block and McCready from an addiction to prescription drugs. Riot Act has some for both their backlash against George W. Bush and an incident in the 2000 Roskilde Festival where nine fans were trampled to death during PJ's show.
• Creator Recovery: Once Bush left and Barack Obama was elected, the band recorded Backspacer, which sounds much happier than the angry, politically charged and pessimistic Self-Titled Album (not to mention the above mentioned Riot Act).
• Executive Meddling:
  • A failed instance in the band refusing to make a video for "Black", considering it too personal, and later on again for "Better Man".
  • Successfully seen in the Ticketmaster debacle, as their boycott and attempted lawsuit prevented them from touring anywhere in America but the most backwater places. They eventually had to admit defeat and resume working with Ticketmaster.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: The original music video for "Even Flow" was never officially released due to the band not liking how it turned out. It took until 2020 for it to be leaked to the public.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Ten's 15th anniversary edition. One of the unreleased rarities on the second disc, "Brother", was released as a single to promote the album...and almost immediately became one of the band's biggest rock radio hits in years.
• Lying Creator: Vedder used to claim that the band's name comes from his great-grandmother Pearl's home-made jam, but later admitted that that's untrue. Some fans assume that it's a reference to semen, but Vedder's later explanation is much less interesting: they came up with "Pearl" apropos of nothing and then added "Jam" to it after watching Neil Young play a long jam set.
• The Pete Best: Dave Krusen, the band's original drummer who quit before they went touring for the first time due to personal issues he had at the time.
• Troubled Production:
  • Communications between band members during the recordings of Vitalogy dropped considerably as Eddie Vedder was taking more control over the songwriting process and Stone Gossard stopped mediating band conflicts. Mike McCready then had to go to rehab for his alcohol and cocaine addiction. Drummer Dave Abbruzzese was later fired near the end of recordings due to his disagreements with the band's actions such as their battle with Ticketmaster and his conflicts with Vedder and Jeff Ament. He was replaced by former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons.
  • No Code is slightly worse in this aspect. Jeff Ament stated that he didn't know recording the album took place three days after it started, at one point walking out of a session due to tensions within the band. Vedder, like in Vitalogy, had complete control of the creative process, causing even more strife within the group. It got worse when Vedder started burning out and had a harder time helping with music. Unlike with Vitalogy, the recording process was very slow and, thus, a few songs were made from jam sessions. Mc Cready said of the album, "I think we kind of rushed it a little bit." Things got better when then-drummer, Jack Irons, started getting the band to discuss their problems and the rest of the recording sessions went a bit more smoothly.
  • Binaural, as Vedder suffered from Writer's Block, the band had to adjust for recording with Matt Cameron after just touring with him, and McCready was coming off a prescription drug addiction.
• What Could Have Been: The timing of drummer Dave Abbruzzese's departure and Kurt Cobain's passing meant that, for a brief moment, Dave Grohl of Nirvana was offered the spot behind the kit. Sadly, he had other plans in the works, but there is footage of Grohl joining the band for an encore performance of Neil Young's "Rockin' in the Free World" on tour in 1995.

• Games the band features in: The second Rock Band has the entirety of Ten (except for "Alive" which is part of the base game and exportable to 3) and Backspacer as DLC, "Life Wasted" and "Even Flow" are in Guitar Hero 2 (Xbox 360 version) and 3 (all versions) respectively.