So did Pearl Jam’s awareness of the pressures of success give them any sort of psychological armour for when the world’s attention shifted to them?
“We still weren't prepared for it,” Jeff reflects. “Especially not the way that it happened. The whole ‘Seattle’ thing was such a crazy time, even just from an energy standpoint. It really did go from you being completely anonymous in your little neighbourhood where you always see the same person at the grocery store and same person at the coffee shop to then, all of a sudden, those same people looking at you differently and talking about you.”
In 2021, Ten remains an astounding listen but even on an album that contains the ventricle-bursting emotion of songs like Alive and Black, its most affecting moment is arguably its closing song Release. In the Pearl Jam anniversary book PJ20, Eddie Vedder reflected on how the song – originally 10 minutes long – saw him address the father he had never known growing up.
“They started playing it, and I just started singing,” he wrote. “And then afterward it got me all tore up. I went in the little hallway and Jeff came out and said, you know, ‘You okay?’ I was having a bit of a moment. Most of the words were done on the first take… I was still thinking of stuff with my dad and loss.”