Book Review: Long Road by Steven Hyden

I'm going to tell you two stories about my relationship with Pearl Jam, both only a bit over a year apart.

First: My first semester of freshman year of college was in the fall of 1993. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I had a 9AM class in a building a ten minute walk from my dorm, then nothing until an 11AM class in the same building. So I would go to my 9AM class (mostly), walk back to my dorm, grab my Walkman, sit on the fire escape, and listen to side A of Ten. Then I would put it away and walk over to my 11AM class. Three times a week every week that semester.

Second: Ten was life-changing, the songs I had heard off of Vs were awesome (note: I don't think I've ever actually heard the entire album), and Vitalogy had just come out. The thing I wanted most for Christmas 1994 was the Vitalogy CD (remember, I was in college - I definitely didn't have the ten bucks to buy the CD myself!). I got it as a stocking stuffer (THANKS MOM) and eagerly played it while it was still early in Christmas morning. The songs were...okay...and then there was...something about bugs called "Bugs". The CD finished, I put it back in its sleeve, and that's the last Pearl Jam album I ever listened to.

I only really followed Pearl Jam from 92-94. I followed other bands, like Stone Temple Pilots, Green Day, and Smashing Pumpkins, for much longer. And yet...if you were to ask me about the best bands in the 90s, Pearl Jam would definitely be in the top 5 - maybe even top 2.

Unlike many other 90s bands, though, Pearl Jam never stopped playing, even when grunge fell out of favor. They are still together to this day, touring frequently and frantically (and it was great to see Mike McCready do the national anthem at the home Seattle Mariners playoff game!).

So what happened to Pearl Jam when the 90s ended (even when it ended for some of us on Christmas of 94)? That's what Steven Hyden's book is all about.

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog (THANKS AGAIN MOM), you'll know that I've reviewed every book Steven Hyden has written, even when it's about Radiohead - he's my favorite music writer, especially when he writes about pre-millennium music. I was really excited to see he was writing a book about Pearl Jam - I had high expectations, and he cleared the bar on every level! Spoilers - eight out of ten hot dogs!

The way Hyden sets up the book is that each chapter revolves around a particular song, with the book divided into "Side A" and "Side B" (NICE). For the most part, the songs are in chronological order, although the stories and commentary are not - Hyden wisely goes where the song leads him, moving back and forth through time with the band, and touching on other bands/music plus politics, culture, and whatever else makes sense to discuss. There are only two exceptions to the chronological list. The last song in the book is "Yellow Ledbetter" (a traditional Pearl Jam concert closer), specifically the version played in a Philadelphia concert in 2016 when the band on a whim decided to play the entirety of Ten. The first song, though, is a relatively unknown song ("Falling Down") played at a 1995 concert in Red Rocks that nearly killed the band, but ultimately gave them their path forward.

Hyden throws in a lot of band history, a lot of which I didn't know about even for the period where I was following the band. The origin of the "Mommason" songs is incredible (“Alive”, “Once”, and relatively unknown “Footsteps” were originally written as a trilogy about a kid who is raped by his mother, grows up to be a serial killer, and is then on death row (!)), how the song and especially the video for “Jeremy” shaped the band was fascinating (Pearl Jam was originally “the post-Mother Love Bone project of Stone Gossart and Jeff Ament – after the “Jeremy” video, it was all Eddie Vedder), and how the song “Glorified G” was Eddie Vedder making fun of the band’s drummer – these were all amazing stories to read. I’m also fascinated, as someone who gave up on Pearl Jam at the end of 94, by Hyden’s theory that if the pop-heavy Yield (1997) and the experimental No Code (1996) had traded places, the band could have extended their stay at the top of the charts, but 1996 was just the year for large-scale experimental alternative music failures (REM released New Adventures in Hi Fi, their last true alternative album and what I consider to be the best album ever made, and Soundgarden released Down on the Upside, which I think of as the last true grunge album – all due respect to Local H, and especially Jimmy’s Chicken Shack).

But then we get to where Pearl Jam falls off the map in popular culture (i.e., people like me), and that’s when you have to go back to that Red Rocks concert in 1995. The band was falling apart, and Eddie Vedder had no-showed the previous concert in San Francisco, with Neil Young coming in to take his place among jeers from the crowd. Eddie came to the Red Rocks show, but seemed pretty listless and disinterested (note to younsters: that pretty much encapsulates the 90s). The band did “Jeremy” acoustically, but Eddie decided to skip the chorus and moaning at the end. He then directed the band to play some really obscure songs. The crowd was a bit confused, and the rest of the band seemed uncomfortable by what was going on. And yet…this would end up being Pearl Jam’s saving grace.

When their time at the top ended, Pearl Jam decided to become this generation’s Grateful Dead. While still producing studio albums, they would concentrate on becoming a must-see live act, never playing the same set list twice, doing songs in different ways at different stops, and constantly surprising the audience – like playing Ten unannounced at that 2016 concert in Philadelphia, followed by playing the rest of their albums song by song at random stops on the same tour (note: imagine you bought tickets in 2017 to see a band you were into more than 20 year previous, and they decided to play every song from No Code? I’d be throwing chairs.).

Hyden really makes all of this fascinating – again, he’s one of the best music writers around, especially when he’s writing about the 90s. I don’t know what your enjoyment level would be if you were never into Pearl Jam, but for me this was a great read!