In Too Deep: My Journey With Pearl Jam (Part 2 - Five Against Me)

In the fall of 1993 fans were anxiously awaiting the release of Pearl Jam’s sophomore album. However, I was still blissfully devouring the bands’ debut. As was the case with almost every major artistic influence on my life, I was very late to the party (I didn’t get into the Beatles until I was in my 20’s, Tom Waits until I was in my 30’s, St. Vincent until her fourth album). As such, I was kinda dreading Pearl Jam’s new release. This was back when “follow-up” was just another word or “let-down.” Ten was an unmitigated masterpiece, a perfect record. Each song was epic and personal, raw and expert, primal and evolved. The music resonated on a cellular level. There was no way they could top that album. Of course, now I realize that topping the previous record is never the point. Part of the curse of being a Gen-Xer with a Millennial moon rising is the goddamn need to rank everything.

To avoid the overexposure they felt during the release and promotion of Ten, Pearl Jam decided not to release any singles or videos in anticipation of their second album. As I’ve discussed before, memory is tricky. I may have this wrong but I don’t think we even knew the name of the album until right before it came out. Either way, downplaying the album was fine by me. My Walkman was occupied. I’d returned the cassette copy of Ten which my best friend Travis had loaned me and purchased my own copy. It was the only album I listened to during the summer of 1993. Occasionally, a Nirvana or Stone Temple Pilots or Alice in Chains song would sneak into the rotation, but the only album I listened to, front to back, was Ten.

Pearl Jam debuted Animal at the MTV VMA’s in June of ’93 (believe it or not, this was highly unusual for a song that didn’t have a music video to be played at the awards ceremony). It was most of the world’s first exposure to a song from the upcoming album. And I’m not gonna lie… y’all, my head exploded. The song, then and now, is electric. But the performance was otherworldly. It was angry and anthemic. It was powerful. There was so much contained rage and kinetic energy that I could feel it through the TV screen. “Animal” was exactly right. Eddie was like a caged jungle cat waiting to attack just as his keeper came to feed him. It’s easy to see why Pearl Jam has the reputation they have about being a live band. The world got to see it. Anyone who tuned in understood immediately what the big deal was. As great as they were in studio, Pearl Jam were in their own galaxy live. But the thing I remember most was the relief that the song didn’t sound exactly like the stuff on Ten. This was different. Funkier, groovier, angrier. Grown up. I was impressed.

But still, it wasn’t enough to totally assuage me. Okay fine, so the band hand another great song in them, a song that was pointed and sharp, that evolved the band’s sound without betraying any of the fire and bombast that made them great in the first place. It was the perfect sequel: the same but different; brand new but hauntingly familiar. Lyrics from a different song on that follow-up record would come to eerily describe what I felt listening to “Animal” for the first time: “I swear, I recognize your breath / Memories like fingerprints are slowly raising / Me, you wouldn’t recall for I’m not my former.”

It was one great new song. And there was no rational reason to fear that the band didn’t have a couple more great songs left in them. But an entire album? I was cautiously optimistic.

In early November of 1993, a couple of weeks after the album was released, I went over to my friend Adam’s house. We were working on a project for school. Sitting on his dresser was a CD copy of Pearl Jam’s Vs. I asked him what he thought of the album.

     “You haven’t heard it?!”

     “Nah,” I said.

     “Jesus, dude! All you ever listen to is Pearl Jam, how have you not listened to this yet?”

I explained why I was hesitant, why I was worried that it would be a let-down and would soil me on Pearl Jam altogether. At that point in my life, that level of disappointment was regular. As brilliant as the 90s was musically, the decade is lousy with one-album wonders.

Hearing Vs for the first time was a seminal moment in my life. Everything changed. That was the day I went from being skeptical and cynical about Pearl Jam (and new music in general) to being eager and devout; a full-throated, heart-on-sleeve enthusiast.

Adam loaned me his copy that night. I returned it to him the next day. That following weekend I went to my local record store and bought a copy of Vs on CD. The shop also had an import version of Ten with three bonus tracks (two of which were studio outtakes I’d never heard). Of course, I bought that, too. And to this day I still own both of those CD’s. What’s fun about the version of Vs that I have is that the band changed the title of the record at the last minute and so there is no title on the spine or the disc. Vs does not appear anywhere on the album. Again, unreliable memory tells me the band initially wanted to call the album Five Against One, which is a lyric from “Animal” and sums up the general theme of the record. Every song on Vs is a battle. Man vs Man. Man vs Nature. Man vs Self. Man vs Stardom.

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Vs isn’t a concept record in the traditional sense. It’s not telling one story like The Who’s Tommy or Jethro Tull’s Thick As A Brick. Vs is more like a collection of short stories that are tied together by a common theme: conflict. Each song features a central character at odds with someone or something. Some are blatant and obvious conflicts (Animal, Daughter, Rearview Mirror) and others are more poetic and nuanced (Dissident, W.M.A., Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town). But all are visceral and gripping.

In the last installment of this series, I talked about how Pearl Jam began to alter the way I looked at and engaged with the world. It wasn’t an overnight thing but a slow transformation. I didn’t listen to “Porch” and decide that I too was pro-choice. I don’t recall having any idea what that song was about back then. Nor do I remember pro-life having a negative connotation. I was a middle-class, cis, white son of Conservative Republicans in a Midwestern state. Pro-life was all there was. There weren’t options. And listening to “Porch” didn’t automatically change that. But seeing Eddie Vedder on MTV: Unplugged writing “PRO-CHOICE” on his arm in permanent marker certainly had an impact. It absolutely got me thinking.

A very similar thing happened with the song “W.M.A.” on Vs. It’s a song about systemic racism; about the way  police and other authority figures treat Black people versus the way they treat people like me (White Male Americans). It’s a gut punch of a song. Eddie does what Eddie does best, empathizes without the arrogance of answers offered. The song isn’t trying to solve anything. The song’s goal is to illuminate, to shine a light and get listeners thinking and talking and acting.

In the Summer of 93 (I was thirteen years old) I was walking home one Sunday morning from a sleepover at a friend’s house. It was early, before 8am. As I walked down the sidewalk I saw a man approaching in the distance. He was walking toward me. He was Black. Without thinking twice I crossed the street to the opposite sidewalk. There was nothing dangerous or exceptional about this man. He wasn’t talking to himself or screaming incoherently. He wasn’t waving a weapon. He wasn’t even looking at me as far as I could tell. I crossed the street because it was early, there was no one else around, and he was Black. And that’s just what you did. That’s what I was taught.

Listening to “W.M.A.” made me reflect on that morning in a way I never had before, that I may not have done if I’d never heard the song. It changed the way I looked at and chose to interact with the world around me. To this day, many of my old-school, back-home friends struggle with the concept of “white privilege” (or “relative advantage” if you want to make the concept more comfortable). I understand it can be a tricky concept especially if one isn’t willing to do the work. But I see my privilege and I know I benefit from it every day. It’s something I’ve seen, thought about, struggled with, and actively tried to engage with since the Fall of ’93 when Eddie Vedder sang: “He won the lottery by being born / Big Hands slapped the white male american” and “trained like dogs / color and smell / walks by me to get to him / police man.”

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I can’t tell you if I thought Vs was better than Ten in the immediate aftermath of the record’s release. They were different records that complimented each other, for sure. I do remember having that conversation with folks, often to nauseating and exhausting length. Vs sits in the back half of my Pearl Jam rankings now. But that’s not because it’s a bad record or has aged poorly. In fact, because of songs like “W.M.A.” and the universal themes of conflict and stellar production, the album feels just as vital and timeless now as it did then. It’s just that Pearl Jam, despite my fears, wasn’t anywhere near done making amazing music. Turns out, I was dead wrong. They did have another brilliant album in them. At the time of this writing they have released eleven albums. Eight of them, in fact, have been brilliant.

Next up, Baskin Robbins, virginity and Vitalogy: How Pearl Jam’s greatest album was ruined by ice cream.

Vs is available on vinyl, CD or digitally pretty much anywhere you like to buy music.

Vs’ Top 3 Tracks: Daughter, Animal, Elderly Woman Behind a Counter in a Small Town