In Too Deep: My Journey With Pearl Jam (Part 3 - Not For Me?)

February of 1995.

I’m about two months away from my fifteenth birthday. After school, my mom offers to take me to the mall to buy the new Pearl Jam album… and then maybe we could grab some ice cream after?

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 Vitalogy, Pearl Jam’s third studio album, came out in November of ’94 – well, it was released on vinyl in November and then on CD and other formats two weeks later, in December. As with the two previous records, I was late to the party. I didn’t rush right out to buy the record. I had a lot going on at school. I was starting rehearsals for a play. I was a fourteen year old boy with a girlfriend (my first!). I had plenty of other things on my mind.

“Spin the Black Circle” was the first single released from the album. The alternative radio station I listened to kept teasing that they’d play the single “soon.” I had to go to school. So I put a blank cassette in my boom box and hit record as I walked out the door that mourning. Back then, you could set up the tape to record the radio station and my player had a feature that would automatically flip the tape so you could record both sides without having to manually flip the cassette. It was a 90 minute tape. My hope was that “soon” meant “sometime in the next 90 minutes.”

I raced home from school and immediately played the tape as I did homework. After five or six songs, “Spin the Black Circle” played. It’s such a weird first single. It’s propulsive, punk-influenced, fast and heavy. It’s a love letter to vinyl (if I’m honest, my love for vinyl is probably born from Pearl Jam’s love of vinyl because I don’t think I ever once even thought about vinyl records until I heard this song). I liked the song well enough but it was, up to that point in time, my least favorite song the band had released. Maybe the magic was over. Maybe nothing would ever live up to the previous records. It was hard to be disappointed. It had been a hell of a ride.

“Not for You” and “Immortality” were the other officially released singles from Vitalogy. But the band (and maybe the label, too? I have no idea how this stuff actually works) let radio stations play whatever they wanted from the album. As a result I know I heard at least “Spin the Black Circle,” “Not for You,” “Corduroy,” “Better Man,” and “Immortality” before the album dropped. I may have also heard “Nothingman” and “Tremor Christ” but I can’t accurately remember for certain.

“Better Man,” I know, I heard in the backseat of my parent’s car as we drove from Kansas to Kentucky to spend Thanksgiving with my grandparents. It randomly came on the radio. I was in the backseat listening to Garth Brooks tapes on my Walkman. My mom got my attention, and when I removed my headphones she said, “New Pearl Jam,” while pointing to the dashboard.

We listened together as a family. It was sort of surreal. As I said before, my parents weren’t PJ people. But they were excited for me and they seemed to really like “Better Man.” That song was a turning point. From then on, my parents seemed to like the band a lot more than they had before. Or maybe it was that they wanted to encourage my tastes. Maybe they liked the band because it was clear how much I liked the band and at least Pearl Jam didn’t seem to be dirty drug addicts like that good-for-nothing Kurt Cobain (RIP).

Flash forward to February of ’95. I still hadn’t had a chance to go pick up Vitalogy. “Spin the Black Circle” hadn’t been my cup of tea but every other song I’d heard from the album was a monster. I was pretty sure the album was going to be special. But as my friends bought the album and listened ahead of me, that anticipation turned to worry. My friends, the very people who had turned me onto the band in the first place, were less than impressed. “It’s weird, man” was the most common critique. But there were other reactions:

“It’s not as good as the last two.”

“Half of it is filler.”

“The good songs are great but the bad songs suck so much ass.”

“I can’t get into it.”

“It isn’t really Pearl Jam.”

So I put off getting it (turns out, maybe I’m not the free thinker I thought I was; maybe I let other people tell me what to think/feel too often. I need to examine that…. later). And then, one day, out of the blue, my Mom wanted to buy the blessed thing for me. Looking back, I probably should have known something was amiss. My birthday was only two months away. I’d waited that long already, why not just hold off a few more weeks and buy it for me then if she really wanted to buy it for me? Mom was always a big fan of lists for gift-giving. She liked knowing she was getting me something I really wanted rather than giving me something random that I hadn’t asked for and maybe wouldn’t enjoy as much as something I thought to jot down on a proper, official gift list.

We went to the mall, where there was a Camelot Music store. I bought the CD. We walked around the mall for a while, chatting and checking in. Mom asked about school. I was about to start rehearsals for a new play. I told her how all of that was going. She did not ask me about my girlfriend.

As we walked into the cold night and across the covered parking lot, Mom said, “You want some ice cream? Let’s get ice cream.” Again, red flags everywhere. But mom always had a sweet tooth, so it wasn’t that odd, really. And it had been such a great evening. I didn’t think twice.

We went to Baskin Robbins. Mom got a cup and I got a cone. We laughed and chatted. I took the CD out of its plastic wrapping and studied the liner notes; the lyrics and images within. I was so excited to get home and give the record a listen — on headphones, of course.

When I looked up, Mom handed me a piece of notebook paper folded many times into a fat, tight, palm-sized rectangle. It was a letter. A letter my girlfriend had written and passed to me between classes. I recognized it instantly. Horrified, I unfolded and re-read the note, even though I already knew exactly what it said. My insides froze. My head pulsed. This wasn’t a brain freeze from the ice cream. This was sheer terror. I’m sure I blushed to purple as I read it in front of my mom.

My mind started working overtime. Should I lie? Probably. But what would the lie be? What was my cover? I settled on something simple: “Ha! I knew I couldn’t trust you! I asked her to write that letter and I intentionally left it in my pants pocket, knowing you’d find it when you did laundry. And I knew you’d read it instead of respecting my privacy!”

Years ago I’d come home from playing outside with my friends to find Mom reading through my journal. She said she was organizing my closet and just found it, thought it was part of my school work and started reading. So there was a history with her not respecting my shit. My fast-planned lie made sense. She would believe it. She would want to believe it. Because the alternative was too much. Probably, my lie would even turn the tables on her, make her feel some small sliver of what I felt: trapped, caught, ashamed.

“Are you having sex?” Mom said, leaning forward across the small table at which we sat by the window. Her voice was little more than a disbelieving whisper.

I didn’t lie.

Looking out the window, I nodded my head slowly. “Yeah…”

Mom exhaled low and long, leaning back in he chair, hands splayed flat on the table, bracing. She looked like I’d slapped her.

My girlfriend’s letter was graphic — pornographic. Full of all the stuff she wanted to do to me, what she wanted me to do to her, how she couldn’t stop thinking about being naked with me, exactly all the stuff you’re thinking. And my mom had read it.

Needless to say, I didn’t listen to Vitalogy that night. That night was full of long talks with Mom and Dad at the kitchen table. They had questions. I had answers that I refused to provide, giving them just enough to shut them up but certainly not telling all.

I didn’t sleep much. In the morning, I stayed in bed staring at the ceiling trying not to replay all of it in my mind. What would I tell my girlfriend? Another terrible, awkward conversation that I was not looking forward to. My stomach hurt and I needed a distraction.

I slipped on my headphones, put Vitalogy in the Discman and hit play. The music was angular, abrasive. I hated it. I was not in the proper headspace for that record. I listened to it all the way through mostly because I didn’t want to get up and leave my room and face my parents.

But I didn’t pick the album back up for years.

The singles came on the radio from time to time. I never turned them off when they did. I enjoyed hearing the occasional, random song but I didn’t play the album. Everything that happened the previous day was wrapped up in it. I couldn’t look at the artwork without thinking about how Mom had set me up. She lulled me with kindness and gifts and sugar, made me feel safe, all the while knowing that eventually she would pounce. When I least expected it. When my defenses were down, she hit me. It felt like a betrayal and Vitalogy was the soundtrack to that betrayal.

It wasn’t just the music. I didn’t set foot in a Baskin Robbins until I moved to New York City, twelve years later. And even then, when I finally did go back, it was because it was a hybrid Baskin Robbins/Dunkin’ Donuts. I just got a coffee, no ice cream.

In the summer of 1998, I got to see Pearl Jam live for the first time - finally! They played in Bonner Springs at (what was then called) the Sandstone Amphitheater. As my friends and I walked across the crowded parking lot to the gate I overheard a bunch of guys, older than me, asking each other what their favorite Pearl Jam albums was. One guy said, “Vitalogy, definitely, because it’s the weirdest.”

I thought to myself, maybe I should give it another shot (again, allowing someone else to have sway over my opinions). After the concert (which was amazing), after hearing those Vitalogy songs in a new context, with new memories attached, with new feelings attached, I knew I was ready. At some point in the following days, I sat by myself in my room, turned the lights off, put the headphones on, and listened again. For the first time.

Vitalogy is now my favorite Pearl Jam album (and my second favorite of all time by any band/artist just barely behind Tom Waits’ Bone Machine). It’s one of two Pearl Jam albums that I reach for most often (the other is Riot Act - but we’ll get to that). I still own that original copy on CD. Also, I have three copies of the album on vinyl (which really is the best way to listen to the album). One of those vinyl copies (badly scratched on both sides) is framed and hanging on my wall above my turntable. Another is part of the Vs/Vitalogy 20th Anniversary Box Set. The third copy I have is an original pressing of the album, mint condition, for my listening pleasure.

The record isn’t especially weird. There are detours and colorful snippets and little flourishes that are weird or experimental for Pearl Jam. But it’s hardly an experimental record. It’s a rock record. It’s a great rock record, containing of some of the most powerful and captivating songs of the 1990’s. “Corduroy” and “Better Man” are the biggest hits, the most beloved by the fandom at large. Fair enough. Both are epic songs (especially live where they achieve their full power and potential). But I find myself drawn to other tracks. “Last Exit,” “Tremor Christ,” and “Nothingman,” are some all-time Pearl Jam tracks in my book. Songs that I can’t imagine my life without. There’s an instrumental track called “Aye Davanita” that might seem weird to some but I find moving and comforting. It’s a song I play often, even without listening to the album in its entirety. The oddest moment is the closer – a sound collage reminiscent of the Beatles’ “Revolution #9.” But even that song isn’t a chore. It probably helps that it’s at the very end and easy cut. It comes after “Immortality” which is a fitting end to the record should one decide to stop there.

It took me way too long to find my way back to Vitalogy. It took years before I could hear the music separated from the memories of that odd, terrible, and cold February night. I had to grow a lot before I could embrace the album. But I’m so glad I waited. I’m glad I hung in there and gave myself the time and space to enjoy it, because it really is an incredible album.

Vitalogy made me a life-long Pearl Jam fan. It would be the last Pearl Jam album that I didn’t buy the day it dropped. Two more albums (No Code in ’96 and Yield in ‘98) would come out before I listened to Vitalogy, front to back, again. But, still, I bought each of those subsequent albums the day they were released. Something about Vitalogy got stuck inside me the first time I heard it. I wasn’t aware of it, but it lodged inside me and grew in ways I couldn’t recognize, understand, or process at the time. But it was there. Working away. Informing my tastes. Transforming my perception. Making me a die-hard fan. Guiding me toward a community that enriched my life forever.

What came after was profound and lasting. My life changed and changed again but the one consistent was Pearl Jam. Even as the very people who’d worked so hard to turn me into a mutual disciple of the band they so loved turned away and found new bands to love, my love was steadfast. My fandom grew, gaining depth and breadth, with each passing year. I wasn’t there at the beginning, but I was hooked and I know I’ll be there until the very end.

Next up in this series is No Code. It’s the first Pearl Jam album that I bought and loved from day one. Because of that fact alone it will always be a very special album for me.

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

Vitalogy’s Top 3 Tracks: “Tremor Christ,” “Last Exit,” “Immortality”