Happy 30th birthday to Pearl Jam’s third studio album Vitalogy – which was released on November 22nd, 1994 through Epic Records.
After becoming one of the kings of the grunge era with debut Ten and the follow-up Vs, Pearl Jam teamed up again with Brendan O’Brien to deliver an album that headed more down the punk route. At the time, it was described as their most experimental record yet.
Living up to the success of both albums and the band’s meteoric rise took its toll on the making of Vitalogy though. Drummer Dave Abbruzzese was fired due to “personal conflicts” and was replaced by Jack Irons. Lead guitarist Mike McCready checked into rehab. With communication issues between the band at an all time low, Stone Goddard stopped being the group’s peacemaker and handed the reigns over to frontman Eddie Vedder.
Vitalogy spawned the singles including “Spin the Black Circle”, “Not for You”, and “Immortality”. But its most famous cut is “Better Man”, which despite not being released as an official single, is arguably one of the band’s five biggest and most popular songs from their 35+ year career. It has become a staple of modern rock radio and spent eight weeks on top of the Billboard Album Rock tracks chart.
Reviews were largely positive for the album. In his four-star review, Rolling Stone staff writer Al Weisel described Vitalogy as “a wildly uneven and difficult record, sometimes maddening, sometimes ridiculous, often powerful.”
Despite feeling some tracks were “strange experiments that don’t always work”, Weisel said Vitalogy combined elements of Pearl Jam’s past albums. “Vitalogy has a number of gripping songs that match the soaring anthems of Ten, the extended grooves of Vs. or the poetry of either record.”
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Pearl Jam are currently on the local leg of their Dark Matter world tour, which has so far made stops in Auckland, the Gold Coast and Melbourne. The Gold Coast show was delayed by an hour due to torrential weather, while in Melbourne, AFL legend Johnathon Brown jumped on stage to do a cameo at their first show.
The final Australian show is on Saturday night at Sydney’s Engie Stadium. Check out pictures from the Gold Coast show by our photographer Ashley Mar.
