Eddie Vedder Recalls The Time Pearl Jam Was Going To Be Crushed

In the recent issue of Classic Rock magazine, Pearl Jam’s vocalist Eddie Vedder and guitarist Mike McCready have recalled some moments from the 30 years of Pearl Jam’s career path, one of which is the period when Eddie thought the band was going to break into pieces and feared they might destroy everything they have worked on through.

The well-liked rock music group Pearl Jam is known to be performing at Asbury Park on September 18 and at Ohana Festival on September 26. The band will also go on a European tour in June and July 2022, which was postponed before due to the pandemic. More recently, on June 18, the band streamed unseen footage of their 2018’s ‘Away Show’ to raise money for the organizations assisting the homeless, and collaborated for a release of a third new beer to raise money for skateparks.

As this summer will mark the 30th anniversary of Pearl Jam’s debut album ‘Ten,’ Eddie Vedder and Mike McCready have looked upon the days that passed after the release until today in the latest issue of Classic Rock Magazine. Vedder remembered the period when he thought Pearl Jam will go out of existence. With the rising popularity of the band and their successful albums, Eddie said that he feared the more popular they get, the easier they were going to be crushed.

McCready recalled those times and said that it was Eddie’s decision to slow down, as it was probably overwhelming for him. McCready also remembered he didn’t want to pull back saying let’s keep going, but the others said no as they were thinking it was all going to fall apart if they didn’t.

Vedder said about those times that:

“I felt that with more popularity, we were going to be crushed, our heads were going to pop like grapes.

McCready then added:

The decision to pull back and to not do videos and to slow down interviews, it was all about Jeff and Stone and Ed thought it was necessary. Ed was getting way more scrutiny than anybody. It was probably overwhelming for him. It was for all of us at the time. But I remember not wanting to pull back, saying: ‘This is what we’ve wanted since we were kids. Let’s keep doing this. Let’s do videos, let’s keep going, let’s embrace this.‘ But they weren’t into it. They said: ‘No, we’ve got to because this is all gonna fall apart if we don’t.’ And I think they were right.

He then revealed that:

“I feel like we’re still around today maybe because of that first major decision to try to do it our own way. We made a lot of decisions that were counter to what the record label wanted us to do. So we were lucky, but it was our decision: pull back, five against one…”

Today, McCready seems he does not regret this decision though. After all, whatever the outcome of that decision would be, they still seem to belong to a renowned and successful band.