Pearl Jam is an American rock band that formed in Seattle, Washington in 1990. Since its inception, the band’s line-up has included Eddie Vedder (lead vocals, guitar), Jeff Ament (bass guitar), Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar), and Mike McCready (lead guitar). The band’s current drummer is Matt Cameron, formerly of Soundgarden, who has been with the band since 1998. Formed after the demise of Ament and Gossard’s previous band Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with its debut album Ten. One of the key bands of the grunge movement in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam was criticized early on—most notably by Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain—as being a corporate cash-in on the alternative rock explosion. However, over the course of the band’s career its members became noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices; including refusing to make music videos and engaging in a much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having “spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame.

” Since its inception, the band has sold 30 million records in the U.S., and an estimated 60 million albums worldwide. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries from the alternative rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most influential bands of the decade, and “the most popular American rock & roll band of the ’90s”. Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of pioneering grunge band Green River during the mid-1980s. Green River toured and recorded to moderate success but disbanded in 1987 due to a stylistic division between the pair and bandmates Mark Arm and Steve Turner.In late 1987, Gossard and Ament began playing with Malfunkshun vocalist Andrew Wood, eventually organizing the band Mother Love Bone. In 1988 and 1989, the band recorded and toured to increasing interest and found the support of the PolyGram record label, which signed the band in early 1989. Their debut album, Apple, was released in July 1990, four months after Wood died of a heroin overdose.Ament and Gossard were devastated by the death of Wood and the resulting demise of Mother Love Bone. Gossard spent his time afterwards writing material that was harder-edged than what he had been doing previously.

After a few months, Gossard started practicing with fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready, whose band Shadow had broken up; McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with Ament. After practicing for a while, the trio sent out a five-song demo tape in order to find a singer and a drummer. They gave former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons the demo to see if he would be interested in joining the band and to distribute the demo to anyone he felt might fit the lead vocal position. Irons passed on the invitation but gave the demo to his basketball buddy, San Diego singer Eddie Vedder. Vedder was the lead vocalist for a San Diego band, Bad Radio, and worked part time at a gas station. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him.

There he recorded the vocals to three of the songs (“Alive”, “Once”, and “Footsteps”) in what Vedder would later describe as a “mini-opera” he entitled “Mamasan”. He sent the tape with his vocals back to the three Seattle musicians, who were so impressed that they had Vedder fly to Seattle. Within a week, Vedder had joined the band. With the addition of Dave Krusen on drums, the band took the name Mookie Blaylock, in reference to the then-active All-Star basketball player. The band played their first official show at the Off Ramp club in Seattle on October 22, 1990, and soon signed to Epic Records. However, concerns about trademark issues necessitated a name change; the band’s name became “Pearl Jam”. In an early promotional interview, Vedder said that the name “Pearl Jam” was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam. In a 2006 Rolling Stone cover story however, Vedder admitted that this story was “total bullshit” (even though he indeed had a great-grandma named Pearl). Ament and McCready explained that Ament came up with “pearl”, and that the band later settled on “Pearl Jam” after attending a concert by Neil Young, in which he stretched up his songs as improvisations of 15-20 minutes in length, a practice known as jamming.