And Now My Bitter Hands Chafe Beneath The Clouds
In a store today, I heard Pearl Jam’s “Black” for the first time in many, many years (Maybe even a decade?), and as Eddie Vedder groaned the “I know someday you’ll have a beautiful life/I know you’ll be a sun in someone else’s sky” part – And, despite the melodrama, who hasn’t felt like that? Clearly, this is a week for melancholy, for me, at least – I remembered my own strange love for the band, back when they first appeared and I was too young to know any better.
The British music scene of the pre-Britpop early nineties was a fractured beast, maybe even moreso than it is now; there were cheesy “pop” versions of techno and indie bands who hadn’t understood that part in The Manual about the public not wanting to look at sullen people’s facial disfigurements on Top of The Pops every Thursday evening, and everything seemed so dull until grunge made it to our shores. I remember hearing Nirvana as the, what, sixteen year old I was at the time? Something like that, and it was a weird mix of “Well, this is interesting” and revulsion at the same time – I wanted to hear more of it, but not more of that particular it, it seemed like, so when Pearl Jam’s more radio-friendly brand came along, I happily signed up.
(Don’t worry, I soon saw the light on the Nirvana train. I still prefer their poppier side, though; “About A Girl” is easily my favorite song of theirs, and it’s pretty much a Beatles song in all but volume.)
Sixteen and seventeen, nowadays, feel like the right age for Pearl Jam. Maybe a little younger, even; there’s something about their anger and sadness and intensity that feels particularly adolescent, after all, but maybe I was just a late developer in those respects. But before they turned into my generation’s Grateful Dead, there seemed a youthful purity about them, some kind of overwhelming “they care so much” that lacked irony or distance or, looking back, common sense at times, and that’s what I was drawn to as much as their music or lyrics. Whereas Nirvana seemed more nihilistic and arch, Pearl Jam were the cuddly face of grunge, the Monkees, and there was something less scary about that that I found easier to follow. I remember listening to Ten and Vs. over and over, convinced that it said something to me about my life, man, if only I could work out what. But by the time the third album came out, Britpop and real life had taken over and all of the old thrill was gone; I’d discovered something brighter, more pop and more who I felt like at the time, and Pearl Jam sounded at once too young and too old for me.
These days, they’re a guilty nostalgic pleasure; something I like, but pretty much only because it reminds me of being younger and everything that comes with it. Happier, simpler, more melodrama-friendly times. Those were the days.
