Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense, reviewed

Review of Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense, available from Bloomsbury here at the end of October.

Pearl Jam. The Seattle quintet has recorded eleven studio albums; sold some 85 million records; played over a thousand shows, in fifty countries; and had five different albums reach number one. But Pearl Jam’s story is about much more than music. Through resilience, integrity, and sheer force of will, they transcended several eras, and shaped the way a whole generation thought about art, entertainment, and commerce.

Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense is the first full-length biography of America’s preeminent band, from Ten to Gigaton. A study of their role in history – from Operation Desert Storm to the Dixie Chicks; “Jeremy” to Columbine; Kurt Cobain to Chris Cornell; Ticketmaster to Trump – Not for You explores the band’s origins and evolution over thirty years of American culture. It starts with their founding, and the eruption of grunge, in 1991; continues through their golden age (Vs., Vitalogy, No Code, and Yield); their middle period (Binaural, Riot Act); and the more divisive recent catalog. Along the way, it considers the band’s activism, idealism, and impact, from “W.M.A.” to the Battle of Seattle and Body of War.

More than the first critical study, Not for You is a tribute to a famously obsessive fan base, in the spirit of Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch. It’s an old-fashioned – if, at times, ambivalent – appreciation; a reflection on pleasure, fandom, and guilt; and an essay on the nature of adolescence, nostalgia, and adulthood. Partly social history, partly autobiography, and entirely outspoken, discursive, and droll, Not for You is the first full-length treatment of Pearl Jam’s odyssey and importance in the culture, from the ’90s to the present.

Not for You: Pearl Jam and the Present Tense, reviewed

This was an interesting book to review as they were not a band that personally resonated for me back in their prime. They always seemed a little overblown and slightly too plodding compared to their near rivals Nirvana. That said Eddie Vedder’s soundtrack to Into the Wild wasn’t bad and it’s perhaps more interesting to review a book about a band that you are not passionate about.

The track above is a good example of how they were open to range of influences and styles, and as a result did create some interesting music. The author of this book, Ronen Givony, despite having seen them over 50 times, has an interesting, and at times ambivalent relationship with the band too. This makes for a more compelling narrative, he is willing to accept that while the early albums were strong, the quality tailed off later on. At the same time it is clear that the band’s heart is in the right place, mostly, most of the time.

Givony has done his research and tries to capture the mood of the time, including the US politics of the nineties and beyond. The video above is pretty hilarious and as you go through the book the great thing is that you can pull up the various moments and performances on youtube to then listen to them. This works and makes you empathise with what they were trying to do, and Eddie’s attempts to reach out to their fans in a human and genuine way. The parallels are clear between the conservative policies of the Bush era and now, though in many ways things seem perhaps worse now.

It’s an enjoyable book and, as a non-fan, I found myself coming around to their music and what they were trying to achieve. Whether you love them or not, it is clear they were trying to be genuine and reach out to their fans, even if some of the tracks didn’t always come off, and some potentially great songs just ended up as b-sides.

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