Movie Review: Pearl Jam Twenty (2011). Written and Directed by Cameron Crowe.

Happy After-Thanksgiving day (also known by some as Black Friday). Once again, though, it’s also Rock and Roll Friday here at The Memory Cache (which is the fourth Friday of each month).

For today’s post, I’m looking backwards again to a documentary film (and DVD) from Cameron Crowe, one-time youthful rock journalist and now grown-up filmmaker, whose earliest exploits as a teenage rock fan and talented young writer were so brilliantly and amusingly portrayed (in mildly fictionalized form) in Almost Famous (2000), which is still one of my all-time favorite movies.

I’ve always had a mixed reaction to Pearl Jam. They are certainly the most successful long-lasting band to come out of the heady times here in Seattle popularly known as “the Grunge era”. They survived the rush of sudden celebrity, massive wealth, drugs and the punk rock fear of “selling out” to corporate interests which crushed other rock stars of the times, notably their friend Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. And of course, there is the civic pride in having a world-famous band of rock musicians whose origins are here in my own city. 

At the same time, I was never a big fan of punk rock, and was too “mature” in age by the early 1990s to identify with the whole new youth music scene in town, and the new bands coming out of it. I sort of missed the whole thing due to adulthood, and never dove into the various bands, the local clubs and the epoch-defining new music that was being created right downtown by local kids.

Eventually, though, I did hear some of Pearl Jam’s early songs, and they were powerful. It was also impossible not to be drawn to Eddie Vedder’s unique voice and vocal style – a rich, expressive baritone with the ability to range from high-pitched, loud screams to the softest, gentlest soothing tones. The band had the same versatility, switching from driving, passionate powerhouse rock to soulful, quieter and more introspective slower songs. Eventually I became a believer in the band and their music, if never a truly committed or devoted fan.

This was the spirit in which I approached Pearl Jam Twenty. The “twenty” in the title is for the twentieth anniversary of the band’s formation, and in that sense, the documentary was very much about a story that was not complete, since the band continues to sing and record new songs to this day. But it does very much capture the most important story about them and their storied career, which is how did this group of talented musicians find each other at this particular time, and turn their shared drive to make music into one of the most successful rock acts of our era?

Crowe does an excellent job of piecing it all together for us, using a combination of interviews with the band members and others around them, archival footage of past performances, and new performance footage. He begins with a tour through the young rock community of the 1980s in Seattle, the lifestyles of the musicians, and how the eventual members of the band met each other and first played together in other groupings.

From there, we move to the formation of Pearl Jam’s predecessor band, Mother Love Bone, and the crushing drug overdose death of their lead singer Andrew Wood. We learn how that tragedy led to the chain of fortuitous events that brought Vedder to the band from southern California.

Crowe takes us on an in-depth tour of the personalities, the clashes, the alliances and the shifting power within the band, as Vedder’s charismatic live presence and his songwriting began to push him increasingly into the spotlight and to increase his influence within the band. We learn how he and other band members weathered the stress of their sudden success, the pressures of touring, and several cataclysmic events, including a concert in Denmark where a crowd rush caused the accidental deaths of nine fans.

It’s all there – the trip from obscurity to celebrity, from poverty to wealth, the competition, the cooperation, the drugs, relationships, screw-ups and wild successes. It’s a fascinating portrait of how a band which at one time was considered “the greatest rock band in the world” survived the perils of success, and became a band of brothers who could continue to come together regularly to create great music and put on fantastic live shows over a period that now spans more than 30 years.

If you’re a fan of Pearl Jam, and haven’t seen this documentary, it’s probably essential for you to track it down and watch it, just to gather all the inside stories and details you didn’t know before. And if you’re not necessarily a fan but want to know more about them, and the Grunge era of rock in Seattle, or about what sorts of challenges musicians in top bands must face and overcome to succeed in the music business, this is a compelling film history of one of the most successful and popular rock bands of the past three decades. Recommended.