Eddie Vedder (left) and Matt Cameron of Pearl Jam on stage during the BST festival at Hyde Park
(Picture: Suzan Moore/PA Wire)You expect a certain amount of trauma and self-flagellation at a Pearl Jam show, but not to witness it play out in real time. “I’ve just realised the person that was written about,” singer Eddie Vedder told Hyde Park, palms on his cheeks after roaring through an anthem of undying support for a troubled friend called Save You, “F**k, we didn’t save them…”
Vedder’s well of anguish runs deep – you only need watch him bent double, wrenching Breath from some inner cauldron of broiling angst to see that. But for the first of two British Summer Time shows by these long-standing grunge titans, he put on an amenable brave face.
“I feel like Adele right now,” he joked, taking to the stage full of compliments (“I like what you’ve done to the place”) and swigging from a bottle of wine he promised to share around. He referenced the mass brawl that broke out at the Eagles’ BST show last week – during Take It Easy, no less – celebrated a red-sky sunset “like an LSD trip” and led the crowd in Happy Birthday for twins from another support act before throwing their cake across the stage. For a cover of PiL’s Public Image he adopted an uncanny John Lydon whine far removed from his usual sand-blasted growl, like a man who’s had his tonsils tarmacked.
The larks added levity to a set sometimes swamped in sludgy rock earnestness. Pearl Jam’s longevity, 32 years and 85 million album sales on, is much to do with the fact that, of all the Seattle snarlers of 1991, they were rooted in hardy country rock rather than explosive punk. Hence songs like Low Light, In Hiding and even early hit Daughter kicked up southern country grit, slipping at times from the powerful to the ponderous even while guitarist Mike McCready finished scorching solos by having fights with his amp stack.
They were at their best when piling into full-on punk tracks like Mind Your Manners, or when their billowing rock found melodic focus on Even Flow, the Kings Of Leon-meets-REM Superblood Wolfmoon and grunge classics Jeremy and Alive.
There was a tangible poignance to Light Years, dedicated to the family of a 42-year-old mother who died with a ticket to the show, and real fun to the funk rock Porch, Vedder distracting from its more indulgent stretches by trying to climb the gigantic fake tree growing out of the stage.
As a band at the forefront of the voter registration drive during the 2020 US election, Pearl Jam’s platform is ripe for protest. In one impassioned rant, Vedder wished hell’s eternal torments on gun manufacturers and argued that lying politicians like Trump should be imprisoned for “defamation of the truth”. Tub resoundingly thumped, it all ended on an optimistic high, with John McEnroe joining on guitar to bang out a riotous cover of Neil Young’s Rockin’ In The Free World. If only a little more of the set had blown so breezily by.
