Pearl Jam
Pearl Jam live in Charlotte, 30/10/2013

Even the greatest love stories sometimes falter in the face of the relentless passage of time. Either because we change, or others change, or circumstances change, in short, something always changes, which is what trips us up, because we weren't prepared or because at that point, we find an excellent excuse to quit, and so we do. I've been loving Pearl Jam unconditionally and with all my heart for over 20 years, a personal record (whether they love me back, I cannot say, but I can say that's entirely secondary); we've had our small crises, some brief periods of detachment, but, as you know, sometimes these temporary difficulties save an entire story. Let me mention just one thing, the album with that avocado on the cover didn't sit well with me, and the one after only barely (even though it has 'Just Breathe' and 'Amongst the Waves,' songs very much in my wheelhouse, which I indeed like)... How is our relationship after 20 years?...

In the year of 'Lightning Bolt,' when our five are showing their wrinkles framed by long hair (as in the case of Stone Gossard's second youth) or early signs of receding hairlines (which I won't specify for whom)? The year when, in the album launch photos, Mr. Vedder flashes a rare smile for the press and poses in front of everyone else instead of hiding behind a raised middle finger or under a hat, or turning his back? Is it still love? Well, it's much easier to answer that today after having seen them live, just a few weeks ago, in Charlotte, North Carolina, for the penultimate night of the first round of dates of the North American tour. A few small premises: being there felt like a miracle to me, any of their concerts always seemed like a miracle, let alone in the United States, let alone in places I love, let alone after 3 years of abstinence... I admit all this, well, maybe just a little, just a little, might have influenced me... I must also say though: I like the latest album but I'm not crazy about it, I've been monitoring their setlists since they started playing live again, and various choices have left me quite skeptical, so my state of mind is obviously well predisposed but not entirely prepared for enchantment, on the contrary. I'm also very curious, I must admit, to observe PJ in their homeland; I wonder who and how their American fans are, if the concert atmosphere will be the same as when they come to Europe and Italy.

Here with us, understand (those who love them and have seen them on tour in our country can testify), PJ's fans have for their idols something that resembles much more a religious sentiment than just simple musical passion; they know it (or this is the explanation I give myself), they feel it, and when they come, they offer these memorable shows where the amazement above and below the stage is tangible, and where, I tend to think, something magical is sprayed into the air so that at the end of the concert, you see these hordes of 30-40-year-olds walking like zombies wondering why it's over and when they can finally have some more...

But now let's go to Charlotte, otherwise, we'll get lost along the way. What noteworthy thing can be said about the wait in the hours before the show? That unofficial merchandise stands don’t exist; there is therefore only one tent selling t-shirts at $35 and key chains at $20 with a long patient line forming from the late hours of the morning; the scalpers are very pressuring instead, apparently divided into different factions but actually headed by a single stout and insolent delinquent (of clear Italian origins) trying to sell and buy tickets from everyone. For the time I stand in line outside the Time Warner Cable Arena (and I'll enter as the second person overall, so do your calculations), a preacher with a megaphone tries to redeem those present by shouting "attention sinners! Risk of fire!", chanting Eddie Vedder's name and distorting Even Flow, and it makes me think of Don Zauker from Vernacoliere... upon entering the arena I am informed that backpacks are not allowed, so they quite rudely force me to discard everything that can be trashed while the rest (wallet, phones, etc.) ends up compressed in my pockets (and I am strongly tempted to ask how it can be possible that in the state I’m in it's legal to enter a restaurant with a gun but not a backpack in an arena, but of course, I swallow it all back). My disappointment must be fairly evident so much that I'm taken under the arm by a kind gentleman from the organization who asks for patience and understanding for these sometimes absurd regulations, I explain to him that I hadn't read this prohibition anywhere, he notices my accent, asks where I'm from, and when I tell him I came from Italy to see Pearl Jam tonight, he has an ecstatic reaction and accompanies me to a coat-check type counter (not in operation) where two girls take my backpack and anything I want to leave there for free. I thank everyone and dash to my seat, which is quite centrally located in front of the stage, let's say second lower ring... there's still no one in the arena, everyone is buying fried chicken and coke because maybe half an hour has passed since the last snack, and they fear starvation. I sit instead and enjoy the view; these arenas are beautiful, they seem as large as our sports halls, and yet are twice as big...

A couple of hours pass without bouts of boredom, and while I'm there wondering whether there's an opening act or not (because the ticket doesn't actually mention anything about it), the lights go down, and 5 men plus a Hawaiian take the stage, and one of them walks in a way I could recognize among a million. It's theeeemmm!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now I know, I fully realize... I'm almost 40 and I have passed (not much long ago, to be honest) the adolescent phase where your favorite rockstar is also your erotic dream and your greatest source of emotional turmoil, but... but Eddie Vedder will always be Eddie Vedder for me, for reasons that probably go beyond his talent but also for being unconventionally but definitely sexy (let me say it in English, so I feel less embarrassed)... and when he takes the microphone for the first note, the first verse, which tonight is Can the word sound... (the opening of Pendulum), the world simply stops rotating. I knew there wouldn't be a 'Release' or 'Long Road' opening this live show, and it is so, and I'm a bit sorry, because both pieces are, for my own personal taste, the almost perfect way to start, cradling the audience and warming them up with a crescendo of choirs that immediately offer true chills. 'Pendulum' is not a piece with these characteristics, but it is without a doubt one of the best songs on 'Lightning Bolt' (someone would say at this point it's destined to become a new classic, but we won't do that); it certainly manages to create a certain type of atmosphere, which is intimate, almost confidential, not a trivial task, given the circumstances.... and if apparently, the world stopped swaying on the rockin' horse of time of 'Release', there remains however an "ah-ah-ah-ah" which produces that same effect of light and perpetual motion, which is sweet and tense at the same time, and allows Vedder to play the seasoned rockstar with intense and sensual singing (I don't know of any other ah-ah-ah in PJ's discography before this one) while at the same time it seems, with every syllable, he's hammering a finger on our temples.

'Pendulum' fades into Low Light, an unexpected choice, keeping us swaying, as we get confirmation that McCready is doing the second vocals tonight... It's then time for Present Tense, the philosophical manifesto of 'No Code,' quite banal content actually, but sung by Eddie Vedder they take on a whole new intensity (so much that when I find myself shouting "or you can come to terms and realize you're the only one who can forgive yourself ooohhhh" my voice breaks and I feel two tears slowly roll down, and thank God, I'm still alive). A very intense and explosive finish, it looks like out of the corner of the eye we're 20,000 ready to start jumping, the sooner the better. Our guys seem to understand and accommodate us: Last Exit bursts in, unexpected, accompanied by liberating choirs and preceding Do the Evolution, and now we really jump. It's time to greet the audience, Eddie jokes about their decades-long absence from the city, introduces the new album and from this pulls out the title track Lightning Bolt (an unusual and amused female portrayal, and if the previous ones are called, for example, 'Breakerfall' or 'Parting Ways' you can't help but wrinkle your nose just a bit, but I promised not to fall into the temptation of lamenting past times like a nagging and know-it-all fan from the first hour and I won't); the irony gives way to anger, and Mind Your Manners pours like thunder on the crowd (and it's a shame I just said I don't want to make comparisons, otherwise I could have pointed out how this one looks a lot like 'Spin the Black Circle', but is, how to say, uglier), followed by a Severed Hand that gains 100 good points in the transition from record to live, and then, ladies and gentlemen, we mean business, here’s Even Flow, angry, explosive, cathartic.

Change of pace with Daughter, certainly among the top 3 performances of the evening also for the impressive scope of the choirs; Eddie introduces a track from the new album, the opening track Getaway (live debut) followed by Sirens (introduced by a sports anticipation on a temporary sports result from the World Series and a "there might be sirens in Boston tonight"), a moving slow dance that if we were in the 80s would be accompanied by a sea of lit lighters and instead here tonight, as has been for many years now, only iPhones shine. The real surprise comes immediately after: Setting Forth, from that masterpiece that is the 'Into The Wild' soundtrack, played lightly, illuminating and perfect as only certain short songs can be, the tail of which bursts into the exasperated j'accuse of Not For You, a piece that reminds us of a time when PJ's anger was directed at targets even then "political" but less global and more confined to the music world, and their five-against-one had absolutely nothing of the cliché that sometimes, alas, seemed to have leaked in the most recent works. Oops, I slipped again on this.

Still from 'Vitalogy', Immortality follows, then the new Infallible and Unthought Known, until one of the pieces that surely everyone here was waiting for, the eternal Rearviewmirror, where everyone, each for their own reasons, shouting, lets out a bit of venom for small or large wrongs suffered in life by someone whom, however, we've finally left behind. A break arrives; the Yankee standing on my left yells in my ear that he’s noticed with pleasure that I know all the words to the songs, I answer by telling him that I'm also Italian and he can’t stop saying woooowww that’s amassszing and tells everyone (they must think we're troglodytes, and they aren't even that far from the truth, I guess...). The first encore begins with an unplugged session where only a lit fireplace is missing... Eddie in the center is accompanied first by Stone then by Jeff for a teary-eyed quartet: it’s dedication time and here come Bee Girl, the refined Yellow Moon (truly beautiful, both on the record and live), Off he Goes, and Just Breathe. Just a moment before finding everyone dancing in couples like in 'La Boum', our guys wake us up abruptly with Given to Fly, but especially with Betterman (with 'Save it For later' in the tail, another absolutely top moment of the evening) before closing the encore with Porch sung for a good half on the shoulders of the audience by a reckless and athletic Vedder who seems unwilling to surrender to the passage of time. If you're wondering if he (and the others) have the voice, legs, desire, energy to play songs like this after 20 years, the answer is unequivocally YES.

The second encore begins with Eddie raising his arms counting one, two, three, four and for the 20,000 at the Time Warner Cable Arena it's a more than sufficient cue to start singing in unison without hesitation I seem to recognize your face... Elderly Woman precedes the splendid cover of The Who The Real Me, an ambitious performance that goes just fine for now, when all the last energies can be shot, before the final trio: Black, Alive (two songs incredibly absent from many of the previous nights) and closing with All Along the Watchtower.

The concert ends with the 5 who, as usual, thank profusely, Eddie naming each one of them, sharing his wine bottle with the front row, Jeff wearing a Sonics t-shirt, Matt Cameron standing on his stool. The band seemed more balanced than ever, there is no room for protagonism, no super guitar and drum solos, Boom Gaspar taking a step back, everyone very calm, very devoted, very smiling. Maybe because of this task distribution, maybe because none of them is a deity in their craft, a sultan of their instrument, no one but Vedder of course, maybe that's why the personality of the frontman breaks impiously over the others, whether he wants it or not (a truly Hamlet-like doubt and destined to remain, at least for me, unsolved)...

What to say? At the beginning of the evening, Eddie acted they would try to make up for a silence of 10 years of absence, and so they did, oh well. 30 pieces, 2 hours and 50 minutes of music, interspersed with outrageous interludes between him and Stone, like when always at the beginning, Vedder recounts in a mix of humility and pride that for the second consecutive week 'Lightning Bolt' is at the first place in the charts, and confesses it's nice to be number 1, when sometimes someone wants to make you feel like number 2; then to tone down and leave not even the slightest polemical nuance to his words he chuckles concluding "and to think that to be number 1 we didn’t even need to show our boobs", he turns towards Stone who wastes no time and at those words lifts his shirt... 20,000 laughs... Or, when introducing 'Small Town', Eddie confesses that the credit for that song goes to Stone, that is, the song is his, he wrote it and was playing it in a room, but it was Stone who heard it from the other side and said it was very good and should be put on a record... another round of general euphoria... Here, perhaps compared to the dates seen in Italy, this is the most noticeable difference (probably also dictated by technical, that is, linguistic reasons): the air is really very familiar, in the sense of less solemn, very natural, no one, neither above nor below the stage, seems to participate in a collective and unrepeatable rite, as happens here with us. Neither better nor worse. I simply had the impression that when PJ cross the ocean to play in the old continent, even today, after 20 years and without any more need for confirmations, they marvel each time at what presents itself before their eyes. The author had the fortune, indeed the grace, of being present at Pistoia in 2006 and will forever remember when, at the end of Black, Vedder stopped with a hand on his chest and ecstatic (after the crowd went on for minutes, music over, singing du-du-du-duduhh) barely managed to mutter "you fixed a broken heart". It’s hard to imagine such a scene in a setting like the (beautiful) concert in Charlotte.

Ah, another difference: the volume, there, is considerably lower than at the concerts here (and perhaps a bit is lost). On the choice of the setlist, I consider myself, despite the precautionary fears pre-concert, quite satisfied, although not completely: successful and more than agreeable, in my opinion, the selections from the latest albums, a tad questionable some from the previous ones. Whether this is a setlist pleasing (or disturbing) to the American taste, or whether these are the songs PJ will probably play everywhere from now on, it's too soon to tell; there is a slight suspicion that there might be a comprehensible desire for change. Surely and excessively rewarded the studio albums, almost all the pearls spread here and there over the years among b-sides, side projects, and soundtracks were missing... a 'Crazy Mary', a 'State of love and trust', an 'I got id', I would have wanted one. But it’s only postponed, I’m sure of it. These are some of the thoughts crowding my mind as I exit. And as I leave, a fan for whom this had been their first concert says to me: "it's the first time I have the sensation that someone played for me". I think I understood what they meant, indeed I envied them a little, because the emotions of the first time are unparalleled. For me, it was the sixth, or seventh, I don't remember, but I realize that what I feel watching PJ live, I don't feel with anyone else, indeed every one of their live performances convinces me that they are the best band around (and let's say generically that in 25 years of attending concerts I have seen a bit of everything, among very large and very small bands, and anyway a lot of beautiful live music); I also realize that what I wrote has no logical or rational foundation and is tied (almost exclusively) to the depth of that feeling I think I called love at the beginning of this text and that I carry with me from the time a radio station played 'Alive' when I was 16, and even before knowing what they were called, I decided they would be "my" band.

The smell of grass in the arena, Vedder’s flannel checkered shirt, the horned fingers rising occasionally from the audience towards the sky: someone might call this old school. Someone might instead say that in full nineties and grunge revival, it was an evening for fashionistas. I simply felt at home.