Pearl Jam concerts make me feel old and young
Not quite time travel, but close
Last night I went to my twenty-first Pearl Jam concert, this time at Wrigley Field. Twenty-one may seem like an excessive number, but Pearl Jam concerts are like professional sports championships. No one expected Michael Jordan to quit after one NBA championship. He wanted more. And you can bet if he could have won twenty-one of them, he would have.
I’ve never won an NBA championship, but I bet Michael Jordan hasn’t been to twenty-one Pearl Jam shows. So there.
Last night’s show was phenomenal. Great setlist. Amazing playing. High energy. It’s great to see musicians who have been playing together for more than thirty years still having fun on stage. I’d say it’s one of the best shows that I’ve been to, but I say that after almost every one of their shows. I think that I mean it this time though.
A great feature of Pearl Jam shows is that it’s not only a concert, but it’s time travel. Or, at least that’s what it has become in recent years.
I started going to Pearl Jam shows in 1998. More than twenty-six years ago. I had just turned twenty when I went to my first show. My oldest daughter was one, but I hadn’t met her yet. I was years away from getting married, having more kids, beginning my career, and everything that followed. A lot of life has happened since that first show at Alpine Valley in Wisconsin.
Last night, Eddie Vedder, the lead singer, mentioned that they’ve been playing together for more than thirty years, and that when they first started there would be some older people at their shows. But, he said, now they’re the old guys, and there aren’t too many people older than them.
The five main guys in the band are between 58 and 61 years old. At 46, I was definitely in the bottom half – maybe bottom third – in age of the 40,000 or so people in attendance. And while I can look in the mirror and see that I’m older than I used to be, I’m not as old as I will be.
But for the two-and-a-half hours that Pearl Jam was on stage last night, I might as well have still been 20 years old.
They played seven songs last night that they played at that very first show that I attended twenty-six years ago. I was just as excited to hear them last night as I was back then. They played four songs last night that I’d never heard them do, and I felt the thrill of hearing something new just as intensely now as I would have at any show before.
My two sons are 18 and 19 years old and attended last night’s concert. Seeing them enjoy the same band that I enjoyed when I was their age is a sort of time travel that’s hard to explain. It’s like getting a view back in time, hearing those songs before all of this life happened.
But it’s also different because they have access to dozens more songs now than I did when I became a fan. It’s like they get to binge-watch a series that has already ended, when I had to watch one episode per week. I think there’s something to be said for the slow drip of exposure to creativity, but I could never fault anyone for wanting to immediately listen to more music from a band that they like.
My sons won’t be going to Pearl Jam shows twenty-six years from now. It’s Hard to Imagine an 85-year-old Eddie Vedder running around on stage. Although Mick Jagger is 81 and he’s still touring with the Rolling Stones, so never say never, I suppose.
But, to quote another iconic 90s band, Smashing Pumpkins, seeing Pearl Jam live in the present day is a good reminder of the resolute urgency of now. Although their music is timeless, the opportunity to see them live won’t last forever. And while the show last night at Wrigley Field may have reminded me that pieces of Younger Me still exist, and that Older Me isn’t yet here, the most reassuring part of the show may have been just how grateful I am for the Now Me.