Nat's Reviews > Long Road: Pearl Jam and the Soundtrack of a Generation

The book covers Pearl Jam's (so far) 31-year career: roughly chronologically, although each chapter teases out themes that have recurred throughout their time together. It is not a biography of the band, so casual readers are likely not going to be able to follow parts of it. It is not quite a journalistic examination of the band, because Hyden's fandom overwhelms his objectivity at points. Nor is it quite a fan's exploration of what the band has meant to him or other fans. Given all this, I'd say it was a Pearl Jam "experience."

Early on, it was amazing. Hyden evoked what Pearl Jam felt like for many young listeners in the early and mid 90s. I found myself so excited by the detailed descriptions of milestone moments in their career that I toggled between reading chapters and finding YouTube clips so I could relive the moments he was describing.

In some ways, this is the easy part of the Pearl Jam story. There's no shortage of Pearl Jam, "Seattle sound," and alt-rock lore to draw from. And this is key: I have no idea what his sources actually were, beyond materials that were already out there. Hyden is not revealing new information about the band; rather, he is packaging and interpreting existing content. He's a close reader of albums and lyrics, and a speculator about authorial intent. More on this in a bit.

The harder part of the Pearl Jam story is where this book falls down--the "Side B" of their career from Binaural to Gigaton, a period spanning over 20 years and 2/3 of their time as a band. For someone who owns all 70+ bootlegs from the 2000 Binaural tour, Hyden surprisingly fails to capture precisely why this band is unmatched as a live band. All the giddiness I felt in "reliving" key moments through his depictions of their early career felt flat in his assessment of their later years. He cannot capture the magic of their live shows, and he does not seem to fully get the beauty in their later albums. It makes for a real letdown.

Part of this ties to how he's approached his subject--the close reading of music and speculation about why Pearl Jam did what they did. The close reading is cringe-worthy at times, largely because he frequently gets the words wrong. This goes beyond typos: he's building the meaning of his analysis on incorrect reads of lyrics publicly and easily accessible on the band's website. And, look: Eddie Vedder is notoriously easily to mishear, and not just on songs like Yellow Ledbetter, where he turns mumbling into an art form. But if you are going to close-read the text, double check to make sure you get it right. (This happened at least a half-dozen times, and each time I found myself double-checking lyrics that I thought I'd had correct but could very well have misheard in past listens. Per Pearl Jam's self-published lyrics, I did not.)

Yet even when he gets the lyrics right, the close reading of the lyrics and albums is jarring when he becomes judgmental about the quality of the lyrics or songs. In his preface, he says that he's trying to tell a story about the band, how they managed to survive and evolve where so many contemporaries did not (quite literally at times), and how they shaped and were shaped by their generation. His assessment of the quality of the music--particularly for later albums--often runs counter to those themes. He does not clearly articulate why the band could be putting out the so-so music he claims they generated on later albums and still be the band that evolved and survived. In this, he stumbles in meeting the purpose he sets out.

But perhaps the greater misstep here is how he attempts to analyze the members of the band--their probable thoughts, feelings, influences, and motivations. He does not interview the band and makes clear early on that that's not his purpose for the book; he says that they have had their own chance to tell their story in 2011's Pearl Jam Twenty, and he does draw much of his first-person quoting from that book and other published interviews. Yet he regularly attempts to build narratives around not just the music but the band members themselves--primarily Eddie Vedder--based on his own speculation about how they see themselves in their music or in the larger rock pantheon. Frankly, if I wanted that, I would just wait for Pearl Jam Forty.

Moreover, he gets some of his facts wrong. For instance, he claims that Pearl Jam never covered Mother Love Bone's "Chloe Dancer" with "Crown of Thorns"--a claim that becomes the basis of his speculation about Stone and Jeff's relationship with Andy Wood after Andy's death. It's also a claim that is factually incorrect and easily checked, since Pearl Jam has on their website a list of every song they've played and when they played it. His assertion--already a somewhat specious take--completely falls apart. This happens a various points in the text.

Lastly, this book overly centers Eddie Vedder; given that I am like the heart-eyes emoji for Eddie and pretty much always have been, I am surprised to be saying this. I love the Into the Wild soundtrack, and have seen his solo shows many times. Eddie is a wonderful performer, but his musical longevity does not stem from his solo work. Nor does PJ's longevity stem strictly from the musical chops each band member brings to the table. There are a few important nods to what Jeff and Stone had to do to make this band work in a way Mother Love Bone probably would not have, had Andy Wood survived. And oddly, for all the focus on Eddie as the benevolent dictator of the band, Hyden misses how Eddie had to give up control in the same way that Stone and Jeff did to keep the band alive. He also skimmed over all the other work that the rest of the band has done: their solo or side projects, their other artistic and philanthropic endeavors, etc. Had Hyden done more of this, it would have been a much more interesting and relevant book, because arguably it's the work outside the band's albums that has been the greatest contribution to their ability to continually gravitate back together.

I wanted to love this book, and if you had asked me to write this review around the time he was describing the Vs. or Vitalogy eras, I would have given it 4 or 5 stars. Hyden just tries to do too much here, deviates too often from his named purpose, and gets sloppy in his analyses. It's not a bad read for a Pearl Jam fan, but perhaps it should be read less as a deep or definitive read of the band's longevity and more as a fan trying to work through his own feelings about the band, their music, and the 90s music scene.

I received an advance reader copy from Netgalley for an honest review.