Summary of Steven Hyden's Long Road

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.

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#1 Pearl Jam played at Red Rocks, a sacred place for rock bands, in the early nineties. In 2017, they were not overly enthusiastic about returning to Colorado. -> Pearl Jam’s second drummer, Matt Chamberlain, once likened playing with the band to boxing with Mike Tyson. The band members carried out a metal folding chair and placed it next to the others in a semicircle near the stage’s edge. Eddie Vedder sat down and forgot his guitar.

#2 In 1995, Pearl Jam was more popular than Led Zeppelin was in 1972.

#3 Pearl Jam was an extremely popular rock band in the 1990s, with the most emulated singer in the world.

#4 In the 1990s, Pearl Jam was extremely popular, but they were also extremely controversial. They were accused of being sellouts and irrelevant poseurs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Oct 7, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350039566

IRB Media

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Insights on Steven Hyden's Long Road

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

Pearl Jam’s second drummer, Matt Chamberlain, once likened playing with the band to boxing with Mike Tyson. The band had a similar strategy: intimidation. They were the baddest band in the game, and this reputation defeated their opponents before the match even began.

#2

Pearl Jam is touring in support of their third consecutive multiplatinum album, Vitalogy. But this isn’t a moment of triumph. They are set up onstage like victims in demand for public show.

#3

Pearl Jam’s music and influence were everywhere in the 1990s. They had the perfect timing to turn out the kinds of songs that the rock audience craved at the precise moment.

#4

Pearl Jam was the right band for the moment in 1995, but they were criticized by both baby boomers and Gen Xers. They were accused of being sellouts, bandwagon jumpers, overheated arena rockers, and hopelessly middle-of-the-road poseurs.

#5

Gen Xers were extremely parochial, and they tended to believe that their culture, the music, the movies, and the terrible kiddie TV shows were the best. They also wanted the security and status of boomers, but they distrusted those desires.

#6

By the time of the Red Rocks concerts, Pearl Jam had reached a breaking point. The band had grown extremely chaotic and incomprehensible, with triumphs mixing with tragedies. They had put themselves in the impossible position of proving that Ticketmaster was a monopoly by attempting to tour without them.

#7

In 1995, Pearl Jam had a disastrous show in San Francisco, and they canceled the next seven shows. But they didn’t die, and they continued to survive and thrive in the second half of the 1990s.

#8

The thrill of listening to the 6/20/95 bootleg recording is witnessing Pearl Jam’s attempt to figure out the who the hell are we. question. They begin with a song they debuted live just four days earlier, on June 16, in Casper, Wyoming: Long Road.