Formed after the demise of Gossard and
Ament’s previous band, Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream
with its debut album, Ten, in 1991. One of the key bands of the grunge movement
in the early 1990s, over the course of the band’s career, its members became
noted for their refusal to adhere to traditional music industry practices,
including refusing to make music videos, giving interviews and engaging in a
much-publicized boycott of Ticketmaster. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the
band as having “spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their
own fame.”
To date, the band has sold more than
31.5 million records in the U.S, and an estimated 60 million worldwide. Pearl
Jam has outlasted and outsold many of its contemporaries from the alternative
rock breakthrough of the early 1990s, and is considered one of the most
influential bands of the decade. Stephen Thomas Erlewine of Allmusic referred
to Pearl Jam as “the most popular American rock & roll band of the ’90s.”
