Rock and rollers Pearl Jam just wrapped up a run of shows throughout the US, in celebration of their 25th anniversary. For those who have been following along, the band has played two of their albums in full, including a surprise Vs. in Greensville, SC and a full performance of Ten to celebrate their tenth sold-out performance in Philadelphia, PA.
With the run of shows in the books and a busy 2016 ahead, guitarist Mike McCready sat down with Rolling Stone to discuss the inspiration behind those performances. For the first album, Vs., McCready explained that it was Eddie Vedder’s idea, “He said, ‘It’s Record Store Day, so let’s do a record’… It was cool to see fans’ eyes light up when they realized what was happening.”
While McCready had mixed feelings before the performance; once they started, he got into it. “I was excited, but hesitant in a way… I feel sometimes when you do a whole record, not that we’d done it a lot, but you have to stay in formula about how the record is, and there’s not a lot of spontaneity. But Vs. was really fun since there’s a lot of upbeat songs. It had energy I didn’t know it would have. I remember I struggled with No Code a couple of years ago, so I was happy that didn’t happen again.”
These weren’t the first times that the band has played an album in full, having performed Ten once before in the 90’s and both Yield and No Code in 2014. So what about the bands other albums? “I’m sure all that’s going to happen… That’s kind of Ed’s call, but we suggest stuff and I’d love to do that. I love surprising the fans. It’s important to us to keep pushing ourselves and revisit our albums and play them straight through.”
He even talks about Pearl Jam potentially hosting amulti-night residency and focusing on a new album each night. “That’s a fantasy of mine… We could do every record in a residency. It would be so cool. We could play the B-sides along with the album and get really creative with it.”
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