Author: Urban Bolta
Photos: Jernej Vene
Venue: Stadion Nereo Rocco / Trieste / Italy
Concert date: June 22, 2014
Attendance: 25,000
Ticket price: €70
Two years have gone by since the American rock giants of the nineties, Pearl Jam, last rolled onto the Old Continent. Back then their tour gave Slovenia a wide berth, but this time Slovenian fans have the shows practically on their doorstep. Long absences are nothing unusual for Pearl Jam, mind you – just think of their boycott of the concert corporation Ticketmaster in the mid-nineties, which at the time even pushed the band to the brink of financial ruin. But we’re talking about a band that has outgrown its former genre label and kept pace with the times, which still brings Pearl Jam huge popularity more than two decades after their golden era.
As part of the new European tour, they played two shows in our western neighbor and spent five days there. A few days ago they hit Milan’s San Siro, one of the biggest football stadiums in Europe, and then Trieste’s Nereo Rocco stadium, where a whole troop of Slovenian Pearl Jam fans made the trip by every means imaginable. Judging by the multicolored flags in the crowd, with plenty of Canadian, Chilean and South African ones among them, the sold-out house was a colorful mix of people from all over the world, which is just one more proof that Pearl Jam became a global phenomenon a long time ago.
The organization of this mega-event was flawless. Public transport kept traffic under control in the hours before the show, info was available at every step, street corners weren’t clogged with illegal souvenir hawkers, even the security staff were decked out in Pearl Jam T-shirts, and most importantly, the show started on time, even a few minutes before the announced nine in the evening. Italians are generally known for sloppy concert organization, but apparently things are changing for the better in that department too.
The opening number of the night, Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town, worked as an acoustic first touch, and continuing in a similar vein with Low Light and Black, Pearl Jam came across as a vivid mood-painting collective before they hit the gas with Why Go and Animal and served up some rougher guitar stuff too. There aren’t many bands like Pearl Jam that build their live repertoire from every era of their career. The red thread of the Trieste show was the presentation of their latest album »Lightning Bolt« (review here), they dug deep into their cult debut »Ten« (1991), and the rest of the timeline was filled out with songs from the albums in between, including ones released in periods when their star (commercially speaking) wasn’t shining at full power.
The central figure of the show was none other than frontman Eddie Vedder. The 49-year-old has become the embodiment of the band over the years, so on stage he gets the role of connector and motivator, even though, being shy by nature, it doesn’t exactly come naturally to him. Legend has it that when he joined the band, Vedder was a quiet, withdrawn kid. That endearing trait probably helped him on the way up among rock’s giants and win massive popularity, since his performances are down-to-earth and unpretentious, which even in a stadium setting presented the band’s grunge material to the crowd in a more intimate light. Vedder again used his tried-and-tested tactic of addressing the audience in their own language, while over the years he has evidently dropped another of his trademark moves: the spectacular climbing of stage structures.
The most emotional moment of the show came with Come Back. Vedder dedicated it to his best friend, who had passed away just a few days earlier, so the words in the closing part of the song »ohhh I’ll be here,come back, come back« rang in our ears even louder. The sleepy, dreamy moments were quickly turned into a bouncy march by the hit Even Flow, with a long instrumental middle section during which guitarist Mike McCready even allowed himself to play guitar behind his back. The best-known songs, among which Rearviewmirror at the end of the main set deserves a special mention, were stretched out by the five-piece and given a shot of live concert energy, cunningly making sure the choruses got repeated again and again.
When they came back on stage, the more devoted fans got their due, as Pearl Jam played Chloe Dancer / Crown of Thorns by Mother Love Bone, true grunge pioneers in which bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard once played. Despite the marathon set, Pearl Jam didn’t skimp on energy in either encore, saving the hardest-hitting songs, with a touch of garage-rock raucousness, Life Wasted and Porch, for the finish.
In this part of the show the five-piece played around with swinging spotlights that had cameras mounted in them, and the resulting footage glued the crowd’s eyes to the two big screens on either side of the stage. From the stand where the Rockline crew was stationed, you could clearly see a huge, elongated Italian flag unfurled, with the words »Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World« on it. The atmosphere reached boiling point after two more »Ten« gems, Once and Alive, and all the magic of stadium shows finally spilled over into the night with the aforementioned Neil Young anthem. A thousand throats united in one song, a thousand hearts united in that moment in the same thought of hippie anthemic spirit. Goosebumps all over, and the gorgeous ambience of the sold-out venue got its visual counterpart when the stadium floodlights came on.
A good three hours together, and the Pearl Jam show in Trieste will be talked about for a long time to come. No matter that the concert industry keeps jacking up ticket prices and they’re now extremely expensive, every single cent was paid back, and Pearl Jam’s great form only whetted the appetite of their Slovenian fans even more, who want to finally see the American rock giants again in the little country beneath Triglav after fifteen years. Time will tell if that wish will be granted!
Setlist
1. Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town
2. Low Light
3. Black
4. Sirens
5. Why Go
6. Animal
7. Corduroy
8. Getaway
9. Got Some
10. Given to Fly
11. Leatherman
12. Lightning Bolt
13. Mind Your Manners
14. Deep
15. Come Back
16. Even Flow
17. Down
18. Unthought Known
19. Infallible
20. Whipping
21. Do the Evolution
22. Rearviewmirror
—————–
23. Let Me Sleep
24. Chloe Dancer
25. Crown of Thorns
26. Jeremy
27. State of Love and Trust
28. Wasted Reprise
29. Life Wasted
30. Porch
——————
31. Better Man
32. Once
33. Alive
34. Rockin’ in the Free World (Neil Young cover)
35. Yellow Ledbetter
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