Chuck Miller

The waiting drove me mad. And then it finally was here, and I really was a mess.

If you hadn’t guessed from my appropriation of the lyrics to “Corduroy,” I went to a Pearl Jam concert a couple of weeks ago. My intro works best, by the way, if you sing it in your mind as you read. Just fit it into the song’s melody as best you can, while also accepting that there’s not a musical bone in my body and that I’ve undoubtedly messed the whole thing up. I’ll wait… … … ….

Okay, good, now that you’re in the proper musical headspace, sort of, I’ll get on with it. My wife, Christina, surprised me with tickets to the second of two sold-out shows at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia on September 9th.

I’ve been to a few big events there, Tool among them, so I thought I knew what we were getting ourselves into. I had no idea.

It began when I jumped in line to get myself the obligatory must-have concert tee before the show. I started discussing my options with the Philly-through-and-through fellow behind the counter.

“Well, this one’s pretty cool. But then again, so’s this one. I really like the white letters on black. But I also like the black letters on white. Which one do you prefer?”

“You’re not from around here, are you?”

But he said it nicely, like he was amused, not all gruff and impatient as you might expect, considering the size of the line behind me.

“No, I’m not. I’m from West Virginia.”

“Ya don’t say!”

We had a good laugh, and he helped me settle on the perfect one. I paid him and walked away thinking, It’s taken me close to a decade, but I actually like it here now. Philly pholks aren’t all as nasty and mean as their reputation suggests. Kind of like West Virginia folks aren’t all as backward as ours does. I guess we’re all just people.

I finally have a real sense of belonging here. It’s become my home now, instead of just some place I ended up. That feeling turned out to be a good omen.

From the opening number, “Of the Girl,” right through the eight-song encore—a mini-concert of its own—the entire crowd stood for the nearly three-hour set. Anyone who claims you can’t understand Eddie’s mumbling has never seen their live audience sing-along. These rabid fans have managed to decipher every obscure lyric in their monster catalog and belt them all right along with the band.

You mean the words to “Yellow Ledbetter” aren’t just a bunch of random LinkedIn profile names? No, silly, just go to a show and let the crowd decode it for you.

Speaking of that catalog, did you know they don’t repeat set lists? Like ever, or so I’ve read. Eddie spends hours handwriting them all in calligraphy, making every show a unique experience crafted just for that audience.

To their diehard fan base, these set lists are a coveted collectible, “suitable for framing” as the saying goes. They also sell high-quality recordings of every concert, calling them “official bootlegs.”

Clever marketing? Ingenious, actually, and it worked on me. I camped out at the virtual record store to be first in line for my copy. If you happen to see me drive past you while banging my head hard enough to rattle the car, you’ll know I’ve returned blissfully to that magical night in Philly, and trust me, I never thought I’d describe Philadelphia as magical.

Back to “Corduroy” from the opening. It’s one of my favorites, but I wasn’t hopeful of hearing it live. According to one source, the band thinks it’s “too obvious” and avoids playing it. I like obvious. I understand obvious. 

I would rather starve than eat your bread. I don’t want to hear from those who know. I don’t want to be held in your debt. I’ll take the varmint’s path.

All true, especially that last one, often even to my own detriment. And yeah, those are a few more of the lyrics. Thanks, fellow concert-goers, for helping me out!

Surprise, surprise. Despite its opening line, they didn’t make me wait long enough to go madder than I already am, ripping into it third in the order. Between the sea of people screaming along and the band searing through it with the energy of twenty-something punk rockers—never mind that they’re all approaching 60—I thought the roof would blow right off of Wells Fargo.

Throughout the rest of the evening, they hit their latest release, Dark Matter, hard with five songs, and also didn’t disappoint casuals with five classics from Ten. In between, they included at least one number from every other studio album (twelve in all).

They completely reworked “Better Man” for the live audience, turning it from a melancholy song about a woman trapped in an unhealthy relationship into an infectious blues number about a guy who’s aware that he messed up begging his lady’s forgiveness. I’m down on my, down on my, down on my knees; wishin’ you would stay, stay, stay. I’m beggin’ you please; don’t runaway, runaway, runaway…. 

Hey, we’ve all been there, Ed. I won’t bore you with a song-by-song recap to express how a moment in time sharing the same space with you and your bandmates made me feel, but that feeling is the real reason we go to concerts.

Why so emo, tough guy?

Think of all the changes you’ve been through in three-plus decades. Births and deaths and marriages and children and breakups and promotions and firings and on and on and on. Traumas and triumphs that define a generation.

Have you ever noticed how your mortality is sort of lingering in the background of all of it? You try to capture special moments and preserve the memories in photos, but time passes anyway.

I’m glad I have my clips to revisit from my night with Pearl Jam, but it’s over now, and they’ve played eight more cities in the two weeks since. I wonder when I’ll go to my last concert. I bet they wonder when they’ll play their last.

With each passing year, that feeling intensifies a little. I ain’t dead yet, but I’m drawing ever closer to the end than the beginning.

Eddie, in that #34 Walter Payton jersey he’s been wearing throughout the tour to signify their 34 years as a band, was a poignant reminder that they’re aware of it too, never mind my irrelevant hope that he’ll throw on a change-of-pace Earl Campbell jersey some night. With many of their contemporaries long since “Dead and Bloated,” Pearl Jam are the de facto ambassadors of their era.

If you’re wondering why I slipped in a Stone Temple Pilots reference, our quintessential concert weekend started with Weiland-less but far from Gutt-less (look up the new lead singer’s name lest my awful pun pass you by) STP playing 1994’s Purple straight through to commemorate its thirtieth anniversary. If not for Pearl Jam three nights later, I might be writing about that.

On this National Daughters Day, I couldn’t help wondering if I’d have dragged Roo to PJ with me if she were still alive. She’d be 17. Would she even tolerate an entire evening with her old man listening to some other old men?

I could try to get her interested by showing her the unnerving footage of Eddie climbing the stage scaffolding during a 1992 concert at Seattle’s Magnuson Park. I’ve probably got a few clips of me lifting weights that I’d be hard-pressed to roll around the gym floor these days. We weren’t always old.

Raging against the dying of the light and all that poetic stuff, the band sounded incredible, at least when you could hear them over all those adoring fans. Christina doesn’t even like them, or at least didn’t beforehand. Afterward, she commented, “His voice is much better in person. And that guitarist (McCready), it’s like that guitar is an extension of his arm.”

That’s because it is.

More than just a concert, a Pearl Jam show is a three-hour love affair between band and crowd. And that love indeed flows both ways, a palpable sense pervading the arena that they’re as much in love with sharing this slice of time with the audience as we all are with being in their presence for a few hours. It’s that genuineness that I was most struck with and that has me listening exclusively to their albums on repeat ever since the concert, likely to the annoyance of everyone who has to endure me.

Toward the end of the evening, Eddie talked about memorable Philadelphia shows. He waxed about four sold-out nights to close the Spectrum right before it was demolished in 2009 and how the building was so dilapidated that rats were running through the halls.

Tying his story to the present moment, he acknowledged a quartet of fans holding signs spelling “R-A-T-S.” Suddenly, the band launched into “Rats,” altering their setlist on the fly to create an unforgettable memory for us all, especially that group of friends. You can see the correction in the photo above.

I can write ad nauseam about the energy they put into every performance, doing yeoman’s work to try and put you there, but live music can only be experienced… erm… live. I might think my bands are the coolest, but it doesn’t matter who you see. It matters only that you go.

You’re not too old. You’re not too busy. It won’t be too loud. They make earplugs if it is. Tickets aren’t too expensive.

Well, they kind of are, but we’re no longer kids scraping by on part-time jobs at The Gap, and it’s a good thing, too, since the store that clothed a generation of mall rats is nearly bankrupt now. Spend a little of that coveted middle manager’s paycheck on an experience you might enjoy instead of another set of throw pillows from Bed and Beyond Tepid Bathwater.

The feature image I chose at the top was my best attempt to capture the crowd at just the right moment during “Once.” They erupted every time Eddie roared “Once!”—and if you’ve heard the song, you know it’s about a hundred times—screaming it right along with him and throwing their #1 fingers high in the air. I lagged a half beat behind and only caught the stragglers who hadn’t put their hands back down yet, so you don’t get the full measure of it, but being right there in it was thrilling.

I’m not the most positive person around. While I have much to be grateful for, fifty-five years of life’s lumps can bias a person toward cynicism and distrust, I guess.

But listening to all those people singing in unison filled me with a sense of renewed hope. Bonded over our love of music and a special band, I somehow felt a real connection with 20,000 strangers.

We had this much in common, so surely we have something else. Even if that feeling is only temporary, it was still with me when we got cut off as we drove out of the packed parking lot.

“No biggie. They’re just tired and trying to get home. Tomorrow’s a work day for all of us. I hope they make it safely.”

Christina probably wondered how she left the house with Genghis Khan and ended up riding home with Mr. Rogers.

When I lose this feeling, and I will, I’m going back to recapture it. Because in the end, even people who couldn’t be from more different backgrounds, like me and the guy working the t-shirt counter, really are connected. And not just when we’re feeling all good and happy from concert endorphins, but also when we’re bickering about politics, religion, generational gaps, and everything else that tears at our humanity.

Whatever you think you have to do can get done another day. Unglue your butt from the couch and let those pancaked throw pillows fluff back up.

Go see that band that defined the moment for you all those years ago when adolescence still hadn’t quite given way to adulthood. You just might get a glimpse of who you used to be and the optimism you had before life became too serious to enjoy.

Maybe that feeling will stick with you for a while, at least until they come around again.

If you liked this post, you might also enjoy my review of Pearl Jam’s new album, Dark Matter.