Before Pearl Jam was Pearl Jam, there was grief, Seattle clubs, bad record deals, and a dead singer named Andrew Wood.
Trailer for “Pearl Jam Twenty”
You Can’t Make This Sh!t Up
- Cameron Crowe built the doc from more than 1,200 hours of rare and never-before-seen footage.
- Pearl Jam formed from the ashes of Mother Love Bone after singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose in 1990. Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were grieving, then Eddie Vedder’s demo tape showed up from San Diego.
- At the 2000 Roskilde Festival in Denmark, nine fans were crushed to death during Pearl Jam’s set. The band thought about ending completely after that night.
Watch “Pearl Jam Twenty”
You can watch “Pearl Jam Twenty” on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Ratings:
- My Rating: 92/100
- IMDB Rating: 8.2/10
- Rotten Tomatoes Ratings: 100/100 (Users); 68/100 (Critics)
Director’s Note: “Pearl Jam Twenty” is directed by Cameron Crowe, who was the perfect guy for this job. He was a teenage music journalist before he became a filmmaker, and he clearly knows how to get rock stars to drop the armor.
Release Date: September 10, 2011 at the Toronto International Film Festival; later aired on PBS “American Masters” on October 21, 2011.
Other Unique Stuff
- The tension between Kurt Cobain and Pearl Jam gets more attention here than in most music docs. Cobain saw Pearl Jam as too commercial early on, while Pearl Jam felt trapped by the same fame machine Nirvana hated too.
- The Ticketmaster war was not just a side protest. Pearl Jam willingly damaged their own touring power and revenue trying to fight service fees. Few huge bands have ever intentionally made life harder on themselves like that.
Wrap Up:
“Pearl Jam Twenty” is for anyone who likes rock docs with real grief, real fights, and real backstage footage. It made me like Pearl Jam more because it shows how much they survived, not just how big they got.
Thanks for reading!
Heather Fenty, Guest Writer, Daily Doc