Pearl Jam in Hyde Park: what of grunge?

Summer is the time for festivals. The epic Glastonbury is going on, with a line up headed by Stevie Wonder. Stevie Wonder is also performing today as part of the three day Hard Rock Calling festival in Hyde Park, London. I was there yesterday, to hear Pearl Jam and a host of 'lesser' bands, including Ben Harper and The Hives.
Photographer: Peter Trainor

I went with my son, who joined me specially to see Pearl Jam - he is currently teaching English to foreign students at the American School in Surrey, throughout the summer.Viks was born the year Pearl Jam got together. When he was a kid I used to take him to rock concerts quite regularly. I was not heavily into grunge back in the 1990s, I was already in my  thirties, so I am not part of  the grunge generation, but I was aware of it and aware of Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, as well as the obvious Nirvana - I discovered Alice in Chains much later.

Photographer: C. Desir

When Viks turned fifteen he fell in love with  rock music and grunge in particular. He began to play it at home quite regularly and I got into it.  I was able to recognise the huge debt  bands like Soundgarden owed to Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. Anyway, all this is to say that Pearl Jam speaks to me as much as it does to Viks, despite the generation gap.

Photographer: Marcello Pozzetti

Rock concerts today are not what they used to be (of course I would say this, would I not?). They are a tamer affair. Bands know exactly what to play, mindful of iTunes downloads. The element of unpredictability that hovered around earlier rock music concerts has been totally superseded.

Pearl Jam are a class act, a very sophisticated one. The fan base that someone like Stevie Wonder has is very different indeed. Today Hyde Park will be flooded and there will be people in their sixties, even their early seventies who will be there to cheer Stevie Wonder. Yesterday I was among the oldest audience members. My son met some friends of his and proudly introduced me to them. They were positively shocked to see me there. Viks explained that he owed his knowledge of rock music - and he is a keen guitarist - to me 'my mum started me off when I was barely seven', he said . They thought I was  unusual and regarded me with some awe.


Photographer: Paddy Johnston

We loitered for a while and then pushed our way forward to be as close as possible to the stage when Pearl Jam began playing. They were brilliant, as could only be expected. By the time I went back home I had nearly lost my voice. I admired Matt Cameron's polished drumming, McCready on lead, Ament and Gossard on bass and rhythm guitar respectively were incredibly accomplished and I truly loved Eddie Vedder's singing. Their keyboard player, not part of the band,  sported hair as long and as white as mine, something I pointed out with glee to my younger companions. They did not play 'Jeremy', one of my favourites - perhaps mindful of the recent Cumbrian tragedy in the UK? but they did play 'Alive' which I absolutely love.

On the way back home - Viks had to leave immediately after the gig as he was due back to his school in Egham - I could not help reflect on the grunge phenomenon. Grunge is dead - quite literally so, as so many of the key players have met their physical death through drug addiction and cannot be resurrected.  The so called grunge bands hate the term, it was very much a media invention - remember MTV?  What there is to say is that  the grunge bands brought something different to music, at a time when rock music had become so very stultifying and stale. Mainstream bands made you want to puke - I went totally off rock music in the 80s. Suddenly there were bands whose lineage went back to the best rock bands of the 60s and 70s and who would write songs full of angst about reality and the pain of living e.g 'Alive'  is about incest and child sexual  abuse, and whose music had a melodic and rhythmic sophistication  that had not been heard in a longtime.



The 'grunge' lyrics were written by troubled souls with talent and sensitivity and were not about a made up and sanitised world. I dont think that grunge can ever really  die. It was motivated by  and was about passion, poetry and escape:  as such  it represents  a new take on Romanticism, hailing back to  Jim Morrison and further back to the French poet Rimbaud.



(All photos , unless otherwise stated, modelled by Alex B.)

Comments

  1. Hi Rudhi and welcome to my blog. I hope yoy have enjoyed it so far. See you around

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  2. Excelente blog y tu cuerpo muy sugerente.

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  3. Me gustaría tener tu cuerpo desnudo en uno de mis poemas.

    Lessen

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  4. I dont know what to make of these comments. Perhaps you would care to explain further?

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  5. Sounds like you were definitely a "cool mom" that night! :)

    I do love those Michael Culhane pics of you and other models; such beautiful shapes and wonderful sense of passion.

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  6. Thank you, I love them too. Yes I was a 'cool' mum. And it was great to sing along with my son the opening of Alive "Son, she said, have I got a little story for you..."

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