Legacy
While Nirvana had brought grunge to the mainstream in the early 1990s, Pearl Jam quickly outsold them, and became "the most popular American rock & roll band of the '90s" according to Allmusic. Pearl Jam has been described as "modern rock radio's most influential stylists – the workmanlike midtempo chug of songs like "Alive" and "Even Flow" just melodic enough to get moshers singing along." The band inspired and influenced a number of bands, ranging from Silverchair to Puddle of Mudd and The Strokes. Pearl Jam has outlasted many of its contemporaries in the grunge scene such as Nirvana, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden.
Pearl Jam has been praised for its rejection of rock star excess and its insistence on backing causes it believes in. Music critic Jim DeRogatis said in the aftermath of the band's battle with Ticketmaster that it "proved that a rock band which isn't comprised of greed heads can play stadiums and not milk the audience for every last dime... it indicated that idealism in rock 'n' roll is not the sole province of those '60s bands enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame." Eric Weisbard of Spin said in 2001, "The group that was once accused of being synthetic grunge now seem as organic and principled a rock band as exists." In a 2005 USA Today reader's poll, Pearl Jam was voted the greatest American rock band of all time. In April 2006, Pearl Jam was awarded the prize for "Best Live Act" in Esquire's Esky Music Awards. The blurb called Pearl Jam "the rare superstars who still play as though each show could be their last." Pearl Jam's fanbase following has been compared to that of the Grateful Dead's, with Rolling Stone magazine stating that Pearl Jam "toured incessantly and became one of rock's great arena acts, attracting a fanatical, Grateful Dead-like cult following with marathon, true-believer shows in the vanishing spirit of Bruce Springsteen, the Who and U2."
When asked about Pearl Jam's legacy in a 2000 interview, Vedder said, "I think at some point along the way we began feeling we wanted to give people something to believe in because we all had bands that gave that to us when we needed something to believe in. That was the big challenge for us after the first record and the response to it. The goal immediately became how do we continue to be musicians and grow and survive in view of all this... The answers weren’t always easy, but I think we found a way." The band have also been credited for inspiring the indie rock scene of 90s-era urban Pakistan, that has since evolved into a rich rock music culture in the country.
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“What is popularly called fame is nothing but an empty name and a legacy from paganism.”
—Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1466–1536)