Tour
Pearl Jam promoted the album with tours in the United States in the fall of 1993 and the spring of 1994. The fall 1993 tour focused on the Western United States, while the spring 1994 tour focused on the Eastern United States. Industry insiders compared Pearl Jam's tour to the touring habits of Led Zeppelin, in that the band "ignored the press and took its music directly to the fans." During this tour the band set a cap on ticket prices in the attempt to thwart scalpers.
Several songs from the band's third album, Vitalogy, were premiered during this tour. The band's April 3, 1994 concert in Atlanta, Georgia at the Fox Theatre was broadcast live on the radio in the United States. A few days later, the body of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was found in his home in Seattle due to an apparent suicide, which deeply affected Vedder. At the band's April 8, 1994 concert in Fairfax, Virginia at the Patriot Center, Vedder proclaimed, "I don't think any of us would be in this room tonight if it weren't for Kurt Cobain." Vedder later said that "the day that we found out about Kurt...I was just spinning. I was lost and didn't know if we should play, or if we should just go home, or if we should attend the services. I still have some regrets about that, even though in the end it was probably better that we played the last two weeks of the tour. I decided I would play those next two weeks and then I'd never have to play again."
Pearl Jam was outraged when it discovered after a pair of shows in Chicago, Illinois in March 1994 that ticket vendor Ticketmaster had added a service charge to the tickets. Following the tour, the band brought a lawsuit against Ticketmaster that accused them of being a monopoly whose anticompetitive practices allowed markup prices of more than 30%. The band's intention was to get ticket prices lowered for its fans. Pearl Jam's plans for a 1994 summer tour were cancelled as a result of a Ticketmaster boycott.
Read more about this topic: Vs. (Pearl Jam album)
Famous quotes containing the word tour:
“Left Washington, September 6, on a tour through Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Virginia.... Absent nineteen days. Received every where heartily. The country is again one and united! I am very happy to be able to feel that the course taken has turned out so well.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Do you know I believe that [William Jennings] Bryan will force his nomination on the Democrats again. I believe he will either do this by advocating Prohibition, or else he will run on a Prohibition platform independent of the Democrats. But you will see that the year before the election he will organize a mammoth lecture tour and will make Prohibition the leading note of every address.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)