Eddie Vedder ‘Wasn’t Paid’ For Pearl Jam Album

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Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam didn’t make money off of No Code, according to Jeff Ament in a new Kyle Meredith interview.

I imagine the label when you turned in the ‘No Code,’ I imagine that wasn’t the most enthusiastic, ‘Yay, this is what we get to press!’ There’s so much going on.

“Going all the way back to the second record [‘Vs.’], we were sort of pushing the boundaries. I think on ‘Vs.’ we were like, ‘We don’t want a jewel case, we don’t want plastic.’

“They were like, ‘Well, we don’t really do that.’ And then they came up with these two options, and those second, third, and fourth records, those packages ate heavily into our profits. For ‘No Code,’ I don’t know if we made any money on that record.”

It’s such an interesting record to listen to these days too because, at least from the stories that I’ve read and heard online in the interviews, and everything, this is sort of ‘the back against the wall’ record. It feels like maybe there was nothing beforehand, it was one of those where it was something created from nothing at that moment.

“Yeah. There are a couple songs on that record that Ed [Vedder, vocals] came with, but for the most part, that record was kind of written in the studio. For me, when I think of that record, I just think about what a force [drummer] Jack Irons was in that record, and how seriously he took his drum parts.

“And it’s super obvious on ‘In My Tree,’ ‘Who You Are,’ and ‘Present Tense.’ Certainly, at that point, it let us know that we could even go more different directions sonically and songwriting-wise, and I think we lean on that pretty hard, still.

“I think every record we hope that there’s going to be a few songs that stretch to some other place in the musical landscape. It was a hard record to make because we were horrible communicators at that point.

“And at the same time, it was the awesome part of making music because we just sat in a room and started playing, and we didn’t tell each other what to play, we were just doing it. But on the other end of it, there was a lot going on that we weren’t talking about, so we’re lucky we got through it.” Ultimate-Guitar transcribed his comments.