Pearl Jam Late Night Series: Ep. 9 – Letterman 2002

The next appearance up in our Late Night Series comes from their promotion of the Riot Act album with not one, but two back-to-back performances on Letterman. I Am Mine and Save You were the two big songs that they were trotting out at the time, but it’s the era that’s much more interesting than the songs. As we’ve studied down this path through their broadcast TV lineage, there are all of these pinpoints where you can mark where the band was at in their career. Coming off an almost two year hiatus following the Roskilde tragedy and 9/11, the band had been out of the public eye, and it would remain that way for most of 2003 after Riot Act didn’t sell as well as the previous six records. They were in the weird stage of not exactly being a legacy band yet and not being anywhere close to feeling fresh. So they went out there and introducing an old Hawaiian organist while changing some important lyrics on Save You. It’s all here, enjoy the episode!