Pearl Jam released Vitalogy, their third album together, in late 1994. Some fans got an early listen to the record, which was released on vinyl on Nov. 22 of that year, two weeks before its mainstream release on all other formats on Dec. 6.
To celebrate, UCR has your chance to win a special Vitalogy prize pack featuring the album in high resolution audio on Blu-ray, plus a vinyl copy of the record and a Vitalogy t-shirt. As a bonus, we’ll toss in a stack of official bootleg concerts from the band’s current Dark Matter tour.
For your chance to win, simply enter your name, email and phone number into the entry form at the top of this page. You will be added to UCR’s daily newsletter mailing list. The contest ends Nov. 29, 2024 at 11:59pm EST.
Ultimate Classic Rock Nights will also mark the milestone on Friday, Nov. 22 at 10pm EST with a special broadcast looking back at the album. Longtime band associate Brett Eliason joins us to share his memories from the time period. Eliason first joined forces with Pearl Jam on July 4, 1991, nearly two months before their debut album Ten was released, so he found himself witnessing their entire rise to worldwide fame.
Pearl Jam played a number of memorable shows in 1994, while they were touring in support of their then-current album Vs., which had arrived the previous year. A Boston date at the Orpheum in April featured a set list that Eliason and other members of the band’s staff had selected. That same month, they played a now-legendary concert in Atlanta, Ga. at the Fox Theatre that was broadcast nationally on radio stations in the United States. Even as they were continuing to promote the Vs. album on tour, they were also writing and recording and starting to play songs live that eventually would help to form the core of Vitalogy. Future fan favorites like “Better Man,” “Not for You” and “Immortality” are among the tracks that began to filter into the set lists during the Vs. run.
Listen to Pearl Jam’s ‘Better Man’
READ MORE: Underrated Pearl Jam Songs
“One of things that Kelly Curtis, their manager, used to do with them and with others, was before you even went in to make a record, he’d ask them to go do a tour,” Eliason recalls. “Even if it was just a handful of shows. It made a lot of sense. When you play those things live, you vet them. You work out some bugs. You find that natural live energy behind it as well. So Vitalogy was steeped in that. They were doing a lot of playing in the room together, with just monitors around them. They were really live performances in the studio and that kind of thing. That adds a different dimension and an exciting dimension to it as well.”
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