When grunge music exploded into the mainstream of popular culture in the early 1990s, it was Pearl Jam, along with fellow Seattle band Nirvana, who filled the column inches and the billboard charts. While Nirvana's September 1991 debut Nevermind generated an immediate media frenzy, it was Pearl Jam's more orthodox blues-rock album, Ten, released almost simultaneously, that would eventually overtake it in sales—over ten million copies in the United States alone by the end of 1996. The breakthrough single from the album, "Jeremy," won four MTV awards, and recognition for a video that tried to create a coherent story for lead singer Eddie Vedder's typically elusive and obtuse lyrics. What was clear from the video was the sense of pain and anger that characterized Pearl Jam's music: songs that helped recharge rock 'n' roll, a seemingly exhausted genre that had been slipping in both market share and...