A curtain call for MoPop's Pearl Jam exhibit

Their sound helped define a generation, and put the Seattle grunge scene at the center of the music industry in the 1990s.

Somehow both raw and refined, gritty and cerebral, Pearl Jam changed rock music.

The band emerged from obscurity to become one of the most successful rock bands of the last quarter century, selling an estimated 60 million albums worldwide.

Their music has influenced artists like The White Stripes and The Strokes. And they’re still selling out venues today.

Since 2018, Seattle’s Museum of Pop Culture has given fans a firsthand look at the band’s journey, featuring more than 1,000 artifacts directly from Pearl Jam’s members.

The band has always been self-examining in a way that no other Seattle band ever was, said Charles R. Cross, a Seattle-based music journalist and author.

"The material at this exhibit is a wide and very complete, you know, depiction of everything about the band, they saved everything from set lists to cassettes to stage props," Cross said. "No other band did that. There is not an archive like this for Nirvana or for Soundgarden, or for Alice in Chains."

Cross said among the T-shirts, guitars, and posters sprinkled throughout the exhibit hall, you really get a sense of what set Pearl Jam apart from the crowd.

But it’s the final curtain call for the exhibit — after five years, "Pearl Jam: Home and Away" will close on April 23.

Jacob McMurray, director of curatorial collections and exhibits for MoPop, said the exhibit began with the band's plan to perform two shows at Safeco Field in the summer of 2018.

"This was April of 2018 that they approached us, and we had already had the calendar planned out the budgets; everything," McMurray said. "But, you know, it was like an opportunity, it's like, this is awesome opportunity, let's try to do something."

In just four months, MoPop pulled an exhibit together, all while the band was on tour in Europe. Many of the artifacts didn't arrive at the museum until weeks before opening day.

But the crunch was worth it. McMurray said the museum has more artifacts in "Pearl Jam: Home and Away" than in any other show MoPop has put on.

Those artifacts include important relics of the band's history, including a cassette tape that got Eddie Vedder his job as lead singer.

"Eddie, over a weekend ended up using this four track right next to us to record his own vocal onto the instrumental demos, and sent it back to Jeff [Ament] and Stone [Gossard]," McMurray said. "And that's what got him the job as the vocalist. So kind of kind of crazy that, you know, it's just a cassette tape, but it's like the cassette."

Fans still have time to check out "Pearl Jam: Home and Away" before everything gets packed up and put back into the archives.

MoPop is hosting a closing party this Friday, April 14, and the exhibit itself is open until April 23.

You can get tickets for both events at MoPop.org.

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