Fighting On Pearl Jam Vows To Continue Its Pitched Battle With Ticketmaster Over Service Charges

Rock ‘n’ roll’s heavyweight championship fight isn’t over after all.

Before singing a note at the opening stop of Pearl Jam’s first tour in more than a year, Eddie Vedder stepped to the microphone Friday at the sold-out Casper Events Center to make it clear that the nation’s most popular band hasn’t thrown in the towel in its bitter dispute with Ticketmaster, the nation’s leading concert ticket distributor.

“I guess you’ve heard … they are saying in the papers that we surrendered to Ticketmaster … and that didn’t happen,” Vedder said. “And take my word, that’s not (going to happen).”

As the audience cheered, Vedder and the band went into a nearly two-hour set that delighted the crowd of 9,000, more than half of which had driven hours to get here, an Events Center official estimated. “Pearl Jam or Bust,” read one sign on the window of a car with South Dakota plates.

Vedder’s comments were in response to news media reports in which Pearl Jam’s manager, Kelly Curtis, said the group had given up its attempt to bypass the Los Angeles-based ticket firm after finding it impossible over the past year to book acceptable venues in certain cities without the ticket giant. He suggested the group might work with Ticketmaster if it was the only way to play an area.

Backstage here Friday, Curtis said his remarks were made out of frustration after the band canceled its June 26-27 shows at the Del Mar Fairgrounds near San Diego because last-minute safety concerns were raised by the San Diego County Sheriff’s Department.

Curtis said he mentioned the idea of turning to a Ticketmaster venue as a last resort on the spur of the moment out of his desire to reschedule the shows quickly to avoid disappointing fans in the area.

“(Bassist) Jeff (Ament) and Eddie were furious after reading reports that we had changed our policy, because that was not their intention at all, and we are all in agreement that it is not what we are going to do,” Curtis said.

Pearl Jam, which maintains that Ticketmaster charges fans excessive service charges, filed a memorandum with the U.S. Justice Department in May 1994, arguing that the company holds a monopoly over ticket distribution in the $1 billion U.S. concert business. The government subsequently launched an investigation into the ticket distribution industry.

For its current 12-city tour, the band turned to some of the few venues that do not have exclusive agreements with Ticketmaster and is using ETM Entertainment Network to handle tickets.

Though fans questioned before the Casper concert said they think Pearl Jam’s Ticketmaster stance is worthy, they expressed frustration over not being able to see a full-scale national Pearl Jam tour. Some worried that Vedder was becoming obsessed with Ticketmaster at the expense of playing shows.

Vedder nodded when the comments were repeated to him backstage after the concert.

“I understand how people might think that, but we aren’t obsessed with Ticketmaster,” he said. “Ticketmaster is just one tiny detail in a series of business details that we have to deal with.

“We made a decision long ago about how we want to present our music, what we think is honorable and fair to the fans, and then we turned it over to our representatives to handle it for us. We don’t sit around in a room all day talking about it. We spend our time making music.”