I dunno about the idea of cloying for credibility as far as the Ticketmaster thing is concerned - they fired a member around that time at least partially because he disagreed with the idea. I mean, that is a move you want to be able to justify.
I said "not fully comfortable" because I recognise that Pearl Jam seemed to always want to be that sort of stadium-filling band. I mean, fair enough. I want to be a band that fills up clubs on a regular basis, and if I accomplished that I'd feel pretty damn comfortable. They just seem like the sort of dudes, based solely on their actions as a band, who achieved huge success and realised that means dealing with some of the absolute dregs of the record industry as far as scruples are concerned. As a result, their biography reads like an admittedly futile attempt to reject the system which gives the complete psychopaths who are involved in a business-related capacity with major labels such extraordinary clout.
So that's what I meant to say. I don't think they're neccessarily whining about "Oh dang we're big now we didn't want this," more "Oh dang we're big and these are problems we didn't expect and these are things that no human person should have to deal with really, why don't we try and change it." Not a huge difference but still an important one.
