Pearl Jam | Main Square Festival

The main reason for my trip to Lille was to go to the Main Square Festival in Arras to see Pearl Jam. I was a huge fan of Pearl Jam in the 90s but never got a chance to see them play live.

I was hoping to see Pearl Jam play in Paris but for whatever reason, they are only playing in a few festivals around Europe, they are not doing any concerts on their own. So I booked my tickets to see them in Arras and arranged to stay in Lille for a few days to check out the city.

The festival started at 2pm but I really couldn’t see myself standing around all day, listening to bands I barely know so I got there at 9pm, just in time to see Ben Harper.

I’m not at all a fan of Ben Harper and only recognised a couple of the songs he played. Towards the end of his set, Eddie Vedder joined him on stage to sing Under Pressure, which was pretty cool and was probably the most popular song in his set, lol. Eddie Vedder > Ben Harper

Pearl Jam started their set at 11:30pm and they played for 90 minutes. They were brilliant. I can’t believe I have never seen them live before, especially seeing as they have toured a lot over the years. They played a couple of newer songs I hadn’t heard before but other than that, they played a lot of their most popular songs from Ten, Vs, and Vitalogy including:

Black
Alive
Jeremy
Corduroy
Even Flow
State of Love and Trust

Ben Harper joined Pearl Jam to play Red Mosquito during the encore. It seems like this is a pretty regular thing for them. I guess a lot of the bands end up playing in the same festivals.

This was one of the best concerts I’ve ever seen but that’s not surprising seeing as they are one of my favourite bands of all time. Eddie Vedder was brilliant as were the rest of the band. I didn’t really follow Pearl Jam that closely after the mid-90s so was surprised to learn that Matt Cameron (ex-Soundgarden drummer) is now the drummer for Pearl Jam. I was even a bigger fan of Soundgarden so it was great to see Matt Cameron playing once again.

I didn’t get any good photos at the festival as I only had my iPhone with me so this is all I got: