They return to America to find their debut album had surpassed Nirvana's record in sales.
With the dates to promote 'Ten', finally over, the band had planned to play a free gig in the Gas Station Park, in Seattle as sort of a home-coming thanks to all their fans.

The band had originally expected around 7 or 8,000 people to turn up.
However, with 'Ten' now surpassing the 3 million sales mark, it was becoming obvious, that figure would be way up around the 30- 40,000 mark.

Buses had been charted from Alaska, full of kids, and there were scores of fans driving in from all over the west coast, only to hear that the gig had been killed at the last minute, much to the bands' anger, and the fans' dismay.

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The band returned to Europe for several more dates, but the almost un-stoppable rise came to an abrupt holt when Vedder disintegrated in public.

Up until now, each show had been a sold out success.
Things changed when Pearl Jam arrived in Denmark for the Roskilde festival, when in Eddie's own words, this is what happened :

'' We play for a couple of hours. It feels great. We tell the audience we're gonna play till i get dark, which is a joke, of course, cause at that time of the year in Sweden, it doesn't get dark, it doesn't even get dusk.
  Anyway, it's a good show, the audience is great, the whole feeling is great.

And then we get backstage, and Dave the drummer says '' Hey I think my bag is missing.'' We say, hey, be cool, you'll find it.
And then I look around, and my shit is missing.
   The main things are, like, two school composition books. One had lyrics in it, and the other, well, it was real personal, see, I never finished high school. So i guess I've  had to educate myself.  I learn stuff, while I'm traveling, and write down what I learn in these notebooks.''

''They're no big deal to anyone else. But they mean a f**king lot to me, man. It was real personal shit, you know. And someone just walks in while your playing and steals 'em.
  Some f**king asshole just walks up and steals 'em.  That was it for me, that's what cracked me up. The stuff that was stolen was just irreplaceable.''

The next day, at  Roskilde the band were not looking forward to playing and no one was in the right state of mind.

When asked why he ended up swapping punches with festival security, this is what he had to say:

'' Well, first of all, there's like, thirty feet separating the stage and the crowd, which is something I had a problem with, but despite this insane f**king distance, some guy actually manages to get up on stage. I mean, that guy wins. That guy gets a prize.  It's just amazing. Incredible, and to top it all, he does this amazing dive off the stage. Hey! Give him another prize. He deserves it. But what he actually gets is a pretty solid f**king beating.
  ' He jumps off the stage and , like, six huge guys jump him, and they've go them in a headlock and they're pounding on him.  So then i jump off the stage, jump them. They dont know who the f**k I'am, so suddenly, we're all fighting, and I'am f**king livid. This shit isn't supposed to be happening.
A doctor was called, and ordered Eddie to rest immediately. Suffering from complete exhaustion.

Within four weeks,  in September, they had been booked into the Lollapolooza, a 27 gig package, comprising of the  Red Hot Chilli Peppers, Ministry, Ice Cube, Soundgarden and Lush on the main stage.

In October, Eddie accepted a lone invitation to sing with the remaining members of the Doors, whilst they were inducted into the rock and roll hall of fame.

The same month, the band finally got to play the free gig they planned the year before.
The concert cost the band $100,000 but they had no regrets.

It was then into the studio to record the heavily anticipated follow up album to 'TEN'.