Pearl Jam Explain Ten (Part One)

The folks at Sony BMG sent us this mind-bogglingly long Q&A with grunge survivors Pearl Jam in honour of the reissue of their Ten album, so we're just going to reprint it for you in three parts over the next three days...

Seattle has always been out of the mainstream American rock circuit, so how did the scene develop in the 1980s?
Stone Gossard: Everyone just got in bands. There wasn't a lot of trying to do anything other than that nobody was getting signed. A lot of us couldn't play! Whatever we had we tried to bring to the table, and that made some weird combinations of people playing together, so everybody was going for broke in the sense of, "What have you got to lose?"

Matt Cameron: Seattle was isolated, so a lot of national known big-time rock acts wouldn't necessarily come up to Seattle and Portland. That forced the northwest music scene to look inward and create stuff on our own turf, play our own clubs.

At the time, the '80s underground in the U.S. was definitely getting a lot more organised with bands like Black Flag and Husker Du, Minor Threat, Butthole Surfers — they were able to create a circuit that had nothing to do with major labels and the known music industry at that time. What our music scene really plugged into was that do-it-yourself spirit.

Jeff and Stone, you started playing together in Green River back in 1984. What were your early influences?
SG: My influences were a lot of FM rock and pop on the radio. Simon And Garfunkel and disco. You couldn't help but be affected by disco. Even if you weren't at the time in love with disco, it was everywhere.

I missed British punk. I never really understood it until I started listening to the Sex Pistols in '84 and I went, "Whoa, this is a rock band." Heavy metal was huge, too. Motorhead was the ultimate Seattle band, the lynchpin memories of how much you loved Black Sabbath when you were eight years old.

It's sometimes claimed that Green River invented grunge.
Jeff Ament: (chuckles) In the last year, we've played four shows with Green River, and while it's been great to go back, we've come to the conclusion that we were really just ripping off Black Flag and Motorhead and The Stooges. I guess that's what ended up being grunge, so we probably owe Iggy and Lemmy and [Black Flag guitarist] Greg Ginn some royalties from that era. They haven't asked yet!

In early 1990, the future of the Seattle rock scene appeared to be Mother Love Bone, in which Stone and Jeff wrote many of the songs. The band was fronted by the charismatic Andrew Wood and was signed to a major label. Days before the release of the band's debut album, Apple, Wood took a heroin overdose. He died a few days later from a cerebral haemorrhage. When Andrew died, did you feel your chance was gone?
JA: I felt like maybe that was my one shot.

I hung out with Stone a little right after Andy died. We'd go on long bike rides, sit around, have coffee and talk about anything other than being in a band together. I tried to make some sort of sense about what I was gonna do and if Stone and I were ever going to do anything together again.

A friend of mine, Richard Stuverud, was in a band called War Babies. Their bass player had just quit and he said, "We have a show in three days. Can you learn these songs and play the show with us?" I did and I had such a great time, better than the last days in Mother Love Bone.

Right around the same time, Stone said that he and Mike [McCready, guitar] had been playing some new songs that he'd written and did I want to play on the demos that they were gonna cut?

SG: I loved writing songs. I had the bug, so I was just gonna keep writing. We had some really tough circumstances, but at the same time I loved waking up, writing songs and playing in a band — particularly if it's stuff you can play.

How did you meet Mike?
JA: I ran into the singer of Shadow in the parking lot behind the restaurant that I worked in and he invited me to their show. When I got off work I walked in and Mike was on the stage by himself playing a guitar solo a la Eddie Van Halen.

Mike McCready [laughs]: He shuddered. Even though Jeff was in the punk rock scene and I was in the metal scene, it was a small scene up here in Seattle back in the early '80s, so it was hard not to run into somebody.

By the end of the '80s, I'd been through the ringer of the music business. I'd been playing in bands since I was 11, and we moved down to Los Angeles in '86 trying to make it down there with Shadow. We played for about a year, partied, ran out of money and I became totally disillusioned with rock 'n' roll.

I got Crohn's disease, which just brought me to my knees, so I changed everything. I just knew it was never gonna happen. I went to the illogical extreme. So I went back to school in Seattle, cut off all my hair and I was reading these Barry Goldwater books. That lasted for about a year, then I heard Muddy Waters playing on The Band's Last Waltz and started playing music again. Like, phew.

I heard that Stone was looking for me. He saw me playing at a party jamming to a Stevie Ray Vaughan record when Mother Love Bone was still happening — so for me it was a huge opportunity.

In my mind, Stone had made it 'cause he had a record contract. He'd already put out records, he knows the game and that was the unattainable thing for me. Stone and Jeff were rock stars around Seattle. I had to ask Stone after we started jamming for about a week — are we gonna start a band? What do you want to do? 'Cause he was keeping everything very close to his chest. It was an exciting time... brand new... it was a twist of fate for me.

The trio of Stone, Jeff and Mike quickly put together some song ideas. Matt Cameron, drummer with Soundgarden and a stalwart of the Seattle scene, was recruited to play on the demo tapes. Eight years later, he joined Pearl Jam as their full-time drummer. The trio were still looking for a singer and a drummer.
MC: Obviously I couldn't predict what it would become, but they were all very well-structured songs that you could definitely hear vocals on top. It was just a fun thing to do as I was between tours. It didn't sound like Mother Love Bone to me. It seemed like Stone was going for something different.

SG: I expected that we were going to find somebody [to sing] in Seattle, only because so far that's the way it had all worked. We loved The Uplift Mofo Party Plan, the [Red Hot] Chilli Peppers' record and the drumming on that record.

Then, because we'd had some success in terms of getting signed and we were like, "OK maybe we should be bold enough to call up [drummer] Jack Irons and see what he's doing?" because we heard at that time he wasn't playing with the Chilli Peppers anymore. He was playing with Eleven — and I literally just asked him on they way out the door "If you know of any singers let us know." So he said, "Yeah, I do. I know a guy. Crazy Eddie."

Eddie Vedder: I was more familiar with Soundgarden and Mudhoney than Mother Love Bone. Maybe that was good, so it didn't come with a whole lot of weight attached to it.

I played the tape at work on the midnight shift at the gas station, and there was something different about it. It stood out musically, though I wasn't sure how I would fit into it, but the songs stuck in my head that night. The next morning, I had a surf and it was still in my head.

That's something about surfing. The last song you hear before you surf best be a good one because it's gonna stick in your head. You've got an hour or two to listen to it while you're out there. I listened to the instrumentals before I jumped in the water, and this idea started forming of a little three-song mini-opera in the spirit of Pete Townshend [The Who] or Roger Waters [Pink Floyd].

When I got out of the water I wrote a few songs. It wasn't any kind of audition tape, just an art project. I can't imagine that I spent more than three or four hours on the three songs 'cause I sent the tape off on my way back to work that night.

What was your reaction to Eddie's songs?
SG: For Jeff, it was instantaneous. He loved it, and a lot of people realised how good he was. For me, it was a longer process. I was probably slow. He was clearly a good singer. I didn't necessarily get it. You can hear a song in your head, but when somebody actually brings you back a finished vocal you can be like, "Wow, that's a different approach."

When Eddie flew up to Seattle, he insisted on going straight from the plane into the rehearsal studio. How did you get on?
SG: Eddie wasn't a drunk. He was mellow. He brought us gifts. He was very thoughtful and very different and that was a great change, so we dove right into it and wrote a bunch of songs. Then we knew it was on. You write your songs and then you've got 'em, then you go out and play, try to put yourself into 'em and hope for the best.

EV: Gifts? I couldn't afford nothing fancy, so I must have made a collage on the plane. That was back when you could bring a razorblade on airplanes. I used to keep a knife and glue stick with me and make art projects.

MM: The first time Ed came to the studio he was wearing a Butthole Surfers T-shirt. He had long hair, but it was shaved at the side, cut off shorts and Doc Marten boots that were fairly worn in and a tan because he was living in California.

I had already heard him sing on his demo, and I knew he had a fantastic, exciting voice so I was wondering what this guy looked like. He was my size. He was short, unassuming, but when he opened his mouth he had this thunderous voice and I was stoked. Because he was still feeling the situation out he was very stoic and staid, didn't move very much as he does now. He would sing with this incredible voice and just stand there. I was blown away.

I knew this was one of those moments that only come once in a band's career. He was the missing piece. There were five guys in a band, everybody was firing on all cylinders and Ed was a guy that could lead us to the promised land. I had no idea it was gonna be as huge as it did, but I knew we were good.

JA: When we played with Ed we knew there was something happenin'. I felt connected to what he was saying, how he was singing and the voice he brought to the band. I felt more connected to that than any other band I'd ever been in. somewhere deep inside I knew that he gave us something for people to respond to it.

EV: Jeff and I had talked on the phone a few times so we had been establishing a relationship, and Mike... well, I just couldn't believe him. I'd never been around a guitar player who could play like that. Stone is a very confident player. They had a stronger foundation than any band I had ever known.

I was looking for comments on the vocals and the lyrics. I wrote "Jeremy" that week, so was it OK if I dealt with this kid committing suicide? But [laughs] they were more concerned with the drummer Dave Krusen and the tempos.

I remember taking the tapes home every night to a little hotel that I stayed in down the street. It was dark and rainy, typical Seattle. I just remember it sounded different, but with elements of all the things I appreciated in music. It had a groove that was its own animal, which evolved in a way that I hadn't seen or heard with other people's songs. It had its own identity.

I was in Seattle for a week, and the next Monday I was back at work, but I had this tape we had recorded, evidence that something did occur. It took a couple of weeks for it to sink in and then they were saying, "Are you ready to rearrange your life and move up to Seattle?"

This was the first time I hadn't had a job since I was 15 and I was gonna get paid, live in a basement, be in a band and apparently make a record. I was pretty confident in what I could offer the group but suddenly I was going to be filling up a similar space in the community as their last singer [Andrew Wood]. It felt tricky for a bit.

Thanks to the generosity of spirit of the people like Chris Cornell, Matt... all the Soundgarden and Mudhoney guys, being welcomed into the neighbourhood went a long way to make me really feel part of the whole thing.

Check here for part two of this interview.