Pearl Jam: Five Against the World
At the heart of Pearl Jam is the relationship between Gossard and Vedder. “I consider us to be very different people,” says Gossard, whose razor-edged wit is far different from Vedder’s deadpan irony. “Almost polarized in a lot of ways. I mean, name any given issue, and we’ll take opposite sides of it. We give each other the total different end of the spectrum so we can always somehow find the middle. My goal, what I really want to achieve, is not to need him. Because he is needed by so many people who don’t really understand him.”
Later, Vedder grabs a pitcher of beer at a bar next door, the Nightlite, and unwinds from the rehearsal. He reflects on singing “Black” for the first time in months. “There are certain songs that come from emotion,” he says. “It’s got nothing to do with melody or timing or even words; it has to do with the emotion behind the song. You can’t put out 50 percent. You have to sing them from a feeling. Like ‘Alive’ and ‘Jeremy’ to this day – and ‘Black.’ Those songs, they tear me up.”
Ament is sitting next to him. The two have not been out together socially since the 1992 Lollapalooza tour. They share the easy camaraderie of music lovers. “My relationship with the band,” Vedder says, “began as a love affair on the phone with Jeff.” Soon the two musicians are recalling the early history of Pearl Jam, the scuffling days of only two and a half years ago.
It had all begun with an unassuming tape marked stone gossard demos 91. The guitar-god magazines have only recently discovered it, but most Pearl Jam songs began life as a Gossard riff. One of his early favorites was a song called “Dollar Short,” an unfinished track that he’d started working on back when he and bassist Ament were in Mother Love Bone. Love Bone was the promising Seattle hard-rock band they’d formed after the breakup of their previous group, grunge pioneers Green River. When Love Bone singer/songwriter Andrew Wood died in 1990 of a tragic heroin overdose, Ament – the Montana-born son of a barber – downshifted, playing around town with a group called the War Babies and returning to his other love, graphic arts. Gossard – a Seattle native whose father is a lawyer – barely put down his guitar, playing constantly, moving away from the trippy atmospherics of Love Bone and toward a hard-edged groove. Part of the new blueprint was “Dollar Short.”
Eventually Gossard called in McCready, an explosive lead guitarist who had been so bummed out by the breakup of his own Seattle band, Shadow, that he’d started turning into a Republican – literally. He’d cut his hair, was working in a video store and was reading a book by archconservative Barry Goldwater. “I was becoming a staunch conservative,” McCready says, “because I was so depressed.” Gossard saw him more as his new secret weapon for the band he wanted to form. “Whatever you’re playing,” says Gossard, “‘Cready comes in and lights the fuse.”
As the Seattle sound started to gather momentum around them – Nirvana were about to enter the major-label arena, Sub Pop Records was flourishing – Gossard and McCready jammed in the attic room of Gossard’s parents’ house. That room had already been the musical hothouse for Green River and Mother Love Bone. When Ament joined the Gossard-McCready jams, inspiration struck again. “I knew we had a band,” McCready says, “when we started playing that song ‘Dollar Short.’ “
Dave Krusen joined the band later, playing on Ten, but soon left to deal with some domestic problems. He was replaced by Abbruzzese, who had been playing in a funk band and co-hosting a radio show, Music We Like, in Houston. At first, Abbruzzese was tentative about playing rock full time; after two shows, he’d tattooed Ament’s stick-figure Pearl Jam logo on his shoulder.
Today, listening to Gossard’s original ’91 demos is not unlike hearing Ten without the vocals – powerful but incomplete. The missing piece, it turned out, was in San Diego. Originally from Evanston, Ill., Vedder – better known on the San Diego music scene as “the guy who never slept” – had brought a Midwestern work ethic to the sunny beach community. Working at hyperspeed, laboring days at a petroleum company to finance his budding career as a singer and songwriter, Vedder had befriended Jack Irons, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Irons passed along Gossard’s tape.
The demo tape from Seattle contained five instrumentals, Vedder remembers, but there was something about that one song, the one with that great bridge, that was triggering things that Vedder had kept long contained. It all came to a head one morning in the fog as he was surfing, the morning “Dollar Short” became a song called “Alive.”
Vedder raced back to the Mission Beach apartment of his longtime girlfriend, Beth Liebling. Working from yellow Post-it pads lifted from his job, Vedder taped himself singing over three of the instrumentals. Together the three songs told a story, as Vedder recalls today, “based on things that had happened, and some I imagined.” The “mini opera” tape was carefully designed by Vedder, the graphics Xeroxed at work and the package entitled Mamasan.
Sitting in his apartment in Seattle, Ament listened to the tape three times and picked up a phone. “Stone,” he said, “you better get over here.”
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