Pearl Jam: When Ten Turns Twenty

Amongst 'serious' musos, admitting that you like Pearl Jam is worse than confessing in church that actually you only religiously follow Hollyoaks. This is a band who not only had the indecency to outsell Nirvana, but then seemingly turned their back on the sound that had turned them into global superstars.

Instead of fitting into the 'moderate rock' pigeonhole ascribed to them by Everett True and other music journalists of an era gone by, they had the audacity to start name-dropping Fugazi; they recorded an album with Neil Young; they picked a fight with Ticketmaster over their monopolistic practices; they released increasingly experimental and challenging albums into the new millennium. It was as if Pearl Jam was the sportiest, most handsome kid at school who then decided to wear black nail varnish and listen to metal; while the football team was unhappy, the Goths were even more suspicious.

Over the years, music publications would hail every new Pearl Jam album with increasingly desperate proclamations of 'a return to the mainstream sound of Ten'. An ironic statement, given that the band were never that happy with the mix of that debut in the first place. “Ten has a little bit more of an 80s production," admits bassist Jeff Ament. "When Brendan [O' Brien] mixed Vs., I asked him ‘can you remix Ten just for me so I can listen to a drier, more direct version of those songs?’”

Such unhappiness has led to a luxurious re-release of their first album, which includes multiple vinyl versions, notebooks, a DVD of their legendary MTV Unplugged performance, and a cassette copy of their original demo. Outside of the recent re-releases of Pavement's back catalogue, such lavish attention to detail is unusual, although it fits in with the ethos of the band, as Ament explains: “Early on I found out it was better to make bad art yourself than to have somebody else create what they thought would represent you. Ten was the one time in Pearl Jam where the finished product really wasn’t 100% what we intended”.

Of course, if the band hadn't been as successful, they'd never have so easily sustained their own path, as Ament recognises: “At the time we thought that selling millions of records was the biggest curse ever, but in retrospect that power actually allowed us a lot of freedom and allowed us to do things in a way that probably 99% of the major label bands that were out there didn’t get to do.”

Hitting that level of success so quickly bore its brunt on the band, as guitarist Mike McCready relates. “It happened so fast for all of us, out of the blue. It was kind of mind shattering. It was affecting us all in certain different ways and we weren’t talking to each other, we were partying too much - Ed [Vedder - vocals] was on the cover of Time magazine”.

Pearl Jam's core ethos - depicted by the five team players on the cover of their first album - was in danger of being smothered by success. At the behest of Vedder and guitarist Stone Gossard, the band turned their back on making music videos and walked away from the kind of glory most stadium acts revel in. Not everyone was convinced by the move. “The idea of pulling back at the height of our popularity was not exciting to me at the time," McCready reveals. "I wanted to continue to ride it and play the game, to do videos and go on tour, not throw away this great opportunity. But in hindsight it was the right idea.”

Such willingness to do what was right for the long-term health of the band, as opposed to indulging in short-term opportunities, was in character with an outfit fronted by a surfer who had an epiphany about the lyrics and melody to their most famous songs whilst in the ocean. Gossard had first heard about the singer via an off-the-cuff remark by former Chili and future Pearl Jam drummer Jack Irons, referring to 'Crazy Eddie' down in California. Gossard posted a demo to Vedder, who cut his own vocals to it, and sent it back up to Seattle. “For Jeff it was instantaneous," says Gossard. "He loved it and realised how good he was. For me it was a longer process - I was probably slow. He was clearly a good singer but I didn’t necessarily get it.”

Once Vedder flew up to Seattle, however, there was little doubt as to the chemistry amongst the band as the singer insisted on going straight from the plane to the rehearsal room. “Eddie was mellow," remembers Gossard. "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.” McCready's recollection is of a man “short, unassuming, but when he opened his mouth he had this thunderous voice and I was stoked. There were 5 guys in a band, everybody was firing on all cylinders. I had no idea it was going to be huge, but I knew we were good.”

Fast forward two decades, and Pearl Jam are still writing, recording, and touring. After eight studio albums have seen them comfortably into their middle age, questions of how much juice is left in the tank arise. While current drummer Matt Cameron "doesn't want to become the Rolling Stones,” Gossard pictures the scene: “It would be thrilling if we all looked at each other 10-20 years from now and went how did we do this? We’d have to play a crotchety Even Flow with disco brushes," he laughs. "Our fans are gonna be so old they’re not going to be able to hear us anyway!”

The dichotomy between not wanting to be rocking geriatrics who have become their own covers band, while still appreciating the affections that they receive from their fan base, is emblematic of an outfit that has always walked an awkward line between Gen-X fury and glowing sentimentality. Perhaps Pearl Jam are disliked in certain quarters not because they're mainstream, but because they refused to play the game everyone expected of them; the remix of Ten might not change many minds, but it fits right in with their modus operandi of taking to the park in their own fashion - of playing football with black nail varnish on.