‘Alive’: did Pearl Jam steal their classic solo?
Nothing is truly original. Aside from Kraftwerk’s Autobahn and Suicide’s first album, every record can be dissected to uncover its lineage and heritage of influences. Rock music is the easiest to detect such a chronology, a genre that displays the sum of its parts with every guitar attack and electric strum whether a band realises it or not. While smattered with clashes, reactions, and insurrectionary explosions threatening to destroy the old order more than once, from Chuck Berry to Panic Shack via Jethro Tull, rock’s plugged-in thread remains intact despite the iconoclasm and necessary revolts that illustrate its rich tapestry.
The grunge explosion that thrust Seattle onto the global music map in the early 1990s is often lazily told as some abrupt alternative bang that spontaneously upended hair metal overnight and ushered a new era of ‘authenticity’ unseen since the hippy counterculture.
The truth is there was a well-paved road to Nirvana’s unexpected global conquer. Its roots are found in 1960s garage, AOR classic rock, punk’s incendiary underground, and a decade-long nurturing by left-of-the-dial college radio groups, keeping alternative music alive and well underneath Mötley Crüe‘s obnoxious mugging for MTV’s superficial attention.
One of grunge’s “Big Four”, Pearl Jam, grew from the joint ashes of Mother Love Bone and Green River just as the big labels started to pay attention to the old Washington logging city. Released a month before Nevermind‘s surprise Billboard number one, Pearl Jam saw debut Ten‘s sales skyrocket following Nirvana’s unwitting sea change to the music wave, starting strong with their first and defining single ‘Alive’.
Despite grumbles from the Seattle community, perceiving the band to be merely the same old stadium rock in ripped jeans and a flannel shirt, Pearl Jam’s first single scored the early ’90s as much as ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ or ‘Would?’, winning critical plaudits for Mike McCready’s electric solo.
Like Kurt Cobain and Melvins’ Buzz Osborne, McCready grew up on New York hard rockers Kiss in his youth, studiously paying attention to spaceman Ace Frehley’s guitar licks and learning his first solo by copying ‘She’ from 1975’s Dressed to Kill. McCready would put his affectionate ‘She’ rip-off to good use for ‘Alive’s ripper of a solo, raising eyebrows at Kiss HQ during their ’90s unpainted goateed era.
Years later, McCready ‘fessed up, spilling the beans on his ‘Alive’s solo theft. Tounge-flicking Gene Simmons couldn’t complain, as he revealed to the Pearl Jam guitarist that Frehley helped himself to The Doors’ ‘Five To One’, plucking Robby Krieger’s proto-meal solo virtually note by note.
If you’re gonna steal, steal from the best. What’s one person’s theft is another’s ‘borrow’, and besides, imitation is the highest form of flattery. McCready has always been honest about his creative pilfering, admitting as much that the plundering of rock’s yesteryear is just another excavation of that great rock ‘n roll tapestry. “Everything I know, I stole directly from Ace Frehley, Angus Young and Keith Richards,” he told Guitar School in 1995. “That’s how you learn. I used to sit for hours and copy every lick on those early AC/DC and Kiss records.”
“From there, I went to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. After a while, you kind of develop your own style.”
