“Out of control”: How Mike McCready ruined Pearl Jam
Watch videos of Mike McCready today, and he’s as glowing and as put-together as ever, but this wasn’t always the case. Only a couple of albums into the formative Pearl Jam years, he ruined the trajectory they were on for good.
McCready has always been on lead guitar, while alongside him, Stone Gossard whittles away at the rhythm guitar, Jeff Ament grooves away on the bass, and Eddie Vedder sends hordes of fans into a frenzy as he smirks down the microphone, adding a third guitar when necessary. Together, they formed a beautiful rock battalion, one that would face its biggest ever threat only three albums into their career.
As with many bands, things were threatened by the air of hedonism in the 1990s. The rock and roll lifestyle goes a little like this: A small town where a nobody dreams big and comes to learn the true meaning of the truism, fortune favours the bold. The nobody, who quickly turns into a somebody thanks to lights, fame, and acclaim, is welcomed into the world of success with a platter of sin and a strong push to indulge from the successors inside the house. Chaos, drugs, alcohol, sex, and then a ruined band, who are forced to pivot their entire sound to make up for the guitarist increasingly spinning out of control.
McCready didn’t have a Far Out article to warn him, so learnt all of this the hard way, and boy, did it get him down: “Mike’s a pretty awful drunk,” Gossard said of his friend in a candid interview, adding, “Not that he got malicious or mean openly to people, but he would get out of control consistently”.
It was this lack of control that ruined the trajectory that Pearl Jam were on forever; the songs weren’t coming together, as the lubricant fusing the Seattle boys had slipped into too many beverages and melted away into hungover creative stagnation, at least on McCready’s behalf. Try as they may to see their friend behind the glassy eyes and pungent stench of ethanol greeting them in the late mornings, Gossard admitted that things shifted around the time of Vitalogy‘s recording.
“It was a difficult situation where you could find yourself blaming Mike for a lot of your own frustrations with the band when he was fucked up or couldn’t come to practice. And we’re used to loving Mike and knowing how much fun and how talented he is. I got upset that he might throw away a great opportunity to be in a cool band and work it out,” Gossard admitted somewhat sheepishly.
With McCready flinging the reins of his life away, the band had to step it up; for the first time, Vedder began making executive decisions on the Pearl Jam sound. Moreover, Vitalogy marked a switch-up in Pearl Jam’s sonic character as a direct result of McCready’s going off in the deep end, and the first thing to go were the lengthy guitar solos characteristic of their 1991 debut, Ten, and 1993’s Vs. If they couldn’t count on McCready turning up to rehearsal sober, they certainly couldn’t trust him with the biggest motifs across the project.
We can also factor in the reality that most of Vitalogy was written spontaneously during jam sessions here, lending itself well to the raw immediacy and frictive excitement of the work. With McCready fast becoming a reliable no-show, Pearl Jam leaned into a rhythm-focused punk orientation. As a direct consequence of McCready’s struggle, the album received mixed reviews, where David Browne of Entertainment Weekly posited that Vitalogy “leaves an odd, unsettling aftertaste”. Plus, though it sold unbelievably well, by Pearl Jam’s own standards, it couldn’t hit the mark set by their first two releases.
McCready might’ve been plagued by his addiction, but he finally landed upon rehab: “He decided to go into treatment, and everyone was thrilled. How could you not be? Here was Mike taking responsibility for himself and his own happiness, going to a new level,” Gossard reflected, and we all know how the story goes from there.
