Hear the isolated guitars on the entirety of Pearl Jam debut ‘Ten’
They might be the last survivors of the grunge era, but Pearl Jam are so much more than the movement they emerged on the coattails of, with their oeuvre extending far beyond the confines of cuts such as ‘Jeremy’ and ‘Even Flow’.
Notably, they have their roots in the seminal Seattle groups Green River and Mother Love Bone, who offered the respective band members the opportunity to experience the trials and tribulations of the music industry at a relatively young age and refine their craft. The steps made in these early outfits effectively laid the foundations for the visceral but more comprehensive style that Pearl Jam constructed in the not-too-distant future.
Whilst they are primarily regarded as a grunge band, it is more befitting to assign them the hard rock label. Musically, they have more in common with Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix than peers like Nirvana and Soundgarden.
This assertion comes via the impact of the blues on guitarists Mike McCready and Stone Gossard, who have mentioned the likes of Hendrix, Keith Richards and Stevie Ray Vaughan as critical influences on their work. Famously, the aforementioned trio of guitarists all drew heavily on the blues of figures such as Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters when assembling their own styles.
The only factor distinguishing Pearl Jam from the classic rock greats of old would be frontman Eddie Vedder’s lyrics. They have been so bleak at points that they’ve eclipsed anything other lyricists of his generation produced, even giving Nirvana’s ‘Something in the Way’ a run for its money. Take the violent themes of the Momma-Son trio from Ten – ‘Alive’, ‘Once’, and ‘Footsteps’ – for instance.
They tell the story of a young man whose father’s death has such a catastrophic impact that it causes him to go on a killing spree, leading to his eventual capture and execution. The themes of this triptych were compounded by Vedder later revealing that the lyrics were inspired by him discovering at 17 that the man he thought was his father was not and that his birth father had already passed away. Understandably, this caused the all-encompassing form of anguish that courses through Pearl Jam’s earliest work.
Although we could concentrate on this darker facet of Pearl Jam’s work, it is impossible to get away from the fact that, as a whole, they are best described as a hard rock band. The grunge title does not correctly account for the essence of their work.
Referring back to the work of McCready and Gossard, who give the Seattle group their electrifying edge, you only have to note the style of their playing on their debut record Ten to grasp how true this is.
Following this assertion, the pair’s isolated guitar tracks for the entire album have been unearthed. Although they deliver a myriad of blistering moments, the influence of classic and hard rock is hard to ignore, with cuts such as ‘Even Flow’, ‘Alive’ and ‘Why Go’ three explicit examples of this.
