Pearl Jam’s Mike McCready is creating a rock opera about Chris Cornell
The Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready has revealed that he’s writing a new rock opera about his late friend and Soundgarden mastermind, Chris Cornell. It will also touch upon the wider Seattle grunge scene.
Alongside the Seattle grunge scene’s heaviest of heavyweights, Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden emerged in the Pacific Northwest city in the late 1980s.
In a recent interview with Guitar World, McCready revealed for the first time that he is involved in a project that commemorates the iconic music scene and the memory of the late Chris Cornell.
“I look at him as one of the greatest singers and songwriters of all time, aside from being a friend,” McCready said of Cornell.
“I love Chris, and I’m working on a little project about the Seattle scene and a musical kind of rock opera thing. It’s just from my experience in the Seattle music scene, and he’s part of it.”
Continuing, he explained that the project would likely amount to “a record and maybe some sort of stage/play thing,” He added: “I’m working on a script, and I’ve got about 18 songs that I’m working on, and I’m singing on it. It’s been a long journey.”
McCready also gave an update on the forthcoming Pearl Jam album with a few kind words for their producer, Andrew Watt.
“It’s just about finished,” he said. “I think there’s a few tweaks here and there that have to happen, and we’re probably not going to have anything out this year.”
Crucially, Watt brought “an energy and a youthfulness and a great ear to us that I think we needed.”
“[Watt] got us into a room and just pushed us as hard as we could be pushed. You know, it’s hard for a quote-unquote outsider to come into our world because we’ve done things a certain way. We’re open to new things, but we are also in our own world.
“We’ve done things for 30 years. So we know the dynamics of our band very well. But sometimes we need to get pushed and questioned, and Andrew did a great job of that.”
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