The Pearl Jam song that disappointed Jeff Ament
For every great song that a band writes, there will always be a few that aren’t fully realised. Even though it might be fun trying to toy with one’s sound occasionally, it stings when there’s a track that’s just shy of being perfect that gets released to the public anyway. Although Pearl Jam has never been shy about putting their B-sides and rarities out as singles or bootleg material, Jeff Ament was disappointed about their work on one of their first significant tunes.
Then again, Ament tended to be the perfectionist in every era of the band. Back when he and Stone Gossard were part of the group Mother Love Bone, Ament was usually interested in taking the group one step further, aiming to get them onto a major label and tour the world as one of the greatest rock bands of all time.
Once plans fell through in the wake of Andy Wood’s death, though, Ament knew that the band would need a change of scenery when forming the basis of Pearl Jam. Bringing Eddie Vedder into the mix, the singer’s distinctive growl became the band’s signature overnight, with every other band trying to follow in their footsteps to put that trademark yarl into their sound.
Although most of the band’s best material would turn up on the album Ten, the B-sides from the project were far too good to be relegated as a leftover. Released on the flipside to the single ‘Jeremy’, ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ would take on a life of its own, with Vedder pouring his heart out as he tells a story of a man who realises that his brother has passed away after heading off to war.
When talking about the creation of the song, guitarist Mike McCready recalled everything happening naturally, recalling in Twenty, “It came out of a jam in the studio, and Ed didn’t really have any lyrics. He came up with some ideas right there on the spot, and that’s what we recorded.”
While most bands thrive under the same principles, the track’s melody is practically bulletproof compared to everything else on the record. Since the lead singles like ‘Even Flow’ and ‘Alive’ were known to be abrasive, this is the kind of mellow ballad that could have been written by Jimi Hendrix, featuring McCready’s tasteful soloing and the band members letting the music carry them throughout the song.
Despite the phenomenal performance, Ament always regretted putting the track out as a B-side, explaining, “We should have worked on that song a little bit more. It probably should have been on the first record.” For all its mainstream potential, though, Vedder was already looking to move far away from conventional pop structures.
Since the band were well-received by the masses, Vedder’s discomfort with fame led to them moving away from their usual sound, incorporating different artsy tracks into albums like Vitalogy later on. That didn’t stop ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ from becoming a cult classic, being used in one of the final scenes of Friends and remaining a staple of the band’s live set. Although ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ probably deserved a better fate than getting released on a B-side to a single, it’s a testament to the song’s power that fans found it on their own.
