The Pearl Jam song they were never satisfied with: “It was a nightmare”
Pearl Jam has always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with fame. While I’m sure that they would love the idea for fans to say that they relate with their music on a deep level, there’s also a good chance that they will roll their eyes at someone who claims to be their biggest fan and garbles the words to a song like ‘Alive’. Regardless of the fans, it all comes down to the music, and Mike McCready remembered the band not being happy once ‘Evenflow’ was finalised.
Then again, it would take a lot for any of the members to say anything nice about the final mixes of their debut, Ten. Despite being a fairly underground outfit, the decision to mix every song like it’s one of the most important rock anthems in the world was not pleasant for Eddie Vedder.
As far as Vedder was concerned, he saw the band more as a R.E.M.-type of a group that spent years on the road paying their dues before seeing their success shoot through the roof. When you come out with this many classics right out of the gate, it’s kind of hard to ignore them once you start playing them night after night.
Out of all the tracks on the record, ‘Evenflow’ is one of the few singles from the record that has yet to wear out its welcome. The funk groove might have been a weird change of pace for the Seattle scene, but the angst behind the song and the meanest groove in alt-rock is enough to get on board, even if you can hardly understand anything Vedder is saying.
Before they got it down on tape, McCready recalled the band playing it repeatedly and never getting it right, telling The Daily Record, “We did ‘Evenflow’ about 50, 70 times. I swear to God, it was a nightmare. We played that thing over and over until we hated each other. I still don’t think Stone [Gossard] is satisfied with how it came out.”
Considering how long it took them to lay it down, it’s amazing that the performance still sounds effortless. Compared to the millions of artists who spend days at a time working on the right drum track for a song, this just feels like it was captured at the right time in the middle of a session when no one in the band wanted to quit for the night.
It’s also a deceptively hard piece to play when you break it down. Outside of McCready’s fantastic lead lines, Vedder’s first few lines involve him hitting a tritone. It is one of the most dissonant intervals in music and an absolute nightmare to sing in tune, especially when it’s the first thing someone hears.
Then again, the drums may have had something to do with the problem, with original drummer Dave Krusen saying that he wasn’t completely satisfied with what he played on the track, either. No matter what they went with, Pearl Jam had just strapped themselves to the musical equivalent of a nuclear rocket.
By the time they took to the road, Vedder saw legions of people showing up to their shows, quickly turning them from a local act into a band that could fill up stadiums in just a few months. This may have been the exact opposite of what he wanted, but once you reach the top of the mountain, you don’t get to make the rules anymore.
