The Pearl Jam song written as an attack on their drummer
Pearl Jam may be one of the few bands with more drummers than Spinal Tap. From the moment they started recording, the band always struggled to find a suitable person to sit behind the kit, either leaving due to a falling out or unable to commit to touring. Though Dave Abbruzzese may have been the most recognisable drummer for them during their 1990s heyday, that didn’t mean everyone necessarily got along.
Unlike the rest of the band setting up shop in Seattle, Abbruzzese came from Texas and was much more comfortable in a rock band situation. Although the band had already made the big time when Abbruzzese joined, he was shocked that his bandmates weren’t especially thrilled to be a part of a mainstream rock band.
In their cover story for Rolling Stone at the time, Abbruzzese talked about how uncomfortable it was to walk on eggshells in the band, explaining, “To me, when I was younger and heard about a band selling a million records, I thought the band would get together and jump up and down for at least a minute. But it doesn’t happen that way in this band. Me, I flip out. I jump up and down by myself.”
Considering what most of Pearl Jam’s output off of their record Ten was about, Eddie Vedder wasn’t ready for the mass amount of attention that it would garner. Looking back on their debut, Vedder goes into dark places across the album, singing about people locked in mental institutions, a man who goes insane after finding out his estranged father is dead, and a child who shoots himself in the middle of his classroom.
Since Abbruzzese had the good-time spirit perfect for primetime, his beliefs didn’t match what Vedder wanted out of the band. Moreover, Vedder became infuriated when he discovered that Abbruzzese was a proud gun owner. While Abbruzzese assured the singer that they were “glorified versions of pellet guns”, Vedder figured that he should take his rage and put it into a song.
Starting with an off-kilter guitar riff from Mike McCready, Vedder wrote the lyrics of ‘Glorified G’, taken almost verbatim from what Abbruzzese had told him. Instead of the happy-go-lucky drummer behind the kit, Vedder created a scenario in this song where guns are the epitome of insecure masculinity, talking about how he feels so manly when armed and using religion as a defence mechanism for surrounding himself with so much artillery.
Despite the song being meant as a slight jab at Abbruzzese, that didn’t stop any animosity from building up over time. In the same Rolling Stone interview, the band initially ganged up on the drummer after suggesting to release the song ‘Daughter’ as a single, thinking he was too focused on what the label wanted.
Everything would eventually hit a turning point on the album Vitalogy. As the rest of the band were caught in a lawsuit with Ticketmaster, Abbruzzese was sent packing after not wanting to deal with the band’s personalities anymore, instead being replaced by former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons. Even though ‘Glorified G’ is still a decent taste of ‘90s alt-rock at its best, a tinge of anger is still hidden within Vedder’s lyrics.
