Pearl Jam’s odd obsession with basketball player Mookie Blaylock
By the time the 1990s kicked into high gear, the alternative revolution was officially underway. Even though hair metal was still holding on for dear life, the sounds of Seattle were making inroads into the mainstream, stripping rock and roll back down to a more authentic songwriting style than what the glamorous Sunset Strip had to offer. Although Pearl Jam lived and breathed music from the moment they started, sports came in at a close second on their list of priorities.
Originally forming as a glam-adjacent band called Mother Love Bone, Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament found themselves back at square one when frontman Andy Wood died of a drug overdose in 1990. Not wanting to give up on his dreams, Gossard started writing songs immediately, eventually shopping around a handful of demos that he was making with riffs that would turn into Pearl Jam songs.
While one tape would fall into the hands of Eddie Vedder, Gossard made sure to include a few knick-knacks with the demo as well. Amongst the different riffs on the tape, Gossard also slipped in a basketball card of one of his favourite players, Mookie Blaylock of The Chicago Bulls. As avid sports fans, Ament and Gossard were known for shooting hoops whenever they weren’t rehearsing for their next show while keeping track of Blaylock’s stats.
Immediately inspired by what Gossard had created, Vedder returned the tape with the first melodies for songs like ‘Alive’ and ‘Once’, which would become staples on the band’s debut, Ten. Not wanting to mess around, Vedder flew to Seattle from San Diego to start woodshedding ideas with the band, culminating in them playing their first show after only a week of rehearsals.
Since they didn’t have a name for this new outfit, the band would bill themselves as Mookie Blaylock for their first batch of shows, opening for Mudhoney and Alice in Chains. After figuring that their jam sessions were more than a fluke, though, they started shopping around for new names, eventually settling on Pearl Jam after they went to a Neil Young show where every song was stretched out into extended jams. While the band changed their name to avoid legal trouble, they did sneak in a tribute to their favourite player on one of their finest albums.
Although the band would continue to pump out material, they did hide a little Easter egg for basketball fans on their debut album. Rather than spend too much time thinking of a title, the band called their debut Ten in tribute to their old moniker, given that it was Blaylock’s jersey number whenever he stepped on the court.
The band’s love for basketball didn’t stop once they started to become the biggest band in the world. In one of their first major Rolling Stone stories, the band occasionally put the recording on pause when cutting their second album Vs. to shoot some hoops on the built-in court at their studio. Although there’s no telling whether Blaylock ever listened to any of Pearl Jam’s music, his legacy as a player has been firmly cemented in both music and sports history.
