Stone Gossard on the artist who made Pearl Jam better: “He kept us on our best behaviour”
No band is meant to be perfect. As much as people like to put together a group where nearly nothing can go wrong, there’s always bound to be people poking at what someone is trying to say in their songs or wondering whether anyone is truly in it for the right reasons. While Pearl Jam did get the reputation of being a little too mainstream by the standards of grunge music, Stone Gossard claimed that Kurt Cobain was the one who turned them into a better group.
Then again, it’s not every day that someone has that kind of accolade for someone who openly hated them. As much as Cobain liked the idea of being the alternative to the mainstream, all he saw was a bunch of classic rock aficionados in grunge clothing when Pearl Jam first burst onto the scene with Ten, especially with the mind-bending solos of Mike McCready driving everything forward.
But it’s not like Pearl Jam didn’t have the proper credentials as a grunge outfit. Gossard and Jeff Ament had been in the pre-grunge act Green River, and there’s probably no better endorsement for being ingrained into the culture than getting to be in a group with Mark Arm. That wasn’t enough for Cobain, though, so that meant Pearl Jam switching things up a bit.
While the cardinal rule of any rock act is not listening to what the critics have to say, the group knew that Cobain’s word carried some water in the community. This was the next voice of a generation, and for the next few albums after Vs, Pearl Jam spent their time running away from their fame just like Nirvana did on In Utero.
Despite Vitalogy having moments on it that weren’t exactly mainstream, No Code is the kind of album that felt like it didn’t want to be listened to, especially with the amount of raw nerves on the lead single, ‘Who You Are’. But by taking their foot off the gas a little bit, they did end up getting the hardcore fans on their side.
There was still a massive contingency interested in what the group had to say outside the catchy singles, which was what Cobain was all about. And without really knowing it, Gossard thought that the reason why they were able to endure was because of Cobain’s influence.
When speaking with Uncut, Gossard mentioned that Cobain helped improve their outlook on where they would take their music, saying, “I think he raised our bar. By him being critical of us, I think we said, ‘Well, that’s what he says about us – what are we going to do?’ I think we made tougher records, and I think we thought about everything in the light of ‘Are we doing this because we like it? Or are we doing it because we’re sellouts?’ So, in a sense, he kept us on our best behaviour.”
And in a world that’s all about going for the most cynical option, sometimes it pays to have someone making you look at the bigger picture. Pearl Jam were already uncomfortable about the idea of becoming a corporate rock act, but as long as they held onto the beliefs Cobain preached, they were bound to do alright.
