The classic 1991 grunge song purposefully designed to make people angry
There was a time when grunge was the most popular genre on Earth, and while this specific period was short-lived, it’s one that still impacts a great deal of modern artists.
It’s not just rock music, it’s rock music with an added element of angst, something which injects emotion and pain into every single second of sound. It’s truly a great genre of music to listen to, and one which still manages to fill out stadiums around the world. How interesting, then, that so much of the genre was done with the intention of frustrating listeners.
When people think about grunge, they think about the likes of Pearl Jam and Nirvana, given that they were some of the movement’s most popular bands and really helped take the genre to the world. However, before these bands came along, you had a few other influential groups, which included the likes of Mother Love Bone.
Mother Love Bone released an album called Apple in 1990, which was one of the first examples of a grunge album that people initially came across. Unfortunately, their time together was short-lived, as lead singer Andrew Wood passed away after the release of the record. However, a fair few Pearl Jam members met when making the album, and they were adamant on continuing to make music together under a different moniker.
Before Pearl Jam officially formed, though, the members of Mother Love Bone got together one final time to make an album called Temple of the Dog, with a band under the same name. This was done as a tribute to Wood, and was the precursor to grunge becoming the biggest sound in the world. People really took to it, and maybe that’s because listeners were dropped in right at the deep end, with a song that was intentionally supposed to annoy people.
Mike McCready has spoken previously about the album’s opening number and how they purposely included it to try to annoy those who might be listening. They did this by making the track a lot longer than it needed to be, and including elongated snippets of guitar, bass and drums.
“With ‘Reach Down’ I remember that Chris was like, ‘Hey, let’s make a super-long song that’s the first song on the record that will piss off the record company. Let’s make it the first single’,” he said, “The demo itself was pretty long with Chris playing drums, guitar, bass and singing. I wanted it to be as true to the demo as possible.”
This was a mindset that the members of the band who went on to form Pearl Jam took into their new band. Eddie Vedder admitted that he didn’t want people to like their debut album because he preferred the idea of becoming successful gradually rather than becoming overnight sensations. It didn’t work in the end, as Pearl Jam’s Ten wound up being one of their most successful albums to date without question.
“I would love for everybody to listen to what we write, but I want it be a slow process,” he said, “I think it would be counter-productive for Ten to be a huge seller […] In order for people to get the most out of Pearl Jam, it has to be a slow growth. It does worry me that we will be a big success, and that our songs will be taken out of context. We are not user-friendly.”
