The artist Mike McCready called one of his favourite songwriters of all time
Pearl Jam were a band built on originality. Despite the fact that a lot of the members had already made a name for themselves in Mother Love Bone, there was never an intention of starting a new band that imitated their prior outfit.
Mother Love Bone were one of the first bands to practice grunge before the genre was actually given a name. They tapped into that unique sound and managed to show onlookers just how much could be done with it. Their debut album, Apple, was a masterpiece, but it would remain a standalone masterpiece, as they disbanded soon after, following the death of lead singer Andrew Wood.
Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were both members of Mother Love Bone, and despite that group splitting up, they knew they wanted to keep making music together; the question was who else they could get on board. Every single singer who sent in any kind of sample was trying to emulate the sound of Wood, and while they respected their former frontman as a singer, they also didn’t intend to replace him. This is why Eddie Vedder was such a revelation to them, as he came into the project with his own unique vocal tone.
“My initial impression was, well, he can sing, and it sounds cool,” said Gossard when discussing the first time he heard Vedder. “The only other things that I’d heard were from singers trying to be Andy, who were really into Mother Love Bone, so hearing Eddie was like, Thank God! I was like, low and clear… that’s pretty interesting. It was the first thing we heard that worked at all musically. So if you have a guy that sounded pretty good and he was into it, don’t screw around, just start making music.”
This is a mindset that applied to every member of Pearl Jam. Good musicianship was one thing, but people also needed to be original, ready to come equipped with their own unique ideas that no other band had put forward before. This made Mike McCready another great fit, as he was able to put together some unique-sounding guitar lines that gave Pearl Jam an incredibly original tone.
His approach was to give audiences something new, but then also make it accessible. So many of the riffs and solos that you hear within the sound of Pearl Jam are clear offshoots of rock, and yet they have their own twist that means they couldn’t be mistaken for any other band. It can often make the songs sound simple, despite the fact that they’re anything but.
When he listened to other singers and songwriters, he admired those who could do something similar. It wasn’t about making a track so unique that it became inaccessible and haphazard; rather, musicians needed to leave their mark on a song while letting it be something that other listeners could easily resonate with. It’s for this reason that he loved Tom Petty so much.
Petty had a habit of dipping into some form of consciousness and coming out of it with a classic. There are few musicians who could write hits so unwittingly, and it led to the creation of some of Mike McCready’s favourite songs of all time. That approach, to give yourself to a song but also allow it to take on a natural progression, is at the heart of what makes Pearl Jam great, and for McCready, it’s a trait he took from Petty.
“I’ve had a lot of cool experiences with him,” said McCready when discussing Tom Petty, “You know, he’s one of my favourite singer/songwriters of all time. He knows how to make something sound simple but it’s not. ‘Insider’ is a beautiful song. I could go on forever.”
