PEARL JAM- LIFE AFTER LOVE BONE by Jennifer Clay {RIP December 1991}
 
   "It's been a really weird last four days. I've been up all night. This
mini-tour thing, the record release after that-the whole thing seems kind of
intense. There are so many mind frames you can go through. There's the
business side. There's the spiritual side. The art, the pure form. It's
really hard," singer Eddie Vedder muses as we speed down a Seattle interstate
to a club where Pearl Jam is rehearsing songs from their debut record, Ten.
   Eddie's a novice when it comes to the business side of music and being in
a signed band. He admits this is his first interview, and that he isn't very
good at it. I beg to differ. Soon, however, he relaxes, and is telling the
tale of how a night watchman surfing on the beach in San Diego ended up in
Seattle in the amazing new band Pearl Jam.
   "Jack [Irons, drummer in Eleven and formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers]
sent me three of their songs," Eddie explains. "I had them in my head from
the night before at work, and I went surfing and had this amazing day. The
whole time I was out there surfing, I had this stuff going through my
head-the music-and the words going at the same time. I put them down on tape
and sent it off.
   "I didn't really know what Stone [Gossard, Pearl's guitarist] and Jeff
[Ament, Pearl's bassist] wanted. The music just felt really open to me. Then
I thought, 'Wow, the music is really good; maybe I should have paid more
attention. Maybe I should have written it down. Maybe I should have really
listened to it before I sent it off.'
   "It was three songs, like rambling weird stuff. One of them is called
'Alive,' and one of them is called 'Once,' and then one of them was called
'Times of Trouble,' which, actually, Chris [Cornell, Soundgarden] did a
version of on the Temple [Of The Dog] record. Mine was called 'Footsteps.' It
was the same music, but different words. There are two versions of that
floating around. Actually, the whole thing was a three-song mini-opera. Using
Stone's music, I set it to this three-act play 'Alive' was the first act, and
that has incest and violence. You have to read all this into it. Actually,
the violent one was 'Once'-he goes out and kills people. Then 'Times of
Trouble,' or my version, 'Footsteps.' That song sounded like sitting in a
jail cell. It's about a guy who was tortured as a child, which is the reason
behind him turning into a mass murderer."
   Trapped in a car traveling about 55 miles per hour with someone I don't
know, in a city I don't know, talking about mass murderers! I hesitatingly
ask, "Where did you come up with this idea?"
   "Personal experience," Eddie says, laughing. "It's all coming in from all
these other sources... stuff that you see. Real life is so much more intense
than any movie, any song, any book-if you join up and see the right
performance. It's not something you could buy tickets for. Two nights ago I'm
staying in the basement of this art gallery where we rehearse, and I was
using the restroom about t three in the morning. I heard these drunks in the
back alley. I went to listen through the crack in the door, because I thought
I could hear them better. I could actually see through the half-inch
clearing. It was more intense than any movie. It was all so real. There was a
beginning, middle and end. It was like drugs, violence, all within less than
20 minutes. It was fascinating."
   For Eddie, who has worked with the homeless and wrote the song "Evenflow"
about the homeless life, the experience was even more intense. "If I could
have actually sat in that alcove of the alley with them and had these three
beers with them, I would have loved to. But then I wouldn't have seen what I
saw."
   Eddie's real outlook and frank observations were obviously to the band's
liking. The bond was nearly instantaneous for both Stone and Jeff, who were
just pulling their lives together after their band Mother Love Bone had
collapsed upon the death of their friend and former MLB singer Andy Wood. The
founding Pearl members recall their initial reactions to Eddie over coffee in
a trendy Seattle cafe.
   "We were blown," Stone explains. "He was really the first that had it. We
had a few other tapes of singers, but it was always people singing Mother
Love Bone songs or trying to be like Andy. When we heard Eddie's tape, it was
like, here's a guy who didn't really know anything about Mother Love Bone for
the most part. He didn't have any preconceived notions about what it was. He
just related to these non-vocal demos that we sent him."
   "It was a kind of a sick, disturbed rock opera-if Nietzsche were to write
a rock opera," Jeff says about Eddie's first three songs. "I mean, lyrically,
I think he's amazing. I think he's really visual. I think just the fact that
he's coming from a completely different place than Andy was coming from, that
really appeals to us.
   So Eddie went off to Seattle for a busy nine days with Stone, Jeff,
guitarist Mike McCready and drummer Dave Krusen. "We rehearsed like crazy for
six or seven days," Jeff says. "We were in the studio and recorded everything
that we had rehearsed, which was like ten songs. Then we played a show.
Within ten days, it was pretty happening. Everybody knew it was the right
thing."
   Eddie went back home, then came up again about a month later and did the
same thing-rehearsed for a couple weeks and played some more shows with Alice
In Chains under the name Mookie Blaylock, an underdog basketball player for
the New Jersey Nets. "We didn't think we'd be very good, so we didn't want
anyone to know who we were," Stone says, laughing. "We just kinda used his
name, and some people actually liked the name. Mookie loved it, by the way.
He's a great fan."
   "Mookie's kinda out there. He's kinda this cult player," Eddie says.
   "Kinda mediocre," Stone cuts in, laughing.
   "He's really got to bust his balls out there every night," Eddie
continues.
   "He's not really good looking; he's just tough," Stone adds.
   Might there be a parallel somewhere here?
   "There's something about the mediocre sports hero that this band can
relate to," Stone says, referring to the volleyball game he and Eddie had
played earlier in my visit -a definite lesson in male bonding and
competition. "Just knowing that someday even a regular guy off the street can
win the championship, if the team has the right chemistry."
   Chemistry in motion and confidence on the rise, the name was changed to
Pearl Jam. "Apparently my great grandmother Pearl married some Indian chief,"
Eddie explains.
"And she used to make this peyote jam, Pearl's Jam. It hasn't been passed
down, but the idea still stands." And the band was ready.
   "We were looking to get a band together right away [after MLB]," Jeff
remembers. "We thought it was going to take a lot longer than it did. Once it
started to happen, I didn't really want it to stop. I basically told Michael
[Goldstone, A&R man] at Epic, 'If you want us on the label this is the
schedule of things that have to happen.' We had a schedule of when we wanted
to make a record. It was only six or eight weeks after we'd been a band. It
was exactly what we didn't do with Mother Love Bone, and that was to actually
get some of the spontaneity and freshness of the songs; to get really close
to them when they were written. With Mother Love Bone, most of the songs on
that record had been written for a year. That's the way a lot of music is
made. It's an analytical process, where you try to write a certain kind of
song for a certain kind of audience to sell a certain amount of product or
records. I think that's not what it's about. I wanted to get back to making a
record that was a little bit more raw, with a little more emphasis on getting
the intensity.
   I think we did that with this record. There are some moments on this
record that are pretty incredible. At the same time, I think there's a real
looseness about it. I think it properly captured where we were at as a band.
I don't think it overextended what we could do. I think it's a real honest
record."
   Ten-which happens to be Mookie Blaylock's number-has eleven songs. The
speed with which they were written and recorded doesn't give them a
half-assed feel. Rather, it adds to the "real, raw, free" vibe. There are
many incredible moments, as in "Why Go," a true story about a teenage friend
of Eddie's who was hospitalized after getting caught smoking pot, and
"Release," which was written when Stone was playing and tuning up, and the
rest of the band was just hitting notes. Eight minutes later the band
recorded it on a tape lying around.
   A creative and vibrant sense is alive in the somewhat depressing, yet
frank songs. The band seems very aware of creating moods, which have been
captured on Ten. The sound is not like Mother Love Bone, but more akin to
Temple Of The Dog, which Stone, Jeff, Mike and Eddie all worked on with
members of Soundgarden.
   "This is not Mother Love Bone Part Two! This is a totally different band,"
Stone says. "Mother Love Bone, in a lot of ways, toward the end especially,
was a creatively stifling experience for the people involved. I think that
this is the kind of band where we're not letting any ideas die. If anyone has
a legitimate musical idea, it at least is coming to the point where we play
the song and record it, then make a decision as a band whether we like the
song and it's something we're going to continue to play or not. Mother Love
Bone did a lot of editing even before the song was written, as far as what we
were going to play and what kind of stuff we liked. I feel like this band now
is so much more open to new ideas and types of things. It's huge steps away
from Mother Love Bone. In that sense, I think similar ideas that we would
have had in Mother Love Bone that never came to fruition are actually being
finished at this point. The more I play with Eddie, the more I hear how his
vocals work, and the more he hears how I write songs, the better we'll get. I
think that's what I am even more excited about. There are moments on the
record that we have right now that aren't perfect, which is great. That's the
kind of record we wanted to make."
   Pearl Jam's first year was a busy one. They rehearsed, wrote and recorded
a smashing first record; played a few shows; played a lot of basketball and a
little volleyball; recorded a song for and had a bit part as Matt Dillon's
backup band in Cameron Crowe's new movie, Singles; drank a lot of coffee and
swallowed a few Excels, natural Chinese herbs; made some great music; and
didn't spend much time wasted.
   I'm much more happy in this band than any other band I've been in," Jeff
adds. "Everybody does their own thing. Nobody is telling anyone else that
they're playing too much or too little. It just sort of falls into place.
It's just the way music should be. If there is a band leader writing all the
songs and telling everybody what to do, then it's not a band. Then the guy
should make studio records. It's the way a lot of bands are run, but not
really a lot of bands in Seattle. I think that's a pretty unique thing about
what is happening here. Everybody just kind of does what they want to do, and
they tell everybody else to fuck off." 

DECEMBER * RIP