![]() Their later endeavours – putting the ethics of Vedder’s beloved Fugazi into practice within the stadium-rock paradigm – would prove the doubters wrong, but as grunge gave voice to a cynical, sardonic strand of 90s youth, Pearl Jam’s earnestness, their inability to ever not “mean it, maaaaan”, set them at odds with their contemporaries. It’s a familiar tale, but beautifully told, McCready playing with the lightness of Little Wing-era Hendrix, picking out the descending melody as Vedder marvels bleakly at “how quick the sun can drop away”.Īs they broke into the mainstream, Pearl Jam inspired blind worship from one half of Generation X, while the other half (including Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain, a famous, and possibly jealous, PJ hater) decried them as corporate-rock sellouts. “All five horizons revolved around her soul,” croons Vedder, but now she’s gone, and even the sound of children playing only causes him agony. Ten even had a power ballad of sorts: the yearning Black, which told the sorry tale of a man’s agony on losing the love of his life. More subtle and complex than Mother Love Bone, it was nevertheless deeply influenced by rock’s classic era, and certainly showed little evidence of interest in the noisy punk brinkmanship served up by grunge’s flagship label, Sub Pop. Gossard and Ament might have served time with Green River, the Seattle punk band whose 1985 debut EP, Come On Down, is often touted as grunge’s patient zero, but the duo were always ambitious to move beyond the scuzzy milieu of Seattle’s abundant punk clubs. Pearl Jam never called themselves “grunge”, but soon had that tag thrust upon them. Ten sold slowly until the breakthrough of Nirvana, whose Nevermind, released only a couple of weeks after, went on to become a surprise smash hit. And while the dark backstory of Vedder’s lyrics lends the track a frisson of complexity, Alive’s true charm lies in its uplifting power, Vedder’s impassioned delivery (within a year countless rock frontmen would be mimicking his hearty burr) and that solo, which could move a corpse to play along on air guitar. However, delivered in Vedder’s heroic baritone over Gossard’s incandescent riff, and gifted one of the most unabashedly classic-rock guitar solos in recent memory (courtesy of Mike McCready), Alive was interpreted as an inspirational message by the thousands of fans who sent Pearl Jam’s debut single into the US top 20. Its lyric suggests an incestuous affair between the hero and his mother, while its hookline, “I’m still alive”, was intended as a rueful statement of fact from the homicidal/suicidal teen. Alive is the first chapter in this trilogy ( Once, off Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten, and the early B-side Footsteps tell the rest of the story). ![]() A lifelong fan of Pete Townshend, he concocted a song-cycle, Mamasan, telling the story of a troubled young man whose traumatic discovery that his supposed birth father was actually his stepfather (a Tommy-esque drama drawn from Vedder’s own life) sends him on a killing spree, for which he is ultimately executed. They are also the most influential as everything, from singer Eddie Vedder's vocal inflection to the band's musicality, has been copied ad infinitum by all bands that followed.A serious-minded, humble surfer dude – in many ways Wood’s antithesis – Vedder’s first contribution to this new project was to write lyrics for a demo tape of Gossard riffs. Of the four bands, Pearl Jam is the longest-lasting, still making music to this day. Stylized by long hair, flannel shirts, and a general disregard for the pomp and pomposity of the Glam era, the music they created was also more simplistic, rawer, and bereft of pretension. This "movement" was really groups hailing from or around Seattle, Washington, who were moving in a different direction than the Glam and Hair Metal of the preceding decade. Pearl Jam was one of the biggest musical acts of the 90s.Īlongside Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains, Pearl Jam made up the BIG FOUR of the 90s Grunge movement. The Best Of Pearl Jam Songs are represented by 1.
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