C’mon guys, it’s Heavy Metal…
Occasional Albums Thing 023 - Pearl Jam “Ten”
Right then, before we get to this record let me lay out my position on “Grunge”. Firstly the genre itself seemed completely music press created, I’m positing that none of the bands lumped under that label would have told you they played “Grunge” music. The music press created a description for a bunch of groups that they, for some reason, wanted to like but couldn’t bring themselves to ‘fess that what they were, in fact, taking a liking to was, in reality, Heavy Metal, albeit in not such ridiculous trousers. Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, c’mon guys it’s Heavy Metal, if you were being kind you’d say Heavy Rock. Nirvana, on the other hand were one of the most over-hyped bands of recent times, one good song (and it was a bloody good song) doth not a legend make. The likes of Mudhoney, Screaming Trees and others who had been around for years seemed to get lumped in there via geographical proximity or tastes in plaid shirts !
Pearl Jam on the other hand always struck me as somewhat more interesting. Yes it’s Heavy Metal, listen to that opening riff on “Evenflow”, it’s something any Metal band would have killed for, but Eddie Vedder could undoubtedly sing and the songs had a melodiousness about them that Grunge/Metal generally never gets anywhere near. I’m pretty sure I first heard this record on The Wonder Stuff’s Sept/Oct 1991 tour of the US and Canada, it was released in the US at the end of August that year. TWS sound Engineer Simon Efemy is a huge metal fan (if that’s your bag check out the band Absolute Power, he’s the singer) so this whole “grunge” thing interested him, plus one of our number, backline tech Jez Webb, was I recall mercilessly ribbed by us all singing endless choruses of the song “Jeremy” at him.
Pearl Jam formed out of the ashes of the bands Green River and Mother Love Bone, the previous bands of bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard (music biz contacts scored us tapes of both bands, they were Metal too). When Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood succumbed to a heroin overdose in 1990, two weeks before the release of their debut album (!), Ament, Gossard and members of Soundgarden made a record under the name Temple Of Dog as a tribute to Wood. That eponymous album featured backing vocals by one Eddie Vedder which is how Pearl Jam, or as they were named when they signed to Epic records Mookie Blaylock, came to be. Mookie Blaylock was an NBA basketball player and “Ten”, recorded in Seattle during early 1991, was titled in tribute to Mookie’s jersey number.
Side One is pretty much faultless. The albums 3 singles are all there, “Alive”, “Even Flow”, and “Jeremy” which reached #5 on the US Mainstream Rock chart, not bad for a song about a high school kid who shot himself in front of his classmates. To be fair any Side Two would struggle to follow that one and while the songs are still good(ish) Side Two doesn’t have the focus and drive of Side One. “Ten” stayed on the Billboard 200 album chart for almost five years, and has been certified 13× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (Platinum = 1 million sales, you do the maths).
I’ve never taken this initial interest in Pearl Jam any further. I’ve heard the odd song here and there since, and liked most of them, but never felt the need to dive in any deeper. Original copies of “Ten” sell for a tidy sum these days (north of £100 for the LP, double that and add a bit for the UK picture disc) but this 2017 re-issue will do me fine, it came my way through the shop and I figured for old times sake and as a reminder of some bloody good times on that 1991 US Tour that I’d hang on to it.
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