But I was wrong. This book is, in many ways, the most interesting of the bunch - because the words are from the band members themselves, as well as those associated with them. And there are surprise revelations. For example, I did not know that, when Eddie Vedder first met with Ament and Gossard, and learned that the band would be a five-piece, he actually proposed making it a four-piece, which he was more comfortable with. In effect, that meant cutting Mike McCready out of the band, and Vedder taking lead guitar! This was, of course, before Vedder actually met McCready. I thought that was pretty funny, actually!
The band members discuss the history of the band, and naturally, they are not always exactly in conjunction with one another. Still, you get a very good idea of how the bad formed, as well as many of their experiences together.
Also a revelation that I first learned about in Cameron Crowe's documentary, was the underlying tensions between Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, two of the founding members of the band. Here, it is revealed that Ament actually wanted to punch Gossard, since Gossard was essentially a wiseass, and punching someone like that was how Ament, who had lived in Montana previously, thought would be the most appropriate response.
Over the years, I have heard a lot of criticism of Pearl Jam. One was that they pieced together the material for their debut album, "Ten", in just a couple of weeks time.
If that is true, I think that is a solid statement about just how good this band is, given how great the album is. Apparently, the numbers attest to this, as well, as the album has not sold ten million and change.
"Ten" was released in 1991, on the heels of Nirvana's enormously successful "Nevermind" album. Yet, I was reminded that one of the strongest rebuttals against this preposterous charge was the dating of the material itself. In this book, it documents how most of the songs on the album were written when the band, then calling itself "The Mookie Blaylock Band" (hence the name of the album, "Ten", which was the basketball star's number), first got together. In October of 1990, when the band really first got together and began creating music, they came out with some of their most iconic songs, many of which would appear on their debut album the following year. In the original tape that Vedder dubbed Stone Gossard's music with his lyrics, which was given the name, and remains known as the "Mamasan trilogy", came the tracks "Alive", "Once" and "Footsteps". By mid-October, just days after Eddie Vedder first arrived in Seattle, and the band began to write and record music for the first time, they came up with a number of other songs: "Black", "Just a Girl", "Breath", "Alone", "Oceans", and "Release". Quite a few of those found their way to "Ten", while a few others were B-tracks. Many of those songs were recorded on a bootleg video (some of which is shown in Cameron Crowe's documentary movie) of the band's first ever concert, back in 1990. Among some of those who attended that show are the members of Soundgarden, Heart, and Randy Johnson, the star pitcher for the Seattle Mariners.
Some Personal Reflections: When I think about Pearl Jam, it truly does amaze me. It seems that my interest in them means different things at different times in my life. When younger, it was the intelligence of the lyrics, as well as the appeal of their raw energy, that lured me to them. I guess that pretty much remained the case through their first three albums, as well as Mirror Ball and Merkin Ball.
Then came No Code, and a different kind of band calling itself Pearl Jam. The members were still the same, mostly. But No Code was more reflective, and it had a softer, slower feel than any of the previous albums. I loved it, and could appreciate it on a different level. At the time, I felt that any lingering insinuations that the band was secretly still trying to actively foster their popularity were answered, as the band had made no videos, done few interviews, and now, released an album that would not appeal to the legions of mindless jocks and others who simply got into this band because it was the thing to do at the moment, because they were so phenomenally popular, that considered themselves Pearl Jam fans.
Reading this book, and getting more of the inside story of some of their experiences, I could not help but be struck by how incredible their story really is! I mean, this is a group that has not only collaborated with numerous other artists, but has outright made two albums with other artists (the self-titled Temple of the Dog, with members of Soundgarden, and Mirror Ball, with Neil Young). Yet, it does not end there. The members, individually and often as a whole, have worked with an amazing number of other musicians, of varying styles. Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament used to be in a band with Mark Arm and Steve of Mudhoney. Mike McCready was in a band with Layne Staley of Alice in Chains.
I have seen them numerous times in concert, and have seen them not only do killer versions (often very different versions as well) of their own songs, but also cover songs from a huge array of other artists, including the Beatles, the Who, the Dead Kennedys, Pink Floyd (added to WMA), the Police,
Listen to the diversity of the words of this group. Form the highly energetic, aggressive chords particularly prominent in their early albums, such as the brooding Deep, or Go, or the more upbeat, yet still fast, tunes such as Breath or State of Love and Trust, to softer, more reflective pieces like
In reading this book, it dawned on my that I personally have been a fan of this group now for two decades! I mean, there has been no other group that I ever followed quite on that level, before or since.
The Beatles could compare, in terms of albums and collecting things and listening to them, and of course, I’ve been a Beatles fan for longer. There are some other groups where I can say the same thing, as well. The Stones. The Animals. Floyd. The Kinks, and Zep, and perhaps the Who. A few others. All of those groups have been since before my childhood, so I grew up on them in many respects.
As for younger groups more of my time, if you will, there are the DK, DOA, Metallica, Voivod, Megadeth, Anthrax, and perhaps a few others that I am not thinking of at the moment.
None of them, however, was I able to appreciate watching and growing with as much as Pearl Jam. After all, most of the British Invasion groups had broken up and were relegated to the past, strictly. It was not like I was ever going to have seen a Beatles concert, or anything, or even have the opportunity to go out and buy a new Beatles album. Sure, they released two new songs in the mid-nineties, with the whole Anthology release. But that was different, and they certainly were not going to go touring following that. The Beatles, as a band, were a thing of the past. I love their music, but it’s all stuff that I have heard many, many times before. Ditto with most of the bands that I mentioned earlier.
Pearl Jam was different, of course. I got into them when they still only had the one album out. They were young and full of energy. The hot new thing, if you will. It felt like there was an element of danger to them. Of course, they appealed to me in another way, as well.
You see, my family is, and always has been, highly political, in a private, under the radar sort of way. My father is the most vocal, but mostly inside the walls of our home. He has a tendency to criticize American policies, comparing them, usually unfavorably, to European, particularly French, policies. That has been the case for a long time.
My mom was a very independent and idealistic woman. She majored in French, and has always had a solid heart. She championed the cause of greater equality for everyone at every turn that I am aware of, and even worked at the ACLU for years and years, an organization that I had come to admire over the years. So, political activism was evident from both parents, and rather naturally, it carried on to their two children, my brother and I.
Both of my parents, but particularly my father, grew up in the sixties, and were a part of that counterculture, if you will. My father was a French hippie, and my mom could certainly relate to the scene. So, liking the new musical directions and experimentation of the era, as well as the feeling of some new possibilities and expanding the possibilities of opportunity for more and more people was very important, and part of the attraction that they felt to the music, even after it had gone from new and experimental to being dated and sounding more like playbacks to a former era, and perhaps even quaint.
My brother was older, and searching for music that meant something more than the hollow eighties bands and one hit wonders. There were some good bands out there, and I followed his musical direction, so to speak, as music became more important in my life the older I got. I still loved the Beatles (always have, and surely always will), but I got into the groups that he got into, such as Metallica and the DK, as well as all of those other bands (and more) already mentioned.
Yet, I guess that I also longed for something more. Voivod were great, but for whatever the reason, I listened mostly to that one album, Nothingface, for a long, long time, until I’d listened to it so much, that it stopped sounding new and exciting and like nothing I’d heard before, and started sounding repetitive. That is unfair of me to say, of course, because that was my fault. But there you have it.
Metallica seemed to have intelligent lyrics. Yet, they changed right around the later couple of years that I was in high school. They had always been a band that poked fun at big, huge bands that took themselves way too seriously. Suddenly, they themselves became such a band that the earlier, younger version of Metallica would surely have poked fun at. Also, they seemed to focus way too much on wearing all black, all of the time, and posing as huge, hulking, macho tough guys - which I'm not convinced they were.
In other words, they seemed almost to be competing with Guns N' Roses, with a macho bravado that spoke to a conservative, close-minded mentality. They still made heavy, intense music that I could rock out to, but it was not the same. Before too long, they felt more and more like a corporate band. Their battles with Napster, and the change in lyrical content and meaning, literally from one albums (...And Justice For All) to another (the black album) betrayed a lack of sincerity one way or another.
That, plus their exaggerated, ultra-macho talk and image showed strands of homophobic attitudes, which perhaps frontman James Hetfield never gave up. Here he is, discussing two fellow members who had the audacity to show a more artistic approach, and obviously emphasizing a great deal less the traditional redneck image that Metallica seemed to thrive on since the black album.
"Lars and Kirk were into abstract art, pretending they were gay. I think they knew it bugged me."
http://www.ultimate-guitar.com/news/general_music_news/testament_pantera_criticise_metallicas_load.html
Pearl Jam is important, because we need thoughtful, and thought-provoking, groups like this. The Seattle scene that exploded in the early nineties has, by and large, faded back into obscurity, if you will. Soundgarden reunited (thankfully!), and Alice in Chains got back together and still exists (in a very different format). Also, surviving members of Nirvana reunited for one night onstage with Paul McCartney in the 12/12/12 Sandy Relief Concert, in what has been referred to as "Sirvana". But Pearl Jam has been the one constant out of the big four - they have been around since then, and continue to be around. They have been innovative, even groundbreaking in their approach.
We need bands like Pearl Jam to balance out the music "scene" that is shoved down our throats by major media and the paparazzi. We need more grounded groups that reflect reality, to counter the world of ridiculous tabloid headlines of Britney Spears or Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber or Taylor Swift. We need bands that are a little more real, and who address a reality that speaks to us, more than these fluff acts do. I cannot speak for everyone, but I could go the rest of my life without hearing about any of those tabloid sensations, or of finding out who the next generation of tabloid headliners will be.
Now, more than ever, we need more bands like Pearl Jam, that address things that are more meaningful than Swift's noted repertoire of songs about bad relationships (that always seem to be someone else's fault), or Bieber's everything is right in the world "So long as you love me". Bieber and Swift are the latest tabloid headline grabbers, as they are the flavor of the moment. Soon, they will fade away (perhaps once their looks begin to change, or fade), and a new crop will surely take their place. We need less acts that make the headlines of tabloids, and more groups that seriously discuss the real news headlines of our time.
Ultimately, this is a great book for Pearl Jam fans, and even a must. It is their history - and probably their most extensive history that you can find (although I would also strongly recommend Kim Neely's "Five Against One"). This book can also be regarded as a coffee table book, if you are that into the band. A great companion piece to the movie, or indeed for any substantial Pearl Jam collection!
No comments:
Post a Comment