Mike McCready has been the lead guitarist for Pearl Jam now for just shy of a quarter of a century. A little over a month from now, on October 22, the band will celebrate a quarter of a century since they first formed and played a show at the Off Ramp in Seattle, just a few years before the whole Seattle music scene was set to explode, and influence the direction of music for a long time to come - perhaps even right to the present day.
McCready is a phenomenal guitarist that lent Pearl Jam some incredible solos, as well as a style that was influenced by metal, by punk, and by the hyped up guitar playing of seventies hard rock bands, when extremely long solos were kind of the thing.
He was a major part of the band as it saw a meteoric rise in popularity, along with several other Seattle-based bands. Pearl Jam in particular rose to huge prominence. Nirvana was the only other Seattle band with comparable popularity, but Pearl Jam began to exceed even Nirvana's popularity by 1993 or so. Several times, I have heard people suggest that the band "took over the world," and indeed, that sounds more or less about right. All of a sudden, everyone was listening to Pearl Jam, and the buzz about them became an explosion of publicity that changed the lives of the members of the band.
For McCready, it was a difficult time. He was skinny as a rail when Pearl Jam first rose to prominence, but he then suffered through serious substance abuse issues. He remained a member of the band, but he definitely needed to resolve this issue, which was one of the growing number of challenges that Pearl Jam faced as a band, and which he personally had to cope with.
But get past it he did. He remained in the band, an they weathered the storm of huge popularity, eventually changing their image and, essentially, pulling the plug on their incredible popularity, and all of the pitfalls that came with it. The band redefined itself, and became a new band, producing a different style of music. Less angst, less energetic anger, and more reflective. Perhaps that is what helped Pearl Jam stay together through all of these years, long after many of the other "grunge" bands had burned out and broken up.
The band's style has changed over the years, but the quality remains. The enormous popularity that they enjoyed started to go away a bit in the second half of the nineties, and quite a few people seemed to predict that Pearl Jam as a band were done, their huge success a thing of the past, and that the band might just fade away into obscurity. Instead, they always kept a loyal following, and their live shows earned such a strong reputation, that it kept them as one of the most popular bands to see when they tour. Their shows are usually filled to capacity, or pretty damn near it.
That is a success story, and McCready can appreciate that, surely. Yet, he has not limited his musical productivity to Pearl Jam. He added his musical talents to other musical projects, most famously when he joined forces with Layne Staley of Alice in Chains (another Seattle band) to form Mad Season.
He was recently interviewed, and had some things to say about numerous topics that should interest music fans, like me. I thought it was definitely something worth sharing, so here you go:
Interview: Mike McCready Talks Pearl Jam’s Future, Mad Season & Chris Cornell Collaboration by Brett Buchanan - Sep 15, 2015:
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