“Ten” Turns Twenty – Volume One

Assuming I finish this post in time, today (August 27th) marks the twentieth anniversary of Pearl Jam’s Ten. In fairly short order, the album would become, arguably, the most influential non-parental piece of my adolescence. The album, and the band in a larger sense, would help shape what I’d become as a person; how to think, how to listen to music, how to question authority. It would become the first real album in the soundtrack to my life, the cornerstone on which twenty years of musical experience would build, introducing me to the worlds of punk rock, folk rock, acoustic rock and indie rock, in addition to providing me a better perspective on the classic rock that I grew up on but abandoned for a time as a youngster.

If you’ve known me for a while and you know my penchant for A)all things Pearl Jam and B)writing stream-of-consciousness, music-related posts on this little blog o’ mine (whose very name is a rather obscure PJ reference), you probably figured an ode to Ten was coming. It’ll be tough to encapsulate exactly what this album has meant to me over the years but that doesn’t mean I won’t try. Join me on an all-encompassing trip, won’t you?

You probably know the story by now, but in brief: Pearl Jam had formed roughly ten months earlier from the ashes of a few seminal Seattle bands (Green River and Mother Love Bone, primarily), when when Jack Irons (ex-Red Hot Chili Peppers) obtained a five-song demo tape that longtime bandmates Stone Gossard (rhythm guitar) and Jeff Ament (bass) had been working on with Mike McCready (lead guitar) and gave a copy to a surfer dude that he knew in Southern California. (Interesting aside: the drummer that the newly formed trio recruited to play drums on their demo was none other than Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron, who, in 1998, would become Pearl Jam’s fifth drummer in eight years after Soundgarden dissolved and the very same Jack Irons would resign his post as Pearl Jam’s drummer. Cameron is still drummer for Pearl Jam, as well as the newly-reformed Soundgarden.)

Rare early PJ picture, featuring the short-lived original lineup. From left: Ament, McCready, Krusen, Vedder, Gossard

That “dude,” Eddie Vedder, would write and record vocals to a few of the tracks (which would later become known as the ‘Mamasan Trilogy’: “Once,” “Alive” and “Footsteps”), and send it back to the other three in Seattle. Long-distance flights would take place, fruitful jam sessions would happen, Dave Krusen would round out the early lineup and the rest, as they say, is history.

The unlikely inspiration behind Pearl Jam's original name and the title of their debut album

As stated above, Pearl Jam’s debut album, Ten,was released via Epic Records on August 27th, 1991, a full month before Nirvana’s Nevermind.By this point, the band had shed their previous moniker, Mookie Blaylock, though due to love of basketball (primarily shared by Ament and Vedder), they would proceed to name the album after the aforementioned point guard.

I’ve spent a long time pondering exactly what form I wanted my “Ten Turns Twenty” post to take. Ten was an important album in my formative years; perhaps the single most important one. I was raised on a steady diet of what we now call ‘classic rock’ – The Beatles, Bob Seger & the Silver Bullet Band, John Mellencamp, Led Zeppelin, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Montrose…oh, and of course Bruce Springsteen (with and without the E Street Band). At some point, I started the “my parents’ music is lame” phase, so my tastes shifted to R&B-infused early hip hop: Bell Biv Devoe, Bobby Brown, Boyz II Men, Another Bad Creation, Marky Mark & The Funkee Bunch, etc. Forgive me…I was like nine years old.

Anyway, in late 1992 came my introduction to Ten. I’m not going to pretend that I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it, though I have a pretty good idea. Gym class. That’s right, gym class. I had just turned twelve and was thus in seventh grade at Pennichuck Junior High. The boys’ gym teacher, “Coach” Connolly, was a rather demonstrative individual, very much a presence in the way that boys’ gym teachers can be. He was also a big music fan, and frequently had the tape player out in the gymnasium while we were playing basketball or handball or the like.

Somewhere along the line, somebody had given Coach a sort of Pearl Jam mix tape. It contained most of the tracks from the band’s performance on MTV Unplugged and some live rarities, including an improv cover of The Pretenders’ “Brass In Pocket” which came from the band’s June 1992 performance in Zurich.

That mixtape, which Coach was kind enough to copy onto an old 60-minute Memorex tape, would serve as the spark that lit the fire that would become my Pearl Jam obsession for, well, the next twenty years. Christmas 1992 brought with it my first CD player and my first two CDs: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and, finally, Pearl Jam’s Ten. (Related side note: I still have one of those CDs, jettisoned the other long ago.) I’m not too proud to admit that I actually obtained my own copy more than a year after the album debuted: remember, I was 11 years old when the album came out. But I finally had my very own copy, and would proceed to spend endless hours unfolding and examining the nine-panel poster that contained the now-iconic, magenta-hued artwork on the front and hand-scribbled lyric sheets to most of the song on the back.

Obligatory picture of the original, unfolded, magically magenta album cover artwork.

Ten is, by no means, a perfect album; far from it in fact. It is by no means Pearl Jam’s best work, nor is it the best example of Pearl Jam’s influence on the so-called ‘Seattle sound’ (that title belongs to the band’s sophomore album, Vs.). In fact, I find it almost unlistenably over-produced in hindsight; I went several years without listening to the original album until about a year ago, when I started revisiting it from time to time, knowing that the twentieth anniversary was approaching. (Related side note: the original album was rendered much-more listenable after hearing Brendan O’Brien’s remixed/remastered, comically bad Ten Redux edition that came out a couple years ago; my hatred of Brendan O’Brien knows no bounds).

Don’t get me wrong: the songs on Ten are great. The album has sold roughly ten million copies to date, and stands as the band’s most commercially successful for good reason. Eddie Vedder’s voice would become a mouthpiece for alienated, disconnected, troubled kids the world over in a more real sense than his ‘grunge’ counterpart Kurt Cobain (be honest: you didn’t really identify with Cobain’s nonsensical lyrics most of the time, just like you didn’t really identify with Jim Morrison’s a generation before him), much like his idol Pete Townshend was before him.

I guess that brings us to the logical point where we re-examine the original album and all of its mystique. If you’re still with me, thanks…we’re up around 1200 words at this point, and my consciousness stream shows no signs of drying up. So I’m going to stop now and call this “Volume One.” When I’m done the next part, I’ll link to it here.