Rolling Stone | 65 | May, 2016ed that February at a house party, and he
washappytoreceiveacallfromthegui-
tarist to come over and jam on some new
tunes.ItwasactuallyMcCreadywholob-
bied to include Ament in the project, de-
spite Gossard’s reservations.
“Mikeworkedinapizzajointright
across the street from where I lived,” says
Ament, “and he’d say to me, ‘Hey man, you
need t o come over a nd play w it h us’, a nd I’d
be like [hesitantly], ‘Ah, yeah, maybe.. .’
But Stone and I got together and we aired
our grievances with each other and told
each other like, ‘OK, if we’re going to do
this together, I think we can help each
other out, but I’m not going to be in a band
with you again if you start doing this...’,
little things that we annoyed each other
with in the past. It was great, because it
cleared the air and meant we could start
afresh.
“In some ways we’re the most unlike-
ly pair of guys to make it through all these
different groups, but there’s something
about how we work. Like if he has rif s, we
have a language where I can help him ar-
range things, or I can be a bouncing board
for ideas. And I have other strengths: I’m
an organiser and a managerial kind of guy.
And I think we can both swap hats and
take the reins. It was like, if we’re going to
be in a band together, we need to support
each other. And that was the ethos we went
into Pearl Jam with.”
In August 1990, the trio placed a call to
producer Chris Hanzsek to book time at
Reciprocal Recording studio to lay down
a tape of instrumental tracks they hoped
might entice a singer and drummer to
join their ranks. The producer had worked
with Gossard and Ament before, when
their former outfi t Green River used Re-
ciprocal to demo tracks for their 1985
debut EP Come On Down, and he’d en-
listed Ament’s organisational skills when
compiling Seattle music sampler Deep Six- featuring Green River, Melvins, Sound-
garden, Malfunkshun and more – on his
own C/Z label the following year.
“When Stone, Jef and Mike showed up
everyone was very business-like and very
friendly,” Hanzsek recalls. “They were so
organised. Stone was like the chairman,
and he came in with a notebook full of
notes about what they needed to accom-
plish.”
Borrowing Matt Cameron from Sound-
garden and Chris Friel from Shadow to
play drums, Gossard, Ament and Mc-
Cready committed 12 instrumental tracks
to tape over two successive weekends.
“I thought it was pretty excellent,” says
Hanzsek. “It seemed to have a bit of soul
to it. You could tell that work had gone
into it.”
“I remember hearing the first demos
and being really impressed by them,” says
Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell, who
used to room with Andrew Wood. “There
really seemed to be a focus to them, and
they were songs that were conceived with-
out lyrics or melodies, which I don’t think
I had ever done. If I was writing a song
without lyrics and without a vocal melo-
dy then it would tend to be musically real-
ly complicated, because something would
have to be in there. I remember thinking,
‘Wow, they’re really open and really in-WHY GO HOME?
Eddie Vedder at the Moore Theatre in
Seattle on January 17th, 1992. He was
so shy at his fi rst show with the band
he barely looked at the crowd, but
soon “turned into an animal” onstage,
says Stone Gossard.