booksthatweliked.He’dbelike,‘Oh,you
make the posters for the band? I make the
posters too!’ and I’d say, ‘Oh, you screen-
print T-shirts? I screen-print T-shirts too!’
So it sort of felt like there was a brother-
hood before we even met. And then to get
thetapeandhearthatamazingvoice...In
some ways it felt like it was probably more
representative of where I was coming from,
morethanevenMark[Arm,GreenRiver
and later Mudhoney frontman] or Andy
[Wood], just personality-wise.”
“Myinitialimpressionwas,well,hecan
singanditsoundscool,”saysGossard.“The
onlyotherthingsthatI’dheardwerefrom
singerstryingtobeAndy,whowerereally
into Mother Love Bone, so hearing Eddie
waslike,‘ThankGod!’Iwaslike,‘Lowand
clear...that’sprettyinteresting.’Itwasthe
firstthingweheardthatworkedatallmu-
sically. So if you have a guy that sounded
prettygoodandhewasintoit,don’tscrew
around, just start making music. We were
pretty quick to go, ‘Let’s just do it.’”O
n october 8th, 1990, eddie
VedderarrivedinSeattleto
play with Gossard, Ament,
McCready and their newly re-
cruited drummer Dave Kru-
sen, who was introduced to
thebandviaamutualfriend. Withinan
hour of touching down at
Sea-Tacairport,thesing-
erwasstandinginGalle-
riaPotatoheadrehearsal
space with a microphone
in his hand.
“I was really impressed
by him,” says Krusen
today. “He had such a
massivevoice,andhis
workethicblewmeaway:
hewasjustconstantly
thinking about the songs.
I remember going back to
my friends, telling them how I thought this
band was going to be huge. I grew up on
Zeppelin, the Stones, the Beatles and the
WhoandIreallyfeltthiswasabandthat
couldfitinwiththoselegendarybands.”
“Wewrote‘Release’andacoupleofother
songsprettyquicklyrightwhenhegot
there,”saysGossard.“Sowewereexcit-
ed. It felt comfortable and it was so difer-
entfromanythingwe’deverdone.Ithink
thatwasthethingthatmadeusthemost
excited: no-one wanted to go back to make
something like Mother Love Bone again. It
wastimeforsomethingdiferent.”
On October 22nd, the newly-bonded
band – temporarily called Mookie Blay-
lockafteroneoftheNewJerseyNets’point
guard’stradingcardsslippedinsideademo
tape–madetheirlivedebutatSeattle’s
OfRampCafe,withaneight-songset-
list , featur ing “Relea se”, “A lone”, “A live”,“Once”, “Even Flow”, “Black”, “Breath” and
“Just a Girl”. Though a visibly nervous Ve-
dder remained largely rooted to the stage
allnight,awatchingChrisCornellrecalled
theshowas“thebestinauguralshowI’ve
ever seen in my life”. For his part, Gossard
will only admit to feeling “really proud”
that the quintet had the guts to step back
into the spotlight so quickly, but he notes,
“ThatshowaddedtotheideathatEddie
was the right one.”
That evening, Vedder wrote a postcard
to his room-mates in San Diego.
“You’re not going to believe it,” he wrote.
“IloveSeattle.Moreunbelievable,itloves
me.Thiscityanditspeopletotallyem-
braced me. And within that warmth/vibe,
I’ve written/played some of the most im-
portant music of my life. It’s been a very
intenseVolume11experience.It’schanged
me, and somehow I’ve afected the people
here too.”
Vedder’s integration into Seattle’s
closely-bonded musical community was
sealed by his immediate assimilation into
a new project Cornell had instigated to
honour his late friend Andrew Wood.
Originally, Soundgarden/Pearl Jam
‘supergroup’ Temple of the Dog intended
toconvenetorecordjusttwoCornell
songs–“ReachDown”and“SayHello 2
Heaven”–butwithideasflowingbetweenthe musicians, that conceit was expanded
torecordafullalbumAmentnowhails
as “a cathartic exercise in us trying to
understand our friend’s death”.
“Overthecourseofaweekwejust
knockedthisrecordout,withzeropres-
sure and no expectations and no-one tell-
ing anyone else what to play,” says Ament.
“I still think it’s one of the most listen-
ablerecordsthatI’veeverplayedon.Stone
would probably say the same thing.”
In early December, as Michael Gold-
stone finalised a new deal for the band at
Epic, Vedder packed his belongings into a
case, and moved permanently to Seattle.
BytheendofJanuary,hisnewbandwere
making album demos at Seattle’s London
Bridge Studio with producer Rick Para-
shar.OnMarch11thallinvolvedreturned
tothestudiotobeginworkonthealbum
in earnest.“We had a great experience with Rick
[Parashar] with Temple of the Dog, so
we just decided to go for it,” says Gossard.
“We had just made a $250,000 album for
Mother Love Bone so this time we wanted
to make a record quickly and as cheaply as
we could. We cut it all in one three-week
session. But I was very anxious and con-
trolling then, trying to make it all perfect.
It turned out good, but we ended up over-
thinking it for sure. Up to that point we
hadn’t really met a producer that had talk-
ed us into being great.”
“Stone was more of a perfectionist than
I was,” says Ament. “We must have played
‘Even Flow’ one hundred times in the
course of that month. We ended up beating
that song to a pulp. ‘Even Flow’ might be
the best song on the record, but even when
I listen to it today I think, ‘God, we didn’t
quite get it.’ We put pressure on ourselves,
but I think that comes down to us think-
ing, ‘Oh my God, we got another chance,
we can’t screw this one up.’”
With the sessions at London Bridge
wrapped up for just $25,000 – one-tenth
of the budget spent on Apple – the quin-
tet felt su ciently relaxed to accept an in-
vitation from mix engineer Tim Palmer,
a “charming, funny, delightful” English-
man who had earned Gossard and Ament’s
trust with his work on Mother Love Bone’s
debut, to decamp en masse to
England to sit in on the mix-
ing process at Ridge Farm
studios in Surrey. To the dis-
appointment of all, a combi-
nation of mounting personal
problems and on-going issues
with alcohol abuse would see
Dave Krusen exit the set-up
ahead of the trip – “They gave
me every opportunity in the
world,” the drummer admits,
“and I regret the shit out of the
fact that I screwed it up” – but
having negotiated more damaging setbacks
in the past, Gossard and Ament temporari-
ly parked that issue.
“We spent way too much money mixing,”
admits Gossard, “but we kinda felt like we
deserved it. We had been going through so
much, and this was a chance to listen to
music and have fun. We all gained about
30 pounds out there because all we did was
eat biscuits and listen to mixes.”
“I fi nd it quite amusing that when you
think of the ‘Seattle Sound’ you think of
sweaty, grungy, industrial nightclubs, and
yet one of the bigger albums to come out
of the Seattle scene was actually mixed in
an old, idyllic English farmhouse amongst
the rolling hills of Surrey with sheep and
cows around,” says Palmer. “But we mixed
one single song, ‘Once’, at A&M studios in
Hollywood, and they were very happy with
the blueprint.“‘EVEN FLOW’ MIGHT BE THE
BEST SONG ON THE RECORD,”
SAYS AMENT, “BUT WHEN
ILISTENTOITITHINKWE
DIDN’T GET IT QUITE RIGHT.”
Rolling Stone | 67 | May, 2016