Glenn Frey repeatedly said about the Eagles that people didn’t just listen to the band’s music, they did things to it. I imagine the same is true for those who came of age listening to Pearl Jam. They got drunk, hooked up, broke up, woke up hungover and drove off in a huff with their middle finger extended, screaming “I’m still alive” at the top of their lungs.
I did none of those things. Despite having just turned 14 when the group’s debut album Ten came out in August 1991, I missed grunge entirely. I never even listened to Nirvana’s Nevermind until a few years ago. It’s a fact that even I’ve found odd over the years given that I like a lot of the genre’s influences like Black Sabbath, Aerosmith, the Ramones and the Beatles, “Helter Skelter,” which I consider to be the first grunge song. In the summer of 1991, I saw Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers in concert, so my musical tastes were clearly somewhere else. By the time I rediscovered contemporary radio in 1997, the landscape had changed with ska, pop punk and the Spice Girls dominating the airwaves.
So when I saw the articles — and various Facebook posts about the articles — saying that Ten had turned 25, I felt it was time to finally give it a listen. I’m usually about 20-30 years behind most musical trends, so the timing seemed right.
I’m not totally unfamiliar with Pearl Jam’s music. I obviously know some of their hits, like “Alive,” and I really like their covers of the early 1960s tune “Last Kiss” and the Who’s “Love Reign O’er Me.” They also appeared as members of one of my all-time favorite fake bands, Citizen Dick, in the movie “Singles.” (Again, I liked the movie but didn’t really listen to the soundtrack.) I once interviewed the singer of a group with the hopefully upbeat name Lollipop Lust Kill who called himself Evvy Pedder. I even saw Eddie Vedder perform Bob Dylan’s “The Times They Are A Changin’ ” at a Ralph Nader political rally at Madison Square Garden in 2000, because we all do dumb things when we’re young.
The first track on Ten, fittingly called “Once,” sounded exactly like I expected it would. The band’s signature sound, i.e. piercing guitars, hard clubbing drums, and Vedder’s fast-paced stuttering staccato, are all there on track one. They rarely stray from the formula on the rest of the record.
As the album progressed, I realized I knew a few more tunes than I thought. While I was listening, I could see why so many people probably connected with the band. They write great hooks. By the time most of the songs got to the final chorus I felt as though I could sing along, even though I could barely decipher any of the lyrics. A few hours later I even found myself humming “Even Flow.”
A few tracks stuck out, mainly because they differed slightly from the rest. Most notable to me were “Black,” a power ballad with a piano-driven buildup to the guitar solo in the final stretch, and “Why Go,” with its slightly funky intro.
The songs on the first half of the album sounded much better than the second half. The dividing line between the good and the somewhat decent tracks was the song “Jeremy,” a tune that I’ve heard many times, but still don’t really like. I feel like the band’s teenage-aged, sad-boy lament led legions of rock n’ roll badasses in the 1990s to stop singing about partying and getting laid and focus on their feelings, resulting in what sounded like a lot of whining on the radio. Or to put it another way, it was the inspiration for every song Creed ever put out. A nearly unforgivable sin.
Still, if the worst thing you can say about a band’s debut is that it inspired 100,000 bad imitators, that’s not too bad. While Pearl Jam has long since made the shift from cutting-edge musicians to middle-aged touring stalwarts, it is fair to say that they started out with a solid foundation with Ten. After listening to it a few times, I actually wanted to hear it again, and suddenly found myself thumbing through the band’s catalogue. Maybe in another 10-20 years I’ll get around to listening to it.
