In Too Deep: My Journey With Pearl Jam (Part 1 - Ten at Forty-One)
Cover art for Pearl Jam’s debut album
No other band or artist has meant as much to me for as long as Pearl Jam. My favorite album of all time by any artist ever is Vitalogy. My favorite song of all time by any artist ever is In My Tree. When I’m alone and want to feel surrounded by friends I play Pearl Jam. When I’m despondent or angry with the state of the world, when I need comfort, when I want to dance until sweat flies, when I want to celebrate a milestone in my life, I spin Pearl Jam. I turned 41 years old on Saturday April 24th. Every year, on my birthday, I go for a run. It’s a great way to clear the mechanism and check in with myself. Not to mention, it’s a great way to start a new year of existence. And of course, this year, as I ran I played Pearl Jam in my head.
I don’t remember the first time I heard them. Their debut album came out in August of 1991. I was eleven and they were already ubiquitous. On the radio, on MTV, at friends’ houses, they just existed. Like Santa or the suburban myth of Satanic cults abducting and abusing children at alarming rates, Pearl Jam’s music was always there, a part of a shared psychic understanding. There was little difference between them and The Stones or The Who or The Beatles. Except that my parents loved those other bands and were dubious of Pearl Jam.
Alive, Even Flow, and Jeremy were not modern Alt. Rock hits. They were standards, as old and cherished as anything by Zeppelin, CCR, Neil Young or (insert any mega famous, chart-altering rock band since Elvis). So, no, I don’t remember hearing them for the first time. There was no first time. I don’t remember the premiere of the Jeremy video. I do remember countless debates with older kids about the meaning of the song and accompanying divisive and controversial video –- it’s clearly about Jeremy killing himself, not his classmates, btw. But when did I first see it? What did I think the song was about before those discussions? What did I think the video was trying to say? Did I know at the time that MTV was censoring the video? I certainly know that now. I’ve seen the original, uncensored version so many times that it’s the only version. Then there are the countless (no, literally, countless) live versions I’ve watched on YouTube or some such site. Already, in 1991, Pearl Jam was just a fact of being alive in the United States. Like weather. Or the President. I’m not sure anyone can remember hearing them for the first time unless they were at The Off Ramp on October 22, 1990. And if they were, then they remember hearing Mookie Blaylock for the first time.
What I do remember very clearly is that my Mom hated them. Dad wasn’t a fan either, but he wasn’t outspoken about his feelings. Dad was always more of an eye roller. Like most of the music I was into in my pre-teens (I’m looking at you They Might Be Giants), Pearl Jam were something he could ignore (cringe warning: I guess you could say that Daddy didn’t give affection and the band was something that Mommy wouldn’t wear). Mom found Eddie Vedder unintelligible and loud and therefore a problem. Thankfully, this has changed over the years. While not a fan per se, Mom likes a lot of Eddie’s music, especially the slower, more acoustic-forward stuff. It’s something we can listen to together and share. But when I think of Mom listening to Pearl Jam back then, the image in my mind is a 1990s suburban variation of Huey Lewis in Back to the Future.
When my friends all started raving about Ten, I wasn’t interested. Eager to please my folks, as any eleven year old, corn-fed, Midwestern, white kid is apt to do, I eschewed Ed’s baritone and Mike McCready’s roaring guitars for The Moody Blues (Dad’s favorite) and Elton John (Mom’s favorite –- well, tied for first with Harry Chapin) because that’s what my parents liked and I wanted to like what they liked. Really, I wanted them to like me. I wanted them to be proud of me. Approval was paramount. I wish I could say that’s changed now that I’m in my fifth decade of existence but really it’s just the people I crave approval from that have changed; the need still permeates.
I don’t remember my parents specifically telling me not to listen to Pearl Jam or Nirvana or Soundgarden or any of it. The forbiddance was implicit. Or inferential. Whichever. The face my mom made when she happened upon five consecutive seconds of Eddie Vedder howling told me they were off the table. To Ed’s credit, five seconds was a lot more than she’d give Kurt Cobain.
Luckily for the ‘rents, I was eleven and still far more into their music than my own. The stuff I did like that was my own was inoffensive, mostly quirky stuff like Weird Al Yankovic or the aforementioned They Might Be Giants and Huey Lewis. Bon Jovi were in there too somewhere but Mom was cool with him. Probably because she thought he was hot and she could understand what he was singing about (sometimes I wonder if that was her biggest issue with Ed, the not understanding and thereby not knowing if what I was listening to was inappropriate or not). Dad also liked Bon Jovi. At least, right up to the moment when he jumped into my room to surprise me, playing air guitar and belting the opening line to ‘You Give Love a Bad Name,’ and cracked his bald head hard against the top of the door frame. I don’t remember dad listening to much Bon Jovi after that.
Here’s what I do remember: in the spring of 1993, my best friend Travis loaned me his copy of Ten on cassette. He insisted the thing upon me. Travis and I shared a lot of music. We liked a lot of the same things: DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince, Mr. Big, Warrant, The Spin Doctors, Meatloaf, Stone Temple Pilots. We spent every spare hour together either lighting fires in his backyard or building forts in the woods behind our cul-de-sac or pretending to be on stage in front of 20,000 people (in fact, we were in his garage) playing our favorite songs (in fact, we were lip-syncing and air-guitaring to his boom box). But the big divide between us? He was a Pearl Jam guy and I was team Nirvana. To his credit, Travis at least enjoyed listening to Nirvana from time to time whereas I wouldn’t give Pearl Jam a fair shot; hence his near violent insistence that I listen to Ten. Alone. With headphones. The whole album. All the way through. At least twice.
“But I’ve heard them a million times. ‘Jeremy’ and ‘Even Flow’ and ‘Alive’ --”
“Nope, the whole thing. All the way through. At least twice. They’re so much more than those songs.”
“Fine, Trav, but only because it’s you.”
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Ten opens with a snippet of an instrumental song the serves as a prelude to the opening track, ‘Once.’ Later, I would learn that this instrumental intro was a full song in and of itself and had a title and everything! The band insisted on using it to open (and close) the record as a way of letting listeners know Pearl Jam wasn’t the straight forward rock band everyone expected. Pearl Jam had layers. Pearl Jam had bigger things coming; just you wait.
‘Once’ was a shot to my system. It’s blistering and forces you to listen. It’s cinematic and dark. I’m not sure what I expected from Pearl Jam but opening an album with some weird ambient noodling that gave way to song about a guy murdering prostitutes was definitely at the bottom of the list. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been so jolting. ‘Jeremy’ is dark. But at the time, as I’ve said, I wasn’t really paying attention to the words. I could mumble along, grunting and hooting, but outside of the refrain (“Jeremy spoke in class today” — which I wasn’t 100% on because it could easily have been “Jeremy’s spoken in class today”) I had no clue what the other lyrics were. I had been told it was about teen suicide. But the first time through the album, I didn’t know Jeremy from Benny and the Jets.
The first time through the record I remember being blown away by ‘Black,’ ‘Oceans,’ and especially ‘Release.’ The slower, moodier ballads grabbed me in a way that the three big hits had failed to do. And then of course we’re back to that moody ambient thing that opened the record. Full circle, we return to where we started. To a twelve year old, that was some fucking ART. There was no question that I would listen again. I had to listen again immediately. Forget my deal with Trav. I had a new deal, a new pact with the band. They had made something that I could feel rearranging my insides. I owed it to them to listen again and again. It was the least I could do. There was no other way to say thanks.
Pearl Jam’s debut album is a masterpiece. It’s a masterpiece in its original 1991 form and it’s a masterpiece in its 2011 anniversary remix. There’s less gloss, less reverb on that one. Ten Redux sounds less shiny and a bit more modern than the original mix which borrowed a bit from the kind of production you’d get from hair metal of the 1980s. But it’s a bit like choosing between Scotch and Bourbon. Both versions of Ten are perfect, and neither is the wrong decision.
As the years have gotten on, Ten has fallen from my personal #1 favorite Pearl Jam album. But it hasn’t fallen far. It rests at #3 right now and I can’t imagine that it’ll ever fall any further. The record was perfect for an angsty, confused, hormonal pre-teen and it’s perfect for an boring, less confused, aching kneed man in his 40’s, and that’s because the album is a tapestry of universal short stories. A famous musician once said that the goal of songwriting is to write something so personal that everyone can relate to it. That’s Ten.
Of course, we all know now about ‘Alive’ (the lead single) and its autobiographical elements. Ed wrote about a deeply personal experience whereby he found out the man he thought was his biological father actually was not, that in fact, his real father was dead. That’s the narrative of the song but that’s not what the song is about. Just ask the hundreds of thousands of people who sing along on any given Pearl Jam tour. “I’m still alive” has nothing to do with a missed chance at a relationship with a biological father. Everyone knows what “I’m still alive” means to them. It’s a song so personal that we all relate to it.
Beyond that song there are portraits of characters not named Ed, Eddie, or Edward. There is a homeless man begging for change and shaking his fist at a rigged system. There’s a broken hearted man in the aftermath of loss. There’s abortion. There’s rape. There’s drug addiction. There’s a troubled young man with no support system and access to a handgun. So many short stories about what it means to be a white American in the 1990’s.
Beyond being compelling rock songs, the stories on Ten helped shape my worldview. Growing up the son of very right wing Republican Midwesterners, I wouldn’t have thought about the houseless crisis, rape, racism, sexism, or being on the outside of a loaded word like “normal” the way Pearl Jam thought about those things. I became a proud feminist as a pre-teen in part because of their example and the way they eschewed old, broken, rock and roll pitfalls like groupies. Ed was in a very public and very committed relationship. I liked that. Monogamy wasn’t weak or flavorless to me. Even then, I wanted that. I wanted strong, funny, driven woman who would challenge me and hold me accountable while also supporting my dreams with her own. While being far from the last stop, Pearl Jam was the gateway to a world I didn’t know existed, that I didn’t see or understand. But my eyes were opening.
There were countless other bands, artists, activists, writers, and thinkers that I found through Pearl Jam and their music. The very first screenplay I wrote when I was nineteen years old was inspired by the lyrics of Pearl Jam. It was a terrible script, but I wouldn’t have tried writing it without Pearl Jam. I’m a writer in part because of Pearl Jam. What a weird thing, but it’s true. It was hearing Ten that cemented in me a deep desire to tell stories.
Of course, Ten is only the beginning of the journey. Over the next several months I’ll write about who I was when I heard each of the bands albums. I’ll talk about my perspective on each album as it was then and as it is now. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate 41 years of existence, 30 of which Pearl Jam has been a challenge, a comfort, and creative spark.
Up next is Vs. The second Pearl Jam album I hesitated on listening to. Ten was perfection and I’d heard too many other bands drop one great album and then a ton of super shitty albums after. So I didn’t buy Vs when it first came out. I let my friend Adam get it first. And then I let Adam lone me his copy.
Ten is available on vinyl, CD or digitally pretty much anywhere you like to buy music.
Ten’s Top 3 Tracks: Release, Even Flow, and Oceans
