The Beginning of Pearl Jam

For many people who lived as a teen or young adult in the early 1990's no other artists or band became "spokesmen for a generation" for them more so than Pearl Jam, fronted by Eddie Vedder. Between the, sometimes, drunken stage presence and somewhat comparable impacting, poetical lyrics many felt, upon the release of 1991's album Ten, that they had found their modern day Jim Morrison. The intertwined rock music scene in the early 1990's brought local and regional talent together in Seattle, Washington to create what became known as "Grunge".

Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Jeff Ament met Eddie Vedder through a mutual friend named Jack Irons. Jack helped by way of exchanging demo tapes between the guys in Seattle to a, then, long haired gas station attendant named Eddie Vedder. Eddie, upon receiving the tapes from Stone Gossard, would listen to them while on the midnight shift back at the gas station in San Diego, California. Inspired by sleep deprivation, the ocean and the world around him, he began writing.

Many times while surfing Eddie would be most inspired. Once in Rolling Stone he was quoted as saying , " The sleep deprivation came into play. You get so sensitive that it feels like every nerve is directly exposed. I was literally writing some of these words as I was going up against a wave or paddling". Often running from the ocean to his beach house he would write the words that were coming to him on Post-It notes stolen from his work.

Three of Stone Gossard's instrumental demos entitled "Dollar Short" (later named Alive), "Once" and "Footsteps" soon got lyrics from Eddie and were recorded over the tapes sent to him. He titled the tape, now with his lyrics, "the Mamasan Trilogy". He then created graphics on a Xerox machine, labeled the tape case and sent it back to Seattle. When Jeff Ament first heard the tape he picked up the phone and called Stone Gossard saying " You've gotta get over here and hear this". After weeks of additional collaboration and practice, Ten was released in the autumn of 1991. With a sound reminiscent of large scale, arena rock bands of the 1970's, Pearl Jam made their place in modern rock. The first singles were "Alive", a biographical account of a young mans struggle to understand the death of his father and his mothers twisted sexual attraction toward him afterwards and "Evenflow", which deals with the issue of homelessness. Both of these songs seemed to hit a vein in the post Cold War youth looking for guidance and someone with whom they could relate.