Less metal and apocalyptic than Badmotorfinger, less grimy and bleary-eyed than Dirt, Ten’s most winning trait may have been that it was less cynical than Nevermind. Ten became just the right album at just the right time, with the DNA to endure beyond its peers. But the ubiquitous media phenomenon of “alternative” rock, led by MTV and a little touring concert festival called Lollapalooza soon made Ten an indispensable rock and roll album. The first few months after its release in August of 1991 saw the band’s expectations more or less met, with the album slowly but steadily finding its way off the shelves.

No one at the time predicted that their debut Ten would sell millions and catapult the band into classic status, hoping instead for a modest 30,000-40,000 and the chance to make another one. Furthermore, Vedder’s lyrics weren’t snarky or intentionally subversive, but rather fragmentary pieces of character and story that recalled the Oedipal confusion and mystery of the Doors, instead of paeans to booty and booze. Vedder’s deep baritone projected both sensitivity and ruggedness onto that template, at a time when both pop-metal and college-rock were led by keening yowlers (Axl Rose, Perry Farrell, etc.). The new songs Gossard and Ament were working on were more aggressive than the shimmery Mother Love Bone material, though they retained an iota of that band’s tendency toward funk rock. Vedder dubbed his vocals over three songs, which he named “Alive”, “Once”, and “Footsteps”, and sent it back to the band (a playable replica of this demo cassette is included the super extra mega deluxe edition of the reissue), and it was clear to everyone involved that there was something special about that voice. Irons in turn gave the tape to a San Diego surfer/gas station attendant named Eddie Vedder, thus defining Pearl Jam’s origins as a combination of tragedy and kismet. After fashioning a demo with the help of fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready and Soundgarden’s Matt Cameron on drums, they passed it along to former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons. The shock and grief of his untimely end led Gossard and Ament not only to record the Temple of the Dog tribute with Soundgarden’s Chris Cornell, but to maintain at least a semblance of momentum for their own compositions. They were poised for even bigger success with the decidedly slicker glam-rock of Mother Love Bone, going so far as to sign a deal with Polygram Records before lead singer Andrew Wood died of a heroin overdose in March of 1990. Guitarist Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament had already had some success with their mid-‘80s garage fuzz-bomb Green River (which also featured Mark Arm and Steve Turner, who would later form Mudhoney). The album was the result of both incredibly good and incredibly bad fortune, and the simple desire of its creators to continue making music through it all. Though their sound, minus the golden baritone of the enigmatic, reluctant hero Eddie Vedder, wasn’t markedly outside the confines of classic rock (with touches of punk and metal), it was received as such by radio, video, and live audiences, if not the media, and its legacy and impact on future bands seemed all but certain ever since Jeremy spoke in class, and all five horizons revolved around her soul.īut Ten, for all of its earnest, burly grandeur, almost certainly wasn’t recorded with the amount of ambition equivalent to its success. Originally released in late August of 1991, the album sold modestly until a year later, when now-iconic videos for its biggest singles, “Even Flow”, “Alive”, and “Jeremy”, became inescapable on an MTV newly flush with product from bands and artists previously relegated to local, independent, and underground markets.Īt that point, Pearl Jam and its initial clutch of songs (along with Nirvana, Soundgarden, et al) became, unfairly or not, synonymous with the notion of an “alternative” music that would ultimately reclaim and save all of rock and roll from the degradations of hair metal and prefab pop. Over the years, Sony Legacy has re-released countless albums by artists from Miles Davis to Bruce Springsteen, Johnny Cash to Journey (?), but rarely has it honored a record whose importance with regards to legacy has been debated since day one as Pearl Jam’s debut, Ten.

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