The first two singles from the album were only available in the U.S. It took “Ten” almost a year to reach the upper reaches of the charts, but once it arrived in late 1992, the album dominated classic rock radio and a monster was unleashed. In late 1991, Pearl Jam was still on the rise, and on one tour opened up for Nirvana (who were opening up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers).
Nirvana made the cover before Pearl Jam (and more often), but there was never any animosity between the musicians that I witnessed, despite Cobain throwing Pearl Jam some shade in a couple of interviews. In contrast, “Ten” didn’t create a new idiom so much as follow the template of a ‘70s classic rock album.Ī lot has been made of the Nirvana versus Pearl Jam “rivalry.” In Seattle during the early ‘90s, I was editor of Seattle music magazine The Rocket, and we gave both bands their first press notices. That convergence contrasted the two bands, and in a way tarnished how I felt about “Ten.” “Nevermind” felt like a breakthrough with its mix of moody acoustic ballads and ultra-melodic blasts of punk. The album officially came out on August 27, 1991, which also just so happened to be the day that Nirvana’s powerhouse single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released to radio. Some of my initial struggles with “Ten” were due to timing. Little wonder it’s the most-played Pearl Jam song, performed at 844 of its 1,034 shows to date. Yet McCready once singled out “Even Flow” as a personal favorite because of the crowd energy it generates live.
Most surprisingly of all, I find myself singing along in the shower the day after Pearl Jam concerts to “Even Flow.” It was the most overplayed Pearl Jam song of the ‘90s, and perhaps suffers the most from the “Ten” production woes. I still rank “Ten” below the studio albums “Vs.” (1993) and “Vitalogy” (1994) (and below live bootlegs), but those many live shows have given me a new relationship with “Alive,” “Black” and even “Jeremy.” Gossard’s songwriting chops, Mike McCready’s guitar riffs, Jeff Ament’s bass and even Vedder’s lyrics pack a different, harder punch. Pearl Jam never used the same producer or mixing engineer again. Stone Gossard told Total Guitar in 2002 that “Ten” was “over-rocked” and blamed the excessive overdubbing for “killing the vibe.” The guitarist wrote it off to the band being studio novices at the time.Įddie Vedder told Rolling Stone in 2006 that he could listen to all of the band’s past catalog except “Ten,” due to reservations he had about the sound. I also called the production “derivative.” I ranked it lower than three of the band’s bootlegs.
I wrote the Pearl Jam entry in the 2004 “Rolling Stone Album Guide,” and Pearl Jam fans clobbered me on the Internet for giving “Ten” only four out of five stars.
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