Pearl Jam: how I came to love the album Ten

I have heard Pearl Jam throughout my life. I remember listening to Last Kiss (1999) in my beat-up Nissan Stanza when it first came out. I can even vaguely remember listening to the riff from Alive at a Little League baseball game. But I never had the album. It was 2003. I had a thing for guitar solos. I was still in that phase of my life where I thought Slash was a god. But it was starting to rub off and it seemed like the only band that fit the bill for me was Guns N’ Roses (circa late 80's).

So there I was in a CD store when a friend of mine told me to place ‘Ten’ under the censor that allowed you to sample 30 second sections from songs for the album. I do remember hearing guitar solos: lots of guitar solos. Based on that pretty simple reason, I bought it.

Strangely enough, I wasn’t blown away. I’ve seen that in a lot of people who hear Pearl Jam the first time. Don’t get me wrong. I did like them very much. But this type of music was a symbol - for me - that was like a death-knell for the kind of music I liked. So, I had an antipathy toward it. It was too modern. My kind of music was classic rock stuff; not this modern, mainstream rock that slowly killed my beloved guitar solo. And yet, Pearl Jam was one of the bands that nurtured it, so for that reason, it did its rounds in my CD player.

Then I did something that I probably should have done a long time ago. I listened to the lyrics. I read them. I found myself listening to a storyteller. The songs themselves are very powerful.

‘Once’ is a raging anthem about a guy who goes crazy and kills everybody because he hates himself and doesn’t know who he is anymore. ‘Even Flow’ is about a homeless man who has no hope at escaping his abject poverty. ‘Alive’ is the haunting (somewhat autobiographical) story about a tender kid finding out his father died, and how the mother makes sexual advances on him because she sees so much of her husband in the child: the ‘I’m still alive’ chorus is more of a regret than an affirmation.

‘Why Go’ is the story of a girl who wants to run away from home because her parents want her to be someone she’s not. ‘Black’ is the story a heartbreak, of lost love. ‘Jeremy’ is about a kid who is picked on and neglected by his parents only to end everything by suicide. ‘Oceans’ is a song about the longing to get away from the suffering in life.

‘Porch’ is another gut-wrenching song about lost love, as is ‘Garden’ And ‘Deep’ is about rape, while ‘Release’ is a beautiful cry for release from all the ills of the world to a father Eddie had never met.

It’s so hard to not hear the Vedder/Stapp comparison, which is one major reason I hate post-grunge. Even so, I get over this by looking at 1991 in perspective, a real hotbed for real, authentic music: Blood, Sugar Magik, The Black Album, Use Your Illusion, Badmotorfinger, Nevermind, Ten, Achtung Baby, Out of Time.

Ten is a solid album. The band is at its least self-conscious. There’s no hint of their obnoxious politics. The music came first. I’ve found that the people who like this music the most have to feel or have felt social alienation. If you haven’t, it’d be like trying to recommend something like coffee or beer to someone who hasn’t yet acquired the taste. It’s something - like everything in music - you have to see from the inside first.