35 years ago Pearl Jam entered the rehearsal room for the first time

If we rewind the tape 35 years and go back to October 8, 1990 we find Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Jeff Ament, Mike McCready and the drummer Dave Krusenthose who would soon become i Pearl Jamin a basement of the Galleria Potatohead rehearsal space in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood to rehearse together for the first time.

As Loudersound tells it, a few weeks earlier Eddie Vedder he had sent his future bandmates a cassette on which he had added vocals to three instrumental demos they had made, songs which he had now titled “Once”, “Alive” And “Footsteps”. The rest of the band was thrilled, as the bassist explains Jeff Ament in the book ‘Pearl Jam Twenty’. “The first listen, I thought, ‘Wow, this is really good.’ I called Stone and said, ‘I think you should come here and tell me for sure.’”

Stone Gossard
was on board, despite still being reeling from the death of
Andrew Wood
the exuberant frontman of his previous band, i
Mother Love Bone
and since the subsequent dissolution of the group, the guitarist had therefore thrown himself headlong into the new project. They had already tried an unsuccessful singer, but now there was a feeling that they might have found their man behind the microphone. But there was only one way to find out. Vedder arrived in Seattle from San Diego on the morning of October 8 and couldn’t wait to get started. Ament recounted: “Just before he got on the plane to go back, he said, ‘When I get there, I want you to pick me up, I want to go straight to the rehearsal room and I don’t want to waste any time.'” Vedder said, “I just want to plug in the tools and get to work. I don’t want to be a tourist, I don’t want to eat anything or do anything.”

The chemistry was immediate. When their first series of rehearsals ended five days later – because Vedder had to return to his job in San Diego – they practically already had the backbone of what would be their first album ready,
“Ten”
(
read the review here
). Beyond
“Once”
And
“Alive”
they had also written
“Even Flow”, “Release”, “Black”
And
“Oceans”
and they had already completed the outtakes
“Breath”, “Just A Girl”
And
“Evil Little Goat”
.

From the beginning,
Eddie Vedder
he felt a special bond with his new companions, he especially bonded with
Jeff Ament
with whom he loved chatting about artwork and how being a member of a band went beyond just music. This is the singer’s vision: “It’s not a slacker job or a rock star thing. It’s about music, it’s about art, it’s about all of those things together, and that’s probably why Jeff and I ended up roommates when we started touring. We just bonded and became very close.”

The band, which was called
Mookie Blaylock
in honor of a professional basketball player, had already booked his first concert. Ament’s desire to try out his new band on stage in front of an audience, Gossard said, was part of the reason for their rampant early productivity: They needed something to play. “We didn’t really have time to worry about what we were going to be, other than the fact that we needed eight songs.”

On October 22nd, i
Mookie Blaylock
alias
Pearl Jam
made their live debut at
Off Ramp Seattle
. The lineup included
“Release”, “Alone”, “Alive”, “Once”, “Even Flow”, “Black”, “Breath”
And
“Just A Girl”
. They made an immediate impression. As the poor man said
Chris Cornell
who was in attendance that night: “It was absolutely the best first concert I’ve ever seen in my life, hands down, beyond compare. I remember exactly what I thought then, that they were incredibly great.”