I’m trying to imagine being 18 and listening to Ten for the first time like I did when I was 18 in 1991. I can’t. I can only imagine listening to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon, which I must have heard as an album for the first time somewhere around that time.
That album, which would also be 18 years old at that time, didn’t feel like an epic to me yet but a bunch of well-worn songs that I was already very familiar with — songs that had been saturated into culture by radio and TV. I imagine that the songs of Ten may feel that way to many younger listeners today. The album, as a whole, may lack the impact it had on us when it struck in August of 1991. Time has embedded many of these songs into our collective soundtrack of the 1990s.
When Pearl Jam appeared on the scene, like the other big names that came to represent grunge, they seemed so drastically different. Listening to the album with fresh ears, it’s a little harder to hear why this was so shocking. Today, the music on Ten sounds like what it is — less showy hard rock. The solos that many decried grunge for doing away with are still there in abundance, they’re just not as technical. Instead, they’re simply emotive. The lyrics are still filled with the kind of thing everyone latches onto — angst, mainly, feeling lost in the world, etc. Classic stuff.
Maybe it just seemed so different to us 18 year olds who had been listening to, and grown tired of, the Warrants of the music world snickering about “Cherry Pie” for the past few years. The stuff of Pearl Jam’s lyrics is the stuff of most of classic rock’s lyrics.
If anything, it was the sound that dated the album to a specific time, something made obvious after the band settled into a style with their next couple of albums which was so strikingly different than that of Ten’s glossy sound. The band was obviously dissatisfied, too, calling in producer Brendan O’Brien to remix several tracks for the rearviewmirror compilation and then a completely retooled Ten Redux, also remixed by O’Brien.
What we got there was a sort of middle-ground that changes the album as we knew it but isn’t really all that different, either. Gone is the de rigueur late-80s/early-90s reverb that drenched the vocals and especially the drums, but obviously still present is the structure of the songs that makes it still feel related to the period — big guitar solos and big, soaring choruses that we never quite heard again in their catalog.
It was Pearl Jam filtered through the hard rock of the time then, and it still is now: There’s no remixing that can change that. And that’s a good thing.
[amazon_enhanced asin=”B0000027RL” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B001N18HOQ” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B005KP0UVE” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B00136RY6I” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=”B005LLXB9K” container=”” container_class=”” price=”All” background_color=”FFFFFF” link_color=”000000″ text_color=”0000FF” /]
- How David Bowie’s ‘Reality’ Stood Out For What It Was Not - September 29, 2023
- Metallica’s ‘St. Anger’ Was Always Much Better Than They Said - June 8, 2023
- How King Crimson Defined an Unsettled Post-9/11 Landscape on ‘Power to Believe’ - March 5, 2023
I remember everyone saying grunge and alternative killed hair metal. I was in high school from 1980- 1984 and even by 1991 I was so tired of hair metal. It was cool when you had a few dozen original killer hair bands but by ’91 there were so many clones it made my ears sick. It was refreshing to hear something new at the time. I liked metal bands still but I also embraced the newer albums too. TEN just happened to be one that everybody had to have. I think it’s one of those albums of the decade that stands out from most of the others like it. My interests in the album have changed but I liked it at the time.
I’ve always argued that “hair metal” (a term I’ve never been fond of) killed “hair metal.” It got to the point where labels were signing and pushing any semi-attractive group of guys with electric guitars, long hair and makeup, regardless of what they actually sounded like. True enough, even some of the earliest bands in that genre were all about image (Poison, I’m looking at you), but the bands that were actually good have kind of been lost in the negative stereotype.
Initially, I didn’t like Pearl Jam very much, but this record grew on me. In the end, I think grunge killed grunge, too, though. At least for the guys that didn’t kill themselves through drug abuse and other mental health issues. Just like there’s only so much partying you can take in music, there’s only so much moping about what a lousy, miserable world it is, too.
Although it was so long ago I can’t remember the name of the magazine, or the writer of the article, or the people interviewed (I apologize, but believe me – I’m not making this up!), but I totally remember reading a songwriting publication in the early 1990s where they were interviewing major producers about the advent of grunge. One producer said (more or less), “I’ve never seen it happen in the music industry that fast – one kind of music just blew in and just destroyed the existing style, which was that highly produced heavy rock, sometimes labelled glam rock. Overnight, those old bands were knocked right out of contention.” So it’s not just a popular perception or false memory – the powers that be in the music biz noticed it as well.
Oddly enough, the first couple of times I heard Pearl Jam on the radio, I was sure it was some kind of Quebecois band from eastern Canada, because back in the 1970s, there were a few bands from that province that kinda sounded like PJ, except they sang in French. Yeah, I don’t remember their names either, but a friend of mine from college days used to play that stuff all the time.
I also remember an old friend of mine (who played in a heavy rock band for a living for a while), told me one day his wife had just bought Nirvana’s Nevermind. After listening to it carefully over the next couple of weeks, he came to this conclusion: “I just don’t get it.”
It was the changing of the guard, I guess – you either got it, or you didn’t. If you get a chance, find Dave Grohl’s keynote address at this year’s SXSW. It sheds a lot of light as exactly how the changing of the guard was actually accomplished.
Don’t get me started on Nirvana. They’re easily the most overrated act in the history of rock. Soundgarden and Alice in Chains were far, far superior bands. I get the grunge movement in general, but I fail to see the “genius” in a band that produced one pretty good album. I actually think the Unplugged album is better than Nevermind.
And the bands that did stick around during and after this transition often made a very painful attempt to embrace the sounds coming from their perceived nemeses. It was usually pretty sad. One of the few that I can think of that was actually really successful, style-wise, was King’s X with Dogman, but there’s such a weird back story to that album that it could be due to that as much as them “going grunge” (which is funny, since some of the bands like Alice In Chains cite King’s X as an influence.)
The early 90s was a mess for rock bands. It was like you either had two choices: go grunge or go industrial, or just give up. Anyone remember Shotgun Messiah? THAT was a shocking change (party rock to NIN-flavored industrial, and surprisingly good).
Dogman is still one of my favorite King’s X records, though. Probably right behind Gretchen. And Violent New Breed is Shotgun Messiah’s best record. I didn’t like their party rock stuff. That title track, though, is killer. Hmm… I feel a Forgotten Series coming on at some point when I’m a little less tired and irritable. 😉
Don’t take that as ripping on Dogman – it’s my favorite KX album.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on Violent New Breed. I wasn’t a fan of theirs before that, but I’d heard them on Z-Rock from time to time, so the new sound was a huge surprise.