Of the entire grunge explosion that dominated the early 1990s’ charts and upended the rock world, the scene’s enduring survivors are Pearl Jam.
While riddled with tiresome clichés and well-trodden narratives, there are grains of truth to the basic premise of Washington state’s sleepy logging city suddenly thrust to the music world’s attention. No, it didn’t come out of nowhere. American punk was alive and kicking throughout the 1980s, with bands like Wipers and Melvins especially brewing a prescient meld of lo-fi attack that would score the American Northwest’s underground.
Before long, Green River and Screaming Trees would stand as regional totems of the Seattle music world, and the likes of Sonic Youth and Pixies’ alternative college rock across the country would slowly pull major label attention away from MTV.
Yet, Nevermind knocking Michael Jackson’s Dangerous off the top of the album charts was a surprise, no less to Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain, who’d allegedly been living in his car when it was released in September 1991. A perfect storm had brewed. To those not paying attention, the spandex fatigue of the day’s hair metal buffoonery and the growing stature of alternative music had pushed grunge’s dam to bursting point. All it took was ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, which dropped a few weeks earlier, to pop the ensuing flannel phenomenon.
Grunge’s ‘Big Four’ were already popular. Soundgarden were seasoned veterans having played since the mid-1980s, and Alice in Chains had won acclaim for the heavy blues attack on 1990’s Facelift. While it took Nirvana’s Billboard success to propel their later commercial fortunes, Pearl Jam’s debut Ten had been out for a whole month on the major Epic label before Nevermind’s seismic impact.
Pearl Jam had a serious Seattle pedigree, comprising bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Stone Gossard of former Green River and Mother Love Bone local fame; yet, many of their peers always harboured a sniffy disregard for their earnest grab for stadium appeal. Such an unabashed chase for anthemic scope served them well, however, ploughing on through music’s shifting trends to stand as a billing that can still fill stadiums to this day.
Such longevity naturally accrues a treasure trove of material, from B-sides, studio outtakes, and compilation oddities feverishly scoured by hardcore fans eager to possess every known Pearl Jam cut in existence. While recording 2002’s Riot Act, an affection for Social Distortion’s Californian cowpunk and the anti-imperial theories of historian Howard Zinn all shaped the session cut ‘Down’. Extremely pleased with the results, a nagging sense of its unintended breeziness and sonic jar with Riot Act saw ‘Down’ relegated to lead single ‘I Am Mine’s B-side, a decision their frontman always rued.
Reflecting on his fondness for ‘Down’, Eddie Vedder put its album exclusion down to “one thing is not like the other syndrome”, further elaborating his affection for the rare cut in 2011’s Twenty book: “For a while, it was my favourite number we recorded for Riot Act… It should have been the single”.
Eventually surfacing on 2003’s Lost Dogs compilation, ‘Down’ would enjoy a reputation larger than its LP offcut, standing as a fan favourite and going down a storm whenever played live.
