Pearl Jam’s groundbreaking 1991 debut album, Ten, struck halfway between the guitar-powered squall of Led Zeppelin, and the coal-eyed intensity of punk. Selling more than 15 million copies worldwide, it's an absolute feast for bass players, with Jeff Ament’s fretless featuring prominently throughout.
Describing his approach in the November 2020 issue of BP, Ament said: “I think over half of that record is fretless. Maybe Porch is fretted bass and I think everything else is fretless. There’s a 12-string on three songs. When we started out, I was a little bit pushier at that point, in terms of wanting the bass to be prominent, but my role has changed over the years.”
On one of the band’s most beloved tracks, Even Flow, the sound of the fretless bass guitar really hits the mark, with Ament sliding a harmonic just before the verse kicks in. Speaking to Songfacts Ament said: “So that harmonic, I'm kind of ripping The Firm's Radioactive. And I figured it out by accident.”
“I was always obsessed with playing harmonics on bass, but at some point I remember accidentally hitting harmonics and sliding on it, so I started experimenting with that part of it. So mistakes, and also having in the back of my head that sound of Radioactive.”
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready later admitted that the rhythm parts were challenging in their own way. “We probably recorded that track 25 or 30 times, and we just never seemed to get it right. Jeff would fucking run outside because he was so mad about it. I remember it wasn’t about the technique of it as much as it was about how it felt. That’s the only time we recorded a song that many times. But it was just this endless puzzle of trying to figure it out.”
“I was really obsessed with fretless bass at that time,” said Ament. “I was listening to a lot of Jaco Pastorius, I was listening to a lot of Japan's Mick Karn, and I was listening to Tony Franklin. I knew at the beginning of Pearl Jam that the way we were writing, it was very Jimmy Page – very riffy. And because of Tony Franklin, I knew that fretless would add a really cool voice to rock music.”
Speaking of hero worship, Tony Franklin revealed on YouTube that he wasn’t the originator of sliding harmonics. “Before people give me any credit, I first heard it on a Paul Young song called Wherever I Lay My Hat. There’s a wonderful two note sliding harmonic that Pino Palladino plays in the intro. It’s a beautiful fretless part and when I heard that, somehow I figured out how to do it.”
Drummer Matt Cameron would later name Even Flow his favourite song from Ten. Speaking to Line of Best Fit, he said: “When I was in Soundgarden and we were making Badmotorfinger, Eddie brought up the mixes to Ten and I distinctly remember hearing the chorus for Even Flow and thinking that’s HUGE. Although we’ve played it a couple of thousand times since I’ve been in the group I think that’s the quintessential Pearl Jam song. Even though it gets played out, the nuts and bolts of that song are just amazing.”
Ten is available to buy and stream.
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