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BENJAMIN REW But I kinda threw my name into the hat for Jeff and Stone’s band anyway and got subsequently denied. I thought Tal Goettling, the singer from a band called Son of Man, would get it, because Tal was just an amazing singer, but he was also blond and blue-eyed.

DAVE KRUSEN (Pearl Jam/Hovercraft/Candlebox drummer) I’m originally from Gig Harbor, Washington, which is about 45 minutes outside of Seattle. I had just moved to Seattle, and I got a call from a guy that I played with in a band when I was 13—Tal Goettling. He said that Jeff and Stone were looking for drummers to play with. I called Jeff up and he said, “We’ll jam and see what happens.” And it kinda went from there.

Because I just had such low self-esteem, I didn’t feel deserving. There was a lot of weird squirreliness with some people because they were like, “Who’s this guy? He came out of nowhere.” So many people wanted that gig. And I just happened into it.

KELLY CURTIS Jeff played me the tape at my office one day and said, “I think we found our singer.” It was pretty apparent that there was something special going on. It was pretty immediate. We were all real excited, and then I met Eddie a few weeks later. He was super-shy, super-polite, and super-quiet.

MIKE MCCREADY I’d never been in a situation where it clicks. It all happened in seven days. We had worked up all the music a month prior to that with Krusen. When Eddie came up he had “Footsteps,” “Alive,” and “Black.” And out of that week came so many other things. It was very punk rock. Eddie would stay there in the rehearsal studio, writing all night. We’d show up and there was another one. And then he had to get back. I remember giving him a ride back, at about 5 in the morning, to Sea-Tac Airport. I remember him saying “Don’t be late!” He had to get back to work.

JEFF AMENT The minute we started rehearsing and Ed started singing—which was within an hour of him landing in Seattle—was the first time I was like, “Wow, this is a band that I’d play at home on my stereo.” What he was writing about was the space Stone and I were in. We’d just lost one of our friends to a dark and evil addiction, and he was putting that feeling to words. I saw him as a brother. That’s what pulled me back in [to making music]. It’s like when you read a book and there’s something describing something you’ve felt all your life.

DAVE KRUSEN I could tell that Eddie was definitely the real deal, very artistic. He wasn’t trying to come across as deeper than he really was. He was a very interesting person and had been through a lot.

EDDIE VEDDER I never knew my real dad. I had another father that I didn’t get along with, a guy I thought was my father. There were fights and bad, bad scenes. I was kind of on my own at a pretty young age. I never finished high school.

[My mother] came out [to San Diego] with the specific purpose to tell me that this guy wasn’t my father.… At first I was pretty happy about it, then she told me who my real dad was. I had met the guy three or four times, he was a friend of the family, kind of a distant friend. He died of multiple sclerosis. So when I met him, he was in the hospital.…

I had to deal with the fact that he was dead. My real father was not on this earth. I had to deal with the anger of not being told sooner, not being told while he was alive.

DAVE KRUSEN A week later, we played a show. It was at a place called the Off Ramp, and we were called Mookie Blaylock. I didn’t know anything about basketball, so I did not know who Mookie Blaylock was. I remember somebody asking, “Why Mookie Blaylock?” And Jeff answered, “Michael Jordan is just not very cool-sounding.”

NANCY WILSON I saw the first time they played, as Mookie Blaylock. Eddie was quite shy. He was kind of studying his boots onstage. He was a really amazing singer, but being in Seattle with this whole tight community of people that loved Andy Wood before him, he was probably a little bit nervous.

LANCE MERCER I photographed them at their