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man with his eyes sewn shut in it. On radio, they had plenty of problems with the song. That lyric, “Jesus Christ, deny your maker,” caused a lot of stations to drop the song once they got into the lyrics. Some stations were playing it only at night. You had some stations playing it in the day, some stations sticking with it for six months, which was kind of unheard-of back then, and some stations dropping it after three months, then putting it back again. It was an anomaly, ’cause no one really knew how to deal with this music, or what it was. No one knew what grunge was then.

DAVE HILLIS I became Rick Parashar’s assistant at London Bridge toward the very end of his work on Temple of the Dog. Then we did the Mookie Blaylock demos, which was interesting because they were all friends and cohorts of mine. When we started working on Ten, they didn’t have the Pearl Jam name yet; it was still Mookie Blaylock.

A lot of people ask me, “What was it like working on the Pearl Jam record? It must have been magical.” And honestly, it really wasn’t. The music was great and everything, but nobody knew—they weren’t famous yet and they were developing as a band in the studio. Eddie really wasn’t Eddie yet. Eddie drove a yellow low-rider pickup, tinted windows; very San Diego Beach, which you don’t see in rainy Seattle. He just had a different personality. He wasn’t brooding and serious, the way people imagine him.

At the beginning, Eddie was kind of struggling getting vocals done, and people were getting a little nervous. He wasn’t fully nailing it. Think about it: He was in the shadow of Andy Wood, brand-new band, he’s still trying to figure out the sound. Plus the weight of, Wow, I’m on a major label. Then he started staying the night in the studio. We would leave blank tracks that he could record himself singing on, and then pick the good parts from there. He’d watch Bukowski videos and all these different types of things to influence him. Over the making of that record, the Eddie Vedder persona seemed to take shape.

MIKE MCCREADY Recording Ten, we probably did “Even Flow” 30 times. [B-side] “Yellow Ledbetter” was probably the second take; when we did that song, Ed just started going for it. But [Ten] was mostly Stone and Jeff; me and Eddie were along for the ride at that time.

DAVE HILLIS I know Rick and Stone butted heads a little. Rick had a very different way of producing. He’s not one of those guys that sits behind the desk, jumping up and down and really getting into the music. He had a very traditional East Indian background and had a very different demeanor than you would think of someone producing a rock record. Stone wanted him to get into it more. I remember listening to them talk, and Stone would say, “Just act like you like us.” Rick would be like, “I’m not there to do that. I’m there to make your record good.”

DAVE KRUSEN It got to the point where we need to pick a new name, because obviously we can’t call it Mookie Blaylock. I remember sitting down in the practice room and everybody writing down names, and it went on for a while. Pearl came out of one category, and jam came out of another.

JEFF AMENT The first time I mentioned Pearl Jam [as a band name] was when Ed, Stone, and I were watching Sonic Youth play with Crazy Horse. In the middle of Crazy Horse, I turned to Stone and said, “What about ‘Pearl Jam’?” A couple of years later, the first time that we played [Neil Young’s] Bridge School [benefit], I saw Neil’s big black, must have been a ’55 Chevy, and the license plate says PEARL 10. I think I’m in a dream. I asked Neil how long he’d had those plates, and he said 15 years.

DAVE KRUSEN I used to do a lot of psychedelics, so I really like the story behind the name that they came up with: that Eddie’s grandmother Pearl had a hallucinogenic jam.

I remember Eddie made each of us in the band a little artwork that said PEARL JAM. It was some glittery, purple goop on a clear CD tray. It looked a little like sperm the way that it was written, like a liquidy thing that had dried. People I knew were like,