{"id":902117,"date":"2026-11-01T12:28:12","date_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902117\/"},"modified":"2026-11-01T12:28:12","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T12:28:12","slug":"stone-gossard-has-the-groove-mike-mccready-has-the-leads-neither-wants-to-trade-places","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/902117\/","title":{"rendered":"Stone Gossard has the groove. Mike McCready has the leads. Neither wants to trade places"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stone<\/p>\n

Credit: Tidal \/ Spotify<\/p>\n

November 1st, 2026 \u00b7 2:00am GMT <\/p>\n

35 years later, it\u2019s easy to think about the emergence of grunge<\/a> rock as if it were some sort of premeditated invasion, carefully organised by a unified, flannel-wearing militia out of Seattle. <\/p>\n

When you actually listen to those bands free of context, though, with no media hype and no music videos, the connections between them become exceedingly less obvious. Dave Grohl, as a relative latecomer<\/a> to the Seattle scene, could attest to this from his own personal experience. When he moved across the country from Washington (DC) to Washington (the state) to drum for Nirvana in 1991, he wasn\u2019t particularly well-versed in the major players of the Pacific Northwest. <\/p>\n

As such, when he heard a new local band called Pearl Jam on the radio for the first time, he didn\u2019t immediately recognise that it was the latest project of dudes who\u2019d already earned their stripes in bands like Green River, Mother Love Bone, and Temple of the Dog. <\/p>\n

Instead, when Grohl heard the big riffs of \u2018Alive\u2019 and the growl of Eddie Vedder<\/a>, \u201cI pictured Mountain or some serious \u201970s throwback,\u201d he recalled to Spin. \u201cThe music just seemed like classic rock to me, so I pictured the singer being some husky, fuckin\u2019 bearded, leather-jacketed Tad type, big and fat and tortured and scary.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obviously, that misconception didn\u2019t last long, as Pearl Jam were soon all over MTV, with the music video for \u2018Alive\u2019 revealing not a grizzled \u201870s band, but a fresh-faced crew of hiply-attired, long-haired Bohemian youths, led by the flanneled surfer boy Vedder, flanked in the video by a shirtless bassman, Jeff Ament, in a big puffy baker boy hat, and a pair of stylish guitar players: Stone Gossard, in a T-shirt and velvet vest, and Mike McCready, cosplaying as Stevie Ray Vaughan in a leather jacket and \u201cplateau\u201d style cowboy hat. None of these guys looked or played like the punk kids from the DC scene, or the punk kids from the Seattle scene, for that matter.<\/p>\n

\"Pearl<\/a>Credit: Far Out \/ Gene Ambo \u2013 MediaPunch via Alamy<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a long period of time, me and Jeff [Ament] would have loved to be in Get Your Wings-era Aerosmith, or [to play with] Iggy Pop or David Bowie,\u201d Gossard told Spin back in 2001, confirming the classic rock influence that Grohl had heard on that first Pearl Jam record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As the clothing choices would suggest, McCready was more of an SRV disciple<\/a>, often crediting a specific Stevie Ray concert at the Gorge Amphitheatre with reigniting his desire to play guitar in the late 1980s, eventually leading him back to his childhood friend Gossard.<\/p>\n

The fact that Pearl Jam were able to become something more than the sum of their influences, in fact, is largely a credit to Gossard and McCready\u2019s unique understanding of one another. They were like-minded enough to have a similar goal in the kind of songs they wanted to write, but different enough in their instincts not to step on each other\u2019s toes as players.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrying to produce an art project with five people can be difficult, to say the least,\u201d Gossard told Billboard in 1998, \u201cespecially when you\u2019re all tripping about whatever you\u2019re tripping about when you\u2019re in your late 20s\u2026 Now, though, everyone is able to \u2018get theirs\u2019 without worrying too much.\u201d<\/p>\n

With their sense of balance and democracy well established across three and a half decades, it wouldn\u2019t seem too crazy to suggest that McCready and Gossard could probably swap roles at this point. That\u2019s an exact hypothetical, in fact, that Rick Beato brought up when he had McCready on his YouTube<\/a> show in 2025. Despite standing across the stage from Gossard for over 1,000 Pearl Jam gigs, though, McCready didn\u2019t think a one-night job swap would work. <\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, no,\u201d McCready said, noting that even if he had some time to learn the parts, it wouldn\u2019t come off right. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have the same groove that he has. I don\u2019t know if he would have the tenacity of my leads\u201d, admitting he wasn\u2019t even sure he could play Gossard\u2019s iconic opening riff from \u2018Alive\u2019. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt never made sense to learn it, because I had my own part,\u201d he said, concluding, \u201cI think we play complementary<\/a> of each other, and that\u2019s why it works.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Tidal \/ Spotify November 1st, 2026 \u00b7 2:00am GMT 35 years later, it\u2019s easy to think about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":902118,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[75109,88,19640,36441,103166,216,9612,1839,377750],"class_list":["post-902117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-eddie-vedder","tag-entertainment","tag-grunge","tag-guitarist","tag-mike-mccready","tag-music","tag-pearl-jam","tag-seattle","tag-stone-gossard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=902117"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/902117\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/902118"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=902117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=902117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=902117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}