Mike McCready talks Pearl Jam's Ten 30 years on: 'I had no idea it was going to blow up'

To celebrate the launch of his 1960 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster, Pearl Jam guitarist and co-founder Mike McCready has caught up with Planet Rock's Loz Guest for a wide-ranging chat.

Timed to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Pearl Jam’s timeless debut album, ‘Ten’, Fender Custom Shop master builder Vincent Van Trigt has created a limited-edition 60-piece replica recreation of McCready’s iconic 1960s vintage Stratocaster.

Van Tright went to painstaking lengths to create an authentic replica of the Stratocaster, disassembling and putting the original back together to ensure every detail, curve, scratch even scratch and other war wound is accounted for.

The original 1960s vintage Stratocaster is Mike McCready’s go to instrument, and he used it on many Pearl Jam classics including ‘Even Flow’ and ‘Yellow Ledbetter’ together with more recent tracks ‘Superblood Wolfmoon’ and ‘Dance Of The Clairvoyants’ from Pearl Jam’s most recent studio LP, ‘Gigaton.’

As Mike McCready confesses, the 1960 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster is so authentic that he has mistaken it for the original on at least three occasions and he says the sound it creates is exactly the same as his legendary guitar.

Check out more about Mike McCready’s 1960 Fender Custom Shop Stratocaster here.

Check out Loz Guest's full interview with Mike McCready for our sister station Kerrang! Radio below where he also discusses his yearning to return to the stage with Pearl Jam and make stupid jokes with Eddie Vedder and co., ‘Ten’ turning 30 later this year, and whether he’s going to change his ’59 tattoo in homage to his Fender now that he’s discovered his guitar is actually from the 1960s...

Loz: Hello Mike, how are you doing?

Mike: “I'm doing well and excited about this new Fender guitar coming out. I want to play music again, live music again. I don't know when that's gonna happen but I miss playing with my guys (in Pearl Jam) and with anybody. I'm trying to be as patient as possible which for me is super hard.”

Loz: How’s the past 12 months been for you? Is it difficult for you to stay creative in isolation or lockdowns – do you need your musical peers around you or are you fairly self-sufficient in that way?

Mike: “I learned to be more self-sufficient because of the lockdown. I learned how to do GarageBand. I've learned how to send files and do demos and send them to a drummer friend of mine. I'm getting pretty good at that. But it seems very myopic. Now I'm tired of it and I want to play with people again because I feel like I get better when I'm (with people). I ran into Jeff Ament (Pearl Jam bassist) last week, and I hadn't seen him for about a year, but we were just talking, you know, it was good to see him and we were socially distanced or whatever, but I just miss playing with those guys. Something happens when I'm playing with the Pearl Jam guys that doesn't happen in any other situation, or anybody else. It's more exciting and I think music turns out better.”

Loz: A lot of people during lockdown as well they've managed, thanks to technology, to sort of have collaborations with different artists or musicians or even you know, make music with their bandmates. But it's not the same is it? You need to be in the room and have that connection with that other person.

Mike: “Exactly, it's the connection. It's the chemical reaction that happens between us. It's the 30 years of stupid jokes that we all know. It's all of that together. It's intuitively knowing how to play around parts and what not to play.

Loz: You mentioned 30 years there… the 30th anniversary of (Pearl Jam’s debut album) ‘Ten’ has crept up on us. Where's that time gone?

Mike: “Oh my god, it’s in my lower back right now and upper back. That doesn't even make sense to me. I remember the first time going to London and actually mixing our first record at Ridge Farm Studios (in Dorking) and that was the first time I'd ever been to London - or outside of London in Surrey. So, that was a whole dream come true just going there! Every band that I've ever loved is coming up - The Stones are from there, The Clash and all of that. Having been able to play there and having to be able to play at Hyde Park where The Stones played in 69! All of these things that are tangible, amazing things to me, have gotten to happen over the last 30 years and it's mind boggling how quickly it went and that it happened at all.”

Loz: “When you finished ‘Ten’ did you realise it was going to be as seismic and as important as it turned out today?

Mike: “I was thinking about that the other day. When we were doing ‘Ten’ and we hadn't been together that long as a band - Ed (Eddie Vedder) kind of came in at the end. And we worked pretty hard at the studio, at the same time we were doing the Temple (Temple of the Dog’s self-titled debut album) record, but it wasn't that long before we made it. That was the interesting part, we didn't have a lot of touring under ourselves as a band. We were just coalescing. We still didn't know what we were all about, I think we kind of had some idea that this was… I knew that we were a very good band. I felt that way because I felt that Ed was a great singer and I felt that we all kind of connected in a certain way and the songs were cool. The songs seemed to come, not necessarily easily, but there's a feeling to ‘Alive’, there’s a feeling to ‘Black’, there was a feeling to ‘Jeremy’ that I had never had in any other situation I was in. I knew that we were a good band, I felt positive about that.

“To answer your question, you know, then we got a chance to work with Tim Palmer to mix it in Ridge Farm Studios like I was talking about earlier. And that's when I started hearing the nuances and we were doing overdubs and I had no idea it was gonna be as big as it was. My mindset back then and as a 24-year-old was ‘It's gonna end tomorrow so let's just do as much as we can.’ I wish I didn't look at things that way and I don't anymore, but that's how I was thinking, ‘we got to do whatever we can, we're putting this record out, we got a tour we're going to England. Let's do everything we can. And this is our opportunity.’ I was a prep cook. I was trying to figure out what I was doing but I played guitar since I was 12 and in bands, so this is my dream coming true. But I didn't know it was gonna be like it was (points skywards).”

Loz: And you blew up very quickly as well. I was talking to a friend of mine and he remembers seeing you at a venue called Edwards in Birmingham in the late 80s or early 90s and he was doing crowd control at the time. He said he was there, and this was a small venue, and within almost a week or two, you had just blown up into this enormous band.

Mike: “It might have been a little bit longer than that, that process. It felt like about a year to me and before it blew up. That was going from London, or England and Europe to back to the States, back and forth. I'm remembering Nottingham at Rock City and we played there and that was probably the same time we played. It felt a little bit longer than that to me, but it still felt quick. We did our own tour, and so we were open up for Alice in Chains and we went on our own thing then we got on the (Red Hot) Chili Peppers tour, then Lollapalooza mid-92. That's when everything blew up from what I recall.”

Loz: To be fair, this guy partied a lot. His mind might not be what it was!

Mike: “You’re preaching to the choir, man. When I first encountered Newcastle Brown Ale, let's just say I've met and I’ve got into a lot of trouble.”

Loz: A lot of that album was was created on the Fender Strat, which has almost become an extension of your body, I guess, in many ways?

Mike: “Yeah, it has. That record had my first Fender Strat I ever had that Jeff (Ament) and Stone (Gossard) bought me - a 1962 reissue. But I knew it was the perfect guitar because Stone was playing Les Paul and I always wanted this Strat because of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Hendrix and Jeff Beck and all that. I love bands that have two different guitar players like Aerosmith and The Stones. The combination of guitars was important. I knew that if I had a Strat, or a Fender, that it would mix well with his Gibson. So if we had two Gibsons it may have sounded different, or if we had two Strats it may have sounded different. But the combination of those two… like ‘Alive’ is a great version of that. I did a rhythm track on my Fender on the outer phase position while Stone did the riff on his Les Paul. I didn't know exactly, but I felt like it would work and it did to do those sounds together.”

Loz: “Do you find the guitar or does the guitar find you? If you see what I mean. I know that musicians and people who play guitar especially, they find a guitar and that's the one isn't it? It's almost the one for life.

Mike: “This is the weird one because I thought this was a 1959 Strat that I was buying in 1992 because Stevie Ray Vaughn played a 59. So I built so much up in in the mythology of the 1959. Turns out it’s the 1960s! So, the 59 didn't find me but I found this. It was actually a 1960! I think what finds me is the music. I can't force the music to happen I have to, from years of doing it, it just comes through something and I'm this vessel, I don't know how to put that in any other way. When the best stuff happens, it happens that way. Like my first couple of leads I do on records, it's always the first two takes, or a combination of those.”

Loz: Maybe comes through the tattoo? I hear you have a 59 tattoo?

Mike: “I have an 1959 tattoo yes, And that’s showing you how much I loved what I thought was the 1959 Strat. I do love my now 1960s Strat but I loved him when it was both of those things, let’s put it that way.”

Loz: You didn't get the tattoo changed? That could have got ugly!

Mike: “Well I keep saying I'm gonna get a plus one. But then another guy told me I should get a 60 over there so that might happen.”

Loz: So what's the deal because you’re celebrating aren't you? You’re recreating your favourite guitar essentially, your Fender.

Mike: “Yeah, I was asked by Fender about a year ago if I wanted to do a model of this guitar and I jumped at the chance. It was something I never thought would ever happen, and it was a cool (idea). They were just really easy to work with right off the bat with Michael Schultz, who’s the A&R guy for the project. I got to visit Fender’s factories and see how they built everything in California and it was overwhelmingly amazing just to see the different wood they use, the machines, meeting all the master builders and what they've done. You know, they’re working on David Gilmour's model, Thin Lizzy model bass – a Phil Lynott model. Seeing things iconic to me was important and how efficient they were at it. They were very easy to deal with.”

Loz: So about the recreation. I'm pretty sure I've seen this Strat you're on about and with the greatest respect, it's a little beat up isn't it? I mean it's got it's got some war wounds on it…

Mike: “It's got a lot of marks on it and those are the ones I love the most, because those are the ones that have been played the most. Someone else had it before me and they put many scratches on the back that I never did. I took a chunk out of the headstock at some show putting it into a speaker. He recreated the chunk - Vincent Van Trigt he Master Builder - created the chunk that's missing out of there. There's a scratch, there's a mark over the top, where I pick that has gotten bigger for the last 25/30 years as I've played shows with it. I've done ‘Even Flow’ live 800 times with that guitar maybe. I always go to that one, or (Yellow) Ledbetter live. You always go to that guitar for that. And then when we did ‘Dance of the Clairvoyants’ on our last record ‘Gigaton’, I went for that guitar because I knew I could get that sound I was looking for, which was this kind of a Carlos Alomar Bowie era, pre ‘Let’s Dance’ kind of his mid area, you know, ‘Fashion’ and that kind of stuff that area. That was what I was going for.”

Loz: Forgive my ignorance, but the recreation, does it have the same sound as your guitar?

Mike: “It has pretty much the same sound yeah. The woman that rewound the pickups, she did a fantastic job of winding the pickups to what they were like, the original ones. I'm not gonna pretend to say that I know what pickups and how they work… but I just know what I like to hear. I do it by here by feel and hearing. The best example is I put my prototype model of the 1960 and then the real one right next to it, in a case and then walked away and I came back and I grabbed it, thinking it was my real my ‘real one’ and it was the prototype. That happened three times. That’s kind of the biggest testament I can tell you, Loz, is that that I've mistaken it for the real one.”

Loz: That’s impressive and for serious guitar fans and Pearl Jam fans that's going to be, something they're going to want to get hold of. Just finishing, obviously happy 30th anniversary for ‘Ten’. That’s coming up in August, will you and the guys celebrate in any way when you have a birthday cake or something?

Mike: “That's a great idea. Hopefully we'll all text each other probably, which seems so lame now that I'm thinking about it. I love those guys and we keep in contact with each other via Zoom right now but I think hopefully by that time we'll be in a room togetherand then we'll give each other a big hug or a high five and we'll talk about the same silly jokes and our love of all the bands from The Clash to The Stones. We'll get back into our ways. It may be different a little bit but I think we'll be proud of that (anniversary). It’s not something we kind of go ‘oh my god. Hey man, 30 years. Isn’t that great?’ I feel very honoured and I think it's amazing, but it's not something that five of us would send anything to. We're always thinking of the future. But I will go into the past because I love, you know, I'll go down that road. Back in the day is what I call it.”

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