“So that harmonic, I'm kind of ripping The Firm's Radioactive”: How Jeff Ament discovered a slide harmonic on Pearl Jam’s Even Flow

Mike McCready and Jeff Ament of Temple Of The Dog perform at The Forum on November 14, 2016 in Inglewood, California.

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.”