Pearl Jam's 1991 debut album Ten captures a magical time for a new band with a previously unknown vocalist. Eddie Vedder wrote the lyrics and melodies to guitarist Stone Gossard's Alive and Once back in San Diego before he ever met the rest of the band. He came up with the haunting closer Release on the spot as Gossard, bassist Jeff Ament, guitarist Mike McCready and then-drummer Dave Krusen jammed the music in a Seattle rehearsal room. But the way the song Oceans came about is perhaps the most unusual of all.
The band that would become Pearl Jam – they played shows and an 11-date 1991 US tour as Mookie Blaylock before a name change – played their first rehearsals together after Vedder arrived in Seattle to meet them for the first time on 8 October 1990. The singer was picked up by Stone Gossard from the airport and had already requested to be taken straight to rehearsal: "I don't want to fuck around," said the singer, eager to prove himself to the others. Even so, their first week together in the basement of Galleria Potatohead before Vedder returned to his job as a gas station attendant in San Diego yielded staggering results.
