Pearl Jam lead guitarist Mike McCready has spent 35+ years touring and recording with the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame group while watching some of the most beloved, talented voices and musicians of his generation pay the ultimate price for fame. At some point, it made the 59-year-old rock legend wonder if it was all worth it.
So, beginning during the COVID-19 lockdown, he started piecing together an ambitious rock opera telling the fictionalized tale about the brightest lights of that early 1990s grunge era in Seattle, forming it into the multimedia rock opera/graphic novel Farewell to Seasons, an ambitious project due out on Oct. 6 that will mark his debut as a lead singer.
“The characters are all based on real people in the scene you would know,” McCready tells Billboard, careful not to make the direct connections in order to allow fans to piece things together on their own. However, he’s quick to hint around them being inspired by too many fallen friends, including Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood, Alice in Chains and Mad Season vocalist Layne Staley, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, among others.
The story — told in the colorful, emotional graphic novel that will be published by Z2 — follows three artists on the Seattle scene, tracking their triumphs and tragedies as they are guided by an oracle, the Queen of the Seasons, who narrates the story. “It’s basically about walking with your darkness as an artist,” he says, citing The Who’s Quadrophenia and Tommy, as well The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the glam theatrics of David Bowie, KISS and Alice Cooper.
He’s recorded an album of his originals as well on which he sings and plays piano and guitar alongside backing vocals from Molly Sides (Thunderpussy), bass from Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan and Dave Matthews Band’s Stefan Lessard and drums from Mike Musburger (Fastbacks), Chris Friel (The Rockfords) and in-demand Seattle producer Nate Yaccino.
And while McCready has not figured out how, or if, he will tour the songs from the album he just finished mastering — an overture and six original songs on which he sings for the first time — he’s hoping to possibly go out on the road in the next year, depending on Pearl Jam’s schedule, of course.
Check out Billboard‘s chat with McCready about the project.
One of the things I was wondering when the news of this broke recently was whether you’re planning to mount a full opera performance of this album-graphic novel?
I originally wanted this to be written as a rock opera with Pete Townshend’s Lifehouse being the high-water mark, which I look up to immensely. I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could actually do something like that and write songs that were specifically about a story … a historical fiction that I was part of that scene and being in the front row of that. It was an exercise of, “I want to do something with this. I want to make a rock opera and be able to perform this some day, in whatever form that turns into.” And somehow it took this left turn into a graphic novel. That was not part of the process originally to do a rock opera. I’m looking at the high-water mark of [The Who’s] Tommy and [David Bowie’s] Ziggy Stardust and I wanted to push myself. I will eventually turn it into something, I hope.
Who might perform in it? Would it be a Tommy-like thing with a stacked cast of recognizable musicians and actors?
It’s a great question and I’m not sure I’ve thought that far ahead, because I want to make sure that I can actually do it. You have to have the money for it and the people behind you and that’s a whole new world to me that I don’t know yet. I have some friends in Broadway and some friends in the music business … I don’t know exactly how to start that process and I need help with that. I don’t have anybody in mind. I want to be able to do a really cool rock opera but with visual content. I don’t know how to mix those two worlds yet, but I’ve written a script for it and I have ideas on how everything should look.
Can you breakdown who inspired the various characters? Are there real-life analogues?
They’re based on all the people in the scene you would know. David Williams is myself. I wanted to create other characters other than myself and the singers of the scene. Jonathan Alexander is the tragedy of the scene, he’s the rock singer — it could be any one of those guys.
Like Mother Love Bone’s Andy Wood…
It’s a combination of all those guys. There’s a character named Angela May Sunrise, who is the female singer-songwriter based on Molly Sides from Thunderpussy or Brandi Carlile. I wanted to bring in a female character in the context of three characters going through their journey in the world of 1980s to mid-1990s Seattle as the scene was starting to explode. I wanted to give props to my old band, Shadow. We were kind of before all that Seattle scene stuff. We were all 16 and we toured a lot around Seattle. We played a lot, that’s where I spent my 10,000 hours. I’m very proud of that era, but it never got the historical props it should have because it kind of got overshadowed with everything else. I wanted to have a fantasy element to it. I love [Shakespeare’s] A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I love Oberon. I love characters that are mythical and tempt you and guide you, or take you down a dark road. I wanted to have an element of mysticism to it as well.
How long have you been working on this?
It started around COVID. I would have dreams about some of theses guys and they were kind of sad and I was like, “Man, everybody from this scene died. And why?” I get it, it’s addiction and all of these things and I’ve had my struggle with that. Was it worth it for all these guys? That’s the thing that was taunting me in all my questions and I wanted to write an artistic question to put out there in the universe and to have everybody answer it who wants to. Because I want to know, because I don’t know. That’s when I called [director] Cameron Crowe.
Tell me about that, because obviously you’ve known Cameron since the Singles days. What were you hoping for in calling him?
Cameron’s the best. Almost Famous is one of my favorite movies of all time. I want to live in that movie and I kind of have in a way. He’s been so good to me my entire career and he’s always supported me and given me advice, so I love Cameron deeply and I respect his vision. He knows the rock world and luckily I can call him and he gave me some great advice. When I was talking about the rock opera part of it and where to place certain songs, [he mentioned] the 11th hour song — which is where the character has to meet their fate or make a decision on where the story is going to go. I didn’t know that that was a thing. I’ve seen Hamilton and now I’m looking backwards at a lot of stuff and seeing the mechanics of these things that I don’t know, other than watching Tommy or listening to Ziggy Stardust or watching Rocky Horror Picture Show.
You’ve had side projects like Walking Papers, Mad Season and Levee Walkers, but this is your first true solo effort. How did it feel taking that step outside for the first time and how did the rest of the band feel about it?
It feels scary in a great way. I’m a guy that always wants to push himself. I need to do that. I need to keep busy with stuff. Pearl Jam is my entity and I live in it, but I’ve got time to do things so I want to fill that in with creativity. As an artist I want to push myself through different boundaries. I’ve been taking singing lessons from this woman named Susan Carr here in Seattle for the past three years. I wanted to do something that forced me to sing, so I did a mini-rock opera within the context of this story. But I wanted to make sure I was f–king good! I feel proud about it. This is my solo experiment, who knows what it will turn into? I just hope that people dig it and it makes them want to listen to all the music from that time.
Have you played it for the band?
I haven’t played it for anybody yet. I think I might have sent one song to [bassist] Jeff [Ament] and he thought it was cool, but that’s it. I just mastered everything two days ago and there is no “perfect,” but I want it to be as close to perfect as it can be with the music before I start sending it out. That’s important to me as well, the story and the music and putting it together with the visual some day. For now, I’m just so honored that I got to do something with [graphic novel publisher] Z2. Their enthusiasm made me think I could do a graphic novel.
Are you nervous for them to hear it?
I’m excited for the guys to hear it when it’s ready. They’re my brothers, so I’d love to hear what they have to say.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’ve never sung on a Pearl Jam song right?
No. I may have done some backups on a Rockfords record once. I’ve been surrounded by all these amazing singers, there was Chris [Cornell], there was Layne [Staley], Ed [Vedder], Molly Sides, Brandi Carlile, [Mark] Lanegan. I was always around them, so I didn’t have a lot of self-confidence probably.
Do you think you’ll tour it and who would join you?
I’m thinking about that now and what’s the right way to do it and not lose money! I love playing with the women from Thunderpussy, they’re great musicians and they rock hard. We’ll just have to see when the book comes out and how the next year progresses.
