Mike McCready was sinking just as Pearl Jam’s career was taking flight. The early ‘90s were a blur as he was blacked out on alcohol and drugs and withdrew from the band.
Speaking to Guitar World in April 1995, he recalled how he and frontman Eddie Vedder had grown apart, keeping their distance from one another for the past couple of years.
“I didn’t have a lot of confidence,” said McCready. “I was literally afraid of everybody. I didn’t know how to relate to Eddie, and after the band really took off, I went off in my own world.”
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One of the first things McCready did when he got help and got sober was reach out to Vedder.
“I told Eddie, ‘Listen, man, I know I’ve been fucked up for a long time, but I want to reestablish the relationship that we had in the beginning,’” he recalled.
McCready got there in the end, but there were many false starts. He would get on the wagon then come off. His bandmates tried to help as best they could. Looking back at it, he admits he thought that he was going to be kicked out of the band.
“We had a lot of meetings where they would say, ‘Hey, Mike, you’re getting way too fucked up.’ But we’re all really good friends and we love each other,” said McCready. “I think they actually thought I was going to die, but they never took steps to kick me out of the band, which I can’t believe because I fucked up so many times. I was drunk and making an ass out of myself and they were concerned about it.”
They called me all the time, and it was cool because I really needed their support
McCready bit the bullet and checked himself into rehab. That’s when he realized the strength of his relationship with the band. Before, he had been in a bubble. That’s the company you keep when you’re using.
McCready would have to get sober by himself, but he was not alone. Stone Gossard came out to visit him. They would all check in with him.
“They called me all the time, and it was cool because I really needed their support,” said McCready. “They’re my greatest friends. I couldn’t believe it; when you clean up, you start realizing that people actually care about you. You just don’t think about it when you’re using all the time because you’re only into the people you’re using with. It clouds everything.”
But the newly sober McCready needed something else to occupy himself with. As he tells it, getting off the alcohol saved him from blacking out and the downward spiral, but there was nothing to attenuate life’s highs and lows. He wanted to have a drink when everyone else was. He wanted to drink every day. He just couldn’t.
Instead, he got busy. McCready getting clean is the origin story of Mad Season, the all-star grunge supergroup featuring the late Alice in Chains frontman Layne Staley, and Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin. While in rehab, McCready had met a bass guitar player called John Baker Saunders.
Saunders would soon join Seattle indie-rock stalwarts The Walkabouts, but right now he had a purpose. Mad Season were going to make an album.
Staley was going through his own issues with substance abuse at the time. Maybe being around these guys could help clear his head, give him something positive to focus on. Pearl Jam had recorded their third studio album, Vitalogy, in sessions snatched between touring commitments. For Mad Season’s debut, Above, sadly their only studio album, McCready could give the material his full attention.
“It’s great to be clear-headed and wake up early and get on with my day,” he said. “And putting this Mad Season thing together has been a blessing.”
As the urge to drink receded over time, he realized two things. One, that his relationship with his bandmates was tighter than it had ever been. And secondly, he was a better musician for that clarity.
He had labored under the misconception that he’d need some stimulant, legal or otherwise, to perform at his best, or to find ideas.
“Playing live, I’m a lot more focused on the music rather than just being in a daze, the way I was before,” he said. “The whole concept of me thinking that I needed something – be it valium or crystal meth or pot – to write songs or be creative is bullshit.
“I couldn’t put anything together when I was doing that crap. LSD might have helped me in certain ways, but it fucked me up a lot more than it helped.”
