\n\tPearl Jam<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n \n\tSo, 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<\/em><\/a>, an ambitious project due out on Oct. 6 that will mark his debut as a lead singer.<\/p>\n \n\t\u201cThe characters are all based on real people in the scene you would know,\u201d McCready tells Billboard<\/em>, careful not to make the direct connections in order to allow fans to piece things together on their own. However, he\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \n\tThe story \u2014 told in the colorful, emotional graphic novel that will be published by Z2 \u2014 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. \u201cIt\u2019s basically about walking with your darkness as an artist,\u201d he says, citing The Who\u2019s Quadrophenia<\/em> and Tommy<\/em>, as well The Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/em> and the glam theatrics of David Bowie, KISS and Alice Cooper.<\/p>\n \n\tHe\u2019s 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\u2019 Roses\u2019 Duff McKagan and Dave Matthews Band\u2019s Stefan Lessard and drums from Mike Musburger (Fastbacks), Chris Friel (The Rockfords) and in-demand Seattle producer Nate Yaccino. <\/p>\n \n\tAnd while McCready has not figured out how, or if, he will tour the songs from the album he just finished mastering \u2014\u00a0an overture and six original songs on which he sings for the first time \u2014\u00a0he\u2019s hoping to possibly go out on the road in the next year, depending on Pearl Jam\u2019s schedule, of course.<\/p>\n \n\tCheck out Billboard<\/em>\u2018s chat with McCready about the project.<\/p>\n \n\tOne of the things I was wondering when the news of this broke recently was whether you\u2019re planning to mount a full opera performance of this album-graphic novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI originally wanted this to be written as a rock opera with Pete Townshend\u2019s Lifehouse<\/em><\/a> 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 \u2026 a historical fiction that I was part of that scene and being in the front row of that. It was an exercise of, \u201cI 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.\u201d 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\u2019m looking at the high-water mark of [The Who\u2019s] Tommy<\/em> and [David Bowie\u2019s] Ziggy Stardust<\/em> and I wanted to push myself. I will eventually turn it into something, I hope. <\/p>\n \n\tWho might perform in it? Would it be a Tommy<\/em>-like thing with a stacked cast of recognizable musicians and actors?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s a great question and I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ve 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\u2019s a whole new world to me that I don\u2019t know yet. I have some friends in Broadway and some friends in the music business \u2026 I don\u2019t know exactly how to start that process and I need help with that. I don\u2019t have anybody in mind. I want to be able to do a really cool rock opera but with visual content. I don\u2019t know how to mix those two worlds yet, but I\u2019ve written a script for it and I have ideas on how everything should look.<\/p>\n \n\tCan you breakdown who inspired the various characters? Are there real-life analogues?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tThey\u2019re 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\u2019s the rock singer \u2014 it could be any one of those guys.<\/p>\n \n\tLike Mother Love Bone\u2019s Andy Wood\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt\u2019s a combination of all those guys. There\u2019s 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\u2019s where I spent my 10,000 hours. I\u2019m 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\u2019s] A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n \n\tHow long have you been working on this?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt started around COVID. I would have dreams about some of theses guys and they were kind of sad and I was like, \u201cMan, everybody from this scene died. And why?\u201d I get it, it\u2019s addiction and all of these things and I\u2019ve had my struggle with that. Was it worth it for all these guys? That\u2019s 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\u2019t know. That\u2019s when I called [director] Cameron Crowe.<\/p>\n \n\tTell me about that, because obviously you\u2019ve known Cameron since the Singles<\/em> days<\/strong>. What were you hoping for in calling him?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tCameron\u2019s the best. Almost Famous<\/em> 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\u2019s been so good to me my entire career and he\u2019s 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 \u2014 which is where the character has to meet their fate or make a decision on where the story is going to go. I didn\u2019t know that that was a thing. I\u2019ve seen Hamilton<\/em> and now I\u2019m looking backwards at a lot of stuff and seeing the mechanics of these things that I don\u2019t know, other than watching Tommy<\/em> or listening to Ziggy Stardust<\/em> or watching Rocky Horror Picture Show<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\tYou\u2019ve 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?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tIt feels scary in a great way. I\u2019m 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\u2019ve 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\u2019ve 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\u2013king 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.<\/p>\n \n\tHave you played it for the band?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI haven\u2019t 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\u2019s it. I just mastered everything two days ago and there is no \u201cperfect,\u201d but I want it to be as close to perfect as it can be with the music before I start sending it out. That\u2019s important to me as well, the story and the music and putting it together with the visual some day. For now, I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n \n\tAre you nervous for them to hear it?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019m excited for the guys to hear it when it\u2019s ready. They\u2019re my brothers, so I\u2019d love to hear what they have to say.<\/p>\n \n\tCorrect me if I\u2019m wrong, but you\u2019ve never sung on a Pearl Jam song right?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tNo. I may have done some backups on a Rockfords record once. I\u2019ve 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\u2019t have a lot of self-confidence probably.<\/p>\n \n\tDo you think you\u2019ll tour it<\/strong> and who would join you?<\/strong><\/p>\n \n\tI\u2019m thinking about that now and what\u2019s the right way to do it and not lose money! I love playing with the women from Thunderpussy, they\u2019re great musicians and they rock hard. We\u2019ll just have to see when the book comes out and how the next year progresses.<\/p>\n
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