The versatility of the Strat was something McCready was able to put to immediate use, although he wasn’t playing his 1960 back then.
HAPPY SONGS BY PEARL JAM PLUS
The trio’s first recorded output would be in tribute to Wood, hooking up with the singer’s flatmate and Soundgarden frontman Chris Cornell, plus that band’s drummer Matt Cameron (now a permanent fixture with Pearl Jam), in Temple Of The Dog. The Strat sound has been integral to his playing since he first hooked up with fellow guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament in the aftermath of the collapse of their previous band, Mother Love Bone, in 1990 following the death of vocalist Andrew Wood. But even then I still break them all the time!” So the other thing is it’s got to be pretty strong, in terms of the strings behind it. “I can’t think beyond Jeremy off the top of my head, because I really go for it at the end of that song when I’m getting feedback. And that’s something I really need when I’m using a tremolo because although I don’t use it all the time, when I do it’s for specific things in leads and specific parts of songs that require it. “I’ll use the tremolo as a rhythmic tool, so two things: it has to stay in tune after I do all that – and that’s a hard thing to make happen on guitars – but my real one, for the most part, it stays in tune pretty great.
I need that for Jeremy, and I’ll use it again on Even Flow in the chorus.
“I usually have five springs on the back of my guitar, on the tailpiece,” he explains, “so it’s a tighter tremolo, not as loose. Stability is key for McCready here, and he is happy with the results.
On the Custom Shop model Fender has used a vintage-style synchronized model with Callaham bridge block, married with vintage-style tuning machines. I’ve just worn it into a place where I really love it, but I’ve been able to do that because I already loved it beforehand.”Īnother aspect of the guitar that was important to McCready was the tremolo. So the secret is in the years of sweating and playing Even Flow on it 700 times or whatever we’ve done. “But my original ’59… sorry, ’60, this guitar played fantastic as soon as I picked it up in 1992, and it has continued over the years. They’re cool, but they never played as well as I like. I hope that makes sense, because I have a few guitars that are like that, that I’ve just never really gotten there with. “Even in terms of getting a new guitar, the neck has to play perfectly for me the first time I get it. “George, who runs the Pearl Jam warehouse, kind of wanted to keep that it was a ’60 from me because I was always talking about how much I love my ’59 – my ’59 this and my ’59 that – and he didn’t want to break my heart and say, ‘Hey, you know, you bought a ’60…’ And so I’m still kind of shocked and blown away that it turned out to be a ’60, but ultimately it doesn’t matter because I love that guitar so much and it plays so amazingly well.” “You know, I was so convinced it was ’59 that I got a tattoo of the number 59 on my arm,” laughs McCready. McCready is sanguine about the revelation. The guitar has been recreated in painstaking detail by Fender Custom Shop Master Builder Vincent Van Trigt for a limited run of 200 instruments, and in the process was discovered to actually be a 1960 model. McCready found what he believed to be an original ’59 Strat in Los Angeles, and he has become synonymous with the guitar over a now 30-year career with the Seattle giants and an array of side projects. READ MORE: How Kevin Shields and My Bloody Valentine changed the course of guitar playing forever.“So that was the initial impetus behind my purchase: Stevie uses this guitar, this is the first time I have any money, I’m going to buy this guitar.” “I had read Stevie Ray Vaughan used a ’59 Stratocaster, and I had seen him four times live and he blew my mind,” he tells us. When Pearl Jam’s debut album Ten started to make serious waves in the white heat of the Seattle grunge explosion of 1991, lead guitarist Mike McCready had one thing in mind as the cheques started to land on his doormat.