10 Perfect Band Members That Everyone Forgets About

In the days when grunge rock was first starting to come up the ranks, Pearl Jam were a bit of an anomaly in the guitar department. For all of the trademark grunge-isms that Eddie Vedder would put into his voice, having Mike McCready's tasty blues licks in the mix gave a nod to the kind of classic rock that most of the band had grown up on in the early days. At the same time that Mike was channeling Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stone Gossard was making some of the weirdest riffs the grunge world had ever heard.

Going through the career trajectory of the band, practically half of their signature songs were started from Gossard's basic ideas, writing the basic demos for songs like Alive and Black before Eddie had even entered the picture. Seattle was always a place for artsy players though, and you can hear Stone going for something a bit more abstract on some of their songs, like the crazy circus atmosphere of All Those Yesterdays or even hits like Daughter, who's guitar tuning you will probably never find in any other rock song.

Then again, Eddie was a perfect foil to Stone's playing as well, like speeding up Stone's demo for Spin the Black Circle until it turned into the balls to the wall sound that we know today. He might not have been aiming to be a bright flashy player or anything, but the amount of ground Stone covered puts him in the conversation for guitar heroes of the '90s.