Pearl Jam History At Hard Rock Seattle

As if Seattle wasn’t enough of a destination city for any Pearl Jam fan, the Hard Rock Cafe  franchise is opening a veritable Seattle rock music museum with the opening of it’s Seattle location on Wednesday, February 10th.

116 Pike Street, a “fish throw” from Pike’s Place Market, is the location of the Seattle Hard Rock.  Naturally, there will be Jimi Hendrix items, the full “Seattle Scene” compliment of memorabilia – including Kurt Cobain’s acoustic guitar, Sean Kinney’s drum kit, a Krist Novoselic bass, a Mudhoney signed drumhead.  For we Pearl Jam-a-holics, there are a couple of truly wonderful items:  Andrew Wood’s Los Angeles Lakers Jersey and 12-string acoustic guitar, and our own Eddie Vedder’s Yamaha acoustic.  It will truly be a “must see” stop on your next trip to the PJ Holy Land. 

Write up on Andy’s guitar from the  Hard Rock Press Release:

ANDREW WOOD GUITAR

This is a Yamaha 12-string acoustic that belonged to Andrew Wood – the frontman for Mother Love Bone. Mother Love Bone formed from the ashes of Green River – the seminal Seattle group that featured future Pearl Jam members Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament, and future Mudhoney guys Mark Arm and Steve Turner. Mother Love Bone had all the elements of what became known as the Seattle sound, but with Andrew on vocals, they had a much more colorful and exuberant style. Andrew didn’t project the dour persona that so many of the ‘90s Seattle musicians seemed to revel in, he was much more of a Freddie Mercury/Marc Bolan-type character. Love Bone made a great album for Mercury records in 1989, but unfortunately Andrew died just a few days before it was released. He was only 24 years old. This guitar is a poignant symbol of lost potential.

Andy Wood’s guitar @ Hard Rock Seattle

 Ed’s Yamaha acoustic has handwritten lyrics from “Elderly Woman” taped to the sides of it.  Here is a photo of it from the Stroupe Condo blog’s post (note the two related pictures on the wall next to the guitar – one is a black and white from Drop In The Park, I believe, and the color one is from that gang backstage photo of PJ and Soundgarden – both taken in 1992).

I’ve also embedded below the Hard Rock write ups on the two items from their Memorabilia site, however the embeds  are in Microsoft’s fancy Silverlight viewer and may not load quickly in some browsers.  You can go right to the Hard Rock Memorabilia site by clicking here, then put in the name of the artist and it will bring up the same images if you can’t get it to load on this page.

Emerald City Rock!