The guitarist revealed the story of a riff written for the second, unreleased Mad Season album, which he later proposed – unsuccessfully – to Ozzy Osbourne.
A few days ago, Mike McCready was interviewed on the State of Love & Trust: A Pearl Jam Podcast, where he shared an untold story about a guitar riff originally composed for the second, never-released Mad Season album. He mentioned proposing this riff to Ozzy Osbourne in the early 2000s, during the sessions for Osbourne’s Down to Earth album from 2001.
Mike explained that, at that time, he was with Osbourne, manager Kaz Kobayashi, and a representative from Epic Records. He said he played the riff through a small amplifier, but Osbourne wasn’t particularly impressed. Mike admitted that he should have recorded the piece better to present it more effectively.
But this riff wasn’t just any riff—it was the main riff of Disinformation, a song that was supposed to be the title track of the second Mad Season album.
The album was recorded instrumentally in 1996 with McCready, John Baker Saunders, and Barrett Martin, with contributions from Peter Buck of R.E.M. on some tracks. In total, the band recorded fifteen unreleased songs, three of which (Locomotive, Black Book of Fear and Slip Away) were later completed in 2012 with Mark Lanegan’s vocals and released in the Legacy Edition of Above.
During the interview, the podcast hosts asked Mike if he had ever reused any riffs from that unfinished second album in Pearl Jam. The guitarist replied no. However, the instrumental Interlude, included in the Legacy Edition of Above, is actually based on an improvisation that Pearl Jam performed during their European tour in 2000.
Mad Season released only one album, Above, in 1995, and plans for a second album were abandoned in the early 2000s after the deaths of John Baker Saunders and Layne Staley. During the time of the second album, the band had tried to recruit Lanegan as their singer and had even decided to change their name from Mad Season to Disinformation.
Despite the initial rejection, Mike had the opportunity to collaborate with Ozzy in 2022, playing guitar on Immortal from Osbourne’s Patient Number 9 album.
Born in Reggio Emilia in 1980. He created pearljamonline.it in 2001 and wrote the first edition of “Pearl Jam Evolution” in 2009 along with his wife Daria. Since 2022, he is behind 2 podcasts: “Pearl Jam dalla A alla Z” and “Fuori Orario Not Another Podcast”. He has collaborated with Barracuda Style, HvsR, Rolling Stone, Rockol and Il Fatto Quotidiano. He continues relentlessly to try to find “beautiful melodies that say terrible things”.
Favorite song: Present Tense
Favorite album: No Code
Favorite bands/artists other than PJ: Tom Waits, Soundgarden, Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, IDLES, Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital, Dead Kennedys, Mark Lanegan, Cat Power, R.E.M.