WOODSHED / MASTHEAD

EVEN THOUGH IT’S pretty damn hard to miss, I’d like to call your attention to this issue’s striking cover graphics — including the gigantic, 3D “PEARL JAM” — that capture some of the look and feel of the original Ten album cover. The graphics were done by Magictorch Ltd’s Michael Chipperfield, who is, as luck and randomness would have it, a major fan of Pearl Jam and Ten. Mike’s random fandom shines through in his work, which is only made better by the addition of Jim Bennett’s brand-spanking-new photo of Mike McCready and his Fender Custom Shop Strat. When I was reading our “Ten turns 30” feature, I couldn’t help but latch onto the fact that McCready’s fandom — of, in this case, Stevie Ray Vaughan — led to a major overhaul of his playing style just a few years before the recording of Ten. “When I started to get more interested in the blues, I tried to consciously or subconsciously pull it back a little bit and feel it more,” McCready tells us. One could argue that at least some aspects of the album’s sound — and, to some degree, grunge itself (or early Nineties radio rock) — was in some way influenced by McCready’s deep respect for SRV. (I can relate, by the way; hearing the intro to “Pride and Joy” as it boomboxed its way across a Jersey City park in 1983 altered my perception of reality in the context of guitar; it also eventually led me here, to this very moment, writing the May 2021 Woodshed column while listening to Ten.) Point is, in our industry, it’s always, always, always about the fans of the artists we cover, whether you’re an editor, a subscriber or an illustrator.