Jeff Ament revealed how much money members of Mother Love Bone and Pearl Jam were paid per month when recording Apple and Ten respectively in a recent interview on the Powell Movement.
“We didn’t know what we were doing, so we signed a $250,000 record deal, but the label said most of that has to go towards the recording budget. I think we budgeted out maybe $50,000, and that was supposed to last us 18 months. We paid each other $400 a month.
So we all had little side gigs, like I still worked at the Rayzon off and on when I could, or when they needed people. Everybody else had little side jobs to keep it going. It was the same way at the beginning of Pearl Jam, when we signed our deal I think we paid each other $600 per month. So I still lived in the same studio apartment in lower Queen Ann, the same studio apartment I’d lived in for a long time, until a year and a half into Pearl Jam.”
In September 1989, Mother Love Bone entered to the studio to record its debut album Apple with producer Terry Date at The Plant recording studio in Sausalito, California. The band finished the album in November 1989 at London Bridge Studios in Seattle, Washington. Andrew Wood died in March 1990, pushing back the album’s release to July.
Pearl Jam formed in fall 1990 under the name Mookie Blaylock and recorded and released Ten in 1991. Listen to the full Powell Movement interview with Jeff Ament below.