How Pearl Jam’s ‘Footsteps’ Travelled Through the Seattle Scene Before Landing as a B-Side

Some songs don’t arrive fully formed. They mutate, pass between musicians, and settle into their final shape only after years of detours. “Footsteps” took one of the more roundabout paths in the Pearl Jam catalog. What began as an instrumental riff on Stone Gossard’s 1991 demo tape became a piece of shared vocabulary between two of Seattle’s defining voices.

When Gossard and Jeff Ament started assembling a new band after the death of Mother Love Bone’s Andrew Wood, their demo cassette made its way to a young singer in San Diego through Jack Irons. Eddie Vedder took three tracks and arranged them into a dark narrative he called Momma-Son. “Alive” and “Once” both made the final cut for Ten. “Footsteps” did not.

The reason was simple. Chris Cornell had already written his own lyrics for the same piece of music during the Temple of the Dog sessions. That version became “Times of Trouble.” Rather than release two songs built on identical instrumentals, Pearl Jam left “Footsteps” off their debut.

The definitive recording didn’t come from a studio. During a 1992 appearance on the radio program Rockline, the band delivered a stripped-down performance that captured something the Ten sessions missed. That live take ended up on the “Jeremy” single, tucked between the title track and another non-album cut, “Yellow Ledbetter.” It remains the version people actually remember.