While we weren’t looking, Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready has been steadily chipping away at a rock opera tribute to his band’s 1990s grunge salad days with his multimedia project Farewell to Seasons. McCready, 59, announced the project on Thursday (March 13), saying in a statement that he’s teamed with publisher Z2 to release a graphic novel telling the fictional tale of Seattle musician David Williams, who finds himself at the center of the city’s suddenly red-hot music scene in the early 1990s.
“It’s a story I’ve been developing for many years, inspired by the creativity, community, and chaos of the Seattle music scene,” McCready said in the statement about what he calls a “historical fantasy” story he co-authored with comic writer Mark Sable (Supergirl, Teen Titans), featuring illustrations by Argentinian artist Sebastián Píriz (ThunderCats, Jonny Quest), due out on Oct. 6. He added that the project, which he’s been working on for 20 years, is “set in that world, and alongside the graphic novel, there will also be a ‘lost’ rock opera connected to the story, featuring original music written from the perspective of David Williams, one of the main characters. I’ve had a great time bringing this project to life with Z2, and I hope people enjoy the journey as much as I did creating it.”
A description says the story “unflinchingly shows the brutal cost it had for so many artists and musicians as it captures the lived experience of that seminal era. The glory and the heartbreak as it asks the unanswerable question … was it worth it?”
Spiked with elements of magical realism, the story follows the characters’ inner struggle amid their triumphs, with a press release adding that it renders an, “almost luminous manifestation in the moments where the music empowers the characters to feel that almost anything is possible, as well as the stark depiction of an oily darkness that threatens to drag them down when they are possessed by self-doubt and fear.”
Deluxe editions and the Platinum graphic novel package will be packaged with a soundtrack featuring new and original songs created by McCready “to serve as an artifact recording produced” by fictional lead character Williams. At press time it was unclear when, or if, the original music will be available on streaming services or if McCready will mount a live production of the opera.
Z2 editor in chief Rantz A. Hoseley said in a statement that, “having been in the heart of the NW music scene as a journalist in the 1990s, I’ve wanted for years to work on a project that would reflect what it was actually like for the musicians and the fans when ‘the world came to Seattle.’ I can say, without any hyperbole or exaggeration, that I feel like my entire creative life has led to me being involved with this book, and I feel so blessed to be a part of bringing Mike’s beautiful and poignant story to the world.”
In a chat with Spin about the project, McCready said he began working on it in earnest during COVID, calling up old friend director/writer Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Singles) for writing advice. “Originally, it was a musical stage show. Cameron gave me some really good tips and ideas, including the ‘11th hour song’ that is meant to be a big show-stopper near the end of a musical,” said McCready. “So, I started writing a script with three characters, almost like historical fiction based around the Seattle music scene from the mid-1980s until about 1995. I didn’t have anything very solid for many years, which is why I didn’t talk much about it. I’m also so ADHD that I was finally able to get this together with the help of other people.”
McCready said Williams is based on him and the other characters include Angela Sunrise, deceiver Hollow, seer Echo, “tragic figure” Jonathan Alexander and narrator the mystical Queen of the Seasons, who spins the tale from her dreams. “How this came up was, I was thinking about all the singers that came from the Seattle scene and how many of them had since died. Was it worth it for them? That’s a question I’m trying to ask, but I don’t know the answer,” said McCready of the long list of friends from that scene who died too young, including Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood, Alice in Chains/Mad Season vocalist Layne Staley, Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain and Soundgarden singer Chris Cornell, among many others. “Why did people become so interested in this music being made in Seattle?”
He described the album as being an overture and six original songs that he sings lead on, with Molly Sides from Thunderpussy singing backup and Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan and Dave Matthews Band’s Stefan Lessard playing bass, along with Fastbacks drummer Mike Musburger, among others. McCready said he’s kept the project hush-hush because he’s been taking singing lessons on the side for the past three years because he wanted to “be good enough to put it out and not be embarrassed by it. I’m pretty proud and excited.”
Check out the Farewell to Seasons announcement below and preorder the various configurations here.
