By the time the legal dust settled, and we were ready to shop the demos for our third record, the change had happened, and we were lumped in with the old, and not considered financially viable with the new grunge scene, even though we were gravitating around that very early on. MCA didn’t want to let us go at all, so we went bankrupt intentionally to break all our contracts. We were on the road with Pearl Jam, knew they were breaking huge, and it was a gift to even have that tour. After MCA pulled us off tour with Pearl Jam at the beginning of the Ten release, because they thought Pearl Jam was a hype band, and not going to break - I’m not kidding - we fought to get off the label. Allocco was asked how detrimental that was to the band’s fortunes to which he replied: “It definitely hurt the band. Law and Order were often lumped into the ‘hair metal’ genre even though the band crossed over many genre boundaries.
MCA Records wasn’t committed to breaking anything, so all the bands suffered, and no one broke through.” It was a half-hearted attempt to promote bands for a short period of time. Distribution was not lined up properly, and there were no records in stores when MCA bands toured. On whether MCA Records properly supported Law and Order, Allocco opined: “ Bruce was great and the NYC city office really wanted to push the band, but the headquarters in LA couldn’t have cared less about the hard rock and metal bands. The City of Memphis honored us by giving us the keys to the city, which was another big highlight.” We loved him and we went for a very live feel for the record. I remember at the end of that recording, we invited thirty or so writers from every music publication to come and listen to the record in the studio. That was a highlight. We wound up recording at Ardent Studios with Joe Hardy. I remember when we got to meet and hang with Stevie Ray Vaughan when we were checking out at Kiva Studio when he was recording there. That was a great experience for us living and recording there.
Our A&R man, Bruce, wanted us to record in Memphis - so we could get out of the city and soak up the blues influence - and we loved the idea. We had a large rehearsal studio upstairs where we worked out arrangements live, but the writing was in our living room. Rob played on the radiators in our home for percussion on “Delta Prison Blues,” while I was adding slide guitar. I remember sitting around our living room writing together adding to each other’s songs. The acoustic material was written at the very end to add more dimension to the record and is some of my favorite. In terms of the writing, recording and reception for Guilty of Innocence, Allocco indicated: “For Guilty of Innocence, we had four years’ worth of songs from three writers - myself, Shane, and Sean - to chose from. The Glass House was reissued by Demon Doll Records (now The DDR Music Group) in 2014. The group consisted of Allocco on guitar, Shane on vocals, Sean Carmody on bass and Rob Steele on drums. Law And Order released two albums - Guilty of Innocence (1989) and Rites of Passage (1991) - via MCA Records, and one more album titled The Glass House, which was recorded in 1992 but only released in 2004. Law and Order and Dogma guitarist Phil Allocco was recently interviewed by Andrew Daly for Vinyl Writer Music. Within a year, 13x platinum-selling debut Ten was stacked high on record store shelves.Phil Allocco reveals Universal Music Group refusing to release first two Law and Order albums Andrew’s death from a heroin overdose in early 1990 rattled bonds and drove Stone’s writing into darker, heavier territory, but the introduction of second six-stringer Mike McCready, and an inspired response to their five-track demo from Illinois-born, San Diego-based singer Eddie Vedder (who’d written lyrics for Alive, Once and Footsteps while out surfing) saw the band take shape. Guitarist Stone Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament joined proto-grungers Green River in the mid-’80s, before forming Mother Love Bone with vocalist Andrew Wood towards the decade’s close. Perhaps the tribulations and inspirations of their coming-together prepared them for that.
Their first three LPs, of course – spanning the pomp of the grunge scene, and full of its revolutionary excitement – still hold a special place in listeners’ hearts, but rather than trying to cling to past glories or fading into irrelevance, their eight albums (and countless other releases) since have solidified one of the most innovative, important reputations in all of rock. They have always been an outfit interested in everything they do. Compared to the vast majority of their platinum-rated rock contemporaries, Pearl Jam’s back catalogue does not easily stack into a defined hierarchy of hit singles, ‘underrated’ fan-favourites and forgotten album tracks.