Eddie Vedder couldn’t care less about his Grammy: “I don’t think it means anything”
None of the grunge bands of the 1990s were in music for the fashions of the day. It was all about making something that spoke to other people or that could exorcise the demons inside them whenever they strapped on their guitars. Although Eddie Vedder could compromise every now and again with the press, he never really understood why people made such a big deal about them winning a Grammy for the song ‘Spin The Black Circle’.
Granted, Pearl Jam was already one of the darlings of the grunge scene before it even started picking up steam. Outside of having some of the veteran players of Seattle in their ranks, Vedder’s singing style seemed easy enough for many fans to get into. Nirvana could be abrasive for people only interested in hard rock, but it wasn’t as much of a jump getting into a song like ‘Evenflow’ or ‘Jeremy’, so long as you ignore the lyrics.
Once the crowds started getting bigger, though, Vedder found himself having a strained relationship with his own fanbase. Suddenly, there were people who weren’t there for a good reason in his mind, and he would spend the rest of his time in the spotlight trying to minimise everything that made him famous.
Despite actively trying to lose his fanbase on albums like Vitalogy and songs like ‘Bugs’, a song like ‘Spin the Black Circle’ is tailor-made for the Grammys committee. After all, the whole show is about celebrating music, and what could have been better suited for the show than a song about celebrating the joy of listening to vinyl?
At the time, this was also one of the closest things to a punk song that could have won a Grammy. Pearl Jam was never known for being a punk outfit, but the licks sprinkled throughout the song tend to have much in common with what someone like Johnny Thunders would have done a few decades prior.
When Vedder actually came up to accept the award, he wasn’t looking to give another helping of praise to the ceremony, saying during his speech, “I’m going to start off with a bang and say I don’t know what this means. I don’t think it means anything. That’s just the way that I feel”. While you could hear a pin drop in the room, are we really surprised that it actually got to this point?
The entire alternative generation didn’t like the idea of getting trophies for art, and the next generation would get even more cut-throat with their acceptance speeches. Even though they fall into wildly different categories, it’s hard not to see the similarities between what Vedder said and Fiona Apple setting the record straight at the MTV VMAs later, saying from the stage that the world of celebrity culture is complete bullshit.
That wasn’t what was on everyone else’s minds, though, with bassist Jeff Ament later saying that he didn’t have the guts to put Vedder in his place when he accepted the award. It’s one thing not to care about the award, but the fact that Vedder went to the Grammys just so he could tell them off from the stage is one of the biggest punk moves anyone has ever made.
