Watch Eddie Vedder join Soundgarden for ‘Outshined’ in 1992
1992 was the first major year for grunge. The previous 12 months saw iconic albums from the likes of Nirvana (Nevermind), Pearl Jam (Ten), Temple of the Dog (Temple of the Dog), Tad (8-Way Santa), and Screaming Trees (Uncle Anesthesia), among a host of other Seattle acts. But once ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ became an MTV staple, the rush was on for any and all bands in the Pacific Northwest. By that point, Soundgarden were solidly elder statesmen among their Seattle acolytes.
Formed in 1984, the band already had two studio albums, three EPs, and even a live home video in their discography by the time the rest of the world took notice of their third album, 1991’s Badmotorfinger. Nearly every act who made it big from the Seattle scene had shared a bill with Chris Cornell and company at some point, and Cornell was more-or-less directly responsible for helping get Pearl Jam off the ground.
For a short period, Cornell was roommates with Andrew Wood, the lead singer for Seattle hard rockers Mother Love Bone. When Wood died in 1990, Cornell convinced Wood’s bandmates Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament to record a tribute album, giving them their first project together after Wood’s death. The recordings later became Temple of the Dog, and around the time that Cornell convinced Gossard and Ament to reunite, the pair recruited guitarist Mike McCready and singer Eddie Vedder to form the beginnings of Pearl Jam (Temple of the Dog/Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron would later join Pearl Jam in 1998).
Cornell struck up a friendship with the reserved Vedder, who knew few people in Seattle outside of his Pearl Jam bandmates after moving up to the Pacific Northwest in 1990. “Ed was from San Diego, and he felt very intimidated in Seattle,” McCready told Rolling Stone in 2016. “Chris really welcomed him. Ed was super, super shy. Chris took him out for beers and told him stories. He was like, ‘Hey, welcome to Seattle. I love Jeff [Ament] and Stone [Gossard]. I give you my blessing.’ From then on, he was more relaxed. It was one of the coolest things I saw Chris do.”
As their bands began blowing up in the mainstream, Cornell and Vedder continued to lean on each other as stabilising forces. When Soundgarden returned to play the Lollapalooza Festival at the Kitsap County Fairgrounds just outside Seattle, they were greeted by an enthusiastic crowd that massively outnumbered their previous club shows. Pearl Jam shared the bill on that tour, and for their homecoming gig, Vedder hopped onstage to join Soundgarden on the track ‘Outshined’.
If you weren’t looking for him, you probably wouldn’t be able to find Vedder at first. For the entirety of the song, he hangs out at Cameron’s drum riser, commandeering the drummer’s vocal microphone to sing the song’s backing parts. The camera finally catches him towards the end of the song, but he only gets one close-up. Notably, Vedder is wearing the iconic corduroy jacket that would become emblematic of the singer’s distaste for fame, as memorialized in the Vitalogy track ‘Corduroy’.
Watch the performance of ‘Outshined’ down below.
