Five artists who hated Pearl Jam: “They’re one of the most boring bands in history”
The grunge movement burned bright and fast. That’s not to say it doesn’t still have a place in the hearts of millions; it does. Pearl Jam continues to sell out stadiums, and Nirvana is still looked upon as one of the most definitive musical acts of all time. However, in terms of grunge’s place in the mainstream, there was only a brief period when it was all people could talk about, and the conversations during that time often got quite heated.
One of the most defining characteristics of grunge is a band’s ability to switch emotions quickly. There is a sense of melancholy that overrides the entire movement, but contained within that is love, rage, anger, joy and lust. It’s a haphazard mixture that shouldn’t work and yet does, and the forefront of that mixture is Pearl Jam.
As soon as they released their album Ten, it became clear that Pearl Jam was a band that was not only making good music but also defining a movement in the process. They have continued to play to sell-out crowds and wow audiences with their captivating approach to sound. However, while many love their music, there’s an equal amount out there who, for whatever reason, can’t stand it.
Whether because of technical ability, the band’s supposed ethos or personal beef, the music industry isn’t short on negative feedback for Pearl Jam. Here are five artists who truly couldn’t stand them.
Five artists that couldn’t stand Pearl Jam
Kurt Cobain
When many people talk about bands who helped pioneer the grunge scene, they refer to both Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the same breath. As such, it’s interesting to note that Cobain couldn’t stand Pearl Jam. It wasn’t necessarily anything to do with their music; rather, he felt that they changed their entire ethos the moment grunge became popular.
“Those bands have been in the hairspray/cockrock scene for years, and all of a sudden, they stop washing their hair and start wearing flannel shirts. It doesn’t make any sense to me,” he said when discussing Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains, “There are bands moving from LA and all over to Seattle and then claim they’ve lived there all their life so they can get record deals. It really offends me.”
Nikki Sixx
Before he was in Pearl Jam and the band had made it big, Eddie Vedder did an interview where he hit out against Motley Crue. “I despised ‘Girls, Girls, Girls’ and Mötley Crüe. Fuck you! I hated it! I hated how it made the fellas look, and I hated the way it made the women look.”
When Nikki Sixx, the band’s bassist, heard about Vedder’s comments, he took to social media to voice his disdain. “Made me laugh today reading how much the singer in Pearl Jam hated @MotleyCrue,” he wrote in a tweet, “Now, considering that they’re one of the most boring bands in history, it’s kind of a compliment, isn’t it?”
Mark McGrath
Following an interview when Stone Gossard spoke out against what he dubbed “corporate rock,” Mark McGrath took offence despite not being called out by name. He admitted that he was a fan of the band, but his opinion was somewhat changed when he felt they were dragging his band, Sugar Ray, through the mud. He seemed to infer that Gossard’s comments came from frustration on the band’s part as to why their records weren’t selling better at the time.
“I’d love to say corporate rock sucks, but it doesn’t suck for us,” he said in an interview, “You can buck the system like Pearl Jam, and you’ll get results like Pearl Jam, but then don’t sit around and go ‘Why didn’t Pearl Jams No Code sell better?’ Well, you haven’t made a video in years, and you’re so stuck in your cocoon you don’t know what’s going on.”
Slash
When they first burst onto the LA rock scene, Guns N’ Roses took over, and their first few albums remain many people’s favourites in rock. However, after their record, The Spaghetti Incident, flopped, they started trying to write something that would establish them as one of the best. There were many creative differences within the band, and these eventually created enough friction that they split.
Slash was writing a lot of music at the time, but none of it was to Axl Rose’s taste, who had already fired their other guitarist, Gilby Clark, for not playing the grunge-style sound he was after. In explaining why the band split, Slash also let it slip that he wasn’t the biggest fan of Pearl Jam. “Axl didn’t really care,” said Slash, “Because he only wanted to play industrial and Pearl Jam-sounding crap.”
Billy Corgan
As one of the most outspoke musicians on the scene, Billy Corgan has never been afraid to make his opinion on other happenings in the music industry known. When he appeared on the Howard Stern Show in 2014, Stern brought Pearl Jam up, and Corgan didn’t hold back in making his distaste towards the band known.
“I love competition, I grew up playing sports, that’s one of the things that makes me crazy about alternative music. You’re supposed to be just kind of nice and nambi pambi I think, I love competition, I think it’s fantasic,” he said. When asked about what bands he saw as competition who came up around the same time as Smashing Pumpkins, he agreed Nirvana were up there, but when Pearl Jam was mentioned, he retaliated, “No, not even close,” before going on to agree that he found the band derivative.
