“They exist unto themselves”: The band Bono called the Grateful Dead of grunge
Ever since the 1990s, there hasn’t really been a movement that has had such a visceral impact on the world as grunge had. As much as people loved the idea of playing music in stadiums in the 1980s, putting that post-ironic twist on rock and roll and bringing the genre back to its roots was exactly what rock needed to get over itself. While Bono is most likely incapable of doing such a thing, he admitted that he caught hints of another rock and roll legend when listening to these Seattle greats.
Listening back to how U2 changed with the times, though, Achtung Baby couldn’t have come at a better moment. They still had their signature posturing going on, but since it was released concurrently with Nirvana’s Nevermind, they got in on the post-ironic angle early, with Bono playing up his status as a rock star to the point where everyone knew that he was being tongue-in-cheek.
At the same time, there were hardly that many grunge artists who were willing to share the stage with them. As much as grunge was about subverting the norms whenever they started gaining traction, did it really make sense for any of them to start talking about going against the system and then working with one of the biggest rock bands on the planet?
Then again, Pearl Jam never had that same sense of punk rock ethos. They still wanted to rebel against what had been happening for the past few years, but opening for U2 was the best thing that they could have done until that point, bringing a little bit of authenticity to the Zoo TV tour of plasma screen televisions and massive runways.
That’s not to say that they didn’t get pelted with a few things along the way. U2 fans might not be known as the most violent folks in the world, but when remembering some of those first shows, Eddie Vedder remembered getting more than his fair share of heckles during their time onstage from people who wanted to hear ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’ instead of his trademark yarling.
Looking at how Pearl Jam structured their career by thinking outside the box on Vitalogy or Binaural, Bono came to respect what the band were doing for rock and roll, saying, “I’m a fan of the Pearl Jam organization, of what you might call the culture around the group. It’s like the Grateful Dead. I’m not sure how long U2’s going to have the energy to take on the mainstream. And the Pearl Jam/Grateful Dead model is something to be really proud of. They exist entirely unto themselves. They don’t depend on the media.”
And it’s not like that isn’t far off, either. While Pearl Jam are probably never going to stretch their songs out for 20 minutes or make some massive jam that leaves people drowning in ecstasy, their way of cultivating their fanbase and switching things up at every show is something that only they could pull off without the help of any critics or catering to what the public might have wanted.
Because that’s the only way they knew how to be authentic. There was some pandering going on in the beginning, but ever since the late 1990s, Vedder has made sure that they stayed true to themselves before anyone else, and even if they didn’t have hits, there were still fans willing to go along for the ride.
