Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) recalls Ugly RIVALRY with Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain

Eddie Vedder revealed details about his relationship with Kurt Cobain

In a recent interview with Howard Stern, Eddie Vedder addressed the rivalry between himself and Kurt Cobain.

About the fact that Kurt Cobain called him a "careerist", Eddie Vedder replied, amidst laughter, that he might even agree with some of the accusations. However, he recalled that the success that both Pearl Jam and Nirvana were enjoying at the time had caused difficulties for both bands.

During the early 90’s Kurt Cobain was on record stating that he found Pearl Jam’s music to be a fraudulent, commercial and a careerist representation of rock being sold to kids and in particular calling out Jeff and Stone’s jockish backgrounds. This happened right after Pearl Jam’s 1991 album Ten went in at number two on the US Billboard album chart.

At the time, Cobain said Pearl Jam were “pioneering a corporate, alternative and cock-rock fusion”.

Now, in a new interview Eddie talked about the sensitive subject on Howard Stern:

“I probably could have agreed with some of the things he said. We had a little bit of a difficult relationship with that reality… and that made us a little vulnerable.”

Talking about the success of the album Ten, Eddie also added: “It affected a few people in our town. We had a good scene here and it changed a little bit… Some of my crowd back in the day kind of held our band in great disdain: some people in the world liked you, but some people resented it or just hated your music or whatever… and I agreed with them on all points!”

Eddie went on to point out that some of the rivalry between grunge bands was also due to the fact that they all had some history in their local music scene. As an example, Pearl Jam’s bassist Jeff Ament and guitar player Stone Gossard having previously played alongside Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and Steve Turner in Green River.

“One of my favorite Seattle bands was Mudhoney, and there was a little bit of a faction, with one side of Seattle music here, and ours didn’t fit as well into that… which was fine. But also Mudhoney… I was so grateful to have those guys as friends.”

“The only thing that bothered me about that alleged rivalry was because it was public, and people were reacting to it: it wasn’t like between us. There was a certain writer who pulled a quote of Jeff Ament’s out, and pulled a quote of Kurt’s out, and that made for interesting press. But really, I always felt like it was us against the world, our town against the world, not our band against another band.”

He continued:

“I still think back and I’ve always been grateful that there was a real scene, there was music everywhere, and people were hanging out every night. After a show at the Crocodile Café when three or four bands would play, Girl Trouble or Melvins… there’d be an after party in someone’s basement in this cool, old house in Seattle that was kind of ramshackle and then all of a sudden Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic would be playing bass, and I’d be playing drums, and we’re playing Beatles songs, with this guy from Fastbacks, Kurt Bloch playing… it was a time.”

In 1993, Kurt Cobain told MTV that he had never argued with Eddie Vedder.

“We never had a fight ever. I just have always hated their band” he said. “We've had a few conversations on the phone, I really like him. I think he's a really nice person.”

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