Friday, March 20, 2009

The Sun: Interview with Eddie Vedder

Thank you, TFT, for the tip-off.  Ed spoke to the Sun about the new Ten Reissue back on January 20th.  They published it today.  Among other things, he delves into his interactions with Kurt Cobain in the early ears of the grunge movement.


With Ten reaching No2 on the Billboard 200 chart in 1992, Pearl Jam upgraded from Seattle to stadium rock band and with it arrived the backlash.
They were accused of being careerists, of betraying grunge, with their most vocal critic, Kurt Cobain, slating them for “pioneering a corporate, alternative and cock-rock fusion.”
In terms of follow-up albums, in the next year, 1993, it seemed grunge fans disagreed with Kurt and Pearl Jam’s Vs sold five times as many copies (nearly a million) as Nirvana’s third album, In Utero (200,000 copies) in their first week of release.
“I don’t think Kurt understood us at the time, but we became friends and I’m glad we had some of the great conversations we had, that I’m always going to keep up here,” says Eddie, pointing to his head.
“I don’t talk too much about him in respect to Krist (Novoselic) and Dave (Grohl) and I know he said that early stuff about not liking us.
“But there’s a couple of complimentary things that he said in public about me as a human being, which I’m proud exist. But if Kurt were around today, I know he’d say to me, ‘Well, you turned out OK.’”