Pearl Jam Nirvana Feud? Did a rivalry between the bands really exist?

Why Pearl Jam Stopped Making Music Videos

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Band rivalries and feuds are nothing new, but one of the stranger feuds to emerge out of the 90’s were between alternative rock bands Pearl Jam and Nirvana. But was it real or was it just all created by the media and what did the band members and their peers feel about the whole thing? That’s what were going to explore today.

It seems strange to think that Pearl Jam and Nirvana had some sort of feud or rivalry between them when you consider everything that’s been put out there about the seattle music scene. If you’ve read the books Everybody Loves our Town or Grunge is Dead, both of which are great books. Ii highly recommend them. They paint seattle especially in the 80’s as a place which was a tight knit community, and bands helped each other out. So the rivalry between Pearl Jam and Nirvana took people by surprise considering they both shot to popularity around the same time and both struggled with fame.. If anything both bands should’ve understood what the other was going through.
While Pearl Jam and Nirvana sonically sounded different the media lumped them in together under the umbrella “grunge” and they still both appealed to the same generation of people as the LA Times would put it “a generation of young people, aged 15 to 25, who feel they have been shortchanged by the American Dream."

Pearl Jam guitarist mike mcready would tell author Mark Yarm in everybody loves our town “I remember after the new years eve 1991 show somebody running onto the bus and saying Nirvana had just hit number 1. I remember thinking wow it’s on now, it changed everything. We had something to prove that our band was as good as i thought it was.” In the same book Pearl Jam’s manager Kelly Curtis revealed how Epic Records, Pearl Jam’s label struggled to market the band initially. They didn’t know whether the band was metal or alternative, but he credited Nirvana for opening the door to radio. Vedder would even admit in the same book that while he thought Pearl Jam’s debut Ten was good, he thought Nirvana’s first record was better (although it’s not clear whether he was referring to nirvana’s first album bleach or their first major label debut ) nevermind.

The website knkx.org interviewed Charles R Cross a local seattle writer and author of the kurt cobain biography heavier than heaven who claimed the feud stemmed from several interviews Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain did. Cobain was tired of discussing his drug addiction and wanted to talk about anything else and it wasn’t out of the ordinary for him to talk about other bands in good and bad ways. One of those bands was pearl jam. Given that Nirvana and Pearl Jam were some of the biggest bands at the time Cobain’s comments carried quite a bit of weight and the media immediately latched onto them. Perhaps the most famous line Cobain stated about Pearl Jam was that the band was "pioneering a corporate alternative and cock-rock fusion." In the book everybody loves our town Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament would weigh in on the feud saying “kurt was talking shit about us and we talked a little shit back. In retrospect i thinnk it waas when when we got interviewed the seoncd or third question was about nirvana and i’m sure they were getting the same questions about us. Ament would point the finger at writer Michael Azzerad for igniting the feud. He was the author behind the 1993 book come as you are

Cobain would also give an interview Rolling Stone in 1994 where he an exchange that went s follows:
Interviewer: “It’s never been entirely clear what this feud with Vedder was about”.
“There never was one. I slagged them off because I didn’t like their band. I hadn’t met Eddie at the time. It was my fault; I should have been slagging off the record company instead of them. They were marketed. not probably against their will. But without them realizing they were being pushed into the grunge bandwagon.”

“Yeah, I do. Except I’m pretty sure that they didn’t go out of their way to challenge their audience as much as we did with this record. They’re a safe rock band. They’re