GN'R mention in new Eddie Vedder interview

[Blackstar]

Nothing much, but since there aren't many active threads currently and it's the first Eddie Vedder interview with a GN'R mention I've come across, I thought of sharing it.

-----------

Do you think any ripples from that Gen X, alt-culture explosion extended to the present?

Vedder: You know, I used to work in San Diego loading gear at a club. I’d end up being at shows that I wouldn’t have chosen to go to — bands that monopolized late-’80s MTV. The metal bands that — I’m trying to be nice — I despised. “Girls, Girls, Girls” and Mötley Crüe: [expletive] you. I hated it. I hated how it made the fellas look. I hated how it made the women look. It felt so vacuous. Guns N’ Roses came out and, thank God, at least had some teeth. But I’m circling back to say that one thing that I appreciated was that in Seattle and the alternative crowd, the girls could wear their combat boots and sweaters, and their hair looked like Cat Power’s and not Heather Locklear’s — nothing against her. They weren’t selling themselves short. They could have an opinion and be respected. I think that’s a change that lasted. It sounds so trite, but before then it was bustiers. The only person who wore a bustier in the ’90s that I could appreciate was Perry Farrell.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/01/31/magazine/eddie-vedder-interview.html

[estrangedtwat]

What a hypocrite.

From his song "Satan's Bed" from 1994:  "Such fine examples, skinny little bitch; Model, role model, roll some models in blood; get some flesh to stick so they look like us.....I'd stop and talk but I'm already in love"

 

Some pretty big talk from arguably the biggest rock star on the planet at the time, at the very height of his popularity, influence, fame, and sex appeal.  And he wasn't interested....he married his pretty average looking girlfriend that he'd been with for about a decade before he got famous.  (She had a really nice rack, but very average face.)

 

Good for him, I thought.  Putting his money where his mouth is.  Talking the talk and walking the walk. 

 

Just a few years later he left her, and married a chick ten years younger.   You guessed it!   A fashion model!   And since his new wife was still fertile, he had kids with her.  So much for his first wife that stood with him all those years he worked at a gas station.

 

But Eddie's cool...he's a good guy...he's a male feminist, after all.   No "Girls Girls Girls!!" for him.

[mystery]

I'd really like to hear more about Eddie Vedder's early adult life which is somewhat of a mystery. He was 25 almost 26 when he joined Pearl Jam but there's a few years there where he was obscure as an adult. He worked security at a gas facility and was a roadie/backstage guy in San Diego while being the singer of Bad Radio which was his main band before Pearl Jam. The latter 2 things got him connected with musicians such as Jack Irons. 

As for Guns N' Roses, it's what a lot of people have said about them. There were some superficial similarities between them and other bands but they had a true devil may care attitude and made the songs that they wanted to make without it looking like pandering to MTV. They also weren't so glammed up like those other bands at the time. 

[EvanG]

23 minutes ago, estrangedtwat said:

What a hypocrite.

From his song "Satan's Bed" from 1994:  "Such fine examples, skinny little bitch; Model, role model, roll some models in blood; get some flesh to stick so they look like us.....I'd stop and talk but I'm already in love"

 

Some pretty big talk from arguably the biggest rock star on the planet at the time, at the very height of his popularity, influence, fame, and sex appeal.  And he wasn't interested....he married his pretty average looking girlfriend that he'd been with for about a decade before he got famous.  (She had a really nice rack, but very average face.)

 

Good for him, I thought.  Putting his money where his mouth is.  Talking the talk and walking the walk. 

 

Just a few years later he left her, and married a chick ten years younger.   You guessed it!   A fashion model!   And since his new wife was still fertile, he had kids with her.  So much for his first wife that stood with him all those years he worked at a gas station.

 

But Eddie's cool...he's a good guy...he's a male feminist, after all.   No "Girls Girls Girls!!" for him.

This makes no sense whatsoever. Just because he got a divorce? Eddie, and most of those alt-bands, were very different in ethos and values from a lot of those LA glam bands.

Edited February 1, 2022 by EvanG

[RussTCB]

This revisionist history cracks me up. Now that GN'R has made itself into a brand institution, you have people like Vedder claiming they were down with GN'R all along? 

I have to laugh at the notion that GN'R came along and changed everything about "hair metal". The biggest difference between Grils, Girls, Girls and AFD is that AFD is just a better album. When they launched, GN'R had the same big hair, makeup and overwll image as Crue. 

I love Pearl Jam and I really like Eddie as a front man, but his retroactive statements about how GN'R were some wildly different thing from Crue are laughable at best 

 

[Blackstar]

1 hour ago, RussTCB said:

This revisionist history cracks me up. Now that GN'R has made itself into a brand institution, you have people like Vedder claiming they were down with GN'R all along? 

I have to laugh at the notion that GN'R came along and changed everything about "hair metal". The biggest difference between Grils, Girls, Girls and AFD is that AFD is just a better album. When they launched, GN'R had the same big hair, makeup and overwll image as Crue. 

I love Pearl Jam and I really like Eddie as a front man, but his retroactive statements about how GN'R were some wildly different thing from Crue are laughable at best

Eddie Vedder hasn't been on record (as far as I know) saying anything against GN'R either, though, so we don't really know if he was down with GN'R or not.

GN'R started out as a glam looking band, but so did some of those Seattle musicians, like the early incarnations of AIC. By late 1987, GN'R had completely deviated from that look, and Mother Love Bone had a similar look as GN'R at the time. Jerry Cantrell tried to pass demos to Axl and jammed with Slash and Duff, Soundgarden opened for GN'R and said that AFD paved the way for bands like them to get signed by major labels, and so on. The only band of those that was vocally "anti-GN'R" was Nirvana.

As for the overall point about whether GN'R were different from the "hair metal" bands, I guess it's subjective. I, for example, wasn't into Motley Crue and those other bands at all at the time, but GN'R did feel different to me - it felt more like a classic rock band and definitely far edgier - whereas, I suppose, other people who were into those bands saw GN'R as part of the same genre.

Edited February 1, 2022 by Blackstar

[MaskingApathy]

29 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Eddie Vedder hasn't been on record (as far as I know) saying anything against GN'R either, though, so we don't really know if he was down with GN'R or not.

GN'R started out as a glam looking band, but so did some of those Seattle musicians, like the early incarnations of AIC. By late 1987, GN'R had completely deviated from that look, and Mother Love Bone had a similar look as GN'R at the time. Jerry Cantrell tried to pass demos to Axl and jammed with Slash and Duff, Soundgarden opened for GN'R and said that AFD paved the way for bands like them to get signed by major labels, and so on. The only band of those that was vocally "anti-GN'R" was Nirvana.

As for the overall point about whether GN'R were different from the "hair metal" bands, I guess it's subjective. I, for example, wasn't into Motley Crue and those other bands at all at the time, but GN'R did feel different to me - it felt more like a classic rock band and definitely far edgier - whereas, I suppose, other people who were into those bands saw GN'R as part of the same genre.

GnR came out of the same scene but to me they're quite a bit different than Motley Crue etc.

I don't even like Pearl Jam that much anymore, to me they're peak dad rock. GnR Slash etc still have some amount of edgy RnR coolness to them.

[EvanG]

14 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Eddie Vedder hasn't been on record (as far as I know) saying anything against GN'R either, though, so we don't really know if he was down with GN'R or not.

GN'R started out as a glam looking band, but so did some of those Seattle musicians, like the early incarnations of AIC. By late 1987, GN'R had completely deviated from that look, and Mother Love Bone had a similar look as GN'R at the time. Jerry Cantrell tried to pass demos to Axl and jammed with Slash and Duff, Soundgarden opened for GN'R and said that AFD paved the way for bands like them to get signed by major labels, and so on. The only band of those that was vocally "anti-GN'R" was Nirvana.

As for the overall point about whether GN'R were different from the "hair metal" bands, I guess it's subjective. I, for example, wasn't into Motley Crue and those other bands at all at the time, but GN'R did feel different to me - it felt more like a classic rock band and definitely far edgier - whereas, I suppose, other people who were into those bands saw GN'R as part of the same genre.

Yeah, Mother Love Bone, especially Andy Wood, looked very glam rock. According to Duff's book, he joined Pearl Jam on stage when they first came to LA and AIC stayed at his house like most of the Seattle bands that came to town, seeing as Duff was the ''Seattle guy''. I believe Duff knew some of the members from Pearl Jam before he moved to LA already. I think a lot of those alt-bands were cool with GnR's music, maybe not with the antics, but a lot of them jumped at the opportunity to open up for them during the UYI tour, even if some of them ridiculed the drama that happened later on. It was mainly Nirvana who publicly criticized them, and in this case specifically Axl because of what they thought he stood for concerning racism and homophobia. I don't think Pearl Jam ever did the same thing.

And I agree about GnR feeling different.

 

[estrangedtwat]

I was a huge band of both bands in the early 90s, and Eddie did indeed trash GNR publicly, specifically making fun of Axl's teleprompters saying if you can't remember the words to your own songs you shouldn't be singing them.  They were an easy target around the time of those MTV awards when all the new "cool kids" showed up in flannel and Axl was there dressed like Liberace and had an orchestra playing with him.

 

And yes, I absolutely stand by his hypocrisy regarding his divorce.  Not because of the fact that he got divorced.  People do it all the time.  But the fact that he went and did every stereotypical cliche thing that a "rock star" does after publicly denying he'd ever do that:  he replaced his longtime wife with a younger woman to have kids with, and after making fun of the vapidness of beautiful women he married a fashion model.  He's not the first.  Thurston Moore left Kim Gordon for a younger woman.  Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips dumped his wife of like 15 years for a much younger woman and had kids.  These guys were always saying how "different" they were and in Eddie's case has always been an outspoken "male feminist."  But at the end of the day, he's not that different from the guys in Crue, is he?  Just wanted a little piece of that Girls Girls Girls.

[Blackstar]

1 hour ago, estrangedtwat said:

I was a huge band of both bands in the early 90s, and Eddie did indeed trash GNR publicly, specifically making fun of Axl's teleprompters saying if you can't remember the words to your own songs you shouldn't be singing them.  They were an easy target around the time of those MTV awards when all the new "cool kids" showed up in flannel and Axl was there dressed like Liberace and had an orchestra playing with him.

Eddie: I remembered a point I wanted to make you know in the magazine Rolling Stone, it's this little magazine some of you might have picked up. There is a picture of me, you can see the front mikes, and the monitors, there is a TV, like a prompter, right there. Umm, a lot of bands use prompters now and I think that's a bunch of crap and if you don't feel the song, if you don't know it by heart, then I think you don't have any right singing it in front of like 20,000, 15,000, 5,000 even 100 people. So, anyway, I just wanted to point out that that was an old TV I found in the back of the alley of the Moore Theater here in Seattle that I put together in order to smash it that night on stage. I just wanna say to all the young budding musicians out there, don't invest in teleprompters like I just wanted that to be clear.

Jeff: Didn't that TV when you found it have the lyrics to 'Paradise City' on it?

Eddie: It did. It did. No, really!

https://pearljamstudy.webs.com/101893rocklineinterview.htm

*

Yeah, many people criticized or made fun of the teleprompters and the whole UYI tour extravaganza, but it doesn't mean they didn't like the music or the band, especially the AFD era band.

[GnR Chris]

7 hours ago, RussTCB said:

This revisionist history cracks me up. Now that GN'R has made itself into a brand institution, you have people like Vedder claiming they were down with GN'R all along? 

I have to laugh at the notion that GN'R came along and changed everything about "hair metal". The biggest difference between Grils, Girls, Girls and AFD is that AFD is just a better album. When they launched, GN'R had the same big hair, makeup and overwll image as Crue. 

I love Pearl Jam and I really like Eddie as a front man, but his retroactive statements about how GN'R were some wildly different thing from Crue are laughable at best 

 

I totally disagree with you.  GNR were wildly different the Motley Crue, Poison, and other sunset strip  bands of that era. They looked the same, sure. Modeling their early style after Hanoi Rocks, as we all know. But sonically, GNR were a cut above all those other bands, who I'll lump in as pop rock.  GNR were of the Rolling Stones/Aerosmith lineage. There was more substance to them. And they, not Nirvana, are the ones who blew it up for their lesser peers and rose above the "hair metal" genre. Even as a kid, when I first got into Guns, it wasn't till years later I gave a shit about Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, and the rest of the LA bands. I was all in on GNR/Nirvana/Metallica in 1992. Pearl Jam, however, I still dislike. lol
 

Also, Duff is/was friends with some of the PJ guys, having come up from the same Seattle scene. I only ever remember Kurt Cobain from the "grunge" guys trashing GNR, and that's because he was petty and jealous at the time and starved for attention.

Edited February 2, 2022 by GnR Chris

[Blackstar]

I think the song that set GN'R apart from that whole Sunset Strip scene the most was It's So Easy. Even if someone sees the rest of AFD as nothing more than better songs played by better musicians than Motley Crue, an album with a song like It's So Easy topping the US charts at that particular time (with what was mainstream rock then) was a huge deal and a game changer.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Blackstar

[mystery]

1 hour ago, Blackstar said:

Eddie: I remembered a point I wanted to make you know in the magazine Rolling Stone, it's this little magazine some of you might have picked up. There is a picture of me, you can see the front mikes, and the monitors, there is a TV, like a prompter, right there. Umm, a lot of bands use prompters now and I think that's a bunch of crap and if you don't feel the song, if you don't know it by heart, then I think you don't have any right singing it in front of like 20,000, 15,000, 5,000 even 100 people. So, anyway, I just wanted to point out that that was an old TV I found in the back of the alley of the Moore Theater here in Seattle that I put together in order to smash it that night on stage. I just wanna say to all the young budding musicians out there, don't invest in teleprompters like I just wanted that to be clear.

Jeff: Didn't that TV when you found it have the lyrics to 'Paradise City' on it?

Eddie: It did. It did. No, really!

https://pearljamstudy.webs.com/101893rocklineinterview.htm

*

Yeah, many people criticized or made fun of the teleprompters and the whole UYI tour extravaganza, but it doesn't mean they didn't like the music or the band, especially the AFD era band.

I wonder if he actually smashed it on stage or if it was something he was thinking about doing? The show Eddie's referencing seems like the Moore Theatre show on January 17, 1992 where the Evenflow video was shot.

He got famously angry with Josh Taft at filming everything like a TV studio; you can see this at the beginning of the music video. There's no reference to him smashing a teleprompter on stage though. I don't think Guns N' Roses ever performed there either.

Edited February 2, 2022 by mystery

[Free Bird]

A big difference to me was all these bands were making hair metal, while GNR were clearly a Hard Rock band. Since UYI at the latest it has been shown that they were much more diverse and that's the biggest difference to the rest. GNR had much more to offer and that's why they were more successful and passed the test of time...

[WhazUp]

The GNR portion of the interview is probably the least interesting part of that article, I found myself really moved by him and the author talking about losing loved ones to suicide and how it was essentially Eddie opening up about the loss of Chris Cornell without flat out saying it was him that sparked the conversation

[RussTCB]

3 hours ago, GnR Chris said:

I totally disagree with you.  GNR were wildly different the Motley Crue, Poison, and other sunset strip  bands of that era. They looked the same, sure. Modeling their early style after Hanoi Rocks, as we all know. But sonically, GNR were a cut above all those other bands, who I'll lump in as pop rock.  GNR were of the Rolling Stones/Aerosmith lineage. There was more substance to them. And they, not Nirvana, are the ones who blew it up for their lesser peers and rose above the "hair metal" genre. Even as a kid, when I first got into Guns, it wasn't till years later I gave a shit about Poison, Motley Crue, Warrant, and the rest of the LA bands. I was all in on GNR/Nirvana/Metallica in 1992. Pearl Jam, however, I still dislike. lol
 

Also, Duff is/was friends with some of the PJ guys, having come up from the same Seattle scene. I only ever remember Kurt Cobain from the "grunge" guys trashing GNR, and that's because he was petty and jealous at the time and starved for attention.

Cinderella is cut from the same cloth as the Stones /Aerosmith as much or moreso than GN'R was. Their look is what held them back from being lauded as such. None of that changes that fact that none of the grunge bands wanted to be associated with GN'R when they were all peers as the biggest bands in the world at the time. 

[RussTCB]

3 hours ago, Blackstar said:

I think the song that set GN'R apart from that whole Sunset Strip scene the most was It's So Easy. Even if someone sees the rest of AFD as nothing more than better songs played by better musicians than Motley Crue, an album with a song like It's So Easy topping the US charts at that particular time (with what was mainstream rock then) was a huge deal and a game changer.

It's So Easy didn't top the charts in the US. It wasn't even released as a single here as far as I'm aware. 

I agree that GN'R was a cut above many bands at the time, but what I find laughable is Eddie Vedder saying so now. It's a big of revisionist history in my eyes for him to say that he saw GN'R as different than Crue back then. 

Just my take on it, but I sincerely doubt if you'd asked Eddie Vedders opinion of GN'R in 87 through 92 that he would have said that. 

[MYWIFEMYLIFE]

GNR was totally different from other bands at the time, they cared about their music and live performances first, they were huge music fans.  They saved us from mediocrity and boredom of glam and rock bands at the time. And yes, they paved the way to true music bands. THey had the true fuck you attitude and they were the only band to back it up with their music and living. Unfo, they were so true, they couldnt be corporal like some other bands and dissolved quickly. THey are simpy the biggest waste of talent in the history of music with such talent and such a low output.

[EvanG]

12 hours ago, estrangedtwat said:

I was a huge band of both bands in the early 90s, and Eddie did indeed trash GNR publicly, specifically making fun of Axl's teleprompters saying if you can't remember the words to your own songs you shouldn't be singing them.  They were an easy target around the time of those MTV awards when all the new "cool kids" showed up in flannel and Axl was there dressed like Liberace and had an orchestra playing with him.

 

And yes, I absolutely stand by his hypocrisy regarding his divorce.  Not because of the fact that he got divorced.  People do it all the time.  But the fact that he went and did every stereotypical cliche thing that a "rock star" does after publicly denying he'd ever do that:  he replaced his longtime wife with a younger woman to have kids with, and after making fun of the vapidness of beautiful women he married a fashion model.  He's not the first.  Thurston Moore left Kim Gordon for a younger woman.  Wayne Coyne of Flaming Lips dumped his wife of like 15 years for a much younger woman and had kids.  These guys were always saying how "different" they were and in Eddie's case has always been an outspoken "male feminist."  But at the end of the day, he's not that different from the guys in Crue, is he?  Just wanted a little piece of that Girls Girls Girls.

Not saying Eddie did this because I haven't seen any proof, but making fun of Axl's antics, which a lot of people did in the 90's (including me), isn't the same as not liking their music.

Even with the Nirvana/Kurt thing... they never talked shit about the music, it was mainly directed at Axl and what they thought he stood for.

And how exactly did Eddie do every stereotypical cliché thing that a "rock star" does? Provide some examples if you state something like that.

As for marrying a younger woman. Seriously? That means you can't be a feminist and you automatically fall in line with the song ''Girls, Girls, Girls''? I mean, I don't even know how to respond to this kind of irrational thinking...

If you really want to go down that road, so because his current wife, who he has been with for 22 years, used to be a model, that must be the reason he married her according to your logic? You forgot to mention that she's also a philanthropist and activist (like Eddie himself) and co-founder of a non-profit organization dedicated to finding a cure for the genetic skin disorder Epidermolysis bullosa. (checked wikipedia for ya). But obviously you would know that Eddie only married her because she's an ex model and because he's a rock star.

At the end of the day, no one knows anything about their private lives, but to assume something like that based on nothing, like you do, is quite ignorant.

Edited February 2, 2022 by EvanG

[Blackstar]

8 hours ago, RussTCB said:

It's So Easy didn't top the charts in the US. It wasn't even released as a single here as far as I'm aware. 

I agree that GN'R was a cut above many bands at the time, but what I find laughable is Eddie Vedder saying so now. It's a big of revisionist history in my eyes for him to say that he saw GN'R as different than Crue back then. 

Just my take on it, but I sincerely doubt if you'd asked Eddie Vedders opinion of GN'R in 87 through 92 that he would have said that. 

Yeah, I know It's So Easy wasn't released as a single in the US. I said it was on an album that topped the charts. And I don't mean, of course, that the album charted mostly because of It's So Easy either. But, considering how raw, edgy and punky that song was, what was popular/mainstream rock at the time, and the fact that punk had never been as popular in the US as in the UK to begin with, I think it was a big deal that an album with a song like that charted.

Vedder didn't have a significant "alternative"/college rock background, so I don't see why it would have been so unlikely that he would've dug AFD at that time and said that GN'R was not the same as Motley Crue - probably he wouldn't have said that in 1992, but could have had that opinion in 1987/88. It doesn't necessarily mean he or other people like him would have agreed with the lyrics etc., but he could have acknowledged, just like other people, that GN'R came from a genuine place and took some risks with it, unlike the other bands of that scene - in fact, I think that's what he's saying in this interview.

Edited February 2, 2022 by Blackstar

[Blackstar]

1 hour ago, EvanG said:

Even with the Nirvana/Kurt thing... they never talked shit about the music, it was mainly directed at Axl and what they thought he stood for.

Well, Kurt talked shit about the music, too

I can't even waste my time on [GN'R] because they're so obviously pathetic and untalented. I used to think that everything in the mainstrteam pop world was crap, but now that some underground bands have been signed with majors, I take Guns N' Roses as more of an offense. I have to look into it more: They're really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they're the most popular rock band on the earth right now. I can't believe it.

[EvanG]

Just now, Blackstar said:

Well, Kurt talked shit about the music, too

I can't even waste my time on [GN'R] because they're so obviously pathetic and untalented. I used to think that everything in the mainstrteam pop world was crap, but now that some underground bands have been signed with majors, I take Guns N' Roses as more of an offense. I have to look into it more: They're really talentless people, and they write crap music, and they're the most popular rock band on the earth right now. I can't believe it.

Ah, well, I thought it was mostly about Axl being everything he was against, racism, homophobia, misogyny and the ''rock star'' thing. At least that's the impression many had of Axl.

But I wouldn't take Kurt's word for anything, though, he bitched about everything, even some of his own peers, and he was very contradictive. 

[EvanG]

At around the 3 minute mark, Henry Rollins, describes how he viewed GnR and I think that's also more or less what Eddie meant regarding how they differed from a lot of the mainstream bands that dominated the 80's.

 

[RussTCB]

59 minutes ago, Blackstar said:

Yeah, I know It's So Easy wasn't released as a single in the US. I said it was on an album that topped the charts. And I don't mean, of course, that the album charted mostly because of It's So Easy either. But, considering how raw, edgy and punky that song was, what was popular/mainstream rock at the time, and the fact that punk had never been as popular in the US as in the UK to begin with, I think it was a big deal that an album with a song like that charted.

Vedder didn't have a significant "alternative"/college rock background, so I don't see why it would have been so unlikely that he would've dug AFD at that time and said that GN'R was not the same as Motley Crue - probably he wouldn't have said that in 1992, but could have had that opinion in 1987/88. It doesn't necessarily mean he or other people like him would have agreed with the lyrics etc., but he could have acknowledged, just like other people, that GN'R came from a genuine place and took some risks with it, unlike the other bands of that scene - in fact, I think that's what he's saying in this interview.

That's fair. I'm not arguing just to argue by the way (I'm sure I come off that way a lot but it isn't the case, I promise) I just have a different view on this is all. I totally see where you're coming from. 

[Rayvela]

I’m pretty sure Beth divorced him fellas, that’s her name by the way. She’s an author I believe.