Everybody Loves Our Town

by Mark Yarm

  MAUREEN HERMAN The San Francisco stop was the day of the Entertainment Weekly photo shoot. My mom and my sister came to the show. Kat has to be revived, and then she starts asking for my mom! I’m glad they have a great relationship, but I was just like, “Oh, Christ, Kat! Don’t ask for my fucking mom when you OD.”

  Kat was indisposed, so Entertainment Weekly ended up taking pictures of me and Lori, and that’s probably how my image ended up on the cover as opposed to Kat’s.

  DAVE ABBRUZZESE When Pearl Jam started talking about laying off on doing interviews and stuff, I had a Modern Drummer cover already in place to be done. One of those nights on tour in Italy was when I was doin’ the last interview with Modern Drummer. Kelly said something to the effect of, “You might just wanna lay off of that.” And my response was that I’d already committed to it. And Kelly said, “Hopefully you’re prepared to deal with the consequences.”

  If I had to guess at what moment I crossed the Eddie threshold into him makin’ a power move to get rid of me, it was probably that one.

  ADAM KASPER (producer/engineer) Vs. was the first Pearl Jam album I worked on, as an assistant. I’ve become really good friends with Eddie since, and at that time he was definitely a different guy. I don’t know if it was an affectation or what, but he was very moody and serious, and most of the guys in Seattle were pretty lighthearted. Maybe it was because of his fame; it was probably a shock to his system. Basically, you gain a lot of power when you’re in that position and everyone is kissing your butt, nobody wants to upset you, and “Can I get you something?” Matt Lukin used to call him the Pope because Eddie would say something and people would cater to him.

  EDDIE VEDDER The second record, that was the one I enjoyed making the least. We didn’t record it in Seattle, and it was just like being on tour. I just didn’t feel comfortable in the place we were at because it was very comfortable. I didn’t like that at all.

  JEFF AMENT Recording Vs., there was a lot more pressure on Ed. The whole follow-up. I thought we were playing so well as a band that it would take care of itself. Toward the end it got fairly intense. He was having a hard time finishing up the songs; the pressure, and not being comfortable being in such a nice place. We tried to make it as uncomfortable for him as we could. He slept in the freaking sauna.

  BRENDAN O’BRIEN (producer/mixer/engineer) There’s a great song we recorded for Vs., “Better Man,” which ended up on Vitalogy. One of the first rehearsals we did they played it and I said, “Man, that song’s a hit.” Eddie just went, “Uhhh.” I immediately knew I’d just said the wrong thing. We cut it once for Vs. He wanted to give it away to this Greenpeace benefit record; the idea was that the band was going to play and some other singer was going to sing it. I remember saying to the engineer, Nick, “This is one of their best songs and they’re going to give it away! Can’t happen!” And we went to record it, and I’m not going to say we didn’t try very hard, but it didn’t end up sounding very good. I may have even sabotaged that version, but I won’t admit to that. It took us to the next record, recording it two more times, before he became comfortable with it because it was such a blatantly great pop song.

  CATHY FAULKNER (KISW assistant program director/music director) Eddie and Jeff appeared on Rockline, a national radio show, to coincide with the release of Vs. It was being recorded in Seattle, and I was there as an assistant to help make it comfortable for them. After Rockline, they came to KISW, and we gave them the airwaves to play whatever songs they wanted and talk about whatever they wanted. I remember how troubled Eddie was about being on the cover of Time magazine. He had the issue with him, and a bottle of wine, and he drank the bottle of wine and talked about how stupid it was that for all the things going on in the world they put a musician on the cover of Time.

  EDDIE VEDDER Maybe I wasn’t ready for attention to be placed on me, you know? Also I think it was the practical things that I wasn’t ready for, or the legal things that I wasn’t ready for. I never knew that someone could put you on the cover of a magazine without asking you, that they could sell magazines and make money and you didn’t have a copyright on your face or something.

  COURTNEY LOVE Eddie did something insanely manipulative. Well, I don’t know if he did it on purpose or not, but I suspect he did. It was gonna be Kurt on the cover of Time, only Kurt wasn’t going to talk to them. So Eddie said he would talk to them, and then he put it off, put it off, put it off, and at the last minute, when it was going to print, he didn’t show up. Eddie pulled the same thing as Kurt, except he was smarter about it. I was so pissed. Kurt was so pissed. It should have been Kurt’s Time cover.

  CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY (Time magazine staff writer) I just knew that the next album coming out by Pearl Jam was gonna sell trillions of copies, but at first it was like, “We should probably put Nirvana on the cover,” because Kurt Cobain is more of an artiste, the stuff was more thoughtful. So I had many conversations with Walter Isaacson, Time’s managing editor at the time, about who would be better, Pearl Jam or Nirvana? The thing is, Nirvana wouldn’t talk to me. They kept putting it off, putting it off, and I realized that we were gonna miss the boat. So I said, “Screw it, we’ll do Pearl Jam.” It wasn’t a second-choice kind of thing, because all the time we’re thinking, Should we put them both on the cover? Should we put Vedder? Can we get them to pose together? That wasn’t gonna happen.

  I kept hearing things about how Eddie felt Time magazine would be overexposure. Maybe it was too mainstream for him. Wasn’t the album a Sony release? They promised Eddie would give me a call to talk about things. So I was up all night waiting by the phone, waiting for this guy to call, waiting for Godot. And he never did call. So we did the classic “write-around.”

  JOHN LEIGHTON BEEZER That cover of Time had Eddie Vedder’s face screaming into the microphone, and down below it says ALL THE RAGE. Well, okay, that’s kind of a pun—yes, it’s a fad, so it’s “all the rage,” but also, he’s full of rage. It’s like, No, he’s not. Well, maybe he is, but that’s the guy from San Diego. You can listen to the music all by itself and get the impression that it was angst-ridden, but part of the humor was that we were a bunch of dorks and we would make noises like that. The humor was easy to miss.

  NILS BERNSTEIN Hype! was cool because you get a sense of everyone’s humor, which you don’t necessarily get in the music or the media portrayals of it. Like Van Conner is the funniest fucking guy. It still surprises me that people have a sense of grunge being really dark or the result of living in the rain, because to me it seemed to be the most lively, funny, upbeat group of people.

  RIKI RACHTMAN When Pearl Jam were on Headbangers Ball, they really weren’t into the whole thing. Complete opposite was Alice in Chains. They always wanted it to be a theme. They went to a mansion in Beverly Hills, where they all had robes on, smoking cigars, with facial masks—I think Jerry Cantrell had cucumbers on his eyelids. Then we went to the water park in New Jersey, and they all came out with Speedos and flippers and snorkels. That’s everybody, from Layne to Jerry. They had a blast.

  CATHY FAULKNER The famous quote that came out of that radio show was that Eddie wanted to wipe his butt with Time magazine.

  CHRISTOPHER JOHN FARLEY You gotta take the staples out first if you do that.

  Putting Pearl Jam on the cover was a great call because the issue sold really well. Also, the week it came out, that album sold a million copies, the first album to sell in that range.

  BILLBOARD (“Sales Suggest Pearl Jam, Nirvana Are Here to Stay,” by Craig Rosen, November 6, 1993) The record-breaking debut week of Pearl Jam’s “Vs.” and the staying power of Nirvana’s “In Utero” strongly suggest that the two bands linked to the “Seattle sound” have transcended any such scene and are well on their way to careers that will continue long after “grunge” is a memory …

  “Vs.,” released Oct. 19, racked up first-week sales of more than 950,000, the largest first-week sales figure since The Billboard 200 began using SoundScan data May 15,
1991.

  Although Nirvana’s Oct. 1 debut at No. 1 with sales of more than 180,000 pales by comparison, “In Utero” has shown staying power that has surprised some observers. This week the album drops to No. 4, but retains its bullet as it experiences a sales gain for the second consecutive week.

  COLLEEN COMBS (Kelly Curtis’s assistant) Pearl Jam was just getting bigger and bigger. Ten was a hit quickly, and then Vs. set the all-time-highest first-week sales record. It looked like things were never, ever going to calm down. Eddie didn’t go through that building process, the years it takes you to get climatized to what’s happening. It was all at once for him. Otherwise, he would know that he couldn’t just go out barhopping with somebody on tour.

  THE TIMES-PICAYUNE (“Slam Jam: Rocker, Cy Young Winner Team Up in Decatur Street Brawl,” by Michael Perlstein, November 19, 1993) A $4 million-a-year major league baseball pitcher, a platinum selling rock singer and a Terrytown waiter converged in a drunken brawl on a French Quarter street just before dawn Thursday and guess who was left standing?

  Hint: The rock singer, grunge super-phenom Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam, was sent to Orleans Parish Prison and booked with public drunkenness and disturbing the peace.

  Hint: The pitcher, 1993 American League Cy Young winner Jack McDowell of the Chicago White Sox, was rushed to Charity Hospital and treated for a cut on his head after barroom bouncer Anthony Martinez decided that the social fabric had been stretched far enough.

  When the melee ended, local waiter and music aficionado James Gorman, 24, had one-upped two of the hottest celebrities of the year.

  “He spit on me for no reason,” Gorman said of Vedder, explaining how the scuffle began. “He grabbed me by the throat and started pushing me and that’s when things went wild.”

  EDDIE VEDDER I was with Blackie and Ed from Urge. I talked to this guy for a while, and we tried to walk on. But this guy, he wouldn’t let it go. He still had to have more. He still had to cover some more points. And Blackie says, “Look, man, just mellow out, we’re going, you know …” And this guy’s going, “No, no. I got to say one more thing, we gotta talk …” and finally I kinda held him against the wall and I … spit … in … his … face. Big fuckin’ deal. Anyway, then all hell broke loose.

  EDDIE ROESER The evening started out innocently enough. We were at Daniel Lanois’s studio, and I think we might have met him. We had quite a few drinks and ended up at an extremely crowded bar. Jack McDowell was there as a guest of Eddie Vedder. Eddie’s just trying to have a good time, and some drunk guy wants to talk with him and ends up saying something like, “You’re not so fuckin’ great,” and Vedder just fuckin’ spit in his face. I think the bouncers took this moment to beat on the out-of-towners.

  Before we knew it, the police were there and they had Eddie Vedder in handcuffs. I don’t know if they knew who he was, though it was pretty obvious, but I remember they said to Vedder, who was extremely drunk by that time, “Shut the fuck up. Shut your mouth for a minute, and if you’re able to be quiet, we will let you go,” and he would not do so.

  ERIC JOHNSON I got to go bail Eddie out of jail at 5 in the morning. By the time I got there, he’d already made friends with everybody. He was laughing and talking to the other guys in the holding cell. I remember the smell of alcohol when I got there. It almost fuckin’ burned my eyes. It was Eddie. He had been having a serious party.

  EDDIE VEDDER But I never threw a punch. Thank goodness. Because—who knows?—I could really have hurt him.… So there’s this guy, a talented and well-respected friend of mine who’s lying on the ground unconscious because of this little dick who’s saying to me, “You’re not my Messiah, you’re not my Messiah …”

  And I’m going, “That’s what I was trying to tell you, man. That’s what I was trying to tell you. I’m not your fuckin’ Messiah.”

  BEN SHEPHERD I had just put my bags down in our hotel room in London and turned on MTV. I saw the video for “Heart-Shaped Box.” That was the first time I’d heard the song, too. I freaked out and was like, “I need to get ahold of Kurt right now.”

  Yeah, I can feel Kurt. A million miles away, and in one song. One note, one little drain of his voice, that’s when I could feel it. It was a bad feeling. Like, It’s either him or me. Kurt, don’t. That’s what I felt like. So I tried to get ahold of Kurt for our entire European tour. But no one helped me get ahold of him from our camp. No one paid attention.

  ANTON BROOKES I saw Kurt OD a couple of times. The worst one was in New York, when they played Roseland, in ’93. And Cali DeWitt, who used to look after Frances Bean, ran into the toilet and Courtney was screaming, and we went rushing into the room and Kurt was just laying in a heap on the floor, next to the toilet, with a syringe in his arm, blue, fuckin’ blue. Cali just smacked him in the solar plexus. He didn’t even think about it, he just did it. He just ran in and was in motion, and by the time he got to Kurt his fist was in his chest, and Kurt just came to. And then you’re trying to get him up and deal with the situation: get him walking, wash his face, get him conscious.

  After that, me and Kurt almost came to blows. I had said to Courtney something along the lines of, “He’s fucking turning into Axl Rose. Who does he think he is?” And Courtney told Kurt that to get me into trouble. What would you say to someone who has just OD’d on a substance called Body Bag? That’s what the little sachets of heroin he was using at the time had stenciled on them. After he OD’d, he was getting a massage and the masseur was finding these sachets everywhere. I was going discreetly next door and flushing them down the toilet. There must have been about 10 bags of it. Body Bag, how sick is that?

  I think I was within my right to accuse him of selling out a little bit, if you think about what Nirvana was supposed to be about and what they stood for; they did antirape benefits for Bosnia and stuff like that. Nirvana were supposedly right-on, weren’t they? They were the voice of a generation, the conscience of a generation. And for all intents and purposes, Kurt mutated into everything he was against. He became your attitudinal rock star, with the tantrums and the plush hotels and everything. And then, for all intents and purposes, Kurt was sucking corporation cock.

  Kurt took what I told Courtney really personally, and me and him got into an argument in Central Park, with a photographer about 50 yards away who was just about to do a photo session with the band. I could see the photographer out of the corner of my eye, and he’s checking his light meter and taking Polaroids of locations to show the band. And meanwhile, me and Kurt are having an argument, literally nose to nose; I’m a good foot taller than him, so I think he stood on a rock or something. Just screaming at each other. Calling each other every name under the sun.

  I told him, “You’ve become Axl Rose! You’ve become everything you set out to be against!” He was arguing he wasn’t like that. The look in Kurt’s eyes said he was probably gonna punch me. I’m thinking, Shit, that guy’s got his camera. And the photographer kept looking over at me. He was far enough away not to know we were arguing. There was a journalist nearby, too. We’re in the middle of Central Park, and I’m thinking, God, can you imagine if this ends up being in the press: ROCK STAR AND PUBLICIST IN PUNCH-UP? Oh, God, this is gonna be really embarrassing. So I just walked away.

  And then that evening backstage, I walked into a dressing room, and we sat down and talked and Kurt gave me a hug and kiss and apologized, and I apologized for saying what I said. Nirvana went from one extreme to the other within a few hours. That evening they played one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen.

  COURTNEY LOVE I put Pat Smear into Nirvana because Kurt needed someone to make him happy, and no one in that band did. We thought of putting Dylan [Carlson] in, but it was just like, “You’ll be dead in a month,” which Kurt heartily agreed with. I’m like, “I know someone. He’s really fucking funny. I’m not gonna say he’s the greatest guitar player in the world, but my God, he will make you laugh.”

  DAVE MARKEY Kurt was looking for a second guitarist. Pa
t was working at the SST Superstore on Sunset. The reason why there was an SST Superstore on Sunset in ’93 was because suddenly the label was selling millions of records. Directly related to Nirvana’s success. Pat, ironically enough, was working for minimum wage at the counter there. He’d recently turned down a position in the Red Hot Chili Peppers. He had a chance at being in a huge band, but because he wasn’t a fan, said no. I think that really impressed Kurt, and Kurt invited him to be in Nirvana.

  CRAIG MONTGOMERY I didn’t do the last In Utero tour. I got fired after the second SNL. I think that SNL taping was the first time I saw Pat play with them. Pat had a lot of credibility because he had been in the Germs, and I think Kurt really just liked having a new personality around.

  Technically, I thought the SNL show went fine, but then we get back to Seattle and there’s a meeting at the rehearsal space and Kurt asks me, “What happened at Saturday Night Live?” And I’m like, “What do you mean?” And he says, “People said it sounded bad on TV.” And I’m like, “It sounded fine in the control room.” Then after I saw a recording of the broadcast, I figured out what he was talking about. What sounded like crap was the way the band played. They had Pat Smear playing second guitar, and like what I was saying about Jason Everman before, what’s coming out of his amp is just noise. I don’t know what the guy was playing. And if you listen to that, Kurt’s guitar is on one side and that sounds like Nirvana, and Pat Smear is on the other side, and it sounds like a random jet taking off. (Laughs.) So maybe that’s what somebody thought sounded bad, I don’t know.