Nirvana/Steve Albini pranked Eddie Vedder

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  • Gravey1975
    Gravey1975 Posts: 342
    Spiritual_Chaos said:
    Gravey1975 said:
    Courtney has also gone on record to say that Kurt was FURIOUS that Ed was on the cover of Time magazine instead of him. Meanwhile,  Ed was furious that he was on the cover at all. Kurt was a bag of contradictions.
    Recipets for the "instead of him" part?

    Hadn't the two camps agreed to not have anything to do with the Time piece? I mean that was what Eddie was furious about. That he was put on there anyways even with both PJ and Nirvana agreeing on not having antfthing to do with it?
    https://www.nme.com/news/music/courtney-love-reveals-pearl-jam-pissed-off-kurt-cobain-1780488
  • Tim Simmons
    Tim Simmons Posts: 9,576
    unreliable narrator
  • Gravey1975
    Gravey1975 Posts: 342
    edited May 2020
    Tim Simmons said:
    unreliable narrator
    For sure. But it seems odd for her to kick against the accepted narrative and imply that Kurt was in any way a careerist.
  • cp3iverson
    cp3iverson Posts: 8,702
    edited May 2020
    We were tired of this topic in 1998 on this board.
    Both bands signed on the dotted line for the hundred million dollar companies.  Both bands made videos/KROQ interviews/countless MTV appearances/VMA Awards/ etc.

    Neither band was shunning fame.  Both could have very easily stayed on Sub Pop or signed with SST or Twin Tone.  

    That and Steve Albini loves to switch between acting like working with Nirvana was a pain in the ass and so below him to other times acting like they were buddies.  
    Post edited by cp3iverson on
  • Spiritual_Chaos
    Spiritual_Chaos Posts: 31,471
    Gravey1975 said:
    Tim Simmons said:
    unreliable narrator
    For sure. But it seems odd for her to kick against the accepted narrative and imply that Kurt was in any way a careerist.
    Some more on this cover thing. Maybe the story of the camps deciding to not work with Time (I am sure I've heard Eddie talk about this.. isn't it in that drunk interview with him and Kurt Loder?). But yeah:

    Farley: I actually wanted to put both Pearl Jam and Nirvana on the cover. I think I gave a thought to putting Smashing Pumpkins on there, too. But Time had a tradition of going with one person. Back then, part of the power of Time was synthesizing the cultural moment and reducing it to a single face. I wanted the face to be Nirvana, but their handlers had played a little bit coy as to whether they would talk to me or not. I sort of got the feeling they were drawing things out so I wouldn’t put Pearl Jam on the cover.
    "Mostly I think that people react sensitively because they know you’ve got a point"
  • Gravey1975
    Gravey1975 Posts: 342
    That's an interesting quote. I wonder to what extent he's being truthful or whether with the benefit of hindsight he knows he should have put Kurt on the cover as he was ultimately the 'face' of grunge. 
  • Matts3221
    Matts3221 Posts: 658
    igotid88 said:
    Matts3221 said:

    I would start by saying things were a lot different 30 years ago with indie vs major along with the term "sellout" , even punk bands say now how silly it was to label  a band like Green Day in 1994 as sellouts whom had no punk credit , 30 years later they admit it was so dumb to think that way but being a teenager in the early 90's this was for sure a thing.

    As mentioned before Nirvana had toured for years  before becoming successful , PJ rose to fame pretty quick even they admit that and wish they had paid their dues so to say.

    Mother Love Bone really has nothing to do with it.

    Sort of like saying Janes Addiction only got popular due to Psy Com ( Perry F old band )

    That said I don't give a shit as I loved both bands in the 90's but again if you were not a teen or older  you may not remember the way it was.

    My 18 year old niece finds it fascinating that bands used to get shit for being on TV commercials.

    Yes Pearl Jam the band rose quickly. But the guys in the band except for Dave Krusen who was probably 21, were in their mid 20s. And close to having to find "real jobs" and maybe having to play small clubs the rest of their lives. 


    Again not arguing any points just saying how fans of indie music looked at "selling out" in the 90' , totally different times now I have nothing but love for both bands. Again I am guilty of growing up in that era and being outraged when bands signed to major labels. As an adult it is just foolish to thing about "how dare you try to make money off your music and how dare anyone charge more than 7 dollars for a show.

    Being a teen in the early 90's god I was such a shit.

  • DeLukin
    DeLukin Posts: 2,757
    I seem to recall a LOT of discussion about selling out when the Target commercial was released. So, yea, still a thing...
    I smile, but who am I kidding...
  • Tim Simmons
    Tim Simmons Posts: 9,576
    Big difference between people truly caring and fans who are still stuck in 1994.

    Also, that Target stuff was over 10 years ago. 
  • NM70698
    NM70698 Posts: 78
    What utter nonsense.  There’s a quote from Mark Arm in Keith Cameron’s Mudhoney book a few years back that sums it up well: 

    “The perception at the time was that Pearl Jam was a sellout major label band and Nirvana was the band that came up through punk rock—which was a crazy myth, but that’s the way things were. Jeff was in a hardcore band, he had a fanzine, he was more involved in the punk rock and hardcore scene than Kurt Cobain ever was. And Stone and Jeff were in Green River, which was on Sub Pop. The roots are just as deep.”

    Two of the original five PJ members had modest ties to a major label.  It’s not like Mother Love Bone had set the world on fire.  The notion that PJ was pieced together by industry executives like some kind of pop group is just pure fiction.  The topic is silly, but Steve Albini has always irritated me.  I wish I hadn’t even watched the clip.
  • evenflow82
    evenflow82 Posts: 3,892
    edited June 2020
    Albini, still smug as hell thirty years later.  "Corporate" just means they sold more albums and the label he assigns PJ helps deflect any insecurity that his work wasn't as commercially successful as PJ's.

    Are The Beatles, Stones, Bowie, Gun and Roses, Fleetwood Mac, etc corporate because they sold a boatload of albums?  If you want to talk labels, Nirvana wanted to be a punk band but ended up writing poppy melodies, fed them through a distortion pedal and sold millions of records.  There's nothing wrong with that, but to advertise them as something else is re-writing the narrative and unjustly ripping on PJ in the process. 
    Post edited by evenflow82 on
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