“I was like, ‘Man, I hated your band. You ended my thing’”: Bill Burr told Eddie Vedder that he hated Pearl Jam because they “knocked out” ‘80s hair metal

It’s no secret that Bill Burr is no fan of ‘90s rock, grunge in particular. He’s previously admitted that he “hated Pearl Jam,” for example, adding that “I hated Eddie Vedder’s stupid ‘I’m in a trance on purpose’ face.”

So, when Burr recently found himself sitting next to Vedder at the SNL50 shindig, what was he to do? Style it out, or double down on his past comments?

It turns out that it was the latter, but with a ‘OK, maybe I got that wrong’ caveat.

“So I got to sit next to him,” Burr told Seth Myers on Late Night. “I did it in good nature. I was like, ‘Man, I hated your band. You ended my thing.’ And he was cracking up. I go, ‘Do you know how long it took me to admit how great a band Pearl Jam is?’ Because now I love ’em. But it was like 20 years where I just, like. ‘I’m not listening to those guys.'”

Burr’s ‘thing’, of course, was ‘80s hard rock and metal, and he blamed Vedder and his band in particular for bringing about its demise.

“Pearl Jam, that was the band that made me realise my youth was over,” says Burr. “I was watching all the hair metal, all those bands, and I was loving them.

“And then Nirvana came in, and I was like, ‘What’s this?’ They always say, like, Nirvana knocked it out - it was Pearl Jam. When Pearl Jam came, that was another one of those grunge Seattle bands. And that’s when I was like, ‘Oh, my God. This isn’t ending. Like, this is just gonna keep coming.’”

Reflecting on the end of his and hair metal’s era, Burr said: “All my bands, Skid Row and all of them, were gone. And it was just these sad guys singing about being under a bridge and not being happy. And I’m like, ‘What happened to nothing but a good time and ignoring all your problems with cocaine, right?’ Like, that was all over.”

Thankfully, Burr’s encounter with Vedder was less awkward than the one he recently had with another ‘90s rock icon, Billy Corgan. The Smashing Pumpkins frontman - who’d previously suggested that he might be Burr’s half brother - made a surprise appearance on Howie Mandel’s podcast, when Burr was the guest. Burr later suggested that he didn’t enjoy the experience, forcing Mandel to apologise.

Bill Burr Confronted Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder at the SNL50 Anniversary Special - YouTube

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