Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [168]
KIM THAYIL When Pearl Jam started going through the roof, the record company, in a very cynical move, decided to rerelease Temple of the Dog to capture and hang on to the success of Pearl Jam. They released “Hunger Strike,” which featured Eddie’s vocals prominently. Of course, as a record company guy, you should do that.
Chris doing Temple of the Dog ultimately helped Soundgarden, in that it got him to exercise some of his creativity muscles and bring that back to Soundgarden. It was bad in that at some point, I think Temple of the Dog was outselling Badmotorfinger.
HIRO YAMAMOTO I didn’t play for like two years after I left Soundgarden, and then Pickerel called me up and I joined Truly. Truly ended up playing this Lollapalooza over on Bainbridge Island. We were playing on a side stage at 12 noon, and Kim was like, “You should come over.” We went over there, and Scott Sundquist, our first drummer, was there, too, and they were saying, “You guys are gonna come up onstage and we’re gonna do ‘Circle of Power’ and ‘Tears to Forget’ together.”
We’re standing on the side of the stage, and I couldn’t believe how many people were out in the audience. There were like 60,000 people, and the stage is so huge. I’m like, “Wow, we’re supposed to go out there?” We got to that point where we were supposed to go out—and Chris kept on singing, and they kept on going. I think he didn’t want us to do it. That’s Chris. I was kind of pissed, but I was actually relieved. I hadn’t played those songs in three years.
At the same time, I was lookin’ at those guys, and I was watching the way Ben was spittin’ on the crowd, and I was like, I am so glad I’m not that. What an ass. Ben is definitely a different personality than I am. He has a more metal attitude. I like Ben and all, but he likes bein’ a jerk to people.
JIM ROSE I went from being unknown to literally needing security within a 48-hour period. MTV punched it hard, and USA Today said the sideshow was the “word of mouth” act of Lollapalooza. I offered the audience a chance to come up and drink a sideshow member’s vomit—bile is what we called it to soften it up. You’d take a big clear cylinder pump, with a long, clear tube attached to it, thread the tube into your nose down into your stomach, pull out the contents from your stomach, and then shoot it into a glass.
One day, Eddie Vedder drinks it and the crowd went nuts and it was all over MTV. Then Al Jourgensen from Ministry started coming up, and Al and Eddie got into a battle of who could drink the most of it, and MTV followed it every day. Finally, at the end of the tour, Eddie was slightly ahead. But Al said, “I’m gonna win because I’ll just make my own vomit.”
EDDIE VEDDER Just looking for attention, I guess. Every city there’d be some old friend or my wife’s parents, and I’d get to gross everyone out.
JEFF GILBERT Around that time, I went to a live taping of Jim Rose’s show at the Crocodile Café that was being shown live in England. Jim came up to me earlier and said, “Look, we’re gonna do the ‘drink the bile’ shtick, and I want to make sure that, since we’re on live TV, when we ask for a volunteer, somebody jumps up there right away.” And I said, “I’ll do it.”
During the show they do the “drink the bile” shtick with Matt “The Tube,” and Jim goes, “Who gets to drink the bile?” And at that point, the crowd normally goes, “Oh, no way!” So I jumped up there. Well, Eddie was in the crowd, too, and he jumped up, edged me out of the way, took the glass right out of my hand, just slugged it right down.
In the footage, you can see me wrapping myself around him from behind—I was gonna squeeze him and make it come right out his nose—and I’m whispering in his ear, “You bile hog!”
JENNIE BODDY Every local paper would call up like they had some unique idea: “Oh, I want to do a story on this hot topic: the Seattle scene.” I’d tell them not to, that it’s been done too much already. What a great publicist! Nobody wanted to talk about it anymore. That was before Pearl Jam hit, and it was already tiresome.
It was