Everybody Loves Our Town_ An Oral History of Grunge - Mark Yarm [222]
KELLY CURTIS I was in D.C. when I heard the news. Neil Young called me, looking for Eddie. He was very upset that someone killed themselves and left a suicide note using the lyrics he had written. He said he didn’t mean them in the way Kurt interpreted them. I don’t know who he found out from, but he knew about it. It could have come from Courtney. I called Stone and told him to go tell Eddie before he heard it on the news.
EDDIE VEDDER When I first found out, I was in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., and I just tore the place to shreds. Then I just kind of sat in the rubble, which somehow felt right … like my world at the moment.
MARK ARM I don’t think we said anything at the show that night. We’re not very good at grand gestures. It was hard enough just trying to keep our shit together and do the show. The funny thing I remember was reading a review of that show the next day where it talked about how Pearl Jam had lit all these candles onstage in memory of Kurt Cobain. But the previous night they’d had the same candles onstage.
KELLY CURTIS The next day, we went to the White House. The band, minus Dave Abbruzzese, and me and a guy named John Hoyt, who got us into the White House. That was weird.
JOHN HOYT (political and community advisor for Pearl Jam; Pyramid Communications partner) We’d been trying to figure out alternative tour locations. The Clinton administration was looking at a series of base closures, and we thought that if we could do concerts at some of those venues and give some money back to the community that was struggling because of a base closure, that might be of interest. So we ended up setting up a meeting with George Stephanopoulos and some people at the White House.
MARK ARM As a courtesy, Pearl Jam were like, “Yeah, these guys can go along.” Me, Matt, and Dan smoked some pot before going. Matt still had a roach with him and the guy who was driving the shuttle bus to the White House started telling some story about how the Secret Service will go through all your shit and how some woman got arrested for having nail clippers or something like that. And I watched Matt’s face as the thought process was going on …
MATT LUKIN I had another joint that I was going to smoke on the way, but all of the sudden, I realize, We’re on our way straight to the fuckin’ White House. I got no time to light this thing up. So I ate it. I’m chewing on this fucking joint, and it’s all dry. After I’m already really stoned anyway.
MARK ARM [Director of the White House Office of Personnel Security] Craig Livingstone—he popped up in the news later when he got canned for something—was the one who welcomed both bands. And then Pearl Jam went on to meet Clinton. We were hoping to meet him, but I think we knew ahead of time that we weren’t going to get the full deal.
MATT LUKIN We got a behind-the-velvet-rope tour. Then some kid recognized us as Mudhoney and asked us for an autograph. So, sure, we gave him an autograph, and as soon as that went down, people just started pouring in, thinking we were Pearl Jam. We’re like, “No, no, no, you don’t know who we are. You don’t want our autograph.” And they’re like, “No, no, you’re Pearl Jam.”
DAN PETERS I’m sure once they get home and realize that some guy named Dan Peters signed their piece of paper, they were like, “Who the fuck was that?”
MARK ARM Craig Livingstone told us, “Yeah, we all know how you feel. We lost a good friend here, too”—referring to Vince Foster. It seemed like a really weird thing to say, and kind of insincere.
JOHN HOYT Meeting the president was an add-on. We sat talking to Stephanopoulos, and then Clinton’s secretary came in and said, “Would you guys all take a moment to see the president?” There was some concern about a possible copycat effect with Cobain.
NILS BERNSTEIN After Kurt died, a Clinton advisor or someone, I don’t remember who the person was, called me, saying, “Clinton’s gonna have to address this. Can you give us advice on what might resonate with people that this is meaningful for—what he might talk about or not talk about?