The Washington Post reports that Eddie Vedder, Billy Corgan, and Kurt Cobain were almost all on the cover of Time magazine in 1993 together.
Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder ended up featured on the cover alone, though Corgan and The Smashing Pumpkins ended up dominating magazine covers throughout the mid 1990’s. The Time issue was about the Grunge era with the title ‘All The Rage’ featuring a photo of Vedder passionately screaming into a microphone.
Christopher John Farley (writer of the Time story) said, “There was a feeling that they [Nirvana and Pearl Jam] both wanted the attention, and didn’t want to have the attention. They didn’t want to be seen as selling out.”
He also said, “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.”
