Nearly 26 years ago, Pearl Jam packed 30,000 fans into Magnuson Park in Seattle for the Drop in the Park show.
The show was free with tickets, and it was done as a voter registration effort for the 1992 election. An estimated 3,000 people registered to vote at the concert.
Photojournalist Jan Kuwahara was there, and he saved tapes or raw footage and interviews for decades. Those tapes were digitized this month, and most of the footage posted here has never been aired or posted. KIRO 7 have released several interviews, including a rare interview with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, who attended the show, with rumors over the years that Dave Grohl may have been there as well.
In May 1992, Pearl Jam planned a free get-out-the-vote show at Gas Works, but the city canceled the Saturday show days before because of crowd size concerns, prompting angry calls to city hall. The band went to Europe and played the Magnuson Park show when the returned in September. That’s what Vedder talks about at the start of this interview.
In Novoselic’s interview, he discussed the 1992 election of George H.W. Bush vs. Bill Clinton, and why he supported Clinton at the time.
Watch interviews with Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, and Krist Novoselic from the show below.
