Pearl Jam co-founder and rhythm guitarist Stone Gossard recently made an appearance at Revolver’s “Fan First” podcast. He was asked by the host Christina Rowatt to share his thoughts on Eddie Vedder’s recently expressed extreme dislike of Mötley Crüe and ’80s hair metal in general.
Both Eddie Vedder and Nikki Sixx have been noted exchanging words in the media. Pearl Jam’s Ten Club President Tim Bierman recently hit back at Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx for making some offensive comments on Pearl Jam.
The band’s frontman Eddie Vedder had once stated that he did not like Motley Crue due to their lyricism which displays women in a bad light. In fact, Eddie Vedder said how he despised the band.
Eddie would make another jab at Mötley Crüe during a recent show from his ongoing promotional tour for his latest solo album “Earthlings”. On the tour, Eddie is backed by The Earthlings, consisting of RHCP drummer Chad Smith, keyboardist/guitarist/vocalist Josh Klinghoffer, bassist Chris Chaney, guitarist/vocalist Glen Hansard, and guitarist/producer Andrew Watt.
During the gig, Eddie pointed at Chad Smith’s drum kit and said: “That drum kit, that silver, beautiful machine that he is the engine of…does not need to elevate or rotate to do its job. Let me just point that out.” The remark was meant as a subtle diss of Mötley Crüe and its drummer Tommy Lee, who’d often perform on rotating drum kit, sometimes even upside-down.
Stone Gossard opens up on the feud
Given that this unexpected “feud” between the two iconic musicians attracted a significant amount of mainstream attention, Stone was asked to weigh in on the matter and describe his own stance towards hair metal. Here is what he said:
“Yeah, and, you know – for sure, Jeff [Ament] and Mike [McCready] and I *loved* hard rock, we went through it all. I bought the first Mötley Crüe Leathür records. I thought it was, at the time, it was punk-like. It had that same – it was, like, Motorhead, and…
“There were things about it that I was discovering – you know, British hard rock – that felt also at the time, like, rebellious, or against the norm, or something that made me interested in it. And I’ve always liked heavy, so…”
