{"id":88413,"date":"2025-08-22T21:20:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88413\/"},"modified":"2025-08-22T21:20:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-22T21:20:08","slug":"the-real-story-behind-pearl-jams-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/88413\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Story Behind Pearl Jam’s Name"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\t\u201cI have a question,\u201d Zo\u00eb Kravitz posed to her Caught Stealing co-star Austin Butler<\/a> and Rolling Stone film critic David Fear while playing a Nineties trivia challenge game recently. \u201cHow old you were when you when you realized what Pearl Jam<\/a> means? It\u2019s jizz, dude.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI\u2019ve also heard that it was a jam that Eddie Vedder\u2019s grandmother made where it was an hallucinogenic jam,\u201d replies Fear. \u201cYou\u2019d take it and have visions.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tTheir confusion about the origin of Pearl Jam\u2019s name is understandable. In the early days of the band, they were asked about the name in nearly every interview. Vedder always gave the same response. \u201cGreat-grandpa was an Indian and totally into hallucinogenics and peyote,\u201d he told Rolling Stone\u2018s Kim Neely in October 1991. <\/a>\u201cGreat-grandma Pearl used to make this hallucinogenic preserve that there\u2019s total stories about. We don\u2019t have the recipe, though.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThey finally confessed the Grandma Pearl story was \u201ctotal bullshit\u201d in a 2006 cover story interview<\/a> with Rolling Stone\u2018s Brian Hiatt. In reality, Pearl Jam originally had the unfortunate idea to call themselves Mookie Blaylock after the NBA star when they formed, and they actually billed themselves as this throughout their first few months. As they got more successful, and were on the verge of signing with a major label, they realized they needed a better name, one that wasn\u2019t likely to get them sued by a member of the New Jersey Nets.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn February of 1991, they traveled to New York to sign with Epic. During downtime, they drove out to Long Island to see Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Sonic Youth, and Social Distortion at the Nassau Coliseum. At the time, Ament was already toying around with the world \u201cPearl,\u201d but knew it needed something else.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201c[Young] played, like, nine songs over three hours,\u201d Ament told Hiatt. \u201cEvery song was like a fifteen-or twenty-minute jam. So that\u2019s how \u2018jam\u2019 got added on to the name. Or at least that\u2019s how I remember it.\u201d (To get absurdly technical, they played 13 songs over 110 minutes that night. Many of the songs, including \u201cLove to Burn, \u201cLike a Hurricane,\u201d and \u201cLove and Only Love,\u201d stretched past the ten-minute mark. It was an truly great tour, one of the best in Young\u2019s history.)<\/p>\n

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\n\tBy the time the true story of Pearl Jam\u2019s name emerged, the story of Grandma Pearl\u2019s hallucinogenic jam had already hardened into fact for most people. And yes, an alternate theory emerged that Zo\u00eb Kravitz came across. To be fair, we\u2019re not even saying she\u2019s definitely wrong. They lied about the name in 1991. We can\u2019t say for certain they weren\u2019t also lying in 2006. Would they really admit if the name did indeed refer to \u201cjizz?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn all probability, the \u201cjam\u201d part of the name did come from Neil Young\u2019s February 22, 1991, show at the Nassau Coliseum. It feels appropriate that the Godfather of Grunge not only laid down the musical groundwork for the entire genre, but he also inspired one of the top grunge bands to give themselves a proper name.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI have a question,\u201d Zo\u00eb Kravitz posed to her Caught Stealing co-star Austin Butler and Rolling Stone film…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":88414,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,59717,63,447,134,45970,52209],"class_list":{"0":"post-88413","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-austin-butler","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-celebrities","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-pearl-jam","14":"tag-zoe-kravitz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}