When the first grunge bands rose to fame in the early 1990s, the musical landscape was changing and Bruce Dickinson was still the frontman of Iron Maiden. These bands, which mainly came from Seattle, quickly became the most sought-after acts and both the industry and fans began to turn away from Hard Rock and Heavy Metal a bit.
Although these bands posed a challenge to the success of older acts like Iron Maiden, Bruce Dickinson paid close attention to the scene. Over the years, he spoke about many of these groups, sharing his opinions on them, including Pearl Jam and their singer Eddie Vedder.
What is Bruce Dickinson’s opinion on Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder
“The best voice I’ve heard in rock is Chris Cornell. I don’t think he’s going to sing hard rock anymore. But he can beat any metal vocalist. The best rock voice… Best two rock voices I’ve heard in the last few years both have been from Grunge bands. It’s Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam) and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden,” Bruce Dickinson told Let It Rock back in 2001. In the early 00s, Bruce was interviewed by VH1 to the list of the “Greatest Artists in Hard Rock” and commented on them, saying: “Pearl Jam I really like. (Eddie Vedder’s singing is) very emotional,” he told VH1.
The Iron Maiden vocalist was not a big fan of the Metal bands that appeared in the 90s. He was more into Grunge at the time and Pearl Jam was one of his favorite ones .”A lot of metal today that sounds like the old New Wave of British Heavy Metal, (it) bores me. It’s like ‘it was new then, but not now”.
Bruce Dickinson continued:
“So why keep doing it?’ When we did it, it was new. It’s time to move on. But non-metal stuff I like is usually poetic, melodic stuff. With muscles or a bit dark. I like Henry Rollins, Pearl Jam, Neil Young… Live is pretty good too. And I even like a bit of Marilyn Manson,” the musician said in an interview with Lollipop magazine in 2000.
By the time Pearl Jam was formed in 1990, Bruce Dickinson had been a member of Iron Maiden for 9 years and had been part of the band’s most successful albums. Pearl Jam’s guitarist Stone Gossard is a fan of the Metal group and in an interview with KLOS in 2024, said: “the first two or three Iron Maiden records freaked me out,” but were among his favorite ones.
The Bruce Dickinson solo album “Skunkworks” was inspired by Grunge
After leaving Iron Maiden in 1993, Bruce Dickinson focused on his solo career. He released the acclaimed second solo record “Ball to Picasso”, the follow-up to “Tattooed Millionaire” (1990). In 1996, however, he decided he wanted to create an album with a different sound. He wanted something that would not remind Iron Maiden’s sound. He chose producer Jack Endino to work with on what became “Skunkworks”. Dickinson originally intended to be the debut album of a new band of the same name. Endino had previously worked with Grunge bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana and Mudhoney.
In an interview with Daniel S in 2021, the producer recalled that Grunge was one of Bruce’s main inspirations for that record. “It became apparent to me that he’d been listening to a lot of the stuff that had been coming out of Seattle in the last several years. A fair bit of which I had been involved, at least in the early days.”
“Bruce is pretty in touch, he listens to stuff, he keeps track of what’s going on. He wanted to make a solo record that didn’t sound explicitly so much like Iron Maiden. He wanted a modern Hard Rock, heavy record. So (I told him) ‘You’ve got the voice, you’ve got the songs. I can do this,” Jack Endino said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Pearl Jam and Iron Maiden
These days the band is formed by Eddie Vedder (Vocals), Jeff Ament (Bass), Stone Gossard (Guitar) and Mike McCready (Guitar). The drummer Matt Cameron decided to leave the band in 2025. Unlike Pearl Jam (Inducted in 2017), Iron Maiden still has not been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Famed Roll Hall of Fame. They have been eligible for decades already, but the Hall never gave a lot of attention to Heavy Metal bands.