Bill Burr has found himself in the '90s music conversation after Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan pointed out how they might be related, and during a visit to Late Night with Seth Meyers he recalled meeting Eddie Vedder at the SNL50 anniversary celebration in February and telling the Pearl Jam frontman that he "hated" the band.
“Pearl Jam, that was the band that made me realize my youth was over,” Burr divulged to Meyers (as transcribed by Consequence). “I was watching all the hair metal and … all those bands. And I was loving them. And they were on the countdown.”
“And then Nirvana came in, and I was like, ‘What’s this?'" he noted. "They always say, like, Nirvana knocked [the hair metal] out. It was Pearl Jam. When Pearl Jam came, that was another one of those grunge Seattle bands. And that’s when I was like, “Oh, my God. This isn’t ending.’ Like, this is just gonna keep coming.”
“And then all my bands, Skid Row and all of them, were gone," Burr lamented. "And it was just these sad guys singing about being under a bridge and not being happy. And I’m like, ‘What happened to nothing but a good time and ignoring all your problems with cocaine, right?’ Like, that was all over.”
As fate would have it, Burr got seated next to Vedder during the SNL50 event, and he had to let him know how he felt. “I was like, ‘Man, I hated your band. You ended my thing,'" he said. "And he was cracking up. I go, ‘Do you know how long it took me to admit how great a band Pearl Jam is?’ Because now I love ’em. But it was like 20 years where I just, like, ‘I’m not listening to those guys.'”
So what kind of music does Burr listen to with his two young kids? AC/DC. “I raise them right," the comic said proudly. "And you know what’s my favorite thing ever? Is my son, not only does he love AC/DC, he dresses up like ’em. I got him a guitar, and he watches the videos. He can do, like, his [Angus Young] Chuck Berry [duck walk] thing.”
Watch the full interview below.