This week on the SNL Hall of Fame podcast we're joined by Ryan McNeil to discuss musical guests Pearl Jam.

Transcript:

[0:43] All right. Thank you so much, Doug Nance. It's me, J.D., and I am back in the.

[0:49] SNL Hall of Fame for the SNL Hall of Fame podcast.

Thank you so much for joining us this week, as you do each and every week.

Now, I've been told that I'm not formal enough with my ask at the beginning, so please, wipeth those feets.

[1:09] It's muddy out. For heaven's sake, we keep a clean floor here at the SNL Hall of Fame.

The SNL Hall of Fame podcast is a weekly affair where each episode we take a deep dive into the career of a former cast member, host, musical guest, or writer and add them to the ballotfor your consideration.

Once the nominees have been announced, we turn to you, the listener, to vote for the most deserving and help determine who will be enshrined for perpetuity in the hall.

That's how we play the game it's just that easy this week we are going to delve into the career of a musical guest and that is the seattle band that goes by the name pearl jam we are joinedby a repeat offender on the show our musical guru ryan mcneil and we're very pleased to have him back.

Now, I'm going to walk down the hall and I'm going to talk to our friend Matt Ardill.

Track 3:

[2:15] Matthew, who you think you're going to talk about this week? Pearl Jam!

Oh, the world's worst Pearl Jam impressions. Yeah, yeah. I lived through that.

I guess, like, the 90s are just a blur.

[2:32] Talk to me about Pearl Jam. Ranging from 5'7 for Eddie Vedder to 6'2 for Jeff Ament.

They were formed in 1990 in Seattle, Washington, and are still performing to this day.

Yeah. So Vedder originally claimed that the name came from his grandmother, Pearl, who made made a drug-laced jam, but he later admitted in a Rolling Stone interview that it was thatwas just made up. It was actually.

Yeah, he does have a grandmother named Pearl, but the jam was just inserted after they went to a Neil Young concert and watched him just do extended jams for 20, 30 minutes of musicalimprovisation at the end of each song.

So they were just like, you know, we'll call it Pearl Jam.

So that's where the name actually comes from. Yeah, They were originally named after the basketball player Mookie Blaylock, but changed it after signing to Epic.

While they officially have 11 studio albums, 23 live albums, and three compilation albums with 42 singles between 2000 and 2001.

[3:38] They released 72 official bootlegs.

So up until that date, they had encouraged their fans to bootleg because they've always always been pro their fans, fighting for their fans' rights with Ticketmaster and all of that.

But during that tour, the Binaural Tour, they released a recording of each concert, their November 6th, 2001 Seattle show, hitting the 98 on the charts for rock albums.

Now, they had some big supporters in those early days. They opened for U2 at the height of U2's fame in 1992 touring Europe for the Zeropa tour, which I can't think of any tour of U2that's more.

[4:19] More diametrically opposed to Pearl Jam style than Zeropa. I agree.

They do have some synchronicities in style, but like that's literally U2 doing like a Depeche Mode concert.

It was just like, it was so weird.

Vedder had refused to release Black as a single in 1992, despite the push by Epic.

So DJs just decided to play it regardless, thus pushing it onto the number three of the Billboard Mainstream Rock Charts, even though it wasn't a single, which doesn't happen very often.

In 1995, though, things kind of came full circle for the band when Neil Young partnered with Pearl Jam to release Mirrorball.

So they got to work pretty early with one of their heroes.

An environmentalist, Eddie, has the logo of Earth First, a stone hammer crossed with a monkey wrench tattooed on his leg.

And the band has been very open with their activism, supporting freedom of choice environmentalism anti-bush protests and support for disaster victims one of the causes supported bythe band members is crohn's disease mike mccready who suffers from the disease after being diagnosed at 21 works to bring awareness of the disease and performs an annual concert forthe northwest chapter of crohn's and colitis foundation of America.

[5:38] And lastly, during the song Oceans, they used a very non-traditional element for percussion because they just were too far away from a rental shop.

So they decided to line up the fire extinguishers in the recording studio.

And that is what the percussion section is for Oceans. That is great.

Nice tidbit. Well, we'll see what happens with Pearl Jam.

Right now, Now Thomas is sitting with Ryan McNeil and they are going to talk more about Pearl Jam and why they should be a part of the Hall of Fame.

So I'm interested to hear that.

Thomas is calling, calling. That one's a bit better. Take it away, Thomas.

Track 4:

[6:50] All right, J.D., Matt, thank you so much.

Welcome, everybody, to another installment of the SNL Hall of Fame.

I'm your co-host, Thomas Senna.

Before we get started today, I actually want to give some recognition to someone who has been really helpful as far as me researching the podcast and everything.

They go by Blood Meridian, and their SNL reviews have been really helpful in going back and getting sketch information and everything like that.

So thank you, Blood Meridian.

You can check out their reviews at bloodsnlreviews.com, a really great resource, really fun reviews.

They review current episodes and episodes dating all the way back a few years.

So thank you, Blood Meridian, for helping me and for helping this podcast.

So today is our first musical guest of season five of the SNL Hall of Fame and for that I'm turning to our go-to person for our musical guest like I don't want to typecast you Ryan becauseI know you did Bill Murray with me but you're kind of my go-to musical guy.

Have I got anybody in yet?

[7:59] Um no but you should and you're still still trying i think i i think bill is bill i think bill is actually and i think but no bands that's what i'm saying like i've argued for some of my veryfavorite artists but it's a iconic performance just nothing so there's someone who's gonna get into a band or an artist it's gonna i hope so yeah i think it's gonna be you so ryan mcneil uhyou were my guest for dave grohl uh david bowie uh what is it what is it gonna have to take for dave grohl to be in by the way dave grohl to me like should be a slam dunk and he'sinching toward their ryan what are we gonna have to do i i mean i think he might have he might have to.

[8:41] Play in front of the beatles and the rolling stones at the same time you know he's played with a beetle and with the stones but he's never played with both together so i'm like youknow You know, that's Ringo's got to be sick or something.

And that's that's what's got to happen. And then maybe and then maybe, you know, apparently, apparently.

Gosh, I mean, he appeared again with Foo Fighters this past season.

It was a great episode with Nate Bargatze and and Dave was in more sketches.

And he's so far out in front. It's like it may be one of those records that like never gets caught.

Yeah. Yeah, it's nuts. So I think we're going to get Dave Grohl in.

I'm pushing for that. I think I think we're gonna get him in at some point nice But even though you haven't got any musical guests in I have I have you back, Yes, so so Ryan you're thehost of the matinee cast in which you discuss movies and whatnot and a recent episode Was about Sean Durkin's new movie the iron claw So be what a movie.

Yeah, absolutely I saw that movie in the theater and then when I got into my car for the drive home home, I immediately put on your episode to get your thoughts. So I had it in queue.

Thanks, man. And I knew I was going to go see it. Yeah, I knew I was going to go see the movie and I was like, okay, so when I'm done, I'm going to play the matinee cast and get yourthoughts.

So you accompanied me on my drive home from seeing The Iron Claw, which I loved and you loved and your guests loved.

[10:09] All of us really loved that movie. It was a good movie. I mean, what I was really thankful for on that one was that was a really good conversation.

And I mean, you know i don't need to tell you because you're a podcaster as well but whether we enjoy it or ...