In early Pearl Jam interviews, when asked about the meaning of the Seattle band's name, frontman Eddie Vedder would graciously share a colourful and evocative origin story. Pearl Jam, he would reveal, is a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who married a Native American, and became known for her unique homemade preserves, in which she blended boiled fruits and sugar with hallucinogenic peyote. A fabulous anecdote, but "total bullshit" as bassist Jeff Ament and guitarist Mike McCready admitted to Rolling Stone magazine in 2006.
Pre-internet, some alternative takes on the meaning behind the band's name also gained traction among fans, not all of them strictly true either. In a recent interview conducted for Rolling Stone, Hollywood star Austin Butler, who shot to fame for his award-wining portrayal of Elvis Presley in Baz Luhrmann's 2022 bio pic Elvis, learned of one such rumour from actress Zoe Kravitz, his co-star in director Darren Aronofsky's soon-to-be-released crime thriller Caught Stealing. Butler's reaction on hearing it rather suggests he'd have been happier not to have gained such knowledge.
"I have a question," Kravitz says to Butler ahead of her revelation. "How old were you when you realized what Pearl Jam meant?"
"Right now," Butler replies after downing a shot. "What does Pearl Jam mean?"
"It's jizz dude," says Kravitz.
"I was today year's old," 34-year-old Butler responds, somewhat shocked.
After Rolling Stone shared a clip of this exchange, which you can view below, a number of Pearl Jam fans quickly jumped into the comments section to shoot down this apocryphal tale. Because of course they did. The real story, they insisted, involves Jeff Ament suggesting the word 'Pearl' as a possible band name when the five musicians were brainstorming alternative ideas to their original name, Mookie Blaylock, with the word 'Jam' being appended after Vedder, Ament and Stone Gossard attended a Neil Young concert at which the 'Godfather of Grunge' stretched out nine songs into a three hour show via extensive jamming.
And the real moral of this story?
Sometimes, sadly, the truth isn't stranger than fiction.
