Left Behind at the Starting Line

Hair Metal, Grunge, and the Soundtrack That Disowned Me

A few nights ago, comedian Bill Burr appeared on Late Night with Seth Meyers and told a story about meeting Eddie Vedder. He admitted—without apology—that he used to hate Pearl Jam. Not because they were bad, but because they ended the glam rock era. “That was the band that made me realize my youth was over.”

It struck a nerve.

Because while Burr is a few years older than me and grunge marked the end of something for him, for me, it interrupted something I was just beginning. I wasn’t finishing a chapter—I was stepping into what I thought was the first page. And then the page tore itself out.

Like Calvin in The Wake of Expectations, I felt deeply alienated when I arrived at college. The musical shift wasn’t the only source of that alienation—but it was a big one. And given how central music was to my identity and ambition, it was profoundly consequential.

I was already struggling with who I was—racially, musically, socially, creatively. These threads are all touched on to varying degrees in Calvin’s story: his discomfort with cultural expectations, his tension between discipline and feeling, his complicated relationships, his uncertainty about his future. For me, the aesthetic upheaval in rock music wasn’t just background noise. It was a mirror, reflecting how out of place I felt across multiple dimensions of my life.

When I arrived at college in the fall of ’91, the shift hadn’t happened yet—but it was coming fast.

About a month in, Nirvana’s Nevermind dropped, and Smells Like Teen Spirit took over MTV’s countdown. But even then, it felt like a moment, not a movement. Guns N’ Roses was still huge. Use Your Illusion I & II had just been released, and for a brief moment, both the old world and the new one were coexisting. Chuck Klosterman wrote about that strange cultural hinge, where Axl Rose and Kurt Cobain seemed like two rival contenders for the next great frontman of a generation.

Would the future belong to the spandex-clad virtuosic showmen? Or to the grunge prophets in flannel with the existential weight?

Nirvana cracked the door open. Pearl Jam changed the furniture.

As Burr said, “They always say Nirvana knocked it out. It was Pearl Jam." That's when he knew it wasn't going to stop. That's when he knew the bands he liked were done. And that was devastating. As Burr said: "It was just these sad guys singing about being under a bridge and not being happy...what happened to Nothin' But a Good Time?''

And here’s the thing—even among the remnants of that fading 80s scene, Guns N’ Roses wasn’t really my thing. Axl’s voice was too shrill for me. But GnR was still a lot closer to what I liked than what I was about to get.

I wanted Steve Perry, not snarling.

I wanted Eddie Van Halen, not “Hey! Wait!”

I wanted music that soared, not music that stumbled through its own pain.

So when the aesthetic center of rock shifted—when mumbling replaced harmony and rawness replaced precision—I didn’t just dislike it. I couldn’t abide it. It felt like a personal affront and I had no frame for it.

It wasn’t just that I didn’t like grunge. It was that grunge didn’t like me. It wasn't just a replacement of what came before, it was an outright rejection of it. And pundits, music critics, and the kids down the hall all celebrated its demise. They danced on the grave of the music I loved.

That sense of cultural disinheritance—that feeling that the very thing that made me me was now mocked by the people I was supposed to fit in with—was isolating in a way I didn’t have words for at the time. And that’s part of why Calvin, in the book, never quite fits in either. His disaffection isn’t rebellion. It’s dislocation.

The irony was that grunge was speaking to the same disaffection I was feeling—it just wasn’t speaking in a musical language I understood. And yeah, eventually I found a new sound. One that was neither in nor out. I gravitated to the classics. Some things—some music—are timeless, even if they aren’t cool. But the stuff I liked? It wasn’t in. It wasn’t hip. And neither was I. And that’s actually a pretty big deal when you’re eighteen.

Because back then, your taste in music didn’t just live in your headphones—it shaped your social world…

Which t-shirts you wore.

Which circles you moved in.

Which parties you attended.

Which girls you talked to.

It was a shorthand for identity.

It was tribal.

And I found myself without a tribe.

I couldn’t just go with the flow, because music was too central to my identity. It meant too much to me, and I’d worked too hard to be good at it.

So when people around me started raving about bands I thought were garbage, I didn’t think, What’s wrong with me?

I thought, What the fuck is wrong with these people? Can’t they hear this guy can’t even play his guitar?

And I’m not even talking about the famous bands on MTV. The guys in Pearl Jam and Soundgarden could play. (OK, yeah—I am thinking about Cobain’s guitar playing.) But more than that, I’m thinking about the local bands. The ones that we would play shows with. The guys rehearsing in the next room. The barista who picked up a guitar last week and decided he was an artist, too.

Grunge created a culture of technical mediocrity.

Because the music wasn’t as important as the angst.

That pissed me off.

And when the audience bought into it, it pissed me off even more.

Like Burr, it took me years—decades—to come around. I eventually made peace with grunge. I even came to love some of it—to accept it as the sound of my generation. But only after I had the space to let go of a sound, an identity, and a vision of who I thought I was going to become. Only after I got to a point where I didn’t care what anyone else thought about my music. Only when it wasn’t really important anymore.

But I’ll always carry that moment—standing at the starting line, ready to run, watching the crowd sprint in another direction entirely.

Javier

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Further Viewing & Reading

📺 Bill Burr on Late Night with Seth Meyers – “What happened to nothing but a good time?”
In this interview, comedian Bill Burr jokingly blames Pearl Jam for killing off the fun of the hair metal era and admits he once told Eddie Vedder so to his face. A perfect mix of Gen X nostalgia, sarcasm, and barely concealed sincerity.
👉 Watch the clip

📺 Chuck Klosterman on Guns N’ Roses and Grunge
In this 2022 Ultimate Classic Rock interview, Klosterman reflects on how grunge dismantled the cultural dominance of glam metal, using Guns N’ Roses as the pivotal example. His take is part history, part sociology, and pure Klosterman.
👉 Read the interview