10 Hard Rock Bands Who FIRED Important Members
9. Pearl Jam - Dave Abbruzzese
If you had to nail down who the least necessary person in a rock band is, 9 times out of 10 people will say the drummer. I mean, unless your name is John Bonham or Neil Peart, being the guy who bangs on things for a living isn't always given top billing alongside those who write the riffs. It also doesn't help when your bandmates have an axe to grind.
When Pearl Jam were shuffling through drummers in the early days, Dave Abbruzzese tended to get picked on the most. Whereas Matt Cameron and Jack Irons fell into place perfectly during their stints with the band, Dave was starstruck with all of the attention, which drove Eddie Vedder up the wall. If that wasn't bad enough, Dave also talked frequently about his nonmusical habits of owning guns, which Vedder sarcastically immortalized in the song Glorified G.
By the time that they got finished making the album Vitalogy, Abbruzzese started to feel more and more unnecessary in Eddie's mind, leading to Irons taking over midway through the recording process.
Even though Pearl Jam could have probably turned any riff into gold in the mid '90s, the fact that they kept shuffling around behind the drummers stool was enough to put them on shaky ground.