Nearly 26 years ago, Pearl Jam packed 30,000 fans into Magnuson Park in Seattle for the Drop in the Park show.
The show was free with tickets, and it was done as a voter registration effort for the 1992 election. An estimated 3,000 people registered to vote at the concert.
Photojournalist Jan Kuwahara was there, and he saved tapes or raw footage and interviews for decades. Those tapes were digitized this month, and most of the footage posted here has never been aired or posted.
In May 1992, Pearl Jam planned a free get-out-the-vote show at Gas Works, but the city canceled the Saturday show days before because of crowd size concerns, prompting angry calls to city hall. The band went to Europe and played the Magnuson Park show when the returned in September. That’s what Vedder talks about at the start of this interview.
Interview with Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic, who attended the show:
Interview with Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman, who attended the show:
Footage from the September 20, 1992 Drop in the Park show, taken by news photographer Jan Kuwahara:
Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder interviewed by MTV at Drop in the Park, Sept. 20, 1992:
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