The 2002 song Eddie Vedder wanted to hide from the world: “He wants it to be hidden”
There hasn’t been a single frontman who has had the same journey with fame that Eddie Vedder has had.
Even though he was more than happy to let out all of his anger whenever he performed with Pearl Jam, there was also something holding him back from being the pinup star that everyone wanted him to be when grunge took over the world. He never wanted to be looked at in that way, so it was better for him to control the one thing that he had to cling to for all those years: music.
If the people wanted arena-sized rock and roll, Vedder was going to give them something that was a little more gritty than before. He had had his moments of making the crowd sing along to tunes like ‘Daughter’ and ‘Alive’, but even the most hardened fans of the group had to have wondered what the hell they were even doing when they started working on tracks off of No Code. The albums of their middle period sounded like a band that wanted to be ignored, but that was all by design.
Vedder didn’t like the idea of hangers-on staying with them throughout their career, and it was up to him to shake them loose while he had the chance. The grunge movement was about people jumping on a bandwagon in his mind, and the most that he could hope to do was make the kind of songs that wore their influences on their sleeve a little too much, even if it meant taking a page out of The Beatles’ playbook and making their own ‘Revolution 9’ on the song ‘Stupid Mop’.
But when one of their own passed away, Vedder was never going to try to exploit the kind of music that he made for his audience. Kurt Cobain’s passing already had so much speculation around it that Vedder just wanted to stay away, but after spending more time on the road, he felt that there was room for him to make a tribute to Layne Staley after hearing about his passing in 2002.
Staley was already in a bad way for years after Alice in Chains had imploded, but his attempts to clean up his act were always going to be difficult. Mike McCready had already done his best to help him through some of his darkest times with Mad Season, but even after Vedder tried pouring his heart out on the song ‘4-20-02’, McCready remembered the singer purposefully trying to keep the song out of fans’ reach for a while.
It was nothing personal against their audience, but McCready felt Vedder made the right call by making fans seek it out, saying, “I think the reason it’s hidden is because he [Vedder] wouldn’t want it to be exploitative. I think he wants it to be hidden, so you have to find it and think about it.” While the song does turn up on the B-sides compilation Lost Dogs, fans would only get to hear it if they bothered to wait through a few minutes of silence after the last track, ‘Bee Girl’.
And compared to what other tribute songs are about, Vedder does have a lot more rage inside him for Staley’s passing. You can tell that he has a lot of empathy for Staley losing his way with his demons, but he also has a fair bit of vitriol in his voice for everyone who tried to sing just like him, to the point where he sarcastically claims that they can try and fail as much as they want to take up Staley’s mantle now that he’s gone.
Sure, William DuVall is doing a fantastic job doing service to Staley every night these days, but there’s a good chance that even Jerry Cantrell knows that he was never going to find another person like Staley ever again. So while other post-grunge bands gave their best to sound as much as they could like old Alice in Chains recordings, those willing to seek out Vedder’s tribute knew that those bands were skating on thin ice with him.
