The album Eddie Vedder said changed his musical landscape
Grunge rock was built upon a staunch DIY ethos and stripping back the sheen of mainstream rock music. Combining elements of punk, hardcore, and outsider music, the Seattle scene eventually came to define the American rock scene of the early 1990s, but the groups which led the charge were much more expansive in sound than the grunge moniker might give them credit for. Pearl Jam, for instance, were harbingers of grunge, but songwriter Eddie Vedder’s endlessly broad music taste brought multiple diverse layers of appeal to the band’s material.
From an early age, Vedder fostered an incredibly diverse record collection, incorporating everything from classic rock to hardcore punk. Of course, it was the punk influences which came to define Vedder’s sound with Pearl Jam, but the songwriter always seemed keen to expand his repertoire.
Seemingly, he moved through life, soaking up inspiration from every venue available to him, embracing the sounds of Motown, noise rock, folk, new wave, and everything in between. A particular moment of inspiration came when Vedder discovered a 1982 compilation album called Music and Rhythm.
Released by former Genesis musician Peter Gabriel, Music and Rhythm was released as a benefit album for his WOMAD (World of Music, Arts, and Dance) organisation. The organisation was first set up in 1980 by Gabriel alongside a range of other creatives and artists. Predominantly, WOMAD exists as a festival, with the first held in 1982 in Shepton Mallet, boasting a line-up which included the likes of The Beat, Echo and the Bunnymen, Imrat Khan, Prince Nico Mbarga, and Simple Minds, among many others.
Alongside the festival, Gabriel oversaw the release of the Music and Rhythm benefit album, which featured many of the same musicians. Seemingly, the record caught Vedder’s eye due to the involvement of The Who’s Pete Townshend, who has always been a heroic figure for the Pearl Jam songwriter. “Peter Gabriel put this world-music compilation out. I got it simply because there was a Pete Townshend song called ‘Ascension Two’ on it, this bizarre jam,” he once shared.
Townshend’s strange composition was far from being the stand-out on Music and Rhythm, which acted as a kind of sonic trip around the globe—incorporating the latest sounds from the United Kingdom alongside euphoric voices from far-flung corners of Africa and Asia. “The album also had the Drummers From Burundi, a Balinese monkey chant, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan,” Vedder recalled.
For a young man whose musical diet was largely limited to classic rock and punk, the compilation album came as a revelation to Eddie Vedder. “It just opened up my musical landscape,” he admitted, adding: “Years later, I actually got to play in a band with Nusrat for a couple of days, and it was incredible.” Seemingly, the album started a lifelong love affair with the incredibly broad landscape of ‘world music’.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan is among Pakistan’s most prominent artists, devoting himself to sharing Sufi qawwali music. That style might be an unlikely love for a grunge icon like Vedder, but his love of the Pakistani musician speaks to his endlessly broad range of musical influences. It is that sonic diversity which has allowed Pearl Jam to enjoy such an enduring career in music, contrasting many of their grunge contemporaries who struggled to adapt to the changing tides of rock music.
