The concert Eddie Vedder called “the worst day of my life”
Eddie Vedder was nothing if not a fan of music from the moment he first heard rock and roll.
Even though most rock stars try to be one of the biggest names in the world once they have their first record deal and start touring the world, Vedder has always presented himself as the kind of guy who loves making music that just so happens to be listened to by millions of people around the world. But there was a lot more classic rock influence that went into Pearl Jam than just about any other band in Seattle.
Because when you think about the beginnings of grunge, most people were too busy rebelling against the sounds of AOR rock at the time. It was a novelty for Kurt Cobain to say that he was a fan of The Beatles around that time, but when Vedder opened his mouth to sing with Pearl Jam for the first time, you heard more than just a man in pain. His voice was shot through with the same tone you would find in everyone from Paul Rodgers to Jim Morrison, and Vedder was willing to lay out all of his influences whenever he sang.
But Pearl Jam were much more of a collage of different bands than any other group to come out of Seattle. They still loved listening to hardcore punk bands, but there was also a healthy dose of the stadium rock bands that they had loved as kids. The Who and Kiss took up prime real estate in their record collections, but a lot of what they played was usually filtered through the funnel of a band like Led Zeppelin.
Or at least that’s how Jeff Ament and Stone Gossard worked in the beginning. They were willing to wear those influences on their sleeves, but Vedder was much more interested in singer-songwriters as well. He first fell in love with Pete Townshend because of the great songs that he came up with for The Who, and even though there were plenty of other songsmiths from the indie scene, Vedder was absolutely smitten the first time he listened to what Bruce Springsteen could do.
‘The Boss’ was made to play giant stadiums around the world, but the fact that his songs were so personal manages to hit home for a lot of people. Everyone was willing to go along for the ride with him when he sang songs like ‘The River’, but while Vedder was happy enough to see him up close when he was a kid, his first Springsteen show turned into an absolute disaster pretty quickly.
This was the early days of bootlegging, and while Vedder was ready to catch every bit of music that he could, he lost the tape as soon as he finished everything, saying, “I had a perfect tape of The River tour – and that was gone. That’s when I broke down. I came home, all rattled and battered. I was living with my mother and four brothers. My mom and little brother were sitting at this picnic table we had in the kitchen, and my mom says, ‘What’s the matter? Are you on drugs?’ And she hauls me back and whacks me across the face. It was one of the worst days of my life.”
For those brief moments in front of Springsteen, though, all of the bullshit of everyday life tends to fade away. Springsteen always likes to consider himself a disciple of rock and roll to a certain degree, and even if some of his songs aren’t for the faint of heart, the most that he could do was lift people out of their comfort zones and have them escape their problems for a little while before coming back down to Earth.
So even if Vedder managed to lose the tape from that night, it’s easy to understand why he would have been so upset. On the tape was the sound of someone slowly healing the wounds of everyone in that arena, and that kind of magic could never be prescribed by any doctor, no matter how hard modern medicine tries.
