Eddie Vedder on his impression of Elvis Costello: “I wouldn’t want to take him on”
Grunge completely subverted mainstream American rock when it hit the airwaves back in the late 1980s. However, much of the grunge scene in Washington took its inspiration from the first wave of punk rock that preceded grunge by over a decade. Artists like Patti Smith, The Ramones, and the Sex Pistols provided young musicians with a DIY ethos and unshakable attitude that lasted long after those artists themselves imploded. Without those early punk outfits, a young Eddie Vedder might never have formed grunge titans Pearl Jam.
One of the most notable groups to emerge from the Seattle scene, Pearl Jam was always more expansive in sound than many of their contemporaries. Not entirely confined to the fast, abrasive, hardcore-influenced sound of groups like Mudhoney or early Nirvana, Pearl Jam explored an incredibly broad range of influences throughout their career. Much of that sonic diversity was down to songwriter Eddie Vedder, whose music taste has always been fairly unprejudiced when it comes to genre and era.
During his early years in the 1970s, Vedder became infatuated with groups like The Who, their seminal rock opera Quadrophenia being a particular favourite, and the comparatively mellow sounds of The Band. The future Pearl Jam singer was a little too young to fully take advantage of the 1970s punk explosion – even with the most convincing of fake IDs, he would never have made it into CBGBs. However, the advent of punk eventually made an impact on the young music obsessive.
Contrary to the claims of Gil-Scott Heron, the punk revolution was indeed televised. Not only did the Sex Pistols and The Ramones have their own respective feature films, The Great Rock ‘N’ Roll Swindle and Rock ‘n’ Roll High School, but various punk performers were invited into American television shows like Saturday Night Live. For Vedder, these televised punks became his first exposure to the movement.
“I think I had kind of a suburban mainstream taste. It wasn’t until I saw Rock ‘n’ Roll High School that I got my first taste; there was a place for misfits to go,” the Pearl Jam songwriter once shared. “Looking back, it took a while to hear the Sex Pistols. I remember hearing Elvis Costello on Saturday Night Live.”
Costello was a true original, even by the standards of punk rock, and his 1977 appearance became infamous after he interrupted his own performance of ‘Less Than Zero’ to burst into ‘Radio Radio’, disrupting the tightly scheduled live broadcast.
This bold stunt brought Costello on the radar of American music fans across the nation. Interestingly, it was the Sex Pistols that were originally booked for the show, but manager Malcolm McLaren could not secure visas quickly enough and, after The Ramones rejected the opportunity, Costello stepped in. “He seemed intense and kind of angry,” Vedder recalled. “You know the looks of him, he doesn’t look like the kind of guy that could kick your ass, but his attitude [laughs]…I wouldn’t want to take him on.”
While Costello’s influence on the music of Pearl Jam might not be immediately obvious, the songwriter’s ‘angry young man’ image formed a key influence on the early days of Eddie Vedder. After all, his SNL performance provided an accessible gateway for the Pearl Jam singer to tap into the punk rock movement, using those trailblazing influences to influence the defiant, rebellious nature of his grunge outfit years later.
