“My blessing”: the singer that introduced Eddie Vedder to Seattle
While the phenomenon of grunge would eventually make its way across the whole of America and even infiltrate other parts of the world, it’s hard not to view the city of Seattle as the epicentre from where it all spawned.
As the most important place in the entire scene, most of the bands who are associated with grunge’s big breakout were either from within the city’s limits or from the satellite towns in the state of Washington. If you think of it in the same way as Nashville being the centre of country and western, or as Detroit is the home of techno, then Seattle is undoubtedly the Mecca of grunge.
Mudhoney, Nirvana and Melvins were all prime examples of the area’s dominance in the field, and proudly flew the flag for the Pacific Northwest when they began to gain traction and assert themselves as some of the finest exports that the wider region had to offer in terms of this burgeoning alternative rock style.
However, while the rest of the people he played with were all locals and had been surrounded by grunge since the beginning, one significant figure of the genre’s initial spike in popularity was not from the local area, but a transplant who had travelled up the coast to see what he could achieve in the music scene.
Best known as the frontman with Pearl Jam, Eddie Vedder was born in Illinois and moved to California in his adolescence before travelling up the coast to Seattle in 1990 – this bold move came after Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons, who he had befriended back in California, handed him a demo by a Seattle band he knew who were after a lead vocalist.
Temple of the Dog had formed as a tribute to the late Andrew Wood of Mother Love Bone, featuring members of the defunct band as well as a couple of members of Soundgarden in Chris Cornell and Matt Cameron. Vedder sent in samples of him singing his own lyrics to their songs, and they immediately invited him up to try out as their frontman.
However, as impressed as they were with him and keen to get him on board, Vedder had to take some persuading to make the move up to Seattle, and according to guitarist Mike McCready, it wasn’t until Chris Cornell took him under his wing that he truly felt at home.
“Ed was from San Diego, and he felt very intimidated in Seattle,” he revealed in a 2016 retrospective interview on the band’s formation with Rolling Stone. “Chris really welcomed him. Ed was super, super shy. Chris took him out for beers and told him stories. He was like, ‘Hey, welcome to Seattle. I love Jeff [Ament] and Stone [Gossard]. I give you my blessing.’ From then on, he was more relaxed. It was one of the coolest things I saw Chris do.”
Of course, Temple of the Dog would be short-lived, and Vedder’s role in the band was limited, but as for those three demos that he sent to them initially, they went on to become ‘Alive’, ‘Once’ and ‘Footsteps’, three of the biggest early hits for Pearl Jam. He may have been intimidated by the move, but it was probably the greatest single decision he ever made in his career.
