The advice Pixies gave to Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder
When Pearl Jam were breaking through, frontman Eddie Vedder tried to equip himself for superstardom. While the stratospheric rise of Pearl Jam surpassed the expectations of almost everyone, Vedder had already enquired for guidance from the Pixies, who were happy to take him out for dinner and oblige.
At the time, Pixies were one of the hottest properties in alternative music, and Vedder was essentially a music industry nobody. However, his band had just signed to Epic Records, and Pixies drummer David Lovering was married to a publicist at the record label who arranged the meeting.
As Lovering knew Vedder was a fan of his band and was under instructions by his then-wife, he agreed to provide advice to the young artist. By this point, Vedder was willing to throw every ounce of energy into his musical career after earning the golden lifeline from Epic Records that he wasn’t prepared to squander.
For most of the past decade, Vedder had worked part-time jobs, including as a waiter and at a gas station, to fund his musical career. After spending several years chasing his dream, Vedder was ready to grab his chance with both hands once Epic Records took the gamble on Pearl Jam.
Meeting one of his heroes was also incredibly enticing for Vedder, who once named the Pixies album Surfer Rosa as one of his all-time favourite records. The Pearl Jam singer explained his choice: “The Pixies were huge for me. Frank Black, or Black Francis, as he was called at the time, had this voice, he just let it loose. He’d let it rip, and weird shit would happen.”
“It seemed not so much rebellious, but just free in the way he could just make sounds like ‘aie! aie! aie!’ and still get his point across,” Vedder continued. “He was liberating himself with his voice. David Byrne was the same way. I’ve never really been able to do that. Well, I think I have sometimes, but not like that”.
Detailing the meeting, Lovering told Louder Sound: “I was married at the time to a woman who worked for Epic Records and Pearl Jam were a brand new band who had just signed to the label. Eddie was a Pixies fan, and he knew that I was married to the label’s publicist, and he needed some guidance, let’s say, so I went out with him early on [in Pearl Jam’s career] and we talked.”
When dishing out the words of wisdom, Lovering didn’t think too much about Vedder’s future and admitted he was “quite wrong” to view Pearl Jam as “just another band” rather than rock juggernauts in the making.
The drummer explained: “It was funny, because I basically just said, This is something that I love, I love playing music, and I think you should do the same, just enjoy yourself, that was the crux of it. I just wanted him to be confident about everything. When we parted I didn’t think too much about it, I was just like, It’s just another band. And I was quite wrong about that, because Pearl Jam just took off and got huge almost immediately it seemed.”
In the subsequent years, Pearl Jam would become one of the biggest acts in rock, and Vedder stayed true to his promise to focus on the music.
