The band Eddie Vedder called one of the most important rock acts ever
It couldn’t have been easy for someone like Eddie Vedder to make their way through the era of irony.
The Pearl Jam frontman might have loved the idea of playing to every single crowd he could when the band was first getting started, but when they blew up much faster than anyone anticipated, weathering his way through the pop machine would have done a number on him by the time he got off the road. He wasn’t ready to get that big, and if he had the world’s ear, the least he could do was shine a spotlight on those who he thought needed some exposure.
Because when any kid is strumming away in his bedroom thinking of becoming a rock and roll star, it’s usually not going to happen. Vedder wasn’t the one with stars in his eyes, hoping to be the next Roger Daltrey by any stretch, but when the stars align just right, the right band can be everything that the world is asking for. Vedder might have become the spokesman for a generation, but not all of his heroes got the chance to do the same thing, either.
Granted, a lot of his heroes probably didn’t want the level of fame that he attained, either. The members of bands like Fugazi were never going to play up their looks on MTV by any stretch, and even though Vedder worshipped bands like The Who, Pete Townshend always seemed to have a slightly touch-and-go relationship with his own celebrity. He knew that the whole thing could disintegrate at any moment, so Vedder was going to live up to those same principles.
If he was going to be remembered, he would rather have something that he could be proud of, and even on his later records, he was still belting every note like it was the last one he would ever sing. Townshend may have instilled those values in him, but there was also a healthy amount of punk rock piss and vinegar thrown into those first few albums as well.
A lot of what Pearl Jam did was a love letter to their influences, but if Mike McCready was their resident guitar hero, Vedder may as well have had a mohawk haircut when he first became famous. He didn’t want to play along with the corporate side of rock and roll, and when he was embraced by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he wanted to be on hand the minute that bands like the Ramones managed to get in.
The punk icons usually never got trophies during their prime, but after most of the core members lived long enough to get into the Hall, Vedder needed to let everyone know what kind of band they were dealing with, saying, “They never had a top 10 hit. It’s crazy when Phil Spector produces one of your records and you still don’t have a top 10 hit. But it’s really circumstantial. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t alter the fact that they were one of the most important bands in rock and roll. And they accomplished a lot whereas bands like Sex Pistols all crashed and burned.”
That’s not even getting into the legendary status they have among the bands they inspired. Despite retiring in the mid-1990s, Ramones could have easily gone toe-to-toe with some of the greatest heavy hitters in grunge, and given how pop-punk was just around the corner, everyone from Green Day to the Offspring to Blink-182 owes them a debt of gratitude for being one of the originators of the genre.
Sex Pistols were the ones that gave the genre a face, but when those leather-clad New Yorkers got onstage, it was about more than playing a bunch of simple chords. They were in it to be one of the most badass rock and rollers of all time, and even if they didn’t fit most people’s definition of the perfect rock and roll band, there’s no one who could mess with their sense of swagger whenever they played.
