The first album that blew Eddie Vedder’s mind: “The shelves were rattling”
You could stand at the back of a Pearl Jam gig with a stubborn clam in your hand, and come the end of the show, Eddie Vedder‘s purring tones will have prized it open. You’ll be the weirdo with the clam, but the power of Vedder’s vocal skills will be reaffirmed thanks to your obscure efforts. This need for visceral force in music was instilled in the rocker from an early age.
He grew up in Evanston, Illinois, until he was around nine when the sunnier climes of San Diego came calling for his family. He would soon find his own calling therein. One fortuitous night, his life would change thanks to the happenstance of a hip-hired hand. “I was around nine when a babysitter snuck Who’s Next onto the turntable. The parents were gone. The windows shook. The shelves were rattling. Rock & roll,” he recalls.
The writer Graham Greene once said, “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in.” This was the moment that happened for Vedder. “That began an exploration into music that had soul, rebellion, aggression, affection. Destruction. And this was all Who music,” he continued. Up until that point, the only album he had really loved was by the Jackson Five; this experience showed him something rather different, and yet, that Motown sound was still around in the welter of The Who.
As Vedder continues in his Rolling Stone appraisal: “There was the mid-sixties maximum R&B period, mini-operas, Woodstock, solo records. Imagine, as a kid, stumbling upon the locomotive that is Live at Leeds. ‘Hi, my name is Eddie. I’m 10 years old and I’m getting my fucking mind blown!‘ The Who on record were dynamic. Roger Daltrey’s delivery allowed vulnerability without weakness, doubt and confusion, but no plea for sympathy.”
But what they offered in energy, they also redoubled with depth. “The Who told stories within the confines of a song and, over the course of an entire album, pushed boundaries,” he adds. The band were great fodder for young kids on this front. They created a world to get lost in, a bohemian realm of rebellion, pinball wizards, solos and pyrotechnics. Vedder lapped it all up, but perhaps the most profound way it prognosticated his future was through the way they made him want to see them live. This hankering turned him from a fan to someone who wanted to be a performer too.
“The Who quite possibly remain the greatest live band ever,” he says on this front. “Even the list-driven punk legend and music historian Johnny Ramone agreed with me on this. You can’t explain Keith Moon or his playing. John Entwistle was an enigma unto himself, another virtuoso musical oddity. Roger turned his mic into a weapon, seemingly in self-defense. All the while, Pete was leaping into the rafters wielding a Seventies Gibson Les Paul, which happens to be a stunningly heavy guitar.”
He concludes: “As a live group, they created momentum, and they seemed to be released by the ritual of their playing.” So, it’s very clear that his love of the band travelled a long way beyond one earth-shattering moment with a babysitter who probably got the sack.
You can check out Vedder living his dream and performing ‘Heart To Hang Onto’ with Pete Townshend below.
