The one singer Eddie Vedder called his musical guiding light
No artist should forget the same lessons that Eddie Vedder held so dear from the minute Pearl Jam started.
There were many opportunities for the band to sell out and cash in to the mainstream once grunge hit, but they valued their integrity a lot more than the raw record sales every single time they played. And while their fans were willing to go along for the ride whenever they played their tunes, Vedder would have been equally as happy if he had lived the same lives of his lesser-known heroes.
Of course, Vedder would be the first person to say he was the biggest fan of everyone from The Who to Bruce Springsteen, but there’s something a little different that unites every single one of his favourite acts. All of them may be the most iconic rock and roll stars of all time, but Pete Townshend never tried to be something he wasn’t, nor did ‘The Boss’ want to change his hair or be a pretty boy when Born in the USA happened. They were happy to play by their own rules, and that came from the punk tradition long before it even had a name.
After all, the grunge scene was about having that punk rock attitude with every single song they played. Not all of them were focused on having limited musicianship whenever they made their tunes, but the flashiness was almost secondary. What mattered was the songs before anything else, and the best artists in Vedder’s mind were the ones that stayed true to themselves even if that meant cutting corners.
Because, realistically, Ramones should have been one of the biggest bands in the world, and yet the kind of success Pearl Jam had always evaded them. It wasn’t exactly fair, but Vedder would do everything he could to shout their praises at every opportunity, even living next to Johnny Ramone towards the end of his life and talking to him at every opportunity about different bands.
Ramones may have started everything, but the world of hardcore punk was about to take the genre even further. The melodicism of Ramones may have been thrown out the window more than a few times, but when you listen to the DC hardcore scene, you can hear the raw anger a lot better. These were kids talking about issues that happened to them personally, and while Vedder was on the other side of the country, Ian MacKaye seemed to have the same kind of musical heart he was looking for.
Compared to the differences he had with other punk icons, Vedder felt a kinship with the way that MacKaye conducted himself, saying, “What he does and [Fugazi] do is different from what we do. But the fact that he respects the way we’ve kinda, to use his line, ‘navigated the empty field is important. For him, it’s about the purity of the experience, the potential music has to reach people and communicate. It doesn’t matter the size of the communion, y’know? 30, 40, 150 people. It’s so powerful. So for me and many others, even kids who aren’t in bands, he’s been a shining energy, a good force.”
That’s not to say that Vedder didn’t go a little bit overboard in following his model. The idea of him traveling in a van by himself when Pearl Jam were at their peak may have had a few people scratching their heads, but since he was the face of the band, he wanted to make sure that he made his musical spotlight as small as possible to blend in with everyone else whenever he got offstage.
Because if there was one thing that MacKaye taught every rockstar he came in contact with, it was that there was no class division between those onstage and those in the audience. Everyone was on the same playing field, and it was up to the musicians to harness that energy and make every single show feel important.
