“You had to do something”: The stunt Eddie Vedder pulled to one-up Nirvana
Any band that’s young and hungry is going to want to devour any audience they have in front of them. The whole point of live performance is about that push and pull of energy from the band and their audience, but when someone is nothing more than an opening act, they’re going to do everything in their power to make sure that they leave those crowds stunned by what they saw. Although Pearl Jam could get the job done with strictly music, part of the appeal was not knowing what Eddie Vedder was going to do next.
Even though the grunge sound was a relatively new term by the time Ten was released, Pearl Jam seemed to be the most approachable band coming out of the Northwest at the time. They could fit in next to bands like Mudhoney and Soundgarden, but for someone who had become interested in grunge after hair metal, it was easier to transition over when listening to Mike McCready’s solos than having to hear Kurt Cobain scream his guts out like he did on In Utero.
But for Cobain himself, that was the problem with Pearl Jam. They had far too much in common with the old school of classic rock for his liking, and no matter how many times they covered tunes like ‘Sonic Reducer’, that would never get them the same credibility Nirvana had as a punk act. That didn’t mean that they couldn’t find other ways to wow the crowd when they played.
Despite both of them being new acts when they were opening for Red Hot Chili Peppers, Nirvana and Pearl Jam were no match for each other at first. Cobain clearly had the better songs, and their shows brought a certain sense of chaos, but if he had no sense of rock stardom when he played, Vedder was about to throw self-preservation out the window when he started performing.
While it’s become iconic now due to its inclusion in the video to ‘Evenflow’, Vedder put his wilderness skills to good use by scaling the rafters of every venue they played. He was already unleashing a lot of energy through music, but seeing him climb on metal poles over 50 feet in the air and dangle as the band played was both exciting and terrifying all at the same time.
For Vedder, though, it was the only thing that would manage to get them in the same conversation as Nirvana when they first tried it in San Diego, saying, “I decided to try it, and it was really ridiculously high, like 100 feet, something mortal. I was thinking that my mother was there, and I didn’t want her to see me die. So somehow, I finally got back onstage, finished the song, and went to the side and threw up. I knew that was really stupid, beyond ridiculous. But to be honest, we were playing before Nirvana. You had to do something. Our first record was good, but their first record was better.”
There was a lot of trepidation that comes with that kind of stunt, but Vedder ended up paying the price more than a few times. While he could always count on the crowd to catch him, he didn’t realise how much of a physical toll it would take, with him later recalling how many deep scratches he had when people started clawing at him in the crowd.
Nevertheless, what Vedder had done for Pearl Jam in those few minutes onstage did earn them some respect amongst the diehard grunge fans. Because no matter how many times Cobain called the band sell outs for riding the grunge train, he couldn’t say that Vedder wasn’t willing to put himself on the line for his art.
