Who is eddie vedder

A cool name for a person? But a terrible name for a band , unless, you know, all their songs were going to be about basketball. In any case, they soon rechristened themselves Pearl Jam, and by , Vedder told Rolling Stone a rather fascinating origin story behind the name: evidently, his great-grandmother had been named Pearl, and she's used hallucinogenic ingredients like peyote to produce the world's trippiest preserve, or in other words, "Pearl's jam.

Cool tale? For sure. It's also a load of crap. In , Vedder admitted to Rolling Stone that while his grandmother was indeed named Pearl, the whole hallucinogenic jam thing was, in his words, "Total bull—-.

Apparently, the "pearl" part of the name was something that Jeff Ament randomly came up with in a restaurant, and the "jam" part is a reference to musical jams, rather than the stuff you combine with peanut butter. Throughout his career, Eddie Vedder has been an outspoken advocate for social justice, both on and off the stage. Bush administration, and he has listed causes like "people on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose" as being close to his heart.

As Global Citizen points out, Pearl Jam founded the Vitalogy Foundation in , a nonprofit organization that supports community health, education, and more. Vedder also is co-founder of the EB Research Partnership, according to Biography , which helps fund treatments for childhood skin disorders. Basically, Eddie Vedder is someone who always puts his money where his mouth is.

If he believes in a cause, he dedicates himself to it. One of his biggest advocacy success stories was his support of the West Memphis Three. As a fierce critic of the U. This raised awareness for their plight, and when new forensic evidence was brought to light in , they were released. The conventional media narrative is that Nirvana and Pearl Jam were engaged in a harsh rivalry.

The truth isn't quite so clean-cut. As explained by the Washington Post , Cobain certainly did antagonize the other band, once remarking, "I find it offensive to be lumped in with bands like Pearl Jam. In fact, Vedder later reminisced to Rolling Stone about a rather intimate moment between the two grunge icons at the MTV Music Awards, wherein the two of them slow-danced to Eric Clapton 's "Tears in Heaven" beneath the stage.

The news of Kurt Cobain's death, then, was something which genuinely devastated Vedder. One of the biggest ways that Eddie Vedder struggled with fame was the conflict between his desire to connect with his fans, and the need to maintain a safe distance. In the beginning of Pearl Jam's explosion into the mainstream, according to the Los Angeles Times , he devoted himself to his followers: Remembering his own loneliness as a youth, he would spend hours talking to fans after shows, talking to hundreds of people, or even giving out his own personal telephone number so they could talk to him if they needed help.

When fans wrote him letters asking what his lyrics meant, he always wrote back. Vedder's dedication, here, was authentic, sincere, and kind, but it could lead to him being overwhelmed by his need to not let anyone down.

Like his new band mates, McCready had roots in commercial rock. After a yearlong stint in the city, where he had worked as a record-store clerk, the band returned, unsigned, to Seattle, and soon broke up. McCready, disillusioned, had given up guitar, cut his hair and applied himself to the teachings of the ultraright-wing former Republican senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater. Irons agreed to pass along the Gossard demos to his San Diego friend.

W hile the individual members of Pearl Jam were seasoned veterans of their respective local music scenes, the band itself, upon forming in late , was the definition of an overnight sensation — at least in Seattle. Before flying from San Diego for his first face-to-face meeting with the future members of Pearl Jam, Vedder asked only that they waste no time.

From the airport, the band members went straight to the rehearsal studio. In five days, they wrote 11 songs. But Vedder, in a pattern that he had established in San Diego, moved to ingratiate himself with the Seattle music clique. The next day, Warnick received a fan letter, signed in glitter, by Vedder and Liebling. Vedder was equally intense, if less voluble, in his early meetings with Epic record executives.

A month later, Nirvana released Nevermind , and by January , that album had landed at No. Pearl Jam were soon swept up in the mania for all things Seattle. From the start, Pearl Jam were dogged by skeptics who saw the band as little more than a cuddlier, more MTV-friendly version of the genuinely anarchic and dangerous Nirvana.

Vedder, perhaps in reaction to such scathing criticism, seemed determined to prove his alternative bona fides. In the current documentary Hype! For Vedder, changing the industry meant setting himself, and his band, in opposition to it. Thwarting the conventional means of mass marketing, he put an unprecedented ban on video and drastically restricted press access.

He has always claimed that these commercially risky moves were made to prevent overexposure. By this year, Vedder seemed leery of promotional efforts of even the most innocuous kind. And fight they did. In May , the band precipitated a Justice Department investigation into the alleged Ticketmaster monopoly. Indeed, when the band later shopped for an alternative ticketing agent, Vedder was the lone band member present at the meeting with ETM.

The tour began to unravel from Day 1. The opening June 16 date, in Boise, Idaho, had to be scrapped — the state-run facility required government approval to use an alternative ticketing system — and moved to Casper, Wyo. At the second stop, Salt Lake City — where the band was obliged to play an out-of-the-way outdoor venue — a bone-chilling rainstorm descended before the band even took the stage.

The concert was canceled, and 12, fans were sent home. Overzealous local cops, fearing that rowdy rock fans would overrun fair goers, moved to have the two shows canceled. During a week of back-and-forth squabbling over the venue, Pearl Jam manager Kelly Curtis announced that the band would, if necessary, tour with Ticketmaster. The fight was clearly taking a toll on Vedder.

On June 24, the singer went to a local hospital, suffering from digestive problems. They want to hear you play good music. The final blow to Pearl Jam came on July 5, , when the federal antitrust investigation of Ticketmaster was quietly dropped. Vedder has never commented publicly on this defeat. But symptoms of a new disillusionment within the singer seemed apparent. His parents divorced shortly afterward, and his mother soon remarried and opened a group home that provided for several foster children.

For many years, Vedder was led to believe that his stepfather was his biological dad. The angst he felt when he finally discovered the truth fueled much of his later music, including the creation of one of Pearl Jam's earliest hits, "Alive. Following the family's relocation to San Diego County, Vedder moved out of his tense home and attempted to support himself through high school.

He eventually dropped out of school altogether, and after his mom divorced again, he adopted her maiden name and rejoined her in Chicago. Carrying a passion for music — groups like the Sex Pistols, the Who, the Ramones and Black Flag were big influences — Vedder returned to Southern California in and became a fixture at nightclubs. He also joined several bands, including one called Bad Radio, and worked on developing his sound between stints as a hotel security guard and gas station attendant.

Vedder was one of the last members to join the group that became Pearl Jam. Irons, who lived in Southern California and had become friends with Vedder, passed a demo tape of the group on to the prospective singer.

Vedder set to work and wrote the lyrics to the songs that became "Alive," "Once" and "Footsteps. The debut album featured Vedder's impassioned vocals as he belted out tracks like "Alive," "Even Flow" and "Black" above the band's powerful, classic rock-influenced sound. Additionally, Ten included the hit single "Jeremy," which was accompanied by a dramatic video that quickly fell into heavy rotation on MTV and powered the album to the top of the charts. Along with bands like Nirvana and Soundgarden, Pearl Jam blazed a new path for a growing contingent of grunge artists, bringing the genre to the forefront of America's youth culture.

As it did, the group explored hard subjects like angst, depression and suicide, giving a voice to a new generation of teenagers and young adults known as Generation X. Furthering their anti-mainstream stance, Pearl Jam refused to produce any videos for songs from their second release, Vs.

Additionally, they entered a heated battle with Ticketmaster over service fees and exclusive arena contracts, leading to a U.

He also dabbled in extracurricular collaborations, singing with a range of artists from famed qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan to the Ramones. At the dawn of the new millennium, Pearl Jam were fast becoming a rock institution, touring relentlessly and satiating fans with scads of official bootleg releases of their live shows.

An ongoing friendship with Sean Penn led Vedder to compose music for Penn 's film Into the Wild , the soundtrack of which became Vedder 's first official solo release. In , he offered up a second solo outing in the acoustic Ukulele Songs , which he supported with a tour of smaller, more intimate venues. He also continued to guest on songs by other artists including R. That same year he appeared performing under his birth name, Edward Louis Severson , during an episode of Twin Peaks' long-awaited third season.

The following year, he resumed his ongoing collaboration with Sean Penn , contributing heavily to the soundtrack of his film Flag Day. AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully. Blues Classical Country.