![]() “There’ll be fans standing outside the arena screaming and he’s nice to 95 people, but he finally has to leave and the 96th person says, ‘You’re an (expletive).’ It bothers him. “(Fame) has been a difficult adjustment for everyone in the band, but especially difficult for Eddie because he remembers the time he needed help and there was no one there,” says Kelly Curtis, Pearl Jam’s manager. ![]() They write him or try to catch up to him on the road, asking for money or help with their problems. Vedder has tried to be that good guy to his fans-sometimes spending hours after a show talking to them or even giving out his home phone number on a radio call-in show so that they can reach him.īut some of the fans are unrelenting. ![]() He remembers the comfort and strength he found as a lonely, troubled teen-ager in the music of the Who’s Pete Townshend-and how he imagined Townshend as someone who understood. He tended to isolate himself.īut Vedder is something of a missionary, a throwback to Bruce Springsteen or U2’s Bono. The singer often drank from a wine bottle on stage during the early stages of the “Vs.” tour last year, but he cut back on that this year, the band observer says, and Vedder now describes his alcohol intake as no more than the average person after a hard day at work.Īnother key difference is that Cobain was suspicious of his audience, wondering whether much of it wasn’t just into Nirvana’s music because it was the cool thing to do. An observer close to the band says flatly, “He doesn’t have a drug problem.” Vedder has largely sworn off drugs since his teens-not complete abstinence, but nothing on a regular basis, he says. Vedder says he’s not an addict, whereas Cobain struggled in recent years with heroin. “It hurts Eddie and he’s a good guy.”īesides, the songs of Cobain and Vedder-whatever the different musical textures of their bands-touched a nerve in millions of teen-agers and young twentysomethings, many of whom were victims of broken homes and low self-esteem.īut there are limits to the similarities. “I’m not going to do that anymore,” he said in a 1992 interview. Kurt Cobain often ridiculed rival Pearl Jam, arguing that it lacked the underground purity of Nirvana-that it was simply an old-line commercial rock band in grunge clothing.īut Cobain, who was 27 when he died, liked Vedder personally, and that made him feel guilty about the put-downs. In a strange twist of emotions, they felt both unworthy of their fame and a bit embarrassed by it. They had grown up on alternative rock and punk, viewing the mainstream rock world as corrupt and its stars as mostly poseurs. When they became famous in the early ‘90s as the two most celebrated figures of the suddenly hot Seattle scene that redefined contemporary rock ‘n’ roll, they worried about what it meant. Their link was finding identity and hope in rock ‘n’ roll. What they don’t understand is that you can’t save somebody from drowning if you’re treading water yourself.”īoth Cobain and Vedder grew up largely on their own-unable to relate to the kids at high school and constantly struggling to find self-worth in troubled home environments. because we don’t have all our (expletive) together either. ![]() “They write letters and come to the shows and even to the house, hoping we can fix everything for them. “People think you are this grand person who has all their (expletive) together because you are able to put your feelings into some songs,” he says softly. On the phone the following week from New York, where the band was to appear on “Saturday Night Live,” Vedder amplified on the remark and the pressures he and Cobain both faced. He told the audience, in part: “Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you (and) it’s real easy to fall. His only public comment came from the stage of a Pearl Jam concert in Fairfax, Va., on the night Cobain’s body was found. ![]()
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