Pearl Jam, ‘Daughter’: Eddie Vedder and life after Kurt

Pearl Jam
‘Daughter’

Highest UK chart position: #31 on January 9, 1994

1. Alone, listless

Back in 2006, Entertainment Weekly did a lengthy interview with Pearl Jam about their new album, their eighth release since the band formed in 1990.

The interview was relaxed, as you might expect from a band that had survived the worst of it. EW talked about the way PJ fans (referred to as “The Jamily”) had developed their own set of response and hand gestures to go with each song. Vedder laughed and said, “I love that. We’re less Grateful Dead and more Rocky Horror. “

EW asked when he noticed that fans had become a loyal almost-family. Vedder replied:

I can’t date it. For me, it’s really just a feeling, you know? There’s a communal exchange, and there’s obviously a line drawn between who’s on stage and who’s in the crowd, but not really. It feels like they’ve forgotten who they are in the crowd, you’ve forgotten who you are up on stage, and it’s like this pure exchange of rock & roll. Sometimes as the lights come up and everyone can see each other… I’m always just amazed that everyone is agreeing on something at the same time.

Entertainment Weekly, December 2019

Pearl Jam are one of the great live bands. Bootlegs of their live shows became so popular that, in 2000, the band started releasing official recordings of most of their concerts. And part of this live appeal is the fact that each of their shows is slightly different.

For example, many shows include what fans call “Daughter Tags”. The recorded version of ‘Daughter’ lasts four minutes and ends in a hazy fade-out; the live version drags on for up to ten minutes, and Vedder will often tag on lyrics from other songs.

In the early days, he tagged on songs like ‘Across The Universe’ by The Beatles and ‘The Real Me’ by The Who. Recently, he’s been mixing it up with more modern songs like ‘Chaise Longue’ by Wet Leg. Generally, he favours tracks that will get a call-and-response from the audience. A fan-written guide to audience participation includes instructions for Pink Floyd tags:

Ed will usually start “We don’t need no education” and the crowd will sing back “We don’t need no thought control,” followed by “No dark sarcasm in the classroom” (Ed) and “Teacher leave those kids alone” (crowd).

Or Edwin Starr’s ‘War’:

This one is tricky but fun, and here’s how it goes: Ed: “War (crowd: Huh!!) What is it good for?” Crowd: “Absolutely nothin’!!”

Vedder seems to enjoy all of this. He loves being with his Jamily. He’s something of a father figure to them.

2. Breakfast table in an otherwise empty room

1993 saw grunge experience another growth spurt, with breakthroughs for Seattle-adjacent acts like The Smashing Pumpkins, Alice In Chains and Stone Temple Pilots, while Soundgarden and Hole were queued up to be the next big things.

But all eyes were on the two rival bands that had dominated grunge’s first wave. Nirvana followed up Nevermind with In Utero, a punishing record with underground punk energy. It went Number One on its release, but only sold 200,000 copies in the first week–a major commercial disappointment after Nevermind.

One of In Utero’s highlights is ‘Radio Friendly Unit Shifter’, an ugly song where a flat-voice Cobain delivers lines like:

I love you for what I am not
I do not want what I have got

A few weeks later, Pearl Jam released their second LP, Vs, which also went to Number One. But Vs sold one million copies in its first week, making it the fastest-selling album of all time–and dwarfing In Utero’s figures.

(Weird historical coincidence: the album was almost named Five Against One, which is the ratio by which they outsold Nirvana.)

But commercial success is a double-edged sword in alternative rock. Cobain dismissed Pearl Jam as “corporate rock” and the sales figures seemed like further evidence of selling out. Critics largely agreed with Cobain, giving Vs mixed reviews while focusing most of their attention on Kurt and Courtney’s ongoing melodrama.

Still, Vs thrived. It was helped along by two numbers that can only be described as radio-friendly unit shifters: the acoustic-driven ballads ‘Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town’ and ‘Daughter’. Vedder wasn’t thrilled about these songs becoming Pearl Jam’s calling cards. In a 1994 interview, he said:

I’ll be listening to radio and then they’ll play another cool Nirvana song or Soundgarden, and then they’ll play our song and it’ll be, like, the small town song. You know, the slow one. Just makes me really mad because it’s really not representative of the record.

So, this is how things stand as we enter 1994. Critics have anointed Kurt Cobain as the chosen one, but audiences have overwhelmingly opted for Eddie Vedder. Nirvana are on their way to becoming the new Pixies; Pearl Jam are turning into the next U2. And maybe that’s how things would have worked out, had things not changed so drastically.

3. Painted room, can’t deny there’s something wrong

Courtney Love didn’t say she wished Eddie Vedder was dead. It was all a misunderstanding.

What happened was this: In early 1994, Select magazine were profiling Courtney Love, who was in London to promote Hole’s new album, Live Through This. Courtney took a pill during the interview, which she explained was Rohypnol. Her doctor had prescribed it for anxiety. She washed it down with sparkling water because she’d been warned of dire consequences if she mixed the drug with alcohol.

The next day, Cobain and Love flew to Rome. Cobain took several of her Rohypnol tablets and washed them down with champagne. He spent 20 hours in a coma and almost died.

A week later, when the couple were flying back to Seattle via Heathrow, Love phoned Select magazine to answer some questions and give an update on Kurt. She complained about the savage press coverage of his coma and ongoing speculation about their drug problems. At the end of the interview, she said this:

“You know,” she says wistfully before hanging up, “I wish it’d been Eddie. They’d have had a fuckin’ candlelit vigil for him.”

That was in March. Select magazine hit the stands in early April with this quote on the cover:

A few days later, Kurt was dead. Select stayed on shelves for the rest of the month, constantly asking the question, “Why couldn’t it have been Eddie?”

Pearl Jam and Mudhoney were playing in Fairfax, VA the night Kurt died, and the news broke just before the bands went onstage. In the bootleg video of the show, Vedder seems genuinely shaken, his voice giving out when he tries to say, “I don’t think any of us would be in this room if it weren’t for Kurt Cobain”.

When they played ‘Daughter’ that night, Eddie tagged it with some lyrics from Neil Young’s ‘Hey Hey, My My’. There’s no way he could have known that Kurt quoted the same song in his suicide note. Just a coincidence, great minds thinking alike.

When Pearl Jam played Saturday Night Live a week later, Eddie once again tagged ‘Daughter’ with Neil Young’s song. Everyone had read the suicide note by then, and the audience cheered when Eddie sang, “Rock and roll can never die”. At the end of the show, he opened his shirt to reveal the letter K written in sharpie above his heart.

It might seem a little cheesy, but Vedder seems like a genuine guy who was shattered and doing his best. Although Kurt never changed his mind about Pearl Jam as a band, he seemed to have deep respect for Vedder as a person, and both men said they wished they knew each other better. When Cameron Crowe made the Pearl Jam 20 documentary, he unearthed some old footage of Cobain and Vedder slow-dancing together at the MTV awards in 1992 while Eric Clapton played ‘Tears In Heaven’. It’s a sweet moment.

By the end of April 1994, Eddie was still reeling from Kurt’s death, but he hadn’t heard what Courtney said, even though it had been picked up and reported internationally.

Allan Jones of Melody Maker decided to fix that. He did one of the first big interviews with Vedder after the event:

“WHY COULDN’T IT HAVE BEEN EDDIE VEDDER?” This was exactly what Courtney Love had told Select magazine, I tell Eddie.

He looks absolutely stunned. “Oh,” he says, the wind gone out of him, utterly deflated. “That’s nice. That’s really nice. That makes me feel really good. I wonder why she didn’t mention that when I phoned her last night and offered her any help or support I could give her…” We sit for a while in one of our regular silences.

During the interview, Vedder seriously contemplates quitting. He admits that he believed he would die before Cobain, and now that Kurt’s gone, he can’t imagine what comes next.

“Think about it, man,” he says. “Any generation that would pick Kurt or me as its spokesman — that must be a pretty fucked up generation, don’t you think? I mean, that generation must be really fucked up, man, really fuckin’ fucked up…..”

4. The picture kept will remind me

Eddie Vedder didn’t quit, obviously. Pearl Jam started working on their third album (their masterpiece, in my humble opinion) and kept touring. They’re still touring today.

And the sad thing is that he’s the last man standing. So many of them are gone now: Kurt, Chris Cornell, Scott Weiland, Layne Staley. Which raises the question: why him? How did he outlast the others.

Melody Maker asked this question at the end of 1993, when Vs was kicking In Utero‘s ass in the charts. Simon Reynolds wrote:

Whereas Cobain has recoiled from the power that was his for the grabbing when Nevermind went through the roof, Vedder has embraced the mantle of Rock Saviour – not greedily or even eagerly (he seems as troubled by stardom as Kurt), but almost with a sense of duty. One example says it all. In MTV news footage of the first Vs tour date, Vedder greets the audience: “How’re ya doing?” A pregnant pause. “Cuz l worry about you guys, y’know?” A massive cheer.

This is Vedder all over: he comes over as a sort of elder brother offering guidance, support and consolation to his faithless, directionless flock of twenty something youth. Contrast that with Cobain, who seems stunned by the fact of his mass audience, and is thus unable, or unwilling, to connect with them.

The great irony of the Cobain/Vedder rivalry is that they each had what the other wanted. Vedder never quite had Cobain’s dash of magic, that ineffable aura of greatness that only seems to strike once in a generation and often kills the one who has been so blessed.

On the other hand, Cobain could never enjoy stardom like Vedder. Among his final words, he wrote:

…when we’re back stage and the lights go out and the manic roar of the crowds begins., it doesn’t affect me the way in which it did for Freddie Mercury, who seemed to love, relish in the the love and adoration from the crowd which is something I totally admire and envy.

Vedder isn’t quite Freddie Mercury either, but he does relish the love of the crowd. He enjoys all of the Rocky Horror nonsense, the hand gestures, the call-and-response, the singing along to Daughter tags. He likes being with his people. His Jamily.

On the night Kurt died, after an electrifying performance of ‘Alive’, Vedder spoke to the crowd in his big brother/surrogate father voice. He spoke about the good old days of playing in small clubs, and said:

“There’s a lot of space between us tonight. We’re not only kind of far, we’re kind of elevated, I noticed. A little more than usual. Either that or I’ve gotten taller. But I don’t think it’s very good to elevate yourself. I think that can be very dangerous. Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It’s really easy to fall.”

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