im am a big PJ fan, so when we were set an assignment in englsih to write a piece suitable for a listening audience, i decided to make a radio show about my beloved band. i do however have a few questions which i cannot find answers too i have also had several technical hitches when signing up to online PJ message boards, so i figured i would pose to you clever people, my short list of q’s:
‘jeremy’ based on a real story? did eddie witness it?
where can i find audio interviews online of the guys?
details of eddie’s marriage
mike mccready’s alcohol woes
i will no doubt think of some more in the upcoming days, but if you could give me some answers with cites, i would really appreciate it.
thank you
John
I would suggest going to the library or a used book store and looking for books on Pearl Jam. One excellent one I have is by Mick Wall. There are a few others out there (according to Amazon, about 5 worth reading), including copies of testimony made during their antitrust suit against Ticketmaster.
Keep searching on the net, too, not just going to PJ boards and asking questions. There’s a ton of really great Pearl Jam Web sites out there with meticulous information. I would bet that if you asked on a PJ board about Jeremy, you might get the same kind of groans you get around here when you ask “where’s the missing dollar?”
I would highly recommend Five Against One: The Pearl Jam Story by Kim Neely. It’s a really good, comprehensive biography of the band so far, and contains a lot of interviews and direct quotes from the band regarding their lives and their music. (IIRC, Kim Neely went on tour with the band at one point, and got a lot of really good info on the band.) You should also check out old interviews in “Rolling Stone” and “Spin” magazine. The ones in RS tend to be well-written, while the ones in Spin tend to be very snarky and pointless, with little tidbits of useful information. Their websites may have audio interview clips you can use, also.
More than likely, you’re not going to find too much info on Eddie’s marriage. It may be out of respect for his privacy, but I haven’t heard too much about it, and I’ve been on almost every messageboard and fan list for about 10 years now.
Just to comment, the Kim Neely book was very controversial among fans, as they saw it as a bit of a hatchet job on the band. Among other things, it spends a lot of time on Dave A, their former drummer, who wasn’t happy about how he was given the boot, and fans were also a bit pissed off at how it went out of its way to dig up dirt about Eddie.
There’s also a notorious Rolling Stone article which went even further, and interviewed people Eddie used to hang out with who were saying things to the effect that his whole image is fabricated and he was a careerist from the beginning. I met one person who went up to Eddie a little while later with a copy of RS for him to sign (one with a photo of him on the front), and he refused to sign it because of that story.
For a wealth of information, check out the excellent fan site Five Horizons, which has many articles and interviews archived, as well as the official site Synergy.
“Jeremy” was inspired by a real suicide in Richardson, Texas. Vedder was not a witness, nor did he know the boy – he read about it in the newspaper. However, he has said that he alos incorporated some events from his life into the song. He knew a boy in school who brought a gun to school and shot up a science lab (the equipment, not the other students). Vedder had been in a fight with this boy some years before and had beat him up.
Not sure about online audio interviews, sorry.
Eddie Vedder married Beth Liebling, his girlfriend of ten years, in Rome in 1994. They divorced in 2000 or 2001 after a period of legal seperation. Neither has made any public statement about the breakup of their marriage. Vedder did not discuss their relationship much even when things were going well. He seems to like keeping his private life private, so I don’t think you will have much luck finding verified information on the details of his marriage. Rumors, of course, abound.
McCready had a serious substance-abuse problem but went into rehab several years ago and is apparently doing fine now. Don’t know much more than that.
I thought it was rather creepy the way Neely went out of her way to slam Vedder’s then-wife. But if you read between the lines, I think it becomes obvious that Neely was suffering from a huge, and unrequited, crush on Vedder. I can’t fault her for that, he’s pretty much the only thing keeping me from a higher Kinsey number, but to base a book on your petty disappointment about a rock-star crush not panning out is pretty tacky.
Aside from that, Five Against One is not merely unauthorized but was outright opposed by the band. For reasons they have never made public, they did not want Neely writing a book about them, although they must have known her fairly well from the time when she covered their tours for Rolling Stone. They refused to grant her interviews, and asked all their friends and family not to speak with her. As a result, the only interviews she was able to obtain were from people who were willing to speak with her despite the wishes of the band.
I know that at least two of those people (including a former bandmate of Vedder’s) have since publically said that their words were twisted and taken out of context to produce that very effect, and that they had never meant to suggest that he was a phony or a careerist. The article in question is an obvious hack job full of logical leaps and unsupported claims.
I don’t mean to come off as such a Vedder apologist, but really, if you read Neely’s book or the RS article with a critical eye it’s clear that they are deeply flawed works from a purely journalistic standpoint. Vedder’s character might be just as deeply flawed for all I know, but I’d never believe it based on the word of Neely or whatever hack wrote the RS article.
FTR, I agree with you 100%, Lamia. I think if you want to do a hatchet job on anyone, you could. Vedder often does things that annoy me, but that’s my problem, not his.
It’s also interesting to read Krist Novoselic’s comment on the RS article here. It’s kinda funny how Rolling Stone’s gone all the way from lame hippie magazine to lame corporate magazine in 30+ years.
