Martin Clarke - Pearl Jam & Eddie Vedder: None Too Fragile

Chapter 1:
My Reality

Chapter 2:
News From The Northwest

Chapter 3:
The Outsider On Vocals

Chapter 4:
Eleven Into Ten Makes Nine Million

Chapter 5:
Abuse

Chapter 6:
Up With The Stars

Chapter 7:
Five Buyers A Second

Chapter 8:
K

Chapter 9:
Fighting The Good Fight

Chapter 10:
Losing Battles

Chapter 11:
Vitalogy

Chapter 12:
Sponsored By No One

Chapter 13:
Stepping Outside The Framework

Chapter 14:
The Involuntary Recluse

Chapter 15:
Into The Wild

I feel like everybody else in the band is a lot happier with it than me.
Happy-go-lucky.
They kind of roll with it.
They enjoy it, even.
I cant seem to do that.
Its not that I think Im better than it.
I dont know.
Im just not that happy a person. Im just not.
What I enjoy is seeing music, getting to watch.
Watching Neil Young.
Or I get to watch Sonic Youth from the side of the stage.
Thats whats been nice for me...

Eddie Vedder

My folks are very proud of me now, Im thankful that theyve given me a lifetimes worth of material to write about.

Eddie

P rior to the winter of 1996, Eddie Vedders childhood was generally perceived to have been a relatively simple, albeit somewhat dour affair. Famed for his verbosity on certain subjects, the millionaire lead singer of Pearl Jam had always become particularly uncommunicative when asked about his formative years. As Pearl Jams popularity had grown, he had reluctantly let out snippets of information, allowing only a scratchy picture to be created, but one that suggested unhappiness. He was born Edward Louis Severson III, in late December 1964, the first of four sons of a doting mother, Marie. The family home was initially in Evanston, Illinois, but shortly after Eddies third birthday the Muellers moved to San Diego in California. According to Eddie, his early years were emotionally barren, bereft of any meaningful relationship with the man he understood to be his biological father, a void which developed into open hostility as he grew up.

Money was always short and this affected Eddies education. Such was his apparent dislike of school that, in interviews, Eddie has usually refused to discuss the subject, but it is clear that he struggled to keep up with the work and frequently fell foul of his teachers. They didnt treat me very well, he told the Los Angeles Times. Well, maybe it was just that I wasnt going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasnt keeping up. His poor academic record was exacerbated by the atmosphere with his father at home, which rapidly deteriorated to the point that when his parents moved back to Illinois just before Eddies final school year, he stayed put in San Diego. When his mother and her husband left for Illinois, there was a heated and angry exchange and Eddie resolved never to speak to the man again indeed, he never has.

Having to take menial jobs to support himself, including work at a Longs Drug Store in Encinitas, meant that Eddies school work suffered even more: Id fall asleep in class and theyd lecture me about the reality of their classroom, Eddie recalled. I said, You want to see my reality? I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. Thats where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality. As an added mark of rebellion he dropped his surname, Mueller, and took up his mothers maiden name, Vedder. His real fathers name was Severson.

Something made me realise it was time to get away or I was going to be just another loser.

Eddie Vedder

Almost inevitably Eddie dropped out of school. Work at the drugstore did little to ease the growing anger inside him, which was exacerbated by the spoilt kids who swanned into the shop: I resented everybody around who drove up in a car that someone provided for them... with insurance that someone provided for them, he said. Id be underneath some shelf putting price tags on tomato soup and Id watch them come in... obnoxious with their fucking prom outfits on, buying condoms and being loud about it. Id think, Those fucks. Maybe I would have been doing that too, if the circumstances were different. Maybe that would have made me more forgiving, but I wasnt very forgiving at all. Everything was just such a fucking struggle for years.

Eddie also revealed how near to self-destruction he came during this low period, when he talked of having thoughts of suicide as often as mealtime... I was all alone except for music.

This fascination with music had developed at an early age, but it wasnt until his teens that he really became hooked. At that time, his obsession was the Whos classic rock mock-opera, Quadrophenia, which recounted a compelling tale of disaffected youth that Eddie related to completely. Such was Eddies fixation with this and other work by the Who that he later declared he should be sending Pete Townshend a card for Fathers Day. When Eddie began trying to create his own material, he found he had a rich seam of inspiration: My folks are very proud of me now, he told Rolling Stone. Im thankful that theyve given me a lifetimes worth of material to write about.

According to the accepted truth, a sixteen-year-old Eddie then embroiled himself in some less than savoury circles, supposedly dabbling with drugs and espousing a drop-out lifestyle, symptomatic of his utter rejection of parental constraints. But with a foresight that hinted at his exceptional instinct, Eddie managed to pull himself out of this shadowy world before it obilterated him, and instead he started to get more actively involved in the music scene in and around San Diego. All of a sudden, he told the Los Angeles Times, the big night out is sitting in somebodys trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up your nose... I was getting swallowed up in it, but something made me realise it was time to get away or I was going to be just another loser.

Eddies already fraught childhood was about to deal him another body blow. One day out of the blue, his mother visited him from Chicago with the express purpose of telling him that his despised father, whom Eddie called the lawyer fuck, was not his biological parent. His real father had divorced his mother when Eddie was just two. Perhaps even more shockingly, his real father was in fact a family friend whom he had met on several occasions, but who had died from multiple sclerosis when Eddie was just thirteen. The news opened up a Pandoras box of emotions the initial relief at being told the man he hated and disrespected was not his father was rapidly and painfully replaced by the realisation that his actual father was already dead. Eddie had seen him in hospital in a wheelchair and on a handful of neighbourly occasions, but any opportunity to build a relationship with this man was gone forever. The news also meant, of course, that Eddies three siblings were only half-brothers.

Eddie remembers the day clearly: There was a piano in the room, he explained in Rolling Stone, and I remember really wishing I knew how to play a happy song. I was happy for about a minute, and then I came down... I had to deal with the anger of not being told sooner, not being told while he was alive. I was a big secret. Secrets are bad news. Secrets about adoption, any of that stuff. Its got to come out, dont keep it. It just gets bigger and darker and deeper and uglier and messy.