29 Aralık gecesi yayınlanan Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck, Grace Bumbry, Robert De Niro, ve Bruce Springsteen’e takdim edilen Kennedy Merkezi Onur Ödülü Töreni’nde Eddie Vedder da yer alıyormuş. Burada ise Eddie ve eşi Jill McCormick’in 6 Aralık’taki gecede çekilmiş fotoğrafları…
Törende Eddie’nin “My City Of Ruins” isimli parçayı seslendirişini BURADAN izleyebilirsiniz.
Ne zamandır bahsediyorum… PJ Austin City Limits kaydı internette de yayınlandı; BURADAN izleyebilirsiniz. Bir saatlik muhteşem bir performans!
Spin Dergisinin Pearl Jam üzerine hazırladığı özel yazı dizisini alıp, metni internete koyan hayranlardan Allah razı olsun diyorum… grup üyelerini gündelik yaşamlarında, birer insanoğlu olarak kaydetmeyi becermişler. Bizimkiler genellikle kişisel hayatları ile ilgili pek konuşmayı, paylaşmayı sevmiyorlardı… şimdiye kadar! O yüzden bugüne kadar okuduğum en özel yazılardan biri. Müzik, yeni albüm, grup olarak ayakta kalmak dışında balta fırlatmak, aile ve çocuklar, bireysel perspektifler ve hesaplaşmalar… hepsinden bir damla. Okurken Eddie’nin arka bahçesi gözlerimin önünde canlandı.Makalenin tümünü BURADAN veya BURADAN okuyabilirsiniz. Brezilyalı PJ takipçisi arkadaşlara buradan da teşekkürler…
MOVING TARGETS
Eddie Vedder And Gang Have An Ax To Grind — And Throw — As Rock’s Former Angry Young Men Try A New Approach.You haven’t really tasted death until you’ve been inches away from an ax swung by Eddie Vedder. Not that Vedder is careless. He’s just… focused. He gets this look: You know the one, from the “Jeremy” video, vaguely lupine — lips curled, fangs bared, eyes crazy. He grips the haft with both hands, draws the blade back over his head, and lets it fly, watching it tumble end over end in an elegant arc, sinking into its target — a three foot-wide cedar stump — with a deep, satisfying thunk.
By Josh Eells
Pearl Jam turnesi Kanada ayağında Eddie ile yapılan bir röportaj… Brad Wheeler tarafından yapılan görüşmede Vedder yeni albümdeki parçalar için teker teker yorumlar yapmış. Orijinalini BURADAN; veya aşağıdan bir kısmını okuyabilirsiniz:
Gonna See My Friend… tough, high-energy rocker that likes to be heard loud.
“All I remember is writing it in a little room on a small table with a little four-track tape machine. I got it sounding loud real quick, without disturbing the neighbours. I work using headphones a lot. I’m not going to have any hearing left. We all make sacrifices at our jobs, and my hearing is obviously going to be the first thing to go.”
Got Some… One of the songs influenced by eighties new-wave pop.
“I’m talking about music to put on when you don’t know how you’re going to get to work, when you’re just not feeling it. It rains in Seattle 220 days a year on average – there’s a lot of mornings it’s hard to get going. This song will do it.”
The Fixer… the lean riff-rocked first single.
“Men, we all think we can fix anything. It’s not necessarily a good thing. In a relationship, a woman will say ‘This is wrong,’ and we’re like, ‘I’ll fix that, don’t worry about it, we can fix it.’ These wonderful people, the woman you’re in a relationship with, they don’t want you to fix it. They just want you to listen to what’s happening: ‘Don’t fix it, I want you to own this with me – feel it.’ This is a reminder song to me, to stop fixing.”
Johnny Guitar… an angular Elvis Costello-like number motivated by an album-cover photo from a record by pimp-blues guitarist Johnny (Guitar) Watson that was pasted over a men’s room urinal. “It’s actually not the first time we’ve got our inspiration from something on a bathroom wall. It’s a made-up story about a kid falling in love with a girl on a record cover. I imagine that must have happened a few times.”
Just Breathe… Triggered by a song from Vedder’s Into the Wild soundtrack, with added strings and French horns.
“There’s never a dull moment on the road – every day it’s something. Maybe that’s why my goal is the dull moment. That’s what this song is: It’s saying, ‘Just stop, and be together. Don’t talk now, just breathe and feel each other’s presence – now that the kids are in bed.’
Amongst the Waves… About ebbs and flows – of a couple’s relationships or even those of a long-running rock band. “On the strength of this album, we feel good about where the band is at. Our relationship is long-standing, but it’s turned into a forthcoming relationship. We’re open and honest. Things go pretty easy – we feel like a gang. We feel like a galvanized group of individuals. As far as waves, I think we’re up there.”
Unthought Known… Culled from a book, a talk with an actress, and one late night.
“It’s about a conversation with Catherine Keener, and a book – I think it might have even been called Unthought Known . I got back late to my hotel in New York, and I pushed it that extra hour. I pushed the limits of how much you can drink and smoke, and this song came out of it. I think the thought of the song is that there are things that you know, and they’re in us, but we just haven’t thought of them. But they’re there, and we base decisions on them.”
Supersonic… A towering track written two years ago by guitarist Stone Gossard, with Vedder adding lyrics about living life with the volume on full, and the need for loud music.
“There’s something about this infusion of energy. It’s a tangible thing that gives you as much energy as a drug. It can change the shape of your mood. I think [rock music] is the greatest art form there is, because there’s so many elements to it, volume being one of them. But momentum, and rhythm, and the literary side of a good lyric, it can really transport you.”
Speed of Sound… A brooding, down-tempo track with complex chord changes that stemmed from a songwriting session with a Rolling Stones guitarist.
“I was working with Ronnie Wood on a record he’s putting together. He asked me if I could contribute some words, which really excited me because I love his voice. This particular song was a little difficult to transcribe though, so it ended up in [Pearl Jam's] court. I played it to Brendan at four in the afternoon, and by the next afternoon it was complete.”
Force of Nature… A classic grungy Pearl Jam vibe, originally titled Distant Planet .
“It’s about the strength of one person in the relationship, when they can withstand some of the faults in another – maybe drug addiction, or straying off the path. The person in the song is the lighthouse for the other person caught in the storm.”
The End… A Springsteen-like ballad with strings, about an unknown future.
“I got a phone call from a friend, from Spain. I couldn’t pick up the phone because I was recording the guitar part. I had written half the song’s lyrics. When I checked his message, he had said something that enabled me to write the second verse, and in 20 minutes, it was done. That’s how it happened on this record. It was writing the quick ones – there was no room for the other stuff. We’ll see how long approaching it like this goes. But it’s the right way for us to do it right now.”
Billboard dergisinin Pearl Jam ile ilgili Backspacer vesilesi ile yayınladığı makaleyi BURADAN okuyabilir veya dinleyebilirsiniz. Eddie Vedder ve Stone Gossard ile yapılan röportajın yer aldığı yazıda yeni albümün yaratılış süreci ve parçalar ile ilgili sorular yer alıyor. Eddie’nin şarkılar üzerinden hayata ve insan ilişkilerine dair yaptığı yorumlar pek bir keyifli… Göreceli olarak oldukça kısa olan Backspacer’i bezelye çorbası değil de maden suyuna benzetmesi gibi! Makalede albümün oluşumundan görsel öğelerin yaratılış sürecine, dağıtım ve pazarlama stratejilerinden solo turne deneyimlerine kadar pek çok detay yer alıyor.
Almanya’da, büyük ihtimalle Avrupa turnesi sırasında yapılan 18 dakikalık Pearl Jam röportajı videosunu … BURADAN izleyebilirsiniz. Eddie Vedder ve Matt Cameron ile yapılan söyleşide Alman sunucu oldukça yüzeysel, genel ve de bazen saçma sorular sorsa da bizimkiler bir şekilde durumu kurtarmışlar. Böyle videoları dünyanın bu ucundan çok izleme fırsatı bulamadığımızdan, bulduklarımız olduça değerli oluyor. Kısaca Eddie ve Matt içtenlikleri, alçakgönüllülükleri ve nezaketleri ile genç ve acemi gazeteciyi alt etmişler!
Pearl Jam’in Kanada’da Toronto konseri öncesi, Alan Cross tarafından, Eddie Vedder ile yapılan samimi bir sohbet… isteyenler BURADAN dinleyebilirler.
Bir Karaoke bar ve Eddie Vedder!… Videoları BURADAN izleyebilirsiniz.
İngiliz müzik dergisi UNCUT’ın Eylül 2009 sayısında Eddie Vedder hayran mektuplarını cevaplıyor. Hayranların arasında ünlü müzisyenler de yer alıyor! Derginin her ay yayınladığı bölümün bu ayki konuğu Vedder’ın cevaplarından oluşan oldukça neşeli bir yazı… İngizce orijinal metinden aynen yayınlıyorum (zira dergiyi burada bulmak oldukça zor olacaktır diye düşünüyorum); meraklılar ve hayranlar keyifle okuyabilir:
“ Eddie Vedder attracts curiously obsessive fans. Uncut’s mailbag for this Audience With…far outstrips any other we’ve done, and not all of them in the “When are you next playing Portugal?” category.
“Why didn’t you turn up to our wedding last year?” asks one slightly hurt fan from Ohio. “And would you and the band like to come and play at our first anniversary?” There are other invitations to weddings in Colombia, christenings in Denmark, safaris in South Africa and surfing holidays in Western Australia. There are fans who promise to come along to a gig and accompany the band on the accordion, others who want Vedder to be godfather to their child, others offering him a spare tent to come to Glastonbury.
“That’s kinda…nice”, says a genuinely humble-sounding Vedder. “I guess that people have always seen me as a kinda regular guy. We’ve never tried to erect boundaries between us and the audience.” It’s this balance of messianic stadium rockers and “aw-shucks” regular guys that made Pearl Jam the real kings of grunge, outselling their rivals Nirvana several times and maintaining their position on the arena circuit two decades on.
Vedder, with a cigarette and a coffee in hand, is speaking from the band’s headquarters in Seattle. “You could call it ‘Pearl Jam Towers’, I guess” he says. “But it’s more of a refuge. A couple of offices, a bit of storage, a fan club operation, some areas where we distribute music and other things, and then a practice space. And a refrigerator that used to have beer in it until last night. We had a bit of a party and drank it all, so excuse me if I sound a bit hungover…”
Seeing as you were both icons of grunge, what do you think of Chris Cornell’s new LP with Timbaland? -Einat Shaul, Israel
I haven’t heard it. Isn’t Timbaland a make of shoe? It’s a producer? I don’t know who that is. Oh well. I really like Chris’ records and I think he’s the best singer that we’ve got on the planet. I first met Chris when I moved to Seattle, and we started hanging around. I didn’t know what musicians did with their life, and I quickly realized that what he did on a Friday night was to get a 12-pack of shitty beer and chase his dog around on the mud for four hours in the forest. That was about an exciting an epiphany as I had! I haven’t seen him in town for a while, but I have taken over the whole dog-chasing practice – me and my Hawaiian mutt. The beer’s gotten slightly better too.
You do lots of great cover versions live – have you thought of doing a studio album of them? – Jeff Tweedy, Wilco
I’m not sure why we all play songs we didn’t write, especially when nothing can be better than the original. One reason is to play them for people who’ve never heard them. When I play Cat Stevens songs, of course I don’t do them as well as him, but I feel I’m introducing him to a new generation of fans. As for a whole LP, well, imagine how many records you could put out if you didn’t have to write the songs! That’s why Elvis released so many albums!
Is there one book that you have read that has been life-changing for you? – Jennifer Coppertino, New York
One that jumps to mind is Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut. He talks about being a humanist, about it being a little different from being an atheist, which had a profound effect on me. I ended up reading pretty much everything he wrote after that, two, three, four, five times. The only other author who’s had a similar effect has been Charles Bukowski, who opens your eyes to the fact that there’s beauty in everybody’s life. The life of someone on the lowest rung of the ladder is as colourful and meaningful, if not more, as some character in an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. So it makes you realize that we are all individuals and we all have something going on that is worthy of introspection and respect.
When you have felt most scared and alone while surfing and where? – Selin Hall, California
If you’re in any big body of water, you get a healthy sense of feat. I would recommend surfing to anyone who thinks they’re high and mighty. It takes all your focus, and it doesn’t allow you to think about anything else. You can even get hurt on a small, insignificant looking wave if you’re not careful. So when you’re on the wave, it’s one of those rare, purifying instances, where you can’t think of anything else apart from surviving and celebrating this wave as it hits the shore after travelling for 2,000 miles. There’s also something quite profound about it, because the ocean is the place where we all came from, and I believe that there is something about the ocean that will protect you.
You’ve been lined with David Lynch’s Transcendental Meditation movement; you’ve worn an Aleister Crowley t-shirt and you’ve stated that you’re an atheist. What do you personally believe in and how did you get there? – Stephan Rott, Germany
Well it changes! And I think we have to be flexible. Any belief system that is inflexible, closed off to other belief systems, is profoundly unhealthy. I also think that if you look at life as a long line of evolutionary changes that started billions of years ago, from little things crawling in the mud, and the you realise where we’ve got to now, that is a remarkable set of circumstances. There is more magic in that, for me, than someone creating the planet in six days and taking a day off. When you realize how long humanity has taken to get to this point, it makes you respect another person’s life in a deeper and broader sense. I wouldn’t think of killing anybody because their lineage goes back to the primordial seas, not because there’s some eye in the sky, looking out for how many commandments you’re going to break.
Be honest. Even you not 100 per cent certain of the words to “Yellow Ledbetter”, are you? – Ed Byrne, comedian
Ha ha ha! This is the comedian who does stuff about me, right? Well he’s quite right – the lyrics to “Yellow Ledbetter” do constantly evolve…I admit that, at times, I have sung total nonsense! The song was originally written about the first Gulf War, and I’d created this image of a young guy with long hair and funny clothes, who had just got a yellow telegram telling him his brother has been killed in action. He’s walking by these conservative-looking, older folks on a porch, flying an American flag, and he waves to them in a show of solidarity, and they brush him off and give him the finger. So, you know, what did his brother die for?
Last time Pearl Jam played Wembley Arena, at the end of the show you offered to buy the entire audience a drink. Well? It’s two years on, and we’re thirsty…. – Thomas Birch, Harefield, Middlesex
You don’t remember? We all went around the back to that little pub in Wembley. Most of us had two drinks! Hell, I’ve still got the receipts, Thomas. Oh shucks, I paid cash. Oh well. But it was a great night, Thomas, pity you couldn’t make it…
Is it true that you recorded an albums worth of ukulele songs back in 2000? Do you plan to ever release them? – Scott Kobleske, Chicago
I did record it and gave it to a few friends. I was going through a rough time – it was after Roskilde [the Danish festival where, in 2000, nine Pearl Jam fans were trampled to death in a stage crush] and after a number of things in our personal lives. And this tiny little instrument with four strings, which could almost fit in your back pocket, became like a good friend. The uke is an incredible machine for learning about melody and chord structure – you’re suddenly able to write ragtime classics! So I wrote these sad songs on a happy instrument. It helped me process some really painful things at the time, but I didn’t want to release it because it felt too personal. It’s funny now, with some distance, they’re not as heartbreaking as I thought. So…it may get released. We’ll see.
What are your top most misinterpreted lyrics? Keep it funny if possible – Michael Stipe, REM
Maybe my diction isn’t so good! Ha! But it reveals a lot about Michael that he’s asked this, as it’s happened to him more than me! His stuff was always so open to interpretation. There’s a track on Murmur called “We Walk”, y’know, “Take a recess…up the stairs and to the landing”. I was in the car with my daughter, who was two, and she started singing along. I almost had to pull over and start weeping. It was one of my proudest moment. My daughter knew an REM song! Of course, she was singing it wrong, though I don’t know if there’s a right way. Those lyrics are oblique and yet they mean so much. Michael is a magician that way.
What were your inspirations when your wrote the soundtrack to Sean Penn’s Into The Wild? – Irene Mariani, Italy
When I was 12, I remember seeing the movie, Harold and Maude, a film that is accompanied by several Cat Stevens songs. Cat’s voice represents the interior voice of the character throughout the movie, and he does it absolutely perfectly. It’s a perfect synergy between film and music, and it really inspired me to try writing for film. Take the final scene, where it looks like Harold is going to drive off the cliff, with the rain hitting the windshield and you know how he feels. Suddenly they play “Trouble” by Cat Stevens and it’s utterly overwhelming, heartbreaking. So seeing it work there made me think I could give it a go.
Has Olivia gone all four floors on the fireman’s pole yet? – Neil Finn, Crowded House
Tell Neil I never talk about the pole! Ha ha! As Neil knows, I’ve got an adventurous young daughter who’s very rough and tumble. I guess things change as they get older and there’s a restructuring of power in the male/female dynamic. But right now my daughter’s as tough as anyone, male or female, under the age of about 15. The fireman’s pole? It’s a long story. Basically, I started smoking dope after a long period of abstinence, and I had an epiphany. I realised the house I was living in had a couple of connected closets. And after having this nice hit, it occurred to me that you could put a fireman’s pole in this house, connecting all four floors. Three months on, we had one installed. It’s really practical! I do all my songwriting in the basement, so if I’m, upstairs, I just slide down. Otherwise you might stop by the laundry room to wash some clothes and you’ll have missed a couple of songs. So it has paid for itself in songwriting royalties.
What was Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan like to work with? – Zak, Leytonstone, London
Well, it was intimidating on many levels. We worked together for a few days – we were put together by Tim Robbins for the Dead Man Walking soundtrack – and everything had to go through an interpreter because I was told he didn’t really speak English. He was very centered, like a Buddhist statue in many ways and he looked like he was made of stone! And when he sang, it was like he was channeling something incredibly powerful and spiritual. After two days of talking through the interpreter, we were left in the room alone, and he looked at me and said, in perfect English: “You have a very nice voice” And it was like that scene in One Flow Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, where the Indian guy finally talks to Jack Nicholson. I thought, you son of a bitch! And of course, we then talked and talked and got on great. I met him a few times after that. I think he pretended not to speak English as a defence mechanism. I wish I’d thought of that! Sadly, he was taken away from us much, much too early. And so many of the secrets of qawwali music have died with him. “
