Photo by Jonathan Hayward
Eddie Vedder Live in Vancouver
The Pearl Jam frontman opens his first solo tour with an intimate yet powerful performance in Vancouver.
By Ann Powers
Beginning his first-ever solo tour Wednesday, Eddie Vedder gave a lesson in how to hush a screaming crowd. Not literally: The 1,800 or so Pearl Jam fans who'd snapped up the night's tickets spent little time being quiet, instead granting their band's beloved singer endless ovations, singing along (only when asked) and shouting requests.
Within this charged atmosphere, Vedder, perhaps rock's most introspective lead singer, created a zone of shared reflection that made all the praiseful fuss seem irrelevant. He could have been in his own basement, alone or with some close friends. The stage set at the performing arts center here had the faux-casual design common to "unplugged" shows -- a funky reel-to-reel player sat near the chair where Vedder sat for most of the night, and a Corona box served as an ersatz stool. But Vedder's thoughtful, sociable performance made the intimacy real.
Immersed in his songs, Vedder half-closed his eyes and let the music take its course. In Pearl Jam, he's expert at playing the surfer, finding one wave within the many that that big ensemble generates and riding it to glory. On this tour, which comes to the Wiltern in Los Angeles April 12-13, he has to be more delicate.
Exploring his songbook of originals and favorite cover versions, Vedder's big baritone found smaller streams to follow, letting his circuitous grooves and melodies undulate toward their conclusions. Some songs, like the recent "Guaranteed," were hymn-like and lovely. Others hit harder, showing the influence of the Who and hard-core punk.
While his vocals were often tender, Vedder's guitar playing pointed to his love of noisy rock. He doesn't often get to show off his chops alongside flashy Pearl Jam axemen Mike McCready and Stone Gossard. He took the opportunity here, playing fast and clean even on the tiny electric ukulele he laughingly called "better than a friend, because it doesn't talk back."
Such asides emerged only after Vedder calmed his first-night nerves; it took him five songs to even pause and address the audience. Pulling aside his long-sleeve flannel to reveal a battered Butthole Surfers T-shirt, he announced it as a talisman: It was the same one he'd worn during Pearl Jam's first show.
After this ritual moment, Vedder relaxed, steering the evening toward the "different kind of conversation" he wanted it to be. He read from a newspaper, commenting on issues ranging from the proposed removal of a local statue to the current crisis in Tibet. He told a mildly dirty joke and then worried that it might turn up on YouTube.
"Bruce Springsteen would never say something like that," he moaned. "That's why he's the Boss and I'm just the employee."
Vedder's set list was carefully organized, with Pearl Jam favorites such as "I Am Mine" leading into selections from his soundtrack for "Into the Wild," some sweet songs for ukulele, a long block of covers, and a bit more Pearl Jam.
Unlike his elders Springsteen and Ray Davies, who staged breakthrough solo tours a decade ago, Vedder didn't resort to a specific narrative or a highly crafted persona. He aimed for an arguably more daring goal: to present himself as himself, unconstructed, turning inward before reaching out to the audience.
He let himself make mistakes too. Flubbing the first chords of the intricate "No Ceiling," Vedder first muttered his discontent, then joked, "If I'm going to play this properly -- it's a very difficult song -- I need complete and utter silence." Playing electric ukulele on "Brokenhearted," he stopped himself, saying, "Let me just check the second chord on this song." Integrating such small missteps into the night's story, Vedder added to the sense of emotional openness.
That's where Vedder's charisma lives -- in the moment when feeling finds its way forward, growing more articulate as it is shared. His songs have a different quality than the usual pop revelations. They show instead of telling, putting listeners inside the consciousness of his characters. The covers Vedder performed, including James Taylor's "Millworker," Springsteen's "Growin' Up," "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" by the Beatles and "Trouble" by Cat Stevens, served to highlight the uniqueness of his own talent.
Vedder doesn't want to stand apart from the lineage of big, singalong pop; his zealous take on Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down" further asserted that connection. This tour is a way for him to consider what new paths he's forged alongside the ones he follows. His ruminative mood may change as he travels through California this month, but he's sure to only refine what he's learning -- and sharing -- about his place in the world.
When Vedder considers his legacy, he'd surely be happy to include Liam Finn among his protégés. The son of singer-songwriter (and Ed's pal) Neil Finn, this shaggy 24-year-old New Zealander is making an impression with his fiery, slightly psychedelic solo debut "I'll Be Lightning." Performing an opening set in collaboration with Australian singer-songwriter Eliza Jane Barnes, Finn moved between guitar and drums, and was best at his loudest and most unbound. He has a knack for poppy songcraft, but spending this tour with Vedder might turn Finn a little wilder, and that would be a fine development.
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LA Times Calendar Section
Published April 4, 2008
Copyright L.A. Times 2008
Why Are Today's Rock Stars So Ugly?
In an age where MP3s have replaced music videos as musicians' introduction to the world, it's easy to love a band you've never seen. Which is why this is the dawn of music's Homely Era.
By Andy Langer
For too long, we were denied the joys of ugly rock stars -- the everyman's vicarious vessel for living out our rock 'n' roll dreams. The '80s obviously hit artists with faces for radio the hardest, which worked out nicely for Madonna and less so for Joe Cocker. But the homely musicians are on their way back. We hear MP3's long before we lay eyes on the artists themselves. And when was the last time you saw a picture of your favorite band larger than a thumbnail? We either download singles without artwork at all or, at best, albums with minuscule renderings of what used to be known as CD covers. Even the artists still making videos live inside tiny YouTube windows. By allowing us to hear first, look later, digital music has made it easy for the homely musician to hide in the shadows. The number and quality of available images has made "image" less important.
There's now enough Homely Music (trademark pending) to declare it a genre unto itself, easily broken into subgenres. The genesis of Hipster Homely is easily pinpointed: Geeks that obsessed over seminally unattractive bands like the Meat Puppets and the Pixies (Black Francis and Kim Deal! A rare coed homely twofer!) back in the day grew up to start their own music blogs, tirelessly trendspotting for hip but carefully backing off just when real fans catch on. They're by and large unfazed by Thom Yorke's lazy eye or by Spoon's Britt Daniel's uncanny resemblance to the Crypt Keeper or Har Mar Superstar's general dumpiness. In a guy like the Decemberists' Colin Meloy, rock critics and bloggers see themselves -- pale, paunchy, and overeducated. Then there's the Anonymous Homely, the direct descendants of Steve Miller. These are bands with big hits but mysteriously no media presence -- presumably because they don't photograph well. Members include Snow Patrol, Blue October, and the 16 people in the Arcade Fire that aren't Win Butler. Or the brunette.
Homely Music's best calling card are the Incidentally Homely. Consider Amy Winehouse: Not a conventionally beautiful woman, but "Rehab" was so instantly undeniable, it hardly mattered. And while there's nothing cute but plenty cuddly about the soulful British export Adele, she looks primed for a breakthrough simply because she's authentic. Her looks are incidental. And we could use more of that -- not just to feel better about ourselves but to feel better about the music.
Copyright Esquire magazine 2008
Newyorktimes.com
April 15, 2008
Measure for Measure
How to Write a Song and Other Mysteries
Teen Beat
By Suzanne Vega
When I was a teenager, I used to have a neat sort of formula for writing songs. It worked over and over, and I got about 60 songs out of it. Now it doesn’t work so well, and I am forced to write in all different ways. But what worked for so long was this: Teen with a guitar.
I would start to write a song sometime late Saturday afternoon. Then, after dinner, when everyone in my family was doing other Saturday-night things, I would go into my room by myself and fool around with the guitar for several hours, usually managing to hammer out some kind of idea. In those days the chords came first, and they depended on what I was singing about. Then the melody, and lastly the lyrics.
Each chord told a piece of a story, and by putting the chords together in a certain way you had a musical narrative. Major chords = happy. Minor chords = sad. Sevenths were sort of sexy and bluesy. Augmented and diminished chords were spooky and spiritual, so I had a lot of those.
Most of the time I didn’t know the names of the chords or what kinds of chords they were; I learned that later when I worked with a band and producers. But in the beginning I worked from a book called â€Pop Songs of the Sixties†that had little pictures of the fretboard and showed where to put your fingers. (Actually, I have never learned to read music and still don’t to this day. I have always depended on the kindness of arrangers! Hahaha.)
So I would string together a few chords that worked with whatever the idea at hand was, or whatever the mood of the day was. And then repeat them. The chords made a safe home for the melody, a bed for the melody to lie down on, sort of. So you had to shape the melody to the chords in some cool way. The idea that a melody could be its own clear idea didn’t really occur to me until much later. Melodies have always been hard for me. What I love is rhythm.
A digression: Recently I was asked by the producer Hal Willner to sing “Cruella de Vil†at a fund-raiser. I was already going to sing “Stay Awake.†(This was a 20th-anniversary concert for the album “Stay Awake: Various Interpretations of Music from Vintage Disney Films.â€) I jumped at the chance. I would much rather be Cruella de Vil than Mary Poppins. I showed up to rehearsal and the band began to play. I sang what I remembered of the song. It’s a pretty well known song, and you could probably hum some variation of it yourself if you wanted to.
“Actually, Miss Vega, according to this chart right here, the melody goes like this,†said the guitar player, playing it for me crisply. Part of me wanted to shout, “Who cares? You know what I meant!†But that was not the intention of Mel Leven, who wrote the lyrics and melody, that I just hurl forth some approximation of his notes because I couldn’t remember the beginning.
It occurs to me that a melody is as precise and inviolate as a skeleton. You can vary it a little, but not much, really, if you want it to be recognizable. And that particular melody is a wonderful mix of dangerous unresolved intervals and jazzy light hearted vaudeville. Ultimately, we all decided that if I spoke the beginning, that would work dramatically.
But back to the teenage formula. Usually I would get say 80 percent of it done on Saturday night. I would work until about 1:00 in the morning. Most of the time there was a piece eluding me that I would sleep on. Maybe it was a final lyrical detail. Maybe it was a chord in the bridge that had to go somewhere unexpected. What I found was that by sleeping on it, some dream logic would creep into the song and give it an extra sparkle.
Now it’s different. I don’t have the hours at home that follow one after the other. I can’t imagine working from 8:00 until 1:00 in the morning without some kind of interruption, and when I wake up on Sunday morning I am not running over to the guitar to see what the missing piece was. Usually I am thinking, “Where’s Ruby? What does she have to do today?†(Ruby is my daughter.) Or answering the phone or staring at my husband in his sleep.
What worked for the last album was getting out of the house. I was having so much trouble concentrating at home (â€I need to clean the closets!â€Ã¹) that I hired an engineer (Britt Meyers) to come to my house to work with me for three hours a day, three times a week. Those first days were agony, and when I sang the opening lines of “Bound†to Britt for the first time, I felt as though something crazy and weird were coming out of my mouth, like snakes. Now it is a real song, and though I still sing it with heartfelt emotion, it feels finished. But any song in the beginning is raw and uncooked and wobbly.
Eventually Britt persuaded me to come down to his studio to work, and we got a lot done. In fact much of the last album was created there at Great City Productions. So this year, when I came off the road, I thought, “Great! Let’s get right back to work!†— and booked myself a bunch of studio time. Which now I have been steadfastly avoiding. I mean, I had jury duty and everything. But we have two days booked at the end of this week. So let’s see what comes slithering out.