Eddie Vedder always wanted his band Pearl Jam to make music that mattered.  He can sometimes feel, as Kurt Cobain did, the pressure of mattering too  much to his fans, but he's finding a way to deal with it.

  By Robert Hilburn

It's eight days after the suicide of Kurt Cobain was discovered and Eddie  Vedder's voice still trembles as he tries to put into words his confusion  and sadness.
"When I first found out, I was in a hotel room in Washington, D.C., and I  just tore the place to shreds," says the brooding lead singer of Pearl Jam  and the artist whose impact on a new generation of rock fans has been most  often compared to Cobain's.  "Then I just kind of sat in the rubble, which somehow felt right . . . [it  felt] like my world at the moment."
Vedder and Cobain were at the forefront of a new generation of American  singer-songwriters whose songs chiefly reflect the alienation and anger of  a generation of young people, aged 15 to 25, who feel they have been  shortchanged by the American Dream. Cobain's music was more acclaimed, but Vedder's was more popular. Pearl  Jam's "Vs." album has outsold Nirvana's "In Utero" by nearly 4 million  copies since they were released last fall.
With Cobain gone, Vedder stands alone--and the heat was immediate. Pearl  Jam's record company, Epic, was flooded with requests to talk to the singer  and songwriter about Cobain's death and what it meant to rock.  His only public comment came from the stage of a Pearl Jam concert in  Fairfax, Va., on the night Cobain's body was found. He told the audience,  in part: "Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you [and]  it's real easy to fall . . ."
On the phone the following week from New York, where the band was to appear  on "Saturday Night Live," Vedder amplified on the remark and the pressures  he and Cobain both faced.  "People think you are this grand person who has all their [expletive]  together because you are able to put your feelings into some songs," he  says softly.  "They write letters and come to the shows and even to the house, hoping we  can fix everything for them. But we can't . . . because we don't have all  our [expletive] together either. What they don't understand is that you  can't save someone from drowning if you're treading water yourself."
Both Cobain and Vedder grew up largely on their own--unable to relate to  the kids at high school and constantly struggling to find self-worth in  troubled home environments. Their link was finding identity and hope in  rock 'n' roll.
When they became famous in the early '90s as the two most celebrated  figures of the suddenly hot Seattle scene that redefined contemporary rock  'n' roll, they worried about what it meant. They had grown up on  alternative rock and punk, viewing the mainstream rock world as corrupt  and its stars as mostly poseurs. In a strange twist of emotions, they felt  both unworthy of their fame and a bit embarrassed by it. Kurt Cobain often ridiculed rival Pearl Jam, arguing that it lacked the  underground purity of Nirvana--that it was simply an old-line commercial  rock band in grunge clothing.
But Cobain, who was 27 when he died, liked Vedder personally, and that made  him feel guilty about the put-downs. "I'm not going to do that anymore,"  he said in a 1992 interview. "It hurts Eddie and he's a good guy."
Besides, the songs of Cobain and Vedder--whatever the different musical  textures of their bands--touched a nerve in millions of teen-agers and  young twentysomethings, many of whom were victims of broken homes and low  self-esteem.
But there are limits to the similarities.
Vedder says he's not an addict, whereas Cobain struggled in recent years  with heroin. Vedder has largely sworn off drugs since his teens--not  complete abstinence, but nothing on a regular basis, he says. An observer  close to the band says flatly, "He doesn't have a drug problem."  The singer often drank from a wine bottle on stage during the early stages
of the "Vs." tour last year, but he cut back on that this year, the band  observer says, and Vedder now describes his alcohol intake as no more than  the average person after a hard day at work.
Another key difference is that Cobain was suspicious of his audience,  wondering whether much of it wasn't just into Nirvana's because it was the  cool thing to do. He tended to isolate himself.  But Vedder is something of a missionary, a throwback to Bruce Springsteen  or U2's Bono. He remembers the comfort and strength he found as a lonely,  troubled teen-ager in the music of the Who's Pete Townshend--and how he  imagined Townshend as someone who understood.
Vedder has tried to be that good guy to his fans--sometimes spending hours  after a show talking to them or even giving out his home phone number on a  radio call-in show so that they can reach him.
But some of the fans are unrelenting. They write him or try to catch up to  him on the road, asking for money or help with their problems.  "[Fame] has been a difficult adjustment for everyone in the band, but  especially difficult for Eddie because he remembers the time he needed help  and there was no one there," says Kelly Curtis, Pearl Jam's manager.  "There'll be fans standing outside the arena screaming and he's nice to 95  people, but he finally has to leave and the 96th person says, 'You're an  [expletive].' It bothers him. He feels he has let someone down."
Curtis, a 17-year veteran of the rock scene, says Vedder lets off some of  the pressure by just disappearing after tours, sometimes for weeks at a time.
Is he still tempted to run away?
"I believe he thinks about that every day."
Vedder is far from the first rock star to worry about the burdens of being a  "spokesman."  Bob Dylan and John Lennon--the two most acclaimed rock spokesmen from
the '60s--both complained about the pressures of being looked to by fans for  answers to their problems.
The deaths of Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin have also been  blamed in part on the pressures of being rock idols. In the '80s, Springsteen and Bono cited the disorienting effect of being viewed as  spokesmen, though they adjusted to the weight.
Kurt Cobain didn't adjust.
In his suicide note, the leader of Nirvana spoke about a loss of enthusiasm  for music and for life--and the accompanying guilt he felt some nights  because he was faking the enthusiasm on stage.
"I understand what Kurt was talking about," Vedder said, speaking from New  York. "You can't do it if you can't be real. I had that same conversation  with someone the other day . . . about how much fans expect."
He also acknowledges times in his own life when he wondered whether life  was worth living. "When I was around 15 or 16, those kind of thoughts came as often as  mealtime, you know," he said. "I felt all alone . . . I was all  alone--except for music."  "Then things got better. I got a job and I looked back on those times and  wondered how I could ever have felt that way. I thought about all the  music and all the experiences I would have missed if I had acted on those  feelings. . . ."
Vedder paused.
When he resumed speaking, his voice had little of the authority it does on  stage or on record. He sounded tentative--as if confused over just how  much of himself to reveal.  "But you know," he said, "there have been times over the last couple of  years when those feelings came back. . . ."
It's hard for those who haven't been touched by the music of Nirvana or  Pearl Jam to understand the pressures felt by Cobain and Vedder.  When Andy Rooney said in a heartless "60 Minutes" commentary that he finds  it hard to feel sympathy for Cobain or his mourning fans, he may  unfortunately be speaking for many adults who suspect that the talk of
troubled childhood and reluctant stardom is just rock posturing.
Cameron Crowe, the rock-journalist-turned-film-director, cast Vedder in a  small role in his film "Singles," which was set against the emerging rock  scene in Seattle, and later wrote a Rolling Stone cover story on Pearl Jam.  "People would come up to me and say, 'Jesus, the pain in that guy . . .
Is it real?'"
Crowe met Vedder before Pearl Jam's first album, "Ten," broke into the  charts in 1992, and he said Vedder struck him as someone who "feels  things tremendously . . . an open wound, in fact."  "I met him at a barbeque at a friend's house and I sat on the rug with  Eddie as things were winding down that night and he just proceeded to  unspool," he recalls.  "He just started telling stories about all these things that were just  crowding his head . . . and those stories ended up on that first album.  . . . Stuff about his childhood and about people he knew and their  problems. What you see is no pose."
The Pearl Jam singer, 29, looks out of place this morning among the  businessmen in their suits and ties in the restaurant of an upscale  Atlanta hotel, a week before the Cobain suicide.  He's wearing the same denim jacket and knee-length pants that he'll wear  on stage that night at the Fox Theatre, where both shows sold out  instantly. His hair, long and unruly, hangs across his face like a  curtain, covering much of the angelic sweetness of a face dominated by  the wary intensity of his eyes.  "I'll take some tea if you've got it," Vedder says to the waiter, with  the politeness of someone who has worked tables himself and remembers the  rudeness of customers.
Vedder was speaking to a reporter in his first interview since the  September release of the group's "Vs." album.
"I'm worried about the hype thing . . . that if people start seeing your  picture everyplace and hear all about this 'spokesman' stuff, they'll get  turned off," he says, explaining why he refused to talk to Time magazine  last fall for a cover story calling him "rock's new demigod."  "I didn't see being on the cover of Time as an accomplishment for the  band," he says. "I was afraid it might be a nail in the coffin."
Vedder still drives the same 1990 Toyota truck around Seattle that he  bought when he was working at a service station in San Diego. When he's  asked if he keeps the same clothes and truck to remind him of his  roots--as a way to keep in touch with himself amid the glitter of the  rock world--he stares at his cup of tea.  "I don't need to do things like that to remind me of who I am," he says  firmly. "But maybe it's good that other people see those things and maybe  it sends a message, that I still am the same person."
Vedder was born Edward Louis Seversen III in Evanston, Ill., a suburb of  Chicago. His parents were divorced before his second birthday and the  youngster grew up thinking his stepfather was his real father. Until he  adopted his mother's maiden name, Vedder, after dropping out of high  school, he was known as Eddie Mueller, using his stepfather's last name.
It wasn't a happy childhood, he says, but he found a comfort and excitement  in music. Though the Who would eventually be his greatest inspiration, the  first record that caught Vedder's ear was the Jackson 5's "ABC."
Vedder didn't hear the Who until the family--which included three younger  Brothers --moved to San Diego County in the mid-70s. A baby-sitter brought  the "Who's Next" album over one night and he listened to it on his  stepfather's earphones.
As things grew tense in his family, he listened more and more to rock. He  talked his folks into giving him a guitar for his birthday when he was 12.  By the time he was 15, his mother and stepfather had separated and he was  paying his own rent rather than living at home, filled with the bitterness  and anger that is expressed in his songs.
Those feelings flare up when he's asked what high school he attended.  "I'd like not to be associated with any of that," Vedder says abruptly. "They didn't treat me well."
Later, Vedder softens his answer.
"Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had  to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up.  "I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the  reality of their classroom. I said one day, 'You want to see my reality?'
I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's  where I kept my bills . . . electric bills, rent . . . That was my reality."
Vedder, who supported himself by working at a Long's Drug Store in Encinitas,  eventually dropped out of school.
The anger returns when he's asked about that period.  "I resented everybody around me who drove up in a car that someone provided  for them . . . [with] insurance that someone provided for them," he says.  "I'd be underneath some shelf putting price tags on tomato soup and I'd  watch them come in . . . Obnoxious with their [expletive] prom outfits  on, buying condoms and being loud about it."  "I'd think, 'Those [expletives].' Maybe I would have been doing that too,  if the circumstances were different. . . . Maybe that would have made me  more forgiving, but I wasn't very forgiving at all. Everything was just  such a [expletive] struggle for years."
Vedder's bitterness pushed him closer to punk rock, because he wanted the  harder, more aggressive sound.  With little money or goals, he had begun sinking into a shadowy world that  brought out his survival instincts.
"There is a thing that happens when you are not as priviledged and you  start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the  same things," he says. "And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting  in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to  put up your nose."  "It is real easy to get into the lower depths and get intertwined. But I  was always aware of that kind of thing. . . . I didn't want to be put on  a leash by any kind of conservative, constrictive parent."  "I didn't want to be in that world, but I also didn't want to be in the  web of this other thing. I was getting swallowed up in it, but something  made me realize it was time to get away or I was going to be just another  loser."
His mother and brothers had already moved back to Chicago, and he decided  to join them. After a couple of years there, Vedder returned to San  Diego in 1984, accompanied by his girlfriend Beth Liebling, a writer. By  this time, he had learned the identity of his real father and had picked  up a high school equivalency diploma. He felt it would help him get a  better job. Music remained just a hobby, not a career choice for him.  He worked nights as a hotel security guard and spent his days making demo  tapes on a home recorder.
Gradually, he got involved in the San Diego music scene, spending a short  period in a band called Bad Radio. Though he had been in a couple of  garage bands earlier in Encinitas, the transition to a real band was  difficult for the shy Vedder. For the first show, he wore a mask--  actually, goggles with the lenses painted over--so that he wouldn't have  to look at the crowd.  Eventually he quit the group, feeling that the members weren't serious  about things. While he was looking for another band situation, Jack Irons,  a friend who was formerly in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, gave him a tape  from a Seattle musician who was putting together a new group.  That musician, guitarist Stone Gossard, had been in Mother Love Bone, a  highly regarded group whose promise ended when singer Andrew Wood died of  a heroin overdose in 1990.  After listening to the tape, Vedder went surfing and the music played over  and over in his head. In the company of the waves, he began framing  lyrics to go with the music.  He raced back home to his recorder, and with the sand still on his feet he  sang the words to the song that eventually became "Alive," one of the  centerpieces on the first Pearl Jam album.  Though the song, with its screaming chorus of "I'm still alive," had been  widely viewed as a statement of youthful self-affirmation, Vedder designed  it as the story of a mother being drawn sexually to her teen-age son  because she sees traces of her late husband in him.  The experience--which Vedder insists is not autobiographical--damages the  son psychologically, turning him into a serial killer (detailed in the  song "Once") who is executed in prison ("Footsteps"). It's not hard to  see the story as a sort of Generation X update of the confused youth in  the Who's "Tommy."
Gossard and bassist Jeff Ament, who had also been in Mother Love Bone, were  thrilled by Vedder's contribution and invited him to Seattle. Pearl Jam  was born, and within a year the group's first album was No. 1.
At first, there were some reasons to suspect that Vedder and Pearl Jam  were rock 'n' roll opportunists. The band--which also includes drummer  Dave Abbruzzese and guitarist Mike McCready--was from Seattle and wore  grunge clothes, but the music didn't have the revolutionary aura of  Nirvana's. It was more radio-friendly and in line with '70s hard rock.  Vedder looked like the star pupil from the Jim Morrison School of Rock  Singers as he prowled the stage, rolling his eyes with brooding anxiety  and thrashing around as if possessed by some foreign spirit.
All of that endeared the group to mainstream rock radio programmers, many  of whom had grown up on '70s and '80s rock and found it hard adjusting to  Nirvana and the Seattle grunge sound. The music itself appealed to both  the young alternative-rock audience and older, more traditional fans.
If the sound itself was rather conventional, Vedder's voice offered  something powerful and real.  But just as Metallica broughng in a deserted basement hallway, holding the  Telecaster guitar that he has carried since Encinitas.
"I can't come from where I came from and not appreciate what has happened  to the band," he says, his head lowered. "The one thing about going from  the audience to the stage in just three years is that you know how it  feels to be down there."  "I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a  positive thing. We went from an era when rock 'n' roll meant wearing a  bustier as a woman and these spandex things and guys trying to portray  something that wasn't realistic. We are trying to portray something that  wasn't realistic. We are trying to make it seem real . . . relate to our  lives."
Pearl Jam was supposed to begin its U.S. summer tour in July, vowing to  keep tickets (including service fee) under $20--a dramatic step away from  escalating prices.  But the dates have been postponed for at least two months, in part because  the death of Cobain "knocked the wind out of the band," said manager Kelly  Curtis.
Vedder doubts the band will tour the rest of the year--at least in the United States.
Cameron Crowe believes Vedder will learn from the suicide of Cobain.  "I don't think it's going to send him off the deep end," Crowe said. "I  know he had a lot of those feelings, those impluses himself, and I'm just  thinking he was able to almost see what would happened had he taken that  jump . . . and it's not pretty. I think it is going to help strengthen  him. I think he'll deal with it properly."
Vedder began dealing publicity with Cobain's death on the "Saturday Night  Live" show.  He displayed the letter K, for Kurt, on his T-shirt and put his hand on  his heart at one point, and ended the band's "Daughter" by singing a  bluesy snippet from Neil Young's "My My, Hey Hey."  That's the song that includes the line quoted in Cobain's suicide note:
"It's better to burn out than to fade away."  But Vedder didn't sing that line.
Instead, he sang these Young lyrics:
Rock and roll can never die
There's more to the picture than meets the eye
Asked why he omitted the "burn out" line, he said, "I guess I could have  turned it around and asked, 'Is it better to burn out?' but it wasn't  something I had planned out. I was just following my emotions at the  time. The other lines just meant more to me."
Vedder expects to spend much of his time in coming weeks in his Seattle  basement, making music. That's the way he has always been best able to  deal with his problems.  "I think that process has already begun," he says finally, a note of  resolve in his voice. "Seeing what can happen [to Cobain] makes me  realize I've got to work on it . . . to avoid getting swallowed up too."