Search Results for: Eddie Vedder

Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder played a surprise five-song solo set in Seattle Saturday as part of a benefit concert anchored by the rock group’s guitarist, Mike McCready. The concert, at the Showbox club, raised about $16,000 for the local chapter of the Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation of America. McCready, who went public last year about his battle with Crohn’s, rounded up four friends for a set of UFO and Aerosmith covers. The show also featured Left Hand Smoke, Vast Capital and Brad, the latter featuring Pearl Jam guitarist Stone Gossard. Vedder offered solo takes on Pearl Jam’s “Parting Ways” “Man… Read more »

Pearl Jam is walking the long road…away from their longtime label. The grunge-rock survivors have served notice that they’re exiting the Sony-owned Epic Records after fulfilling the terms of its contract. The Seattle quintet quietly announced the split in the Q&A section of its Sony-run Rumour Pit Website. Sandwiched between questions about where the band is playing concerts and whether it will ever play the controversial anti-White House song “Bu$hleaguer” (answer: “Ya never know…”) is the query: “Have Pearl Jam left their record company yet?” The answer is simply “yes.” Pearl Jam has been in the Epic fold since the… Read more »

Pearl Jam are buying trees to make up for their tour. Pearl Jam has cut a deal with Conservation International to buy a 1,400 square-mile area of rainforest in Madagascar. The band has figured out their tour will create 5,700 tons of greenhouse gas emissions. That’s from the trucks, buses and airplanes that will move their tour through its 30,000 mile route, plus the 1 million fans who will drive to see them. In addition, the forest is in a biodiversity hotspot and includes rare plants and animals, including three species of endangered lemurs. The band recently caused a controversy… Read more »

The 21st Century Doors have lit a fire under the estate of the late Jim Morrison. Seeing red are George and Clara Morrison, the octogenarian parents of the group’s legendary frontman, who filed a trademark infringement lawsuit against surviving members Ray Manzarek and Robbie Krieger on Wednesday. They claim the rockers swiped their son’s poetry and image and used them in a revamped version of the Doors currently touring the U.S., featuring the Cult’s former frontman, Ian Astbury, as a fill-in for Morrison. The complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, also names Astbury as a defendant. According to court… Read more »

A reunion concert by two former members of 1960s band the Doors has sparked a lawsuit by a third member, who says they can call themselves “the Windows, the Hinges,” but not “the Doors.” Drummer John Densmore filed a legal action in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Tuesday charging breach of contract, trademark infringement and unfair competition against keyboardist Ray Manzarek and guitarist Robby Krieger. Manzarek and Krieger have joined forces with singer Ian Astbury, formerly of 1980s rock band the Cult, and drummer Stewart Copeland, formerly of rock trio the Police, to play a concert in Los Angeles… Read more »

Eddie Vedder and his Seattle-based rock group Pearl Jam are letting fans know they’re still alive. The band plans to launch a 48-city North American tour in April at the Pepsi Center in Denver in support of its latest album, “Riot Act,” after a swing through Australia and Asia in February and March, the group announced on Thursday. The North American outing will be broken into two legs, the first wrapping May 3 in State College, Pennsylvania, and the second starting May 28 in Missoula, Montana, and winding up July 9 at Madison Square Garden in New York City. According… Read more »

More than a decade after the height of the Seattle rock explosion, Nirvana, Soundgarden and Alice in Chains are long gone and Mudhoney have become a cult band. Pearl Jam are the last man standing. And despite their best efforts to maintain a low profile, their Riot Act debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200 albums chart, selling more than 165,000 copies. No one could be more surprised than guitarist Mike McCready. “I’m amazed that people are even still wanting to listen to us,” he said. “With all the other music out there and the shifting times, I’m surprised that… Read more »

Eddie Vedder has found plenty of material in mortality over the years. His band, Pearl Jam, was born of a heroin overdose more than a decade ago. Rival songwriter Kurt Cobain of Nirvana committed suicide while at the height of popularity. Two of Pearl Jam’s biggest hits, “Jeremy” and “Last Kiss,” deal with teen death. Now comes renewal, an appropriate topic as the lead singer and his bandmates re-emerge from their most proximate shock: the deaths of nine fans trampled during the 2000 Roskilde festival in Denmark. “Riot Act,” released Nov. 12, is Pearl Jam’s first studio album since the… Read more »

Fans growing impatient for the release of the Ramones tribute album We’re a Happy Family now have a good reason to turn that frown upside down. The track list for the LP, which is currently being mastered, and a tentative street date of November 5 were announced via a posting on the Web site of Rob Zombie, who is serving as co-producer along with guitarist Johnny Ramone. Although Zombie himself vouched for the accuracy of the most specific details concerning the album since he first announced plans for it in November, a spokesperson for Columbia Records, the label which intends… Read more »

Ramones bassist Dee Dee Ramone died of an apparent drug overdose in Hollywood on Wednesday (June 5). When the group was inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in March, some of modern rock’s biggest stars tipped their hats to the legendary band and Ramone himself. Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder said that the group’s arrival in the late-’70s was a monumental occasion. “They were visually aggressive, four working-class construction-worker delinquents from Forest Hills, Queens, who were armed with two-minute songs that they rattled off like machine-gun fire, and it was enough to change the earth’s revolution, at… Read more »