Pearl Jam rocker is the final man standing of early grunge, a style on the verge of extinction-Leisure Information , Firstpost

In #TheMusicThatMadeUs, senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri chronicles the impact that musicians and their art have on our lives, how they mould the industry by rewriting its rules and how they shape us into the people we become: their greatest legacies.

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If there had ever been a perfect moment in my life, it was this: Copious amounts of Gaymers cider, a Hyde Park gig, the love of my life for company, and Eddie Vedder singing Queen’s ‘Under Pressure.’ You know how people talk about the stars aligning and all? This was it.  

At the 2010 Hard Rock Calling, Pearl Jam were scheduled to play after Ben Harper but Vedder surprised fans by joining him on the Queen classic, eliciting a cheerful roar from the crowd and triggering us to run towards the stage with unfinished bottles in hand from the bar. It was monumental.

So much is written about how a live music experience can be such a transformative shared experience; in many ways, it has been a big part of why I do what I do. But a Pearl Jam concert is a communal experience like none other. In Vedder’s vocal grandeur lies his ability to make a packed stadium feel like it is sitting in his drawing room by the fireplace. His vocal manipulation, the sharp truncating of his vowels, and the marble mouth he is so famous for, only embellish the richness and resonant nature of his voice as he moves from the guttural rambling to the high-powered growl with remarkable ease.

“A scratching voice all alone / There’s nothing like your baritone,” he sings in the Jeff Ament-penned ‘Nothing As It Seems’ from Binaural [2000], and he could very well have been singing about himself as Ament’s upright bass and McCready’s Hendrix-like distorted playing create a song so brooding and dark, typifying the more mature sound and tone the band has embraced over the years. 

This column was born out of a fervent need to document how the soundtrack of our lives shapes us, how the songs we listen to and why we do so play a big role in how our memories and identities are moulded. As part of the generation that grew up on grunge, Vedder’s voice was constant. Kurt Cobain made grunge popular, but it was Eddie Vedder’s or Chris Cornell [Soundgarden/Audioslave] that you could instantly recognise. A bit like Bruce Springsteen, Freddie Mercury or Leonard Cohen, if you will. Completely unmissable and wholly unique.

If Jim Morrison established the rock-and-roll prototype in the 1970s, Vedder and his grunge mates made the plaid shirt over a plain T-shirt and jeans the uniform of the modern-day rocker. So much so that when Bradley Cooper was working on A Star Is Born, he modelled his character’s mannerisms and essence on Vedder’s, having spent days with the singer in preparation.

Vedder is a cultural icon, the last remaining face of early grunge, and a voice of a lifetime for Cobain took Nirvana with him, Layne Staley took Alice in Chains with him, and Cornell took Soundgarden with him.

He is the last man standing in a genre facing extinction not just in tone but in the attitude and the aesthetic that it provided my generation. If grunge borrowed punk’s attitude without its tempo and heavy metal’s distorted guitar-playing, it also rewrote the grammar of modern songwriting, putting a great deal of focus on introspection and socially-conscious issues. Angst-filled lyrics yearning for freedom, for a life devoid of struggle, for inclusion, for an end to social isolation, and a solution for mental neglect, were characteristic of grunge back in the ’90s. 

In so many ways, we hold onto Eddie Vedder and Pearl Jam with aching nostalgia for a time when it was okay to sing about not being okay. Today, the world is a different place and it has grunge to thank for it; particularly since not easy to give honest introspection some space at a time when squeaky-clean, over-produced boyband artifice was becoming the norm. Where a cheating girlfriend was a better mainstream topic to sing about than a son who cannot forgive his father. 

It is heart-breaking how some of the main proponents of the grunge movement have each found their lives not worth living anymore despite keeping us all alive with the power of their words. It makes it even more poignant how Pearl Jam has seen their contemporaries give up their personal fights and succumb, while they live on with heavy lessons and heavier memories to help them tide through. 

Words cannot do suggest to the poetic quality of even their noisiest songs. Pearl Jam fans have their own favourites — a mix of chart-toppers and some off-beat hidden tracks, usually. From ‘Alive,’ ‘Jeremy,’ Black,’ ‘Oceans,’ ‘Even Flow to Man of the Hour’ [dedicated to Layne Staley], and ‘Long Road to Indifference,’ ‘Just Breathe,’ ‘Thumbing My Way,’ ‘Nothing As It Seems,’ and more, there is a song for every state of mind. His collaboration with the legendary Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan for Dead Man Walking’s version of ‘Long Road’ is a rousing amalgam of two very distinctive voices coming from cultural backgrounds that could not be more dissimilar.

With his new solo album Earthlings, Vedder aims to pick up from his second album Ukulele Songs [2011], by making us privy to his inner workings through his delicious timbre. Vedder’s age might have started to show in his untrained voice, but it still has so much to offer, providing us with soothing comfort and fuel for rebellion in equal measure 30 years since he and his band first broke into the scene. When MTV first came to India, Pearl Jam’s ‘Jeremy’ would play all the time, jostling for space with some of the most iconic music videos of the time. 

The thing about music is you tend to listen to what your musical heroes count among their favourites. When they laud a musician, you feel your choices are validated; not like we would need anyone to popularise how unique Vedder is. In an interview with The Rolling Stones, The Who’s Roger Daltrey once described Eddie Vedder’s vocals: “I think he’s got such a distinctive, fabulous voice. He doesn’t copy, so that’s what I like; he does the Eddie Vedder version. It’s never easy to do because most people will just try and copy what The Who have done. He’s always himself.”

Being himself has been exactly what has worked for him, and by extension, Pearl Jam. Because most of their fans today are people who have grown up on their music, who have used their music on date nights or to navigate a breakup; people whose lives may have been toast but palatable with a generous helping of Pearl Jam.

Senior journalist Lakshmi Govindrajan Javeri has spent a good part of two decades chronicling the arts, culture and lifestyles.