Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder was recently interviewed by Chicago Cubs manager Joe Maddon and radio color man Ron Coomer on local radio station, 670 The Score. Here, Vedder discussed how while on tour, Vedder met a doctor who is working on curing a rare disease. Vedder and his wife Jill run the EB Research Partnership, which helps research for Epidermolysis Bullosa, a family of rare genetic disorders that affect the body’s largest organ: the skin. Eddie Vedder’s wife recently called out a big name for doing something ‘shameful.’
Individuals with EB lack critical proteins that bind the skin’s two layers together. Without these proteins, the skin tears apart, blisters, and shears off leading to severe pain, disfigurement, and wounds that may never heal. Chicago Cubs pitcher Jon Lester also appears in the interview. Alternative Nation transcribed their comments.
Coomer: Going back to your charity, is there anything that you want to get out to some of the things you wanna get out people here in Chicago tonight or on TheScore listening and can you tell them how they can get in touch and support your program?
Lester: NVRQT.org is one of our ways, you also go to Cubs.com and click the links there as well. I believe there are still some tickets available to it, Joe [Maddon’s] on lead. It’s a lot of fun, that’s the main thing that we try to do, make sure we have fun. I know going to Joe’s event over the past four, five years, however long i’ve been here his main objective is: everybody come in, have fun and at the same time we are gonna raise a lot of money. Same thing with Riz [Anthony Rizzo], [Kyle] Schwarber and everybody else that has events. They are all great, the Cubs have a great job with helping us with it and at the end of the day we are giving money back to a good cause. So that’s the main objective.
Coomer: NVRQT are in initials, so you would look that up with dot org at the end, is that right?
Lester: That’s right. Or the NVRQT Facebook page as well.
Coomer: So, that’s some of things that the players do, I was at your show in Minneapolis and you do something similar too. I remember that I was sitting in Eddie’s little box right next to the stage, in the Minneapolis show and you had a little guy you met at the Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis for a few days because we tried to hook up but you know, your schedule was really busy before shows. You had this little guy with a skin condition, you couldn’t touch his skin because it would peel right off. The kid was in the section with his mom and his dad and he’s a boy, he wants to wrestle and hangout. You had him on stage and handed him a white guitar and I just thought that was one of the coolest things ever. Here is this little guy, *this* big, standing there with a great, big electric guitar and Eddie’s handing it to him with twenty-five thousand people in the arena. I just think some of those moments that we get to do are so special. This little guy got pictures of it and it will be a memory etched in his brain, for his parents too.
Vedder: You know the cool thing, I remember that trip because it was in Minnesota and there is a University of Minnesota doctor there, and on tour we would go find these genetic researchers, and get to learn the process on how they are trying to cure this disease which is finding a mutated gene in the DNA that causes this condition and then reverse the process. If it’s successful, it will help all kind of genetic skin disorders of which there are no cure currently.
In the same interview, Eddie Vedder made a surprising Michael Jackson and Jackson Five revelation.
