Mike McCready Feared Eddie Vedder Would Die At Pearl Jam Show With Nirvana

2
8387

Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready discussed Eddie Vedder’s daredevil live persona from Pearl Jam’s live early days in a new interview with SouthFlorida.com. McCready said he used to fear the worst when Vedder would scale and leap off from scaffolds.

“There’s a few specific ones that I really remember,” McCready says. “When it was us and Nirvana and the Chili Peppers in San Diego [on Dec. 28, 1991], and he went up on this crazy girder, the lights were all red, and it was just oily, and it was a hundred feet up at the top of the building. … I could see him kind of struggling up there. And I thought, ‘OK, this is it. He’s f—— dead.'”

McCready says Vedder’s acrobatics were driven in part by his fear that Pearl Jam would not make it to its fifth anniversary, let alone its 25th. “I had talked to Ed about it a few times,” McCready recalls, “and he had explained he felt like, early on in our career, he didn’t know how long this band was going to last, so he wanted to do something that was memorable. And I think he was into it, too. He was strong. He could climb up these crazy things. It made me nervous. It was a combination of nerves and excitement. I’m glad he’s not doing that anymore.”