Pearl Jam singer Eddie Vedder played a corporate gig in Vancouver a few days ago.
25 years after Pearl Jam’s legendary secret Binaural warm-up show at the same venue, Eddie Vedder returned—solo this time—for a private, unannounced set in front of just 200 invited guests.
An intimate, emotional night filled with acoustic gems, heartfelt covers, and mystery—no one knows which corporation hosted the event.
🎶 Highlights: From Small Town to Porch, and covers of The Beatles, Tom Petty, Springsteen & more. Smile and Last Kiss were on the setlist—but may not have been played.
Setlist: Small Town, Don’t Be Shy (Cat Stevens), You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away (The Beatles), Wildflowers (Tom Petty), Wishlist, Just Breathe, Far Behind, Rise, Society (Jerry Hannan), Better Man/Save It for Later (The English Beat), I Won’t Back Down (Tom Petty), Porch
Encore: Open All Night (Bruce Springsteen), Hard Sun (Indio)
In a recent interview with Rick Beato while talking about how he wrote the famous riff to Pearl Jam’s song “Yellow Ledbetter,” Mike McCready revealed that at one point early on in his career he had completely stopped playing music. As McCready explains, though, we have the legendary Stevie Ray Vaughan to thank for him deciding to pick up the guitar again.
“I got way into- I was very much into metal. And then I went and saw Stevie Ray Vaughan. And I was kind of starting to get into blues a little bit, but I dropped acid and I went and saw Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Gorge,” he said. “I had stopped playing [previously]. It’s kind of a long story. This is around ’88-’89. I’d moved back from Los Angeles, kind of trying to make it with Shadow down there, and we just didn’t do it. And I got Crohn’s, and I’m sick.”
“All this stuff was going on. I stopped playing music. I went and saw Stevie, tripped, sat up all night, and went, ‘I gotta play guitar again.’ So I started playing guitar again the next day. And then that’s all when everything has been blowing up in Seattle. I feel like maybe I missed that. But, you know, [Mother] Love Bone was happening, and then everything just kind of fell into place. Andy [Wood] died, and then the Temple [of the Dog] thing happened, and I got to be part of that.”
McCready went on to add that because of the way Mother Love Bone ended – with singer Andrew Wood’s death – he was cautious about moving forward with Temple of the Dog:
“I was very careful about that because I felt like I got into a situation because this guy died. I knew I was good and all those things, but I felt like this was this catalyst that, ‘Oh, wow, this is my opportunity, but I want to be really careful with this Temple thing because I don’t want to step on anything.’ I just had interesting feelings about that at the time, which I don’t anymore, but I did for many, many years.”
