During a new appearance on SiriusXM’s “The Howard Stern Show,” Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder shared a story about a chaotic horseback ride he once took with Bruce Springsteen and their wives.
“I’m terrified of horses, and that ride with Bruce did not help anything at all,” Vedder admitted. “He says, ‘You know, here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to get on the horse. The horse is going to walk. You’re going to get off the horse. That’s what’s going to happen.’ And I was trying to act not terrified. I was like, ‘I got this…’ You know, don’t let the shark know you’re scared.”
Despite Springsteen giving Vedder instructions on how to handle the horse, things took a turn when it ran off with him on it.
“For whatever reason, my horse just took off, and I’m kind of headed off the trail into this forest of trees,” he recalled. “I don’t know what is happening, and I’m just trying to like surf. What I remember is like surfing the horse and looking, ‘Where am I going to jump? Where I going to jump?’ You know, everybody’s helping, yelling stuff like, ‘Pull right, pull left,’ and I can’t see a clear space to jump.”
Luckily for Vedder, the horse eventually stopped.
“Anyways, it stopped, and then everyone was a little mystified. Patti [Scialfa, Bruce’s wife] was like, ‘That’s very odd. That’s very odd. He might be barn sour.’ And then, damn it, if the horse didn’t do it again. So, in the end, Bruce said that was pretty good horsemanship that I didn’t crack my head.”
Speaking about his friendship with Springsteen, Vedder told Stern that they have been friends for “quite some time.”
“All I could say is everything you imagined him to be, you’re not even halfway there,” he said. “Just as a person, as an artist, as a friend.”
