Eddie Vedder Quotations

It's an art to live with pain... mix the light into gray.

There's a lot of bands that get to a certain level, and it just stops. They scrap it. Compare this to, say, The Rolling Stones or The Who, where they just continued on forever and are still playing, or they quit after 20 years.

If it's a good cause, I'll play just about anything.

I feel like we have to keep our eyes on the road. Being nostalgic is like taking an offramp and getting a sandwich - and then you get back on the highway. I don't want to be spending the rest of my life at the gas station.

The love received is the love that is saved.

Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It's real easy to fall.

I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.

Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.

At a certain point, you realize you have a responsibility more behind yourself and your need for adrenaline. I'm glad I did things in my 20s that were more reckless.

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.

Life moves fast. As much as you can learn from your history, you have to move forward.

I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.

I probably get strangers coming up to me two or three times a week to just say something nice.

When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.

The one thing about going from the audience to the stage in just three years is that you know how it feels to be down there.

The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful.

I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it.

People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!

You know, rock stardom... I have a hard time discussing that because I don't really accept it. It's not really that tangible. What's really bizarre is how it's used as a thing - you know, 'He's the rock star of politics,' 'He's the rock star of quarterbacks' - like it's the greatest thing in the world.

As far as viewpoints, I think I'm more well-rounded and definitely more educated, and probably more hopeful than I used to be. I think when you're young and you get into a cause, you get frustrated with it within a few years, or six months.

If I'm not on tour or in the studio, I'm in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It's not lost on me that it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.

When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't.

When I was 13, I got my first guitar, and I could sort of play Ted Nugent songs, but I couldn't play the solos. But I could play along with entire Ramones songs.

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

It's fun singing with other people who are really good singers. There's something kind of poignant about braiding a couple vocals.

You know, punk bands now sell with one record - their first or second record - sell 10 times the amount of records than the Ramones did throughout their career with 20-something records. That's why I go over to Johnny Ramone's house and do yard work three times a week, just to absolve some of the guilt.

I just think that all of us in this room should have a voice in how the USA is represented. And he don't allow us our voice, that's all I'm saying.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

So my one kid's 4, my other kid's 4 months, I'm 44, Barack Obama is the 44th president - it's all lining up nicely here.

After the Ramones, it was more about new wave for me than punk.

Do you force your kids to pay attention to what's going on, or do you let them live their lives outside of it? My hope is that my child is a strong activist. That would make me most proud.

It's not a bad time to be me.

I've never been a calm, midrange type person.

I don't need drugs to make my life tragic.

I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.

You can't be perfect. You can't be the perfect father. You can't be the perfect singer.

I just finished touring, and I'm on a detox thing. It's a heavy detox, so nothing in my belly except water, salt, and cayenne pepper.

I'm an example of someone who never made it to university. I did have this dream to be a musician. I felt that this dream had an expiration date.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.

Any conversations we hear about 'So who are Pearl Jam marketing to?' are despicable.

I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines.

That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.

I had actually been going to Hawaii for quite a while before I ever picked up the uke. I think with anything new you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if it comes to you quickly, and the uke facilitates that.

Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force... a different kind of energy.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.

The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball.

I don't know how people do it these days - paparazzi and that kind of thing. That's something I can't even imagine.

I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs.

We went from an era when rock 'n' roll meant wearing a bustier as a woman and these spandex things and guys trying to portray someone that wasn't realistic. We are trying to make it seem real... relate to our lives.

I'm not ready to be that guy who can meet with world leaders and all that. It's tremendous what Bono does. I don't know if I could do it, not the way he does. I don't think many people could.

We want them to be heard for the first time when the record comes out.

I just don't understand, if they see numbers [of CEO salaries]that represent people, how they can somehow skirt around that and morally justify taking or ruining those lives and leaving them with nothing. That, to me, is violent crime. It's certainly more violent than selling grams of pot to other adults.

At some point, when you read about this factual information that comes out in The New Zealand Herald and it's barely mentioned in The New York Times, then I think you've got to question where this is being manipulated, and where the filters are.

I'm angry that George Bush got to be in the White House, and I'm angry that [Al] Gore wasn't able to be a better candidate after eight years of a great economy and being an incumbent.

If he can't sleep, how will he ever dream?

You mature as far as your understanding of what it's going to take, and you increase your stamina. You don't let frustration overtake you when you're looking for change.

Die on a hilltop... eyeing the crows... waiting for your lids to close... but you want to watch as they peck your flesh... Ironic that they go for the eyes first...

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community.

You feel that no matter what's said in the music or how pointed it may get, the most you can wish for is that it plants a few seeds.

No music is going to stop the war. What's going to stop the war is a large amount of body bags, or a large amount of people in the streets, protesting it before it starts.

It's the ones without scars - those are the people you have to watch out for...

Isn't Timbaland a make of shoe? It's a producer? I don't know who that is. Oh well.

Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest.

I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a positive thing.

War hurts. It hurts no matter which sides the bombs are falling on.

Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up. I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the reality of their classroom. I said, 'You want to see my reality?' I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality.

This little four-string songwriting tool started changing the way I brought songs to the group.

I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down....

Worship the music, not the musicians.

I don't need drugs. Life is already tragic enough....

I'm Eddie Vedder and I sing. I do.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to say things. I'm a little exhausted by the process.

I think celebrities suck.

There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.

That makes it even more offensive to me that she's interested in our band and she did something for Slaughter.

Are you woman enough to be my man?

If you're anti-war it doesn't mean you are 'Pro' one side or the other in a conflict. However, it does make you 'Pro' many thingsPro-Peace, Pro-Human, Pro-Evolution, it makes you Pro-Communication, Pro-Diplomacy, Pro-Love, Pro-Understanding, Pro-Forgiveness.

It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave...

We've got clouds and rain, just like in Seattle .. but Sao Paulo is better.

I remember back in 1994 when the Eagles charged more than $100 for tickets. They said, 'We ain't Pearl Jam.' That's back when records were selling and the Eagles had sold just about as many as anyone on the planet. And years later we're still charging less than them.

You have to be able to grow and move with the organism that is the music industry. You need to maintain flexibility. Ownership of your own stuff is key and then you're able to dictate on a present-terms basis what would be the most effective way to protect yourself and what you've created. You also don't want to lock yourself into a situation where a major label owns part of your touring and merchandise.

I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.

This is still a young man's game, so we have to stay young. Music allows you to do that, especially rock'n'roll.

I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.

I've had a lot of typewriters that I've had relationships with; one still has a piece of masking tape that says "$8" on it. I love working on them. I can't fix a computer or a car, but I can fix a typewriter. I like them because you can write on them late at night, depending on what you're fortifying yourself with, and the next morning you can still figure what you wrote.

I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.

One thing you might suggest to a young band is don't get involved in any kind of long-term contract because everything changes on a bimonthly basis: The way people hear music and access it, the way it is distributed.

I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.

I had a $1.50 from playing the ukulele after owning it seven minutes. I thought, "Hmmm, this has some possibilities."

Delight, Delight, Delight...in our youth.

I am a thief, I am a liar, I am George Bush and my son is an asshole.

Singing someone else's songs is like keeping your clothes on.

Yeah, we'll play that. You want fries with that?

I'm really high... I mean the altitude of course.

Your pot laws are great! But your gun laws are even better!