Eddie Vedder has always been uncommunicative of his past, rarely letting out small snippets of information that has allowed us to view a sketchy picture of his childhood life, one that suggests unhappiness. As the successes of Pearl Jam have grown, Eddie Vedder seems more and more distant.
Edward Louis Severson III was born in late December 1964. He was the first of four sons to a particularly, “mad” mother, Marie. The family were initially based in Evanston, Illinois, however shortly after Eddies third birthday, they moved to San Diego in California. According to Eddie Vedder, his childhood was very emotional, being barred him from any meaningless relationship he understood to be his biological father, something that affected him deeply.
Back at home, it was evident that
Eddie Vedder was having trouble coping with the amount of work he had to do whilst explaining to school academics why he hadn’t kept up. In his own words, “They didn’t treat me very well. 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” (
Los Angeles Times)
His “father” further aggravated his poor academic record, that when his parents moved back to Illinois, Eddie vowed never to speak to, “That Lawyer ****”. He made up a conscious decision to stay put in San Diego and took up a nightly job at a drug store, now called Long’s Drug Store, in Encinitas. This of course meant that his schoolwork suffered even more. By day he would sleep in school classes, by night he was fuelled by a hatred passion.
“I’d be underneath some shelf putting price tags on tomato soup and I’d watch them come in…obnoxious with their ****ing prom outfits on, buying condoms and being loud about it. I’d think, those ****s.”
Eddie has admitted that maybe he probably would be doing that too, if the circumstances were different, however his struggle for life made this seems more and more distant, claiming that he was, “not very forgiving at all”. Soon after his parents moved, he dropped his surname, Mueller and took up his mother’s maiden name, Vedder (his father’s name was Severnson).
Almost inevitably, he dropped high school.
Eddie has in the past revealed that his life almost came to near-destruction during this low period, however music had saved his life and if not, we probably wouldn’t have heard much of him at all. Music for Eddie grew at a young age, however it wasn’t until his teens that he became really hooked. At the age of 16, Eddie’s obsession was the Who’s classic rock mock-opera, Quadrophenia, which Eddie would relate to. His obsessions with The Who made Eddie claim that he “should be sending Pete Townshed a card for Fathers Day”.
Eddie Vedder’s musical inspiration seems to be very rich, given the fact that he has the Who and a childhood full of memories both positive and negative. In his own words, “I’m thankful that they’ve (parents) have given me a lifetime’s worth of material to write about.”
At aged 16, Eddie supposable dabbled with drugs and was locked into the murky world of the underground. Never too long, Eddie managed to fixate himself and began to concentrate more on the music scene. He didn’t want to be, “another loser”.
In mid fall, his mother paid him an unexpected visit from Chicago explaining to him that his, “father”, that he called, “That lawyer ****”, was not his biological parent and that had divorced his mother when he was barely two. Perhaps more shockingly, his father had been a family friend who had visited them once of twice, who had died of multiple sclerosis when Eddie was just thirteen.
This news came with mixed emotions, relief that the “father” he had despised was not his biological father and the fact that any meaningless relationship with his real father was gone. This also meant that Eddie’s three brothers were only half-brothers.
“There was a piano in the room and I remember really wishing I knew how to play a happy song. I was happy for about a minute, and then I cam down…I had to deal with the anger of not being told sooner, not being told while he was alive. I was a big secret. Secrets are bad news. Secrets about adoption, any of that stuff. It’s got to come out, don’t keep it. It just gets bigger and darker and deeper and uglier and messy”.
His mother brought more news that his biological father had been a organist/vocalist (that’s where Eddie gets his talent from). The news came down on Eddie hard. He had resented this.
“I was like, **** You! I learned how to play guitar, saved all my money for equipment, and you’re telling me that’s where it all came from?”
His anger was soon to subside as he began talks with his fathers’ cousin. He told Rolling Stone that he and his father were really alike, yet they had no relationship at all. He was proud of his heritage and where he came from. By this time, Eddie was waiting tables, working the graveyard shift at the local petrol station and a nightly shift at as a security guard at an upmarket hotel.
His last job seemed to be more bearable. Often he would steal wine and jump onto the roof where he would, “prey on the rich”, writing millions and millions of songs. Little did he know, this would be the last batch of jobs that Eddie would encounter before leading a world acclaimed rock group, Pearl Jam.
All this was questioned with Rolling Stones. It seemed that Eddie had fabricated a lot of his childhood life, in order to capture the attention of listeners. Till this day, we still don’t know what is true and what is not. Rolling Stones had dug even further to his lower school life and found out that his main passion before music was acting, recalling that he was an avid member of the school drama club. However, even though Eddie did not get on well with his step father, there had evidently been a third, “father”, his drama teacher, the late Clayton Liggett, whose widow said, “Eddie was in school, he would come over to our house quite often and talk to Clayton about personal things…Clayton was always there for him.
In a school play in 1981, Eddie fell for a girl in the year below, Liz Gumble, during rehearsals. They were so in love, that when she left for vacation, a distraught Eddie walked into school with a scarf draped around him melodramatically. Though the real reason why Liz broke up with Eddie is unknown, this caused Eddie a lot of misery, so far that he had dropped out of the Drama Class and all Theatre Productions.
After quitting high school, Eddie went to Chicago for two years, before returning to La Mesa beach, near San Diego in 1984. His mind was fixated on music. It has been proven, Eddie was a common, well-known net worker on the local music scene, hanging around all the key clubs (especially Bacchanal), talking to bands, drinking with agents and managers, drawing flyers, helping roadies and generally absorbing as much of the music business as possible. He regularly sneaked a recorded in concerts to make bootleg copies for himself. He was well known in all the San Diego clubs.
-GoodNite_AmyLee
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