Eddie Vedder's Embarrassing Tale: Naked in Public

During your period of unhappiness with fame and everything that was happening with the band, are there things that you did that you regret?

Yeah, I'm sure there were, but I'm not going to think about them now because it just doesn't matter. It's hard for us to watch early performances, even though that's when people think we were on fire and young. 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. And I find it kind of hard to watch those early performances because it's so just fucking, semi-testosterone-fueled or whatever. But it didn't come from jock mentality. It came from just being let out of the gates. And Jeff and Stone, their horse was just about to be put down when it was put in the race. And I was coming from the same place. So when they finally let us out of the gates, we didn't have a smooth, galvanized, streamlined gate. We were just rocking all over the place.

I saw a clip on the Jools Holland show where they made you watch an old performance and you looked like you were going to die.

Could you see us watching the performance?

Yeah, I mean you were laughing, but you were also were starting to get really uncomfortable.

I was thinking, "OK, I've had enough. That's enough. OK." And it's not even that bad. It's like looking at pictures from high school or something. But outside of that, we made it through. So we shouldn't have too many regrets. I can listen to the early records [except] the first record, which is strange because it's the one that, in a way, we've been defined by, or people know those songs most. But, it's just the sound of the record. It was kind of mixed in a way that was...it was kind of produced.

I understand that the guys would present riffs and you'd pick the weird one instead of the one that sounded like Pearl Jam. And also, I wonder if there were other songs that were as catchy or as poppy as "Betterman" but we never heard them because they weren't what you wanted.

Yeah. We were all trying to tame the beast. I was the guy who got [stalkers] or whatever, it just happened. And so it probably seemed more life-threatening to me to tame the beast. And you know, we're talking about melodies and hooks in a song, and could that be life-threatening? But, I've just explained it. I felt that with any more popularity we were going to be crushed, or our heads were going to pop like grapes. I went through this fucking yearlong period where I wore helmets all the time. It was like army helmets that I'd find, or just like whatever. It was this kind of analogy, like I need a helmet...I felt like...it's just funny looking...sleeping in a fucking army helmet. I remember one day after a Lollapalooza gig, I woke up in a hotel in an army helmet and a T-shirt. And, I heard a live band playing. I thought it was a live band. So I went out the door to see if it was live. I had to know -- was that a real stand-up bass? Or were they just playing music in the atrium or whatever? So I pushed the door open, went to look, you know, and I looked back and the door just went [makes a clicking sound]. So I'm standing in the hotel, in this atrium thing and I've got an army helmet on and a T-shirt.

In like your underwear? Nothing?

Nothing; army helmet and a T-shirt. I was thinking, "Aww, this is really bad." And so I go down to the maids, but they won't let me in. I don't know anybody else's room number. Everyone's got a pseudonym. I don't know who's what. And, so I take the T-shirt off, wrap it around the back, put the army helmet over the front, go down in this glass elevator, it's Easter Sunday -- this all starts to hit me -- it's Easter Sunday, there's all these people in their Easter [best]. It was somewhere in the Midwest like Milwaukee or something. I had to walk through the people, and parents were hiding their kids from this freaky guy. It must have been like a real apparition. Then -- sorry I got into this story; I'll just finish it -- but the funny thing is that I actually waited in line. There was a line at the front desk. I actually waited in line behind two other people. It was kind of a Tarzan goes to Vietnam look or something. And then of course you get to the lady, tell her your problem, locked out of your room and, of course, she asks for an ID. That's when I lost it.

Your helmet period was like in '92 when you were playing Lollapalooza?

Yeah, yeah. It's a joke. I mean, it happened, but it probably wasn't a year; it was a couple of months. If you look back, you'll see pictures of me wearing it.