Pete Townshend spoke about his — and his younger brothers' — close relationship with Eddie Vedder. Townshend recalled to Mojo meeting the Pearl Jam frontman after the Berkeley, California stop on his last full-on solo tour, behind 1993's Psychoderelict. Townshend looked back at the pair's first meeting: “I remember it very well. . . My manager Bill Curbishley said, 'Before you see your guests, I want you to meet this young guy, Eddie Vedder, who's the singer in Pearl Jam.' And I said, 'OK.'”
Townshend remembered, “He walked in and sat down and we started to make small talk. And he said, 'I f***ing hate this. I just hate it. I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to be in a band. I’m feeling like I just want to run away. I grew up on the beach in La Jolla surfing. And that’s really what I want to do for the rest of my life.' And he said, 'I've heard that you’ve been through similar stuff' — because, 10 years before, I had left the Who.”
He went on to recall, “I remember saying to him, 'I’m afraid it’s too late.' And he said, 'What do you mean?' And I said, 'This isn’t like politics, y'know, you don’t put yourself up for election, get your seat, f*** up the country and then retire. What you actually do is get railroaded. You just get grabbed and put on the stage, and told to keep doing what you’re doing until you’re allowed to stop. And you have absolutely no choice. You’ve been elected without standing. And you just might as well enjoy it, because it’s not going to go away.'”
Townshend shed light on how his friendship with Vedder has blossomed with the singer and Townshend's two brothers, Paul and Simon Townshend: “We’ve been very good friends, but it goes further than that. He’s also very good friends with my brothers. My two brothers are much younger than me. Simon is 14 years younger and my brother Paul is 12 years younger. And they still live in the same street that I grew up in (in England). And often I’ll hear from, y'know, somebody in Ealing Common: 'Oh, we saw Eddie Vedder and your brother Paul in the pub the other day.' I’m like, 'I didn’t even know he was here.' 'Oh, he was just passing through but he bought a few rounds.' In other words, people in Paul’s local pub in Ealing know Eddie Vedder probably as well as anybody.”
On his 2012 album Looking Out Looking In, Simon Townshend recorded a salute to Vedder, titled “Electric Friend.” Simon gave us the back-story to the Eddie Vedder tribute: “That was inspired by Eddie Vedder. I was in L.A. and I had a friend contact me from Washington saying they wanted to get Pearl Jam tickets. So I texted Eddie, and within a half-an-hour he got 10 people in to the show in Washington. But not only got them in; shown them around backstage, got them all drinks, y'know, chatted to them. And I just thought that was so wonderful, that I could just so quickly do. . . could get that contact, that I was inspired to write 'Electric Friend.'”
