Eddie Vedder: New Single, Response to Concert Controversy

Less than 2 months after his last solo single, Eddie Vedder releases a new song: this time too it’s a cover recorded for a TV series. The last time it was “Save it for later”, a song by English Beat that Pearl Jam have been performing live for a long time together with “Better man”: the song was recorded for the third season of “The bear” (which was released in America in June, in Italy it will be available on August 14 on Disney+).

This time it’s a cover by Tom Petty for “Bad Monkey”, Apple TV+ series, also released on August 15th. The song is “Room at the top”, which Petty recorded with the Heartbreakers for “Echo”, a wonderful (and underrated) album from 1999. The song was produced by Andrew Watt, who worked on the solo album “Earthling” and the last Pearl Jam album “Dark matter”, and recorded with Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Josh Klinghoffer, Glen Hansard and Benmont Tench (who was Tom Petty’s keyboardist in the Heartbreakers).

All the songs on the “Bad Monkey” soundtrack are Tom Petty covers. There is one song by Larkin Poe available now (“Runnin’ down a dream”), it’s unclear when the others will be released, but the tracklist features covers by Weezer, War on Drugs, Jason Isbell.

As for Eddie Vedder, his love for Tom Petty is well known: he sang this very song at the 2018 Oscars to remember his colleague who passed away the year before, he often performs “I won’t back down” live and the two duetted together for a memorable version of “The waiting” in 2006.
The website Pearljamonline.it, always well informed on the band’s affairs, goes so far as to hypothesize that the two songs could be collected in a solo album or EP of covers, a genre that Vedder loves and often performs in Pearl Jam concerts and those under his own name.

The controversy over Pearl Jam ticket prices

Sempe Pearljamonline.it relaunches an interview with the singer that appeared in the music magazine Visions, in which Vedder responds to the controversy over the cost of tickets for Pearl Jam concerts in Europe, which have reached €175, causing protests from fans (and several dates that are far from sold-out).

This is Vedder’s response, who blames the increase in the “living” costs of a tour that have occurred in recent years

After the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone wanted to go on tour as soon as possible, so why not? This doesn’t apply to us, but many colleagues depend directly on the income from touring for their livelihood. As a result, production costs have gotten completely out of control. You can hardly find a crew anymore, there are problems with organizing buses, stages, PA systems, venues. People say: “If you don’t pay my price, no problem, someone else will pay it.” This also applies to service providers with whom we have been working for over 30 years.
(…)
If we can save money, we pass it on to the fans. But it’s essential for us to at least cover the costs. If we had to pay extra and couldn’t earn anything, we wouldn’t tour anymore.