The magazine Rolling Stone features a cover story on Eddie Vedder, but the only dirt the magazine could dig up in its expose is that Pearl Jam's star performer was once "a tireless hustler."
It seems that Vedder, unlike the reticent rocker he is today, was once an ambitious self-promoter who worked tirelessly to advance his former San Diego band, Bad Radio."Eddie was constantly promoting that band, trying to make it into something," San Diego club promoter Tim Hall is quoted as saying.
"He is a master manipulator of the people and situations around him," says a source at Epic Records, Pearl Jam's label. "And he's a master manipulator of his own image."
The obvious implication is that Vedder is hiding his true nature and that the world-weary image he projects is a fabrication.
The story in the Nov. 28 issue quotes a lot of unnamed sources, as well as a number of Vedder's high school friends. But there's no input from Vedder, who rarely does interviews.
Nevertheless, it's an interesting profile of Vedder, whose house, according to Rolling Stone, is patrolled by two bodyguards "who check out even the Domino's Pizza boy who delivers Vedder's weekly small pepperoni and sausage pie."
In a sidebar to the main story, an "industry insider" estimates that Pearl Jam's long-running dispute with Ticketmaster has cost the band more than $30 million in lost earnings.
- CORNELL, TOO - Eddie Vedder isn't the only Northwest rocker featured in an upcoming magazine cover story.
Soundgarden's shy leading man, Chris Cornell, talks about his music and his life in the December issue of Details magazine.
Says Cornell: "I'm lucky I get to go out and sing. Because when I'm home, I don't talk to anyone; I don't go out socially. My one outlet is that I get to stand in front of 5,000 people and sing `Outshined.'
"When I'm alone between tours, writing songs, I might not speak a word to another human being for a week or two or three."