Wednesday, July 23, 2008

THANK YOU PETE TOWNSHEND

No secret that I'm a huge fan of Pete Townshend
and The Who. He's so interesting to me, just as a personality. He was one of the first rock stars that I was aware of who blogged, and in his interviews have always been interesting to read. It's like, he feels compelled to be honest. He recently sent an email to Rolling Stone writer/Left Of Center DJ Jenny Eliscu, which you can read at RollingStone.com. Among the interesting points is that at one point in 1993, Eddie Vedder considered hanging it up. He said, "To think he nearly quit in 1993 and went back to some surfing beach. Lucky he came to speak to Uncle Pete. I told him — submit" While I don't generally think of "submit" as great advice, I'm glad that he talked Eddie out of a pointless retirement.

I was thinking about the recent Green River reunion at SubPop's 20th anniversary concert. It must have been a bit weird: on one hand, you have Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament of Pearl Jam, millionaires who can do whatever they want to for the rest of their lives. On the other, you have Mark Arm and Steve Turner of Mudhoney, who still record and tour (some of their recent stuff is truly awesome, by the way) but they tour in a van and play small places and have day jobs (Arm manages SubPop's warehouse). I think Vedder used to romanticize these bands that were less popular and had some kind of guilty conscience about Pearl Jam's success and maybe felt that that somehow made them less cool/good/relevant. But I think - I hope - that these days, with most of his peers playing small venues, if they are still playing at all, Eddie is grateful to be in a great band like Pearl Jam with a loyal following.

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