There’s a relatively famous story that Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder tells about the first time he encountered his surf hero Mark Richards. In his grommet days he was sitting on a plane, the latest issue of SURFER in hand, when MR ambled down the aisle. The four-time world champ just happened to be on the cover of the mag. Vedder was star struck.
A testament to Vedder’s love of surfing, through all the stardom of being a rock and roll hero, today there’s a mutual admiration and friendship between the two men.
“He’s just such a fan of surfing,” shares photographer Steve Sherman, who annually shoots Vedder’s Ohana Festival in Dana Point, which is coming up this week.
Digging into Sherm’s archive, he shared this image of Vedder, 11-time world champion Kelly Slater and power surfing ace Taylor Knox at the opening ceremony for the 2006 Eddie Aikau Big Wave Invitational.
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“It was December 2006 when Pearl Jam ascended on the island of Oahu to play at the local stadium,” recalls Sherm. “Eddie decided to bring the band to the North Shore to play a private gig for Quicksilver and Kelly Slater at the park up from the Bay. That same day was the opening ceremony for the Eddie Akaui event.”
“To everyone’s surprise, Kelly cruises to the event with Eddie borrowing one of his guns to paddle out for the ceremony. It was quite a moment,” he continues. “I’m on the beach shooting as all the invitees walk into the water when Kelly and Eddie stroll up getting ready to paddle out, just then Taylor Knox walks up to Eddie and surprises him! Taylor and Kelly are super good friends with Ed, so this is a great moment.”
“Later that night Pearl Jam played a small gig for 200 people up in the valley at the park while security roamed the bushes all around keeping people from sneaking in , it was like seeing Pearl Jam at a high school dance,” Sherm adds “They rocked the joint with Kelly sitting in on the last couple songs. Kelly had just won his eighth world title and they presented him with a guitar with the number eight painted on it. It was a musical night the North Shore won’t forget.”
As one of the lucky 200 people to be in the audience that night at Waimea Valley, I can personally attest to just how magic it was. I’ll never forget Eddie brushing past me on his way to the stage and thinking, “Wait, is that Eddie Vedder.” The next thing I knew it, Pearl Jam was launching into a cranking set. Kelly joined them for a raucous rendition of Neil Young’s “Rockin’ In The Free World.”
Last week, Vedder and Pearl Jam’s Jeff Ament sat down for an interview with CBS News Sunday Morning for a deep dive into the band’s history and how they keep on trucking more than 35 years after their debut album. Vedder explained how he came to write “Alive,” one of the hits that put the band on the map.
“I was doin’ those midnight shifts security. So when I went for a surf in the morning … But I remember it bein’ super foggy and one of those days where you think, ‘Maybe I won’t go out’ … So these waves were just kind of all of a sudden coming outta nowhere. And–but I had the music in my head, the instrumental, and, and just kind of wrote it. And then I was still wet when I hit record,” Vedder recalled.
And to think, it all started with a chance encounter with MR and a copy of SURFER on an airplane.
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