Top 100 Eddie Vedder Quotes
#1. I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it.
Eddie Vedder
#2. I remember back in 1994 when the Eagles charged more than $100 for tickets. They said, 'We ain't Pearl Jam.' That's back when records were selling and the Eagles had sold just about as many as anyone on the planet. And years later we're still charging less than them.
Eddie Vedder
#3. I got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um,
it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam.
Eddie Vedder
#4. Delight, Delight, Delight ... in our youth.
Eddie Vedder
#5. I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.
Eddie Vedder
#6. Leave it to me as I find a way to be Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me Guaranteed
Eddie Vedder
#7. If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.
Eddie Vedder
#8. We're not going to be the coolest rock stars in the world. We're trying to be good musicians.
Eddie Vedder
#9. The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball.
Eddie Vedder
#10. I'm angry that George Bush got to be in the White House, and I'm angry that [Al] Gore wasn't able to be a better candidate after eight years of a great economy and being an incumbent.
Eddie Vedder
#11. I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down ...
Eddie Vedder
#12. The love received is the love that is saved.
Eddie Vedder
#13. If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.
Eddie Vedder
#14. Is it O.K. that I speak in English? The only thing I know in Dutch is how to order pot.
Eddie Vedder
#15. When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.
Eddie Vedder
#16. I just think that all of us in this room should have a voice in how the USA is represented. And he don't allow us our voice, that's all I'm saying.
Eddie Vedder
#17. As far as viewpoints, I think I'm more well-rounded and definitely more educated, and probably more hopeful than I used to be. I think when you're young and you get into a cause, you get frustrated with it within a few years, or six months.
Eddie Vedder
#18. You don't love me. If you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. You love who you think I am. And don't pretend that you know me. Because I don't even know myself.
Eddie Vedder
#19. This is still a young man's game, so we have to stay young. Music allows you to do that, especially rock'n'roll.
Eddie Vedder
#20. I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.
Eddie Vedder
#22. It's saying, just stop, and be together. Don't talk now, just breathe and feel each other's presence ...
Eddie Vedder
#23. This little four-string songwriting tool started changing the way I brought songs to the group.
Eddie Vedder
#24. Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.
Eddie Vedder
#25. I'm really high ... I mean the altitude of course.
Eddie Vedder
#27. It's understandable why someone would like their entertainment to provide an escape from modern day worries and the reality of war. We feel this record creates a healthy opportunity to process some of these emotions rather than deny them.
Eddie Vedder
#29. It's important to have a life and spend time outside of those things [music and politics], in order to appreciate what you've achieved as far as just spending time with people you love, and doing things like painting.
Eddie Vedder
#30. I feel like we have to keep our eyes on the road. Being nostalgic is like taking an offramp and getting a sandwich - and then you get back on the highway. I don't want to be spending the rest of my life at the gas station.
Eddie Vedder
#31. I'm not ready to be that guy who can meet with world leaders and all that. It's tremendous what Bono does. I don't know if I could do it, not the way he does. I don't think many people could.
Eddie Vedder
#32. That makes it even more offensive to me that she's interested in our band and she did something for Slaughter.
Eddie Vedder
#33. I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.
Eddie Vedder
#34. Things like guitars and ukuleles, you should never part with it, because there will probably be good, healthy times spent, just playing and writing.
Eddie Vedder
#35. Yeah, we'll play that. You want fries with that?
Eddie Vedder
#37. Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere
Underneath my being is a road that disappeared
Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead
Overhead ...
Eddie Vedder
#38. It's an art to live with pain ... mix the light into gray.
Eddie Vedder
#39. Sorry is the fool who trades his soul for a corvette Thinks he'll get the girl he'll only get the mechanic.
Eddie Vedder
#40. There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.
Eddie Vedder
#41. Though some may think there should be a separation between art/music and politics, it should be reinforced that art can be a form of nonviolent protest.
Eddie Vedder
#42. I'm an example of someone who never made it to university. I did have this dream to be a musician. I felt that this dream had an expiration date.
Eddie Vedder
#43. I don't need drugs. Life is already tragic enough ...
Eddie Vedder
#44. After the Ramones, it was more about new wave for me than punk.
Eddie Vedder
#45. I used to kind of blame someone for not being able to get through that - I'm talking about the addiction part - but I've had a few experiences recently where you don't blame the person anymore.
Eddie Vedder
#46. I think what happens is when something becomes successful, then a lot of people take credit for it in such ways that it takes credit away from you.
Eddie Vedder
#47. I don't trust nobody, especially when they say something good.
Eddie Vedder
#48. I'm optimistic yet disillusioned, hopeful yet frustrated.
Eddie Vedder
#49. Well there's a lot of machines making music today too so you should expect perfection from them! Other than that it's humans programming it which is actually why i still like it. But yeah, that sounds about right. Now what I've got to do is I've got to stop expecting it of myself.
Eddie Vedder
#50. You can't be perfect. You can't be the perfect father. You can't be the perfect singer.
Eddie Vedder
#51. Ladies and gentleman of Florida, this is the real Jeff Ament ... take a very good look because there's an imposter running around ... if someone comes up to you and says he's Jeff Ament and says he wants to take your pot or wants to take you to a strip club, it's probably not him.
Eddie Vedder
#52. Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It's real easy to fall.
Eddie Vedder
#53. There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful.
Eddie Vedder
#54. The one thing about going from the audience to the stage in just three years is that you know how it feels to be down there.
Eddie Vedder
#55. Your pot laws are great! But your gun laws are even better!
Eddie Vedder
#56. If he can't sleep, how will he ever dream?
Eddie Vedder
#57. Competition is healthy, if you can turn it off and on. When someone gets too cocky in victory, that can ruin the positive aspect.
Eddie Vedder
#58. The smallest oceans still make big big waves.
Eddie Vedder
#59. You mature as far as your understanding of what it's going to take, and you increase your stamina. You don't let frustration overtake you when you're looking for change.
Eddie Vedder
#60. I don't need drugs to make my life tragic.
Eddie Vedder
#61. It's fun singing with other people who are really good singers. There's something kind of poignant about braiding a couple vocals.
Eddie Vedder
#62. You feel that no matter what's said in the music or how pointed it may get, the most you can wish for is that it plants a few seeds.
Eddie Vedder
#63. Any conversations we hear about 'So who are Pearl Jam marketing to?' are despicable.
Eddie Vedder
#64. You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.
Eddie Vedder
#65. If 'little George Dubya Bush' wins, we are going to apply for Canadian citizenship.
Eddie Vedder
#66. Wait a minute, yes, those are human heads.
Eddie Vedder
#67. I would do anything to be around music.
You don't even have to pay me.
Eddie Vedder
#68. I probably get strangers coming up to me two or three times a week to just say something nice. I get more than my share of compliments as I walk through my daily life. I'm not having to show off or make a point about how good I am at doing something. I think I've always kind of been that way.
Eddie Vedder
#69. If people don't like what I'm doing I really don't have time to hear it. I'm doing something good with my life and I challenge them to do the same.
Eddie Vedder
#70. I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like ... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.
Eddie Vedder
#71. War hurts. It hurts no matter which sides the bombs are falling on.
Eddie Vedder
#72. If it's a good cause, I'll play just about anything.
Eddie Vedder
#73. At some point, when you read about this factual information that comes out in The New Zealand Herald and it's barely mentioned in The New York Times, then I think you've got to question where this is being manipulated, and where the filters are.
Eddie Vedder
#74. I've been writing and collecting songs on the ukulele for at least 10 years, so it was time to clear them out of the apartment building and make room for some new occupants.I need to make room for the bassoon record.
Eddie Vedder
#75. I know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky. But why can't it be mine?
Eddie Vedder
#76. If you're anti-war it doesn't mean you are 'Pro' one side or the other in a conflict. However, it does make you 'Pro' many thingsPro-Peace, Pro-Human, Pro-Evolution, it makes you Pro-Communication, Pro-Diplomacy, Pro-Love, Pro-Understanding, Pro-Forgiveness.
Eddie Vedder
#77. One thing you might suggest to a young band is don't get involved in any kind of long-term contract because everything changes on a bimonthly basis: The way people hear music and access it, the way it is distributed.
Eddie Vedder
#78. The sorrow grows bigger when the sorrow's denied.
Eddie Vedder
#79. Do you force your kids to pay attention to what's going on, or do you let them live their lives outside of it? My hope is that my child is a strong activist. That would make me most proud.
Eddie Vedder
#80. If I'm not on tour or in the studio, I'm in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It's not lost on me that it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.
Eddie Vedder
#81. I would thank God, but I don't believe in it ... It's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything ... All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.
Eddie Vedder
#82. We went from an era when rock 'n' roll meant wearing a bustier as a woman and these spandex things and guys trying to portray someone that wasn't realistic. We are trying to make it seem real ... relate to our lives.
Eddie Vedder
#84. I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you ... You try to reflect the mood of the songs.
Eddie Vedder
#85. I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.
Eddie Vedder
#86. I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.
Eddie Vedder
#87. I've got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts.
Eddie Vedder
#88. Life moves fast. As much as you can learn from your history, you have to move forward.
Eddie Vedder
#89. I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.
Eddie Vedder
#90. I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines.
Eddie Vedder
#91. No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.
Eddie Vedder
#92. Music's at its best when it has a purpose.
Eddie Vedder
#93. I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.
Eddie Vedder
#94. I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a positive thing.
Eddie Vedder
#95. It's the ones without scars - those are the people you have to watch out for ...
Eddie Vedder
#96. I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to say things. I'm a little exhausted by the process.
Eddie Vedder
#98. People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!
Eddie Vedder
#99. I just finished touring, and I'm on a detox thing. It's a heavy detox, so nothing in my belly except water, salt, and cayenne pepper.
Eddie Vedder
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