Eddie Vedder

With his growly, lacerated blues howl and heart-on-sleeve alt-rock anthems, Eddie Vedder led grunge heroes Pearl Jam to worldwide success in the 1990s, building a reputation as a principled, socially conscious songwriter with a soul-wrenching, thunderbolt of a voice. Born Edward Severson III on December 23, 1964, in suburban Evanston, Illinois, he started playing guitar at the age of 12 and took up surfing when his family moved to San Diego, California in the mid-1970s. When his parents divorced, he discovered that he had been living with his stepfather and not his biological father who was actually deceased, and so he ended up taking his mother's maiden name of Vedder as he started making demo tapes and playing in local funk-rock band Bad Radio. When Red Hot Chili Peppers' drummer Jack Irons gave Vedder a demo tape of young Seattle band Mother Love Bone - whose frontman Andrew Wood had recently died - he wrote lyrics and added vocals to their tracks and ended up moving to Seattle to work with guitarist Stone Gossard and bass player Jeff Ament. Initially, they teamed up with Soundgarden's Chris Cornell to pay tribute to Wood on the Temple of the Dog album, but out of that Pearl Jam officially formed in 1990. The band soon became a major part of the Seattle music scene that was fast becoming the home of grunge rock. Eddie Vedder and the band went on to pen their classic anthems “Alive” and “Jeremy” and their debut album Ten shot to Number 2 on the US charts, sold over ten million copies, and became regarded as one of the classic rock albums of the era. Though ingrained with punk spirit and hailing from the disenfranchised US alternative scene, the band went on to top the US charts with the albums Vs., Vitalogy, and No Code. Away from the band, Vedder first started creating music for film soundtracks when he collaborated with legendary Pakistani musician Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on a track for death row drama Dead Man Walking in 1996. Eddie Vedder’s debut solo album was a collection of stripped-back, rootsy, acoustic tunes written for Sean Penn's survivalist movie Into the Wild in 2007. Over the years, Eddie Vedder also made guest appearances on albums by Crowded House, Neil Young, and REM. His second solo album, Ukulele Songs (2011), pitched his trademark gravelly, weathered vocals against the bright, cheery strums of the humble ukulele. Subsequently, Eddie was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as part of Pearl Jam in 2017. After a long wait, “Long Way,” the first single from his third solo album Earthling saw the light in September 2021. Two months later, he issued the single “The Haves”, followed by the album’s third single, “Brother the Cloud”, in January 2022. In February, Eddie Vedder released Earthling, which was met with critical accolades.