Four of the five members of Pearl Jam joined Joe Biden’s wife, Dr. Jill Biden, and Kamala Harris’ husband, Doug Emhoff, last night for a conversation about voting and activism.
Jill Biden and Douglas Emhoff donned Pearl Jam t-shirts, which featured Jeff Ament, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready and Eddie Vedder on Zoom from their respective homes. Before the online conversation, Douglas Emhoff curated the pre-event playlist.
According to Variety, Eddie revealed that Pearl Jam had been planning to tour through U.S. swing states at this time of year had it not been for COVID.
Vedder also said he’d just seen upcoming Bruce Springsteen documentary Letter to You. After watching a sequence where Springsteen and the E Street Band members hugged each other following a particularly emotional take, Vedder said, “I just started to lose it, because I miss that. [Pearl Jam’s members] are close family and we share our love with each other, but as far as our brothers, and hugging strangers, it’s a deep hole. It’s something we’ve missed for so long [and] it’s one other thing to fight for at this critical, critical time”.
McCready asked Emhoff how a Biden/Harris administration would work to stabilize the music and arts industries crippled by the pandemic. “This isn’t just devastating for the arts and culture scene — it’s a disaster for our local communities”.
Vedder also reminding attendees that the members of Pearl Jam have been voting absentee for 25 years and that in the decade since Washington state went to a mail-in voting system, “the amount of voter fraud has been minuscule. It has been a little scary to see how [Donald Trump] is trying to create an issue before we even have an issue.”
You can read the whole article on Variety.
.@DrBiden and @DouglasEmhoff wearing @PearlJam T-Shirts is the photo we all needed today. pic.twitter.com/R3JTpzfohn
— Andrew Weinstein (@Weinsteinlaw) October 8, 2020
Born in Reggio Emilia in 1980. He created pearljamonline.it in 2001 and wrote the first edition of “Pearl Jam Evolution” in 2009 along with his wife Daria. Since 2022, he is behind 2 podcasts: “Pearl Jam dalla A alla Z” and “Fuori Orario Not Another Podcast”. He has collaborated with Barracuda Style, HvsR, Rolling Stone, Rockol and Il Fatto Quotidiano. He continues relentlessly to try to find “beautiful melodies that say terrible things”.
Favorite song: Present Tense
Favorite album: No Code
Favorite bands/artists other than PJ: Tom Waits, Soundgarden, Ramones, Bruce Springsteen, IDLES, Fontaines D.C., The Murder Capital, Dead Kennedys, Mark Lanegan, Cat Power, R.E.M.