Vedder Quotes & Sayings

Singing someone else's songs is like keeping your clothes on. — Eddie Vedder

I don't need drugs to make my life tragic. — Eddie Vedder

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

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

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

If it's a band I like, I just hope they will survive it all. And I'll admit that if it's crap music, I hope they won't and it'll go away. Simply because there are too many great bands who should be heard in their place. — Eddie Vedder

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

Your pot laws are great! But your gun laws are even better! — Eddie Vedder

If he can't sleep, how will he ever dream? — Eddie Vedder

I just don't understand, if they see numbers [of CEO salaries]that represent people, how they can somehow skirt around that and morally justify taking or ruining those lives and leaving them with nothing. That, to me, is violent crime. It's certainly more violent than selling grams of pot to other adults. — Eddie Vedder

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough. — Eddie Vedder

I'll ride the wave, where it takes me! — Eddie Vedder

The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion. — Eddie Vedder

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

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

I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me. — Eddie Vedder

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

It's a fragile thing,this life we lead if I think too much I can get overwhelmed by the grace by which live our lives with death over our shoulder. — Eddie Vedder

You have to be able to grow and move with the organism that is the music industry. You need to maintain flexibility. Ownership of your own stuff is key and then you're able to dictate on a present-terms basis what would be the most effective way to protect yourself and what you've created. You also don't want to lock yourself into a situation where a major label owns part of your touring and merchandise. — Eddie Vedder

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

Yeah, we'll play that. You want fries with that? — Eddie Vedder

For the most part, I really love being in a collaborative thing. And in a collaborative thing if you have a singer as good as Sean Smith or Eddie Vedder, you kind of think, well, why don't you just go ahead and let them sing? People seem to really like it. — Stone Gossard

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

Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force ... a different kind of energy. — Eddie Vedder

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

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

These pop songs almost feel like tabloid journalism, in a way. It's c**p that people seem to like. And I don't know if it has meaning. I don't know if one of the pop songs of the summer has any fibre in it. People are consuming it, and is it healthy? ... Maybe there's some healthy property or some restorative property that I'm not receiving. It seems like it has a really high fructose content. — Eddie Vedder

I've got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts. — Eddie Vedder

Delight, Delight, Delight ... in our youth. — Eddie Vedder

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

Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane. — Eddie Vedder

I don't wanna think, I wanna FEEL. — Eddie Vedder

Before music videos first came out, you'd listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you'd come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression. — Eddie Vedder

Sure as I am breathing, sure as I'm sad I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh I leave here believing more than I had This love has got no ceiling — Eddie Vedder

Gave her love away, put it in my pocket when it should of been framed! — Eddie Vedder

I think Elvis Presley is a crooner. Even people like Eddie Vedder, I hear him sing some things and I go "wow". Seal, that kind of nice voice, too. — Michael Buble

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

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

At a certain point, you realize you have a responsibility more behind yourself and your need for adrenaline. I'm glad I did things in my 20s that were more reckless. — Eddie Vedder

No music is going to stop the war. What's going to stop the war is a large amount of body bags, or a large amount of people in the streets, protesting it before it starts. — Eddie Vedder

People listen to music for different reasons. Some people, -its background music - but other people need it to survive. Other people need music to get things out and maybe that's just where I'm coming from, you know, when things weren't easy for me, growing up. You know, music, I felt, saved my life. Pete Townshend, wherever you are, Pete, you saved my life. You know, whether he knows it or not. I wouldn't be here. And I had absolutely nothing else besides music. And so that's still, you know, that's in me, and so if we're gonna play, if we're gonna get up and play, or write a song, you know, write about something that means something. You know, why write about, you know, 'Oh, pretty day', or, 'Pretty girl' or 'Pretty people', there's nothing ... people have different reasons for listening and playing. I need to - for me-, it's much more.. religious! — Eddie Vedder

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

He who forgets will be destined to remember ... — Eddie Vedder

I am a thief, I am a liar, I am George Bush and my son is an asshole. — Eddie Vedder

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

People wonder if the Pearl Jam audience will get into The Buzzcocks. Eddie Vedder is a big Buzzcocks fan. He used to come to see Buzzcocks before he was in Pearl Jam. If his fans like what he likes, I guess that they might like The Buzzcocks. — Steve Diggle

Wait a minute, yes, those are human heads. — Eddie Vedder

Society, you're a crazy breed. — Eddie Vedder

Sometimes I hear news about the huge dollars involved with CEO pay and corporate-management salaries, and I'm mystified at how someone can justify taking that much at the cost of other people's livelihoods. In a bizarre way, I'm almost kind of curious, like "How can they absolve themselves and enjoy their wealth?" I don't understand it. — Eddie Vedder

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

I don't work so hard at trying to get every song to be three-dimensional and mean so much. I just want to breathe, right now, with the music. — Eddie Vedder

It's saying, just stop, and be together. Don't talk now, just breathe and feel each other's presence ... — Eddie Vedder

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

The love received is the love that is saved. — Eddie Vedder

So my one kid's 4, my other kid's 4 months, I'm 44, Barack Obama is the 44th president - it's all lining up nicely here. — Eddie Vedder

I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together. — Eddie Vedder

We've got clouds and rain, just like in Seattle .. but Sao Paulo is better. — Eddie Vedder

You know, rock stardom ... I have a hard time discussing that because I don't really accept it. It's not really that tangible. What's really bizarre is how it's used as a thing - you know, 'He's the rock star of politics,' 'He's the rock star of quarterbacks' - like it's the greatest thing in the world. — Eddie Vedder

The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself. — Eddie Vedder

This little four-string songwriting tool started changing the way I brought songs to the group. — Eddie Vedder

The smallest oceans still make big big waves. — Eddie Vedder

You know, punk bands now sell with one record - their first or second record - sell 10 times the amount of records than the Ramones did throughout their career with 20-something records. That's why I go over to Johnny Ramone's house and do yard work three times a week, just to absolve some of the guilt. — Eddie Vedder

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

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived. — Eddie Vedder

It's more like you write what comes to you ... You try to reflect the mood of the songs. Take 'Rearviewmirror', we start off with the music and it kinds of propels the lyrics. It made me feel like I was in a car, leaving something, a bad situation. There's an emotion there. I remembered all the times I wanted to leave ... — Eddie Vedder

We're not going to be the coolest rock stars in the world. We're trying to be good musicians. — Eddie Vedder

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing. — Eddie Vedder

That makes it even more offensive to me that she's interested in our band and she did something for Slaughter. — Eddie Vedder

I had a long talk with Bruce Springsteen on a rooftop during the Vote for Change tour (in 2004). And it boiled down to this: That guy you used to be, he's still in the car. He'll always be in the car. Just don't let him drive. He might be shouting out directions. But whatever you do, don't let him get behind the wheel. — Eddie Vedder

Dream the dreams of other men, you'll be no ones rival. — Eddie Vedder

The only person that I have met, that I have ever been in awe of, is Eddie Vedder. — Pete Sampras

So much energy comes out of concerts sometimes, especially good ones that are really moving. And that energy, no matter how great the show is, it dissipates within two weeks or a month. — Eddie Vedder

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and I get excited talking about making record artwork or working with T-shirt designs. The least exciting part for us is talking about the finances; it's like going to the dentist for us. But we at least try to do it in a creative way and put our stamp on it. I can only think that we create something that's worth the value of that dollar. — Eddie Vedder

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

I think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something — Eddie Vedder

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

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community. — Eddie Vedder

On bended knee is no way to be free
lifting up an empty cup I ask silently
that all my destinations will accept the one that's me
so I can breath
Circles they grow and they swallow people whole
half their lives they say goodnight to wive's they'll never know
got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul
so it goes ... — Eddie Vedder

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

It's the ones without scars - those are the people you have to watch out for ... — Eddie Vedder

Nothingman" is about a troubled relationship. I wrote it before I was married.I might bring something I know from the relationship to "Nothingman," but I'm thinking about someone else going through it, someone who fucked up. I didn't fuck up. The idea is about if you love someone and they love you, don't fuck up ... 'cause you are left with less than nothing. — Eddie Vedder

Caffeine. The gateway drug. — Eddie Vedder

That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work. — Eddie Vedder

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

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

Darkness comes in waves ... tell me, why invite it to stay? — Eddie Vedder

I'm making music for music's sake, and I have an audience I'm proud of. — Eddie Vedder

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

Best two rock voices I've heard in a last few years both have been from grunge bands: it's Eddie Vedder and the other one is Chris Cornell from Soundgarden. — Bruce Dickinson

If 'little George Dubya Bush' wins, we are going to apply for Canadian citizenship. — Eddie Vedder

I had actually been going to Hawaii for quite a while before I ever picked up the uke. I think with anything new you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if it comes to you quickly, and the uke facilitates that. — Eddie Vedder

I'm Eddie Vedder and I sing. I do. — Eddie Vedder

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

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

I don't know how people do it these days - paparazzi and that kind of thing. That's something I can't even imagine. — Eddie Vedder

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

Most of my ukulele heroes were traditional players from Hawaii, like Eddie Kamae and Ohta-san. There may not be uke stars in popular culture, but there are certainly pop stars that play uke - George Harrison, Eddie Vedder, Taylor Swift, Train, and Paul McCartney. — Jake Shimabukuro

I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a positive thing. — Eddie Vedder

It's an art to live with pain ... mix the light into gray. — Eddie Vedder

Worship the music, not the musicians. — Eddie Vedder