Chris Cornell’s passing will continue to affect the rock music world, and the greater music community, for years to come, and the latest colleague to express his intense grief is collaborator and Pearl Jam legend Eddie Vedder, who took a moment at his recent London show to open up about the event for the first time.
Vedder, who describes the late singer as “an older brother” had played several musical tributes to Cornell in recent solo shows, but hadn’t yet spoken about it with fans or the media. In a similar sentiment to those expressed by Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington, who penned a moving open letter to Cornell yesterday, Vedder chooses to be “grateful, not sad” for the time he was able to spend with him.
Eddie’s heartfelt speech was shared by a fan who was in attendance, before being reported by Ultimate Guitar – you can read his entire speech below. As Rolling Stone notes, Vedder’s “performance etiquette policy” disallows video from being taken of the shows, so the transcript is all we have, but we’re sure it was a powerful moment for all in attendance.
If you or somebody you care for needs help or information about depression, suicide, anxiety, or mental health issues, contact Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636 or Lifeline on 13 11 14.
Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate these days. I was thinking about the history of this building and the Bowie history. So I started to think about that and my mind began to wander. It’s not a good…
So I haven’t really been talking about some things and I kind of… now it feels like it’s conspicuous because I lost a really close friend of mine, somebody who…
(applause)
I’ll say this too, I grew up as 4 boys, 4 brothers and I lost my brother 2 years ago tragically like that in an accident and after that and losing a few other people, I’m not good at it, meaning I’m not…I have not been willing to accept the reality and that’s just how I’m dealing with it.
(applause starts)
No, no, no, no
So I want to be there for the family, be there for the community, be there for my brothers in my band, certainly the brothers in his band. But these things will take time but my friend is going to be gone forever and I will just have to…
These things take time and I just want to send this out to everyone who was affected by it and they all back home and here appreciate it so deeply the support and the good thoughts of a man who was a … you know he wasn’t just a friend he was someone I looked up to like my older brother.
About two days after the news, I think it was the second night we were sleeping in this little cabin near the water, a place he would’ve loved. And all these memories started coming in about 1:30am like woke me up. Like big memories, memories I would think about all the time. Like the memories were big muscles.
And then I couldn’t stop the memories. And trying to sleep it was like if the neighbors had the music playing and you couldn’t stop it. But then it was fine because then it got into little memories. It just kept going and going and going. And I realized how lucky I was to have hours worth of…you know if each of these memories was quick and I had hours of them. How fortunate was I?!
And I didn’t want to be sad, wanted to be grateful not sad. I’m still thinking about those memories and I will live with those memories in my heart and I will…love him forever.
