Pearl Jam wrapped up their epic 2024 tour in Sydney over the weekend, delivering a show fans will be talking about for years.
Pearl Jam’s final 2024 tour show in Sydney was charged with emotion and history as the band performed “Hunger Strike”, a song originally created by Temple of the Dog – a supergroup featuring Eddie Vedder and the late Chris Cornell.
The performance, their first live rendition of the song in ten years, signalled a tribute to the Soundgarden frontman, who passed away in 2017.
Cornell and Vedder’s collaboration on “Hunger Strike” is legendary in rock history, with Cornell initially writing it as a filler track for the Temple of the Dog album but struggled with parts of the vocals during rehearsal.
Vedder, who was rehearsing separately with his newly forming band Pearl Jam, stepped in to sing the lower vocal parts. Their voices blended seamlessly, prompting Cornell to transform the song into a duet. This became a breakout moment, launching “Hunger Strike” to success and giving Vedder his first featured vocal performance on a record.
For Vedder, Cornell’s death in 2017 was a devastating loss. In interviews, Vedder, who called the late rocker an “older brother,” admitted to being “angry” about Cornell’s suicide and described his struggle to process the grief.
“I’ve had to be somewhat in denial,” Vedder admitted in 2020. “I don’t even feel like I had a choice. I was just terrified where I would go if I allowed myself to feel what I needed to feel or what I was instinctively wanting to feel or how dark I felt like I was gonna go.”
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“I still haven’t quite dealt with it,” he said at the time. “I’ll get stronger as time goes.”
The Soundgarden frontrunner became close after Vedder moved to Seattle to form Pearl Jam.”We were neighbours. I would hang out with him outside the band more than even the other band guys, and I didn’t know that many people in Seattle,” Vedder once told PEOPLE.
“We would go on crazy hiking adventures, or we would go mountain biking, or we would chase the dog in the rain while drinking s—ty beer—and it was cool.”
Revisiting “Hunger Strike” during the Sydney show was undoubtedly a moving homage to his friend and collaborator.
The Sydney concert, marking the conclusion of Pearl Jam’s first tour of Australia and New Zealand in a decade, also included a surprise cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “No Surrender”, a song Vedder hadn’t performed live since 2006. The tour celebrated their latest album, Dark Matter, and featured a mix of new material and classic hits.
This tour also marked Pearl Jam’s first shows in this part of the world since their iconic Big Day Out performances in 2014. The demand was so overwhelming that extra dates were added in Melbourne, Sydney, and Auckland. With Pixies joining them — who recently made a surprise appearance at the 2024 ARIA Awards — each night became a celebration of the kind of music that defined an era.
