From: marck@nwu.edu (Jater & Co.)
Subject: Pearl Jam (Lollapalooza) anecdote
Followup-To: rec.music.misc
Organization: NU ACNS
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 19:57:04 GMT

i'm doing the unthinkable:  i'm reprinting something copyrighted without
permission.  (a gasp rises from the crowd.)  when i read this, i screamed
out loud.  when i read it to my girlfriend over the phone, she broke out in
a sweat.

i'm sitting here reading the Chicago Reader, and Bill Wyman's article on
the St. Louis and Chicago Lollapalooza shows.  he basically says that the
Pearl Jam sets at both concerts were pleasing, but the best moment of both
shows came during the closing of their set at The Riverport, outside of St.
Louis.

i think i would have paid the $30 admission *just* to see this:

---

"Anyway, at Riverport, playing at about three in the afternoon, the band
had the entire venue bounding along to the songs.  On the last number,
[Eddie] Vetter [lead singer of Pearl Jam], an inveterate stage diver,
looked around for the best place from which to make his obligatory leap
into the outstretched hands of the crowd.  (The higher the better, is his
motto.)  He took a fancy to one of the giant pillars holding up the
pavilion at the side of the stage.  From the front, the pillars consisted
of giant squares, six or eight feet high, each with a single diagonal beam
bisecting it.  Climbing it looked difficult but not impossible -- indeed,
large plastic plates had been placed over the bottom two or three squares
of the pillars that anchored the back end of the roof, way out in the
crowd, to stop kids from climbing them.  The only thing between Vetter and
the pillar was a bank of amplifiers pushed to the front of the stage right.
 Grasping their wire-mesh fronts, Vetter pulled himself across, reached the
pillar, and started clambering up it, giant rung by giant rung.  The crowd
started frothing at the mouth and clustered below Vetter in anticipation of
his jump.  But he didn't stop climbing; he continued to the top until he
could, gingerly, reach out, grab hold, and swing himself up into the
superstrucure beneath the pavilion roof.

"From there, he slowly, carefully half walked, half stumbled his way across
the roof's undercarriage, some 50 feet above a frenzied crowd and very hard
floor.  There was no catwalk, no handrail:  Vetter essentially had to do a
high-wire act, walking across a surface narrow as a balance beam about half
the way.  Beneath him was sheer pandemonium:  The crowd, to put it mildly,
was going nuts; the remaining members of Pearl Jam kept blasting their way
through some riff onstage; from backstage, this or that manager type kept
bursting out, barking into a walkie-talkie, and disappearing.  Up on the
lawn, people could tell something was happening, but were a little less
certain in their excitement -- until Vetter, after five minutes or so,
reached the back of the pavilion, poked his head out, and waved to the
crowd, eliciting a roar that was probably heard in Saint Louis, about 10
miles away.  Vetter started shinnying down the breezeway pylon, only to
discover the plastic shields.  He half sat, half crouched, breathed hard,
and watched the crowd grow some 20 feet below him.  With nothing else to
do, he jumped.

"If a movie had been made of the incident, the moment he leapt off the
pylon the picture would have switched to slow motion: we would see him
stretch out his arms and hang for a moment or two in space before beginning
his downward plunge.  In real life, though, a guy who jumps off a pillar 20
feet up drops exactly like a stone.  The kids' upstretched hands broke his
fall; Vetter then pushed through the crowd, raced across the breezeway,
tore down an aisle and leapt back onstage.  The band finished up the song
and took off, just in time, I heard, to allow Vetter to throw up."


mlb

*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+* marck@nwu.edu +*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+*+
m l bailey                           || Zorg: "I don't see the connection
flagrant poseur                      ||        between demolition and 
northwestern university              ||        writing."
looking for wide open spaces         || Betty: "I'm not surprised."
high above the kitchen               ||
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