The Rocker and the Teacher / Howard Zinn & Eddie Vedder
Jeff Glenisky
While Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder and historian Howard
Zinn may lead very different lives, their conversation here
shows there's no greater bridge than a desire to shake up
the status quo.
Eddie Vedder, a rock star whose breakthrough video (Pearl
Jam's "Jeremy," 1992)showed a student erupting from his
desk, has never taken a political science class. Howard
Zinn, a retired professor and author of the land mark
new-history text A People's History of the United States
(Harper Collins, 1980), had never before been to anything
like the Pearl Jam concert he saw last summer. But the
media-critical academic was the interviewer of choice for
the media-weary singer (whose 1999 Grammy-nominated band's
behind-the-scenes labors are documented in the upcoming book
Pearl Jam: Place/Date [Universe], by Charles Peterson and
Lance Mercer). When the doctor and the rocket met for this
conversation, they found they have similar backgrounds, and
consciousness that have been shaped accordingly -- and that
they could each learn from the different world in which the
other works.
Howard Zinn: I remember reading that in your early years you
had a job that enabled you to read a lot. Was that when you
were working as a security guard?
Eddie Vedder: Yeah. In an eight-hour shift, usually for
hours are quiet. So I'd write bring drum machines to work --
whatever I could do to still do what I have a passion for
and get paid at the same time.
HZ: At that times you weren't getting paid for your music?
EV: No.
HZ: But you were already writing songs?
EV: Oh, yeah. [Writing Songs] is like a curse actually: It's
something you're doomed to do. [laughs]
HZ: So many people have a secret desire to do something
artistic -- music, art, poetry. And they know they're not
going to get paid for it, so they drive a taxi, do
carpentry, work as a security person, waiter, busboy. And
most of them get out of those jobs. I think of that whenever
I see anybody doing a menial job, like when somebody takes
my bag into the hotel. I think what are the secret longings
of that person? What are their secret talents?
EV: That's why you never really have a silent cab driver. My
wife and I both have this theory: [Ask a cab driver] one
question and learn about other parts of the world.
HZ: Was it your reading that got you so interested in the
world beyond music, in social issues? Or was it something
else?
EV: I think for me, it stems from having nothing, and
knowing how scary that can be, and knowing that no one is
going to help you and that you're gonna raise you hand and
no one will call on you. We were hard-working, ambitious
young folks, and I remember thinking, Man, there might not
be any way out of here. I don't know how we're gonna get
anything more, if we'll be able to afford to travel. How big
is our world going to be? Is it going to be the apartment to
the bus to the job and back again? How much of life will we
get to experience?
HZ: So in your case, thinking about other people who had
little emerged from the fact that yourself had so little.
EV: Yeah. I still remember how it feels.
HZ: I think that's the thing: remembering how it feels.
There are people who have had very little, but then become
successful, prosperous, well known, and they forget -- or
maybe they choose to forget, maybe that's easier -- what it
was like, what it is like for other people. My parents were
poor; we lived in the slims of New York. My father was a
waiter with a fourth-grade education; my mother had a
seventh-grade education and she was the educated one in the
family! Actually, she was a very smart women, and my father
was a hard-working man trying to keep his family alive.
Being aware of that, looking at how hard my father worked,
at my mother taking care of four sons, and then at the end,
seeing them having nothing [material] to show for it,
nothing... From that point on, for the rest of my life, I
never believed anyone when they said -- some of my students
would say this to me, and my students came from well-off
families -- "Oh, my father made; in this country if you work
hard, you'll make it." The implication being, if you didn't
make it, you didn't work hard. And I knew that wasn't true.
EV: I think it helps to hang on to that stuff as a writer,
too. I think I got a lifetime of material out of the whole
experience.
HZ: You started writing early, right?
EV: Pretty much, yeah. [pause] I'm not... See, I don't...
I'm not a... See, that's why songs and rock 'n' roll are
good for me: I have time to put together a thought [laughs],
and you don't have anyone checking the punctuation.
HZ: You're better off that way.
EV: Yeah, well, songwriting is a good medium.
HZ: I say that on the basis of having been in the academic
world. You see people who are meticulous about their grammar
and punctuation and spelling, and you fall asleep at the
second sentence. There is not life to it. I always wanted to
see essays that had life to them -- I didn't care if the
students spelled right. The important thing is the feeling.
I guess with rock 'n' roll, you know right away that you
don't have to pay attention to those rules. You can do
whatever you want. Was it always songs that you were
writing?
EV: Yeah, I needed something that in the end would give the
writing volume. With guitars and drums behind it, you can
turn it up. With melody and rhythm, these simple sentences
have a little more life to them.
HS: It's a mix, a collective thing. It's not just you as an
individual doing something great, it's you plus this person,
that person, that person, and so you become this team.
That's something I discovered for myself after spending
years working on a number of individual projects, writing
articles, and books. Then I wrote a play in the mid '70s
about the anarchist-feminist Emma Goldman from the early
twentieth century. If ever you get a chance, read her
autobiography, Living My Life, 'cause that's what she did.
She said, "I'm gonna live my life the way I want to live it.
I'm not going to let the government tell me, the church tell
me, my bosses tell me, I'm not going to let anyone tell me
how I'm going to live my life -- my personal life, my sexual
life." Of course, that got her thrown in jail. When I wrote
this play about her, the great moment for me was when I
handed my words, the script, to the director so he could
cast the play with actors, choose the set designer, select
the right music, etc. Suddenly I go to opening night and
look at the thing on-stage and say, "wow!" What you're
describing sounds like that experience. The song is no
longer just about your words, there are all these other
elements to it now as well. I had never been witness to a
scene like the one I saw at your concert in L.A., and what
was interesting to me was how much everything in the
atmosphere contributed to what you were doing on-stage. It
all created a fantastic mood. And it's exciting that the
audience is in it with you; they feel they're part of
[what's happening on-stage].
EV: It is exciting to see twenty thousand people all
agreeing on something. Wow, that's quite a concept right
there.
HZ: When you started composing songs, did you think you
would write things that had some sort of social message? Did
you have that desire from the beginning?
EV: I did, but that was because of the music I was listening
to tat the time. The music that effected me always had some
kind of story line or substance to it; it wasn't just about
motorcycles or rock 'n' roll.
HZ: What music were you listening to?
EV: This guy called Pete Townshend [of the Who].
HZ: Oh, Pete Townshend. I've actually heard of him.
EV: He was a little more theatrical. Some of the songs would
tell stories or describe characters. One of the biggest
periods of in my writing, or learning to write, or
improvising my writing, or learning to write, or improving
my writing, was the early '80s, when most mainstream music
was just -- it wasn't communicating anything. It just got
silly for a while. I knew I could do better that that. I was
writing music for myself, to keep myself inspired, not
necessarily inspired about music but just about life. I
wanted to hear things that I couldn't go out and purchase
myself at the time.
HZ: Do you find that the other people in the band are on
your wavelength as far as the songs you write? Are there
disagreements about the substance of what you do, or the
content of your songs?
EV: No, there's never been that at all. Which I like to
think is because I'm so hard on myself that by the time I
bring a song to them it's at least halfway decent. I respect
everyone in the band, so that when they pick up on
something, it means a lot to me. Every once in a while
they'll go, "Wow, I was listening to this and I figured out
what you're saying there" or "I see the double meaning
there." I consider that a huge compliment. And they've been
writing, too, and bringing social issues of their own to the
table. Our guitar player has gone out to Indian reservations
and actually helped to build structures with native
Americans and other volunteers. And we donate money: In
Seattle we raised five hundred grand by playing two shows,
and the money went to buying books for schools -- stuff I
believe the government should really be taking care of, that
rock bands shouldn't have to support. And then there's all
the money we give for taxes. This is where my frustration
gets raised to another level. Every year we hand over a huge
chunk of money [to the government], none of us uses a lot of
loopholes, and there still isn't enough money for stuff like
schoolbooks. My wife says when you fill out your taxes,
there should be a checklist at the bottom, and everyone gets
to pick three things they'd like to see some of their money
go to.
HZ: I think most people would say, Let's give more money to
the important things, like health care, education, kids --
all of that -- and not the military. I think that's a
terrific idea.
EV: Here's a bigger question. Near the end of your book A
People's History of the United States, you quote Marlin
Fitzwater [White House press secretary, 1983-92] talking
about how when individuals and corporations pay up to four
hundred thousand dollars to attend a Republican party dinner
to raise campaign funds, that have access. And then when
asked about people who don't have so much money, he replies
that they have to demand access in other ways. That's the
frustration. How do you get that access? And how do you get
enough people motivated and together?
HZ: It's very hard to sustain that powerful an interest in
politics. We were able to do it in the '60s; there are
certain issues that have such an inherent pull, such a tug
at people's consciences that they will stay with you and you
will stay with it for a long time. Racial segregation in the
late '50s-early '60s was one of them. The war in Vietnam was
another. I think what's happening now is we haven't found
the issue that will excite people enough to build a great
national movement, a central dramatic issue that will grab
people and keep them focused for a while. You know from the
benefit concerts you do that there are people working on
Tibet, people working in choice, people working on providing
food and medicine. There's a huge number of people in this
country we don't know about who are doing good things. It's
important to know about those things because otherwise you
would be very discouraged -- you would look on TV or in the
newspapers and see nothing but what this senator or
congressman or secretary of state is saying. Television and
newspapers are not telling you what these other people are
doing.
I think of music as playing that kind of role. I think,
Here's politics on this level up here and it's corrupt and
awful, and then underneath that surface there are the
people, there's culture, there's music, there's writing,
there's painting, there's poetry. There are people who link
things and they are, little by little, having an effect.
Things are bubbling beneath the surface. I think of music as
being part of that.
EV: Someday I really hope to take a political science class.
Until then, I'm reading your work.
HZ: I think you would learn more from just reading and
talking to people than taking classes. People who haven't
taken classes have a romantic notion of what classes do.
Like people who haven't gone to college thing, Oh, if I only
went to college, I'd really be smart.
EV: Wow, so I can just let go of all that?
HZ: Yeah, absolutely.
EV: I'm going to walk out of here feeling a lot... taller.
HZ: To me artists have always been wonderful -- what would
we do without them? But whenever I come across an artist who
is a little more than an artist, who doesn't just do art but
really thinks about the world outside, to me that is a great
blessing. When I was a teenager listening to Pete Seeger, I
thought, He's not just a folksinger; he knows, he cares
about what's going on in the world. And that made me feel
something for him I didn't feel for other good folksingers.
EV: Or even Sinatra... This has been great; I've appreciated
every moment of your time. And it was really nice of you to
come see us play. Actually, it mad me a little
uncomfortable.
HZ: Well, going to a Pearl Jam concert was an experience I
would not have had in my life if it hadn't been for you.
Just to take in that whole scene, and to be affected by it,
was something I never would have imagined.
--
We are all conduits for something. Whatever we are in
contact with, whatever we surround ourselves with, passes
through us whether we like it or not. A driver zooming
through traffic because he's listening to speed metal is a
conduit for the music. Likewise, we are conduits for the
enterprises in which we participate. Ideas pass through us,
spirituality and certainly the desire for money passes
through us as surely as the cord through the wooden hands
of a marionette. When large corporations are the ultimate
purveyors of what we make, it has to affect our work. We
become conduits for corporate ideology. We take the check
and wonder why we're miserable.
--Eric Bogosian
jason
jason