According to Anthony Kiedis's autobiography "Scar Tissue" Ed used to be a Chili Peppers cover band before Jack Irons introduced him to Stone and them

This has been brought up somewhere before and wass concludede that Kiedis has mistaken Bad Radio for a chilli's cover band because their funk style

i.e. Bad Radio

What the Funk is Up?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnXZQ-z5mvU

or

Believe You Me (the breakdown near the end)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpk6WstIs20


fucking careerist....

ha ha ha

He's addicted to the shindig.

My buddy has been telling me this for ages and I keep telling him besides Bad Radio, there was nothing. I was going to make a thread about this myself if he brought it up again.

Yeah, it had to be Bad Radio, I doubt the Chili Peppers had any cover bands before 1991.

But the whole Bad Radio thing makes me wonder. They were obviously a pretty crappy band, I mean some of their songs are just awful. How can Vedder go from writing some seriously shitty Funk songs to writing and singing on Ten. There must of only been a few weeks between Bad Radio breaking up and Pearl Jam starting, yet Ed is a completely different lead singer. I think Chris Cornell may have played a part in this overnight transformation. I'm sure the seattle scene as a whole inspired his lyrics/vocals...

I'm arguing with my buddy, now. This kind of fun. I can't wait until he cites Wikipedia as a source.

Seriously, though, Kiedis claims that BR started as an RHCP cover band. However, they started in 86, two years before Ed joined and only a year after Freakey Styley came out. I don't think that's much time to have anyone want to cover you.

EDIT:



Yeah, because Kiedis' eye-witness acounts from the mid-late 80's are ever-so reliable.

EDIT #2:

ThumbingMyWayToNFLD, you need to photoshop the crack/alcohol away.

Did that actually happen?

Not sure I know what you're getting at here, cono. If you're confused as to where the conversation I posted came from, it was MSN.

To be honest, I meant to delete it as I didn't think it was very fair to my friend. I was just a little frustrated with him because he kept saying I was calling Kiedis a liar and getting all defensive. Meh...



If I wrote a book about it, then it did.

yup. well, it was probably half mistake, half kiedis trying to bignote himself.

Eddie left Bad Radio around February 1990. He did not move to Seattle until October 1990, more than half a year later. Alive, Footsteps and Once were written before he ever set foot in Seattle. And the majority of Ten was written, quite literally, within days of his arrival (Release, Once, Alive, Black, Oceans, Breath, Alone and others were all written and recorded within the first week of the band playing together).

Eddie was already a Soundgarden fan before moving to Seattle so any Cornell influence was preexisting. If you listen to his 1988 solo demo it is clear that he had the talent. He just needed to link up with the right songwriters, namely Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament. The vast majority of the music on Ten is written by Stone (author or co-author of 8 of the 11 songs) with significant contributions from Jeff (author of co-author of the music for 6 of the 11 tracks). Eddie is only credited for musical (i.e. non-lyrical) contributions for Oceans and Release. He did write Porch himself.

So I think it had much more to do with having better music to work with. Again a lot of the music for Ten was written before he even met the band. Those guys were holed up in a room cranking out songs and an unbelievable rate when Eddie first arrived.

My point is that chillin' in Seattle and hanging with Chris Cornell did not create some magical transformation in Eddie as a musician and lyricist. It had been there for a while, building up before exploding in an amazingly short period of time. The "seattle scene" is not what was behind those lyrics on Ten. Most of Ten was already written before Eddie even sat in on the Temple recording sessions.

if its true at least it was a cover band not a band that covers tom petty songs with boring guitar arrangements, and shitty new lyrics... and claim it to be original

two disc cd... and their single is the ripped off song

funny story.
we had a substitute teacher in middle school that passed out pamphlets talking about how abraham lincoln led a secret gay life. and this bitch was serious about what she believed in. she spent the whole period talking about it. it looked relatively "official", but you could tell someone had just made it themselves. haha.
when our regular teacher came back we told him about it and needless to say she didnt sub at our school again

This is how I thought the history of PJ went:

Stone bumped into old pal Mike at a party. Stone recruited Mike to record a demo with full instrumentation for some music he had written, so they can start shopping for singers and drummers. They talked Jeff, who was in another band at the time, into playing bass on the soon to be titled "Gossman Project", along with some other friends drummers Matt Cameron and Chris Friel. Altough Stone was the primary writer, being that he wrote the arrangements and riffs, Mike, Jeff, Cameron, and Friel all lent their unique talents to the "Gossman Project". During this time the guys were already in the studio, or just started studio time with Temple of the Dog, writing and recording. Then in San Diego, Eddie got the Gossman Project demos from Jack Irons. The instrumentals on the Gossman Project were The King/Even Flow, Dollar Short/Alive, Richard E/Alone, E Ballad/Black, Weird A/Animal, 7Up/Pushin Forward Back, Doobie E/Breath, Agytian Crave/Once, Times of Trouble/Footsteps, Evil E/Girl. Ed added lyrics to three songs, Alive, Footsteps and Once (Once had completely different verses, and was Motown influenced). The tape was sent back to Seattle along with some Ed solo demos and Bad Radio songs, Jeff or Stone received it, and they talked to Ed on the phone soon after. Ed flew to Seattle within the month/week and they instantly starting writing songs at the Potatoe Head Art Gallery. Sometime right before this time, they recruited Dave Krusen to play drums, most likely after Ed sent back the "mamason trilogy" demo he made (with Mookie Blaylock card on the cover). They played a show 7 days later debuting the new songs. Ed went back to San Diego soon after this show, and quit his job and his band. He moved all of his shit up to Seattle soon thereafter. When Ed first moved to Seattle he lived in Jeff's apartment, and spent his time hanging out at the studio as they recorded the Temple album. During this time he worked on lyrics for Mookie Blaylock, and even found time to contribute lyrics to Hunger Strike and a few others. Then Mookie Blaylock went on a short stint with Alice in Chains, writing new Mookie songs in the meantime. Then after they changed their name to PJ, they went into the Studio and recorded Ten during March and April of 1991. Sometime before they went into the studio, they were signed by Epic records. The first demo Mookie Blaylock did is referred to as "Stone Gossard Demos '90" and consisted of Alive, Footsteps, Once, Black, and Alone all with lyrics. Then another early demo popped up, referred to as "Mookie Blaylock Demo" and had the above mentioned songs plus Even Flow, Breath, Release, Girl, and Goat. I personally am guessing this is the demo that convinced Epic to sign the band. The first demo they made as Pearl Jam (after they got signed) includes all the above plus Jeremy, Porch, Brother, Oceans, Garden, Why Go, and Deep. My history may be way off.

I am not trying to disprove anything you said, but I think the Seattle scene definately influenced Ed, since after his move to Seattle and after having played/seen a bunch of shows and listened/recorded with TOTD, PJ then thereafter wrote Why Go, Deep, Garden, and Porch... all songs that basically carry the grunge banner, more than the others atleast. Plus some of the older songs were reworked, like Even Flow which started out a lot slower.

You are 100% correct though, he did have talent that was waiting to be tapped and unleashed. Some people are so talented they can cover different styles and genres of music with relative ease..., Ed being the huge music fan and talented vocalist that he is, is one of these people.

I think the answer might be that Bad Radio had covered a Chili Peppers song at least once. RHCP was huge in the LA club and underground scene back then. Jack Irons told Anthony that Eddie was once in a cover band. Perhaps it was a lie to get RHCP to have PJ open for them. Anthony says he was reluctant to bring Pearl Jam on, so its possible that Jack lied about it to make this favor easier to accommodate.

Good point.

By the way, what's Irons' relationship with the guys these days? I know the split was amicable and, as far as I know was related to Jack's health (something to do with his arm, I forget the term), but are Ed and Jack still in touch? I imagine they would be since they go back so far, but you never know.

All signs would indicate that Eddie and Jack remain friends. Eddie sings on Jack's solo album which was released in 2004. Also, Jack played drums as a guest during two Pearl Jam shows on the 2003 tour (6/2/03 and 10/28/03).

Very cool, thanks for the info. I was completely unaware of both of those facts.

http://www.jackirons.com/JackIrons/

go to biography, he says he left due to his anxiety disorder. it's actually a really good read overall, he also talks about the time he met Eddie back in San Diego for the first time.