Contrivance, thy name is Vedder.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... 99,00.html

Here's my problem with Ed: This continuing schtick about his painful childhood is, it seems to me, kind of a slap in the face to people who had (or are having) real painful childhoods. There are kids everywhere who would give anything to have the "painful" childhood that Mr. Vedder did. I can tell you for a fact that my wife had a worse childhood by a factor of (at least) 10. Ed is 25 years removed from his "pain", the whole thing is kind of comical already.

Also, way to drop Bono and Springsteen in the same answer, Ed.

As justified as your post is, the thing is it can fuck you up the same really bad.
Children take most of what is going on around them kind of for guaranted or even worst feel like they deserve the hell they are going trough.
This things are very complicated and can't be just graded in real life, i mean if your a kid and you're on a good way of fucked up adulthood it's individually irrelevant to your psychological situation what others are going trough, it doesn't work like this. It took Ed a lot of time to grow out of his problems, whatever they were, and is always a very good thing when somebody is able to achieve this. I think he trough this in because it fits the story.

Don't get me wrong i understand your point of view, but from real life experience i think this things should never be judged.

Hyperbole, thy name is Man in Black.

So what is this? A who had the most painful childhood competition? If you've gone through a shitty time during childhood and you think you had a bad time, then who is anyone else to judge the level of pain and suffering you went through?

in fact i thought that this interview was very good indeed - MIB must not have read a lot of interviews in his life
but MIB, i get your point and Mine expressed my feelings toward your post quite well.

Thanks for that

I know what you mean, Man in Black. I, too, am bothered Mr. Vedder's pain. It Bugs. Recently Vedder was just talking about his first flight back from Hawaii by himself when he was 14 and he met some incredible surf idol. Talk about pain! 14 and on a flight back from Hawaii. What an abusive childhood!

Oh, I know I'm being evil. But still. I think his pain lies more in his interpretation of events than in the events themselves. I, too, didn't find out I was adopted until midschool, and my reaction was more like, "Yeah? No wonder I don't really look like you people." Big deal. It was hardly like I wasn't loved.

Imho, there is something slightly annoying in reading about a person who in his 40s is still stuck in his childhood. Or who is at least acting as if he is. Ed needs to de-leash himself from his childhood. Everyone likes a good story, and a pity party ranks among the best of tales. For a while. After a while, it's like...I've heard this story before. Tell me another one that matters NOW. His story of childhood pain resonated with a lot of us because there's hardly a person who doesn't have some childhood pain in his or her past. But, a lot of us have moved on. We're ready for something else. The old story is just....old.

so you compare his pain to you being adopted?

this thread sucks

No one can judge what anyone else went through. The point is not a most painful childhood competition. But at adulthood--and by golly by 40 and beyond, the point should be that you have a life that doesn't rely on the pain you experienced to give you meaning/material/etc. Things have conceivably happened to Vedder even after the age of 13. I'm just assuming. And I'm assuming that these things might conceivably begin to supplant something that happened 25 years ago. These things might have something to do with love and growth rather than with, "Oh, my god it hurt so bad way back when." That is what is annoying about Vedder at this point. Not that he had pain which was or wasn't worse than anyone else's.

To me, Vedder seemed like he was a great songwriter/lyricist at a point. It's because he gave us a story that reverberated with us. But now, he's starting to seem lazy, and the terrible childhood story seems a little more like a one-trick pony each time it's told. I know that's harsh. But, apart from his politics, he has less and less to say to me if all he'll say is that he had a rotten childhood.

Oh come on! That's not really fair. Ed hasn't really reference his childhood pain in song for a long time. The only reason he did for this is because it fits the story of the movie.

some people's job require mathematical knowledges, some other's ask for strenght and attention, a singer-songwriter's job asks for a thin skin in a certain way, a straight connection to one's feelings, backgrounds, memories, experiences - it's not the same at all and i think eddie was talking candidly about his childhood experiences in this interview. he was speaking about how his own backgroung could make him connect to the actual story of the movie.
in another perspective - you guys at the office are exposed to mor music all the time - any of your newly engaged work buddies begin to sing about "MY NEW LOOOOVE" in the office? everybody in its right place

When I read the interview (thanks for the link, by the way), this quote from Ed struck me as a good response to this thread:

I went through pain, but it was just a long time ago. And I guess what's a little bit worrisome to me is how easy it was to access it. You know? That I just had to barely put my finger in. It was right there on the surface. I thought I'd grown up much more. I'm glad there was a use for it, but now I've got to tuck it away again.

I don't think Ed harps on it. I get the feeling he's scared by how easily and quickly the feelings come back. I'm also a person who is in my 40's, and my sister died in 1981 and my dad died in 1983. Day after day, things are fine, but if I hear a certain song, I'm instantly 19 again, mourning their passing, crying like a baby. Fortunately for Ed, he can write songs to cope. I just eat lots of chocolate.

well said (I eat alot of chocolate too)

i can teach you people how to write songs if you pay me with chocolate

Thanks for the offer but I think I'll keep internalizing my pain and eating all the chocolate

i had a really shitty childhood, but you wouldn't know from the way i speak of my inheritance. i am grateful for the familial traits which i now understand to be gifts. but back then it was fucking hell.

who's to say another's life is better or worse? this is not a race to the shittiest childhood, with only those who have suffered the most allowed to feel the pain of it, write of it, and explore its agonies in art.

i have a hearty fuck you for people who have no concept of what that means.

you, those who wrote absurdities, can't have a concept of what it is to be an artist and create or such thoughts would never occur to you. they occur to the artist regarding their own work ... it's nakedness, and if they even have the right to speak. one thing artists do IS evaluate their pain and compare it to the world. where do you think this shit comes from? great art does not spring from a locked interior world, without outside observances and judgements about/of/against oneself and ones own experiences. no it springs from those experiences mirrored onto the outside.

and that's what's happened here. vedder didn't write about himself. he wrote about chandless and to do so, he reached into himself.

.

The cynic in me thinks it was just for the Time magazine audience..."let me just remind everyone of who I am".

play on words or honest mistake?
maybe chandless bing?
chandlers illegitimate son
ha!

ps-im sorry you had a shitty childhood