Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Music news Guest blogger: Eddie Vedder's leg
Posted by Web Editor on Tue, Jun 23, 2009 at 8:07 PM
A young fan. A chance encounter. With a leg.
By Anna Watson
1994, Fox Theater
I got a job helping the catering lady in the hopes of getting backstage access. The catering room was in the basement of the Fox, off a narrow sloped hallway with linoleum floors and cement walls. Inside there were low ceilings with corrugated ceiling tiles and collapsible round tables and chairs. It was a small room with stale air.
The encounter
Eddie Vedder walked in the room, just like a normal person. He didn't get any food. He just went and sat down at a table in the back left corner of the room. It was a now or never moment. I don't normally drink coffee, but I needed an excuse. So I got a cup of coffee, walked over, sat down at his table and acted like I was supposed to be there. Then I open my packet of sugar and dropped the entire packet (paper and all) in my cup. I pushed it into the coffee so he wouldn't see and remained calm as I burnt my finger. He had a little doll figure, a boy, with movable arms and legs and clothes that were painted. He was really into it. Then I noticed that he and I were wearing matching navy corduroy — his jacket and my pants. I couldn't resist pointing this out, and he lit up when I did — he felt the knee of my pants as if to confirm that it was indeed the same as his jacket. We bonded for a split-sec. Then he had to leave. At the end of the food table near the door there was a vase of beautiful fresh star-gazers ("Eddie Vedder flowers" forevermore). On his way out he asked me if he could take a few up to his room. I was like, "Oh, yes, please, take them. Take them all!" He took a few.
Cigarettes
I was sent to Kroger to buy cigarettes for Pearl Jam. But first I had to find them to ask what kind. I found EV in a hallway a couple floors up, surrounded by posse and bodyguards. He saw me and I tried to yell to him. The bodyguard tried to push me back (like I was dangerous or something), but EV said, "No, it's okay." So I asked him. I think he said Marlboro. I was only 15, but somehow Kroger sold me two big boxes of them.
The leg
Pearl Jam was on stage and everyone was distracted, so it seemed like a good opportunity to check out their dressing room and search for evidence to take home. It was on the top floor (which I knew about from a previous time when I was sent up there to deliver sugar to Meatloaf, where he was in his bathrobe). Nobody stopped me, so I went up and walked in (the door was half open, so I could have easily just been lost and wandering into the wrong room, right? Yes, I thought — a believable explanation if I get caught). The lights were off except for a couple of lamps and the bathroom light. There were all these weird psychedelic black light posters on the walls and lava lamps, which I found odd. To the left of the door was a love seat and a small coffee table with the EV stargazers and the little figure boy. I thought, OMG, I've found EV's SPOT — his NEST!! I focused, got in hyper-absorption mode and looked further. And as I looked around a corner next to the coffee table, my eyes fell on something right there in front of my face. Leaning against the wall was … was EV himself — only it was just part of him. Just his LEG. Without a doubt, it was Eddie Vedder's OWN leg — only it was FAKE. Fake as in not alive or attached to a body.
Besides that, and the fact that his two other legs were on stage with him at the time, it was eerily real. Wearing worn-out cargo shorts (a short?) and a worn-out combat boot with a red and gray sock sticking out of the top — a well-worn red and grey sock. And his tattoo — the same tattoo he has! — on the inside of his right calf. I stood there staring — stunned, confused, and ecstatic to have discovered something so utterly bizarre. I touched it. Everything felt real except for the leg itself.
Suddenly I felt that I must run down to the stage and look to see if he definitely had two real legs. I went to the side of the stage, as close as I could, and looked hard. Besides being seemingly impossible for him to have done the things he was doing on a fake leg — like violently stomping, jumping off of things and scaling walls — I was close enough to see the actual hairs on both legs. I kept double checking just to be sure, even after seeing them clearly the first time. Then I went back upstairs to do one last double-take of the fake leg. It was just as I remembered, right where I left it. That's what I saw, just like I saw it.
Eddie Vedder. $75. 7:30 pm. Tonight and tomorrow, June 23 and 24. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway. 770-916-2800. www.cobbenergycentre.com.
(Photo by marco annunziata/flickr)
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