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Yellow on Many Depressing Things



>1) I would also be very interested in a boot of that Pete show. I 
wonder
>if Vedder knows that Pete called PearlJam "toothless" in his 
Playboy
>interview? I agree, although I'm not putting down PearlJam if that 
is
>someone else's favorite group!

If I remember right, Pete called ALL modern rock music toothless, and 
listed a few popular modern bands as examples, one of them Pearl Jam. 
 I don't think it was anything personal against Pearl Jam, just 
modern rock in general, and I've read other interviews where Pete has 
said he likes Pearl Jam.  Eddie probably has read those interviews, 
but I doubt he cares.  He's a fan like us, remember.  If I were in a 
band and Pete said we sucked, I know I would agree, just because we 
would suck compared to the Who!  (Of course, any band with me in it 
would REALLY suck due to my general lack of musical talent, but this 
is beside the point.)  And I would never ever pass up the opportunity 
to sing with Pete, no matter what he said about my hypothetical band.


>3) I majored in psych. Of course teen suicide is terrible, but 
people
>are often misled to believe that young people have the highest rate. 
In
>reality, the rate among older people is the highest.

In "13th Gen", published in 1993, Neil Howe and Bill Strauss write, 
"Today, for the first time ever recorded, Americans in their late 
teens and early 20's are more suicide prone than older Americans."  
"Adolescence: Continuity, Change, and Diversity" (an adolescent 
development textbook) confirms this statement.  I don't mean to try 
and show you up on this point, you probably got your degree before 
1993 anyway so it was different then.  But the tiiiiiiimes they are a 
chaaaaaaaaaaaangiiiiiiiiiiiiiin'.  (Side note: maybe we should start 
a Who/Psychology Digest, those listers with no interest in psychology 
are probably getting really bored!  Sorry guys!)

>What would I rather have had, an honest answer or a "pat" answer 
which says all
>the right things?  In this case, neither one.  I foolishly expected 
Pete to be
>connected with his fans to the point that he would be profoundly 
affected by the
>events.  He was not, as demonstrated by not only the interview but 
his failure
>to even mention this in any of his music (which for 20+ years now 
has been
>intensely personal).  I learned from this that hero worship of Pete, 
The Who, or
>any other famous person is a foolish thing.

I don't think it's fair to say that Pete wasn't profoundly affected 
by the tragedy at Cincinnati.  Insomuch as I am any judge of other 
people's emotions, I'd say quite the opposite.  Reading the 
particular interview in question, you have to realize that Pete must 
have been feeling incredibly angry, confused, and guilty.  Eleven 
people were dead, and while he certainly was not directly responsible 
for this, he was involved in the situation that led to their deaths.  
Now, I know I have never had any reason to blame myself for eleven 
people dying, but if I had I doubt I would have been able to handle 
it any better than Pete did.  He was upset and wasn't saying the 
"right" things, he probably wasn't even saying exactly what he was 
thinking.  How could he?  A clear, carefully worded statement would 
to me indicate nothing more than a complete emotional detachment from 
the entire issue.

This part of the interview I find especially telling:

>What do you do?  We did all the things we thought were right to do 
at the time: sent flowers to the >f***ing funerals.  All wasted.  I 
think when people are dead they're dead.

That made a lot of people angry, and I can certainly see why.  It 
wasn't "the right thing to say".  One could easily read that and 
think, "Pete doesn't care at all about those poor kids, and any 
previous show of remorse was just that, a show."  I understand such 
an interpretation, but I do not agree.  I read that quote and I see 
it to mean, "We did what we thought was right, but to what end?  No 
matter how many flowers we send, it's not going to bring those people 
back to life.  Nothing we could ever do will change or erase what 
happened."  As I said, I've never had to deal with guilt over the 
death of eleven people, but I have had to deal with death.  I know 
about grief and I recognize Pete's statements about the Cincinnati 
tragedy as the words of a grieving man.  And I don't at all blame him 
for not writing a song all about it.  Could anyone honestly wish for 
such a horrible incident to be reduced and cheapened into a three 
minute single?

- -Yellow "fog" Ledbetter