[IMG:L]Into the Wild was an all around rebel film. Sean Penn is a rebel filmmaker, doing things his way, even though Hollywood would like him to just act and win Oscars. It is the story of Chris McCandless, a rebel who refused to conform to society’s expectations that he contribute to the commercial economy. Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder provided the film’s rebellious score.
With Pearl Jam, Vedder has led his own rebellions. In the early ’90s, Pearl Jam contributed to the alternative “grunge” sound that defined a generation of musicians. They also refused to sell concert tickets through Ticketmaster because of the extra fees they charged their fans.
Determined to tell McCandless’s story of wilderness survival appropriately, Penn allowed all of his collaborators to go with the flow. His camera team was ready to capture any difficult vista they encountered. The actors had space to breathe in their dialogue scenes. So too did Vedder get to feel the music, rather than fitting into a studio-dictated mandate.
“I don’t know how, but it just kind of grew organically,” said Vedder. “I may have been intimidated if Sean were to have said, ‘We need this, and we need a theme, and it would be nice if it were structured this way or that way, and then it revisits this at the end.’ None of that happened, or not consciously, and he started finding places to put the songs.”
The script and director contributed to Vedder’s inspiration. Simple elements like lines of dialogue or images gave Vedder the spark to build songs. “With the music basically he allowed me to write my own lines [and] a couple of cover songs, so that was nice too. He gave me a few lines that I could interpret. He gave me a lot of freedom, and I think the biggest thing was trust, which was just kind of unspoken. The story is so inspiring, just so inspiring, and the images were inspiring, and it was so easy to focus that it really became kind of an out of body experience.”
With his band, Vedder mainly provides vocals. On Into the Wild, he got to exercise his skill with many different instruments. “It went real quickly and instruments were being handed to me and we were just doing all the takes real quick, and then we’d send it to Sean and he’d find places for it, and ask for a couple of more, and it just kind of grew that way. I don’t know if I’d want to do this again, because I know it wouldn’t be as good as this experience was, so I could just leave it at this. This was great.”
The collaborative process also revealed the humorous side of Penn. Known more for his brooding performances and outspoken political views, Penn would make parenthetical asides in his notes to Vedder.
“One of the directions that Sean gave me [when Chris is] leaving the bus, before he gets to the river and the river is overflowing, just a short little note he sent up, and he said, ‘On this scene, don’t be afraid to be too literal with the lyrics. He knows he’s leaving, he knows he’s leaving the bus, and he’s not going back to his parents, and he’s not going back to f*ck the 16 year old girl (I don’t know why).'”
McCandless felt the call to the wild so strongly that he did not want any part in society, be it work, dating or his own family. Though not as extreme, Vedder could relate to the need to take a break from structure, without forsaking his responsibilities.
“For me, if I’m not on tour or in the studio, I’m in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It’s not lost on me that it’s a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature. I have a 3-year-old daughter now. I’m glad I did things in my 20s that were more reckless because at some point you realize you have a responsibility behind yourself and your need for adrenaline. I’m still looking for bigger waves and I could jump up a few more feet before I go back to the longboard. I’m glad I did that stuff at the time. For people who see this movie, if they haven’t done that in their life, I think it’s going to hit them pretty hard.”
Given his own lifestyle and his contributions to Into the Wild, Vedder accepts that he will have to be a supportive dad should his own daughter decide to make a leap like Chris McCandless. “The initial reaction is to send a security guard along, keeping him 50 yards away keeping an eye on her at all the time. I can only encourage that at this point. I know that no matter what I do, [she’ll go anyway]. I know she’s going to go through a time when she’s going to have to assert her independence and I’m going to have to encourage that. I don’t know what I’m going to be able to say when she’s going to see pictures of me hanging 30 feet off a raft or over a crowd. There’s nothing I’m going to be able to say, and I think she’ll survive all that just like I did.”
Most entertainers cite great life changes when they have children. Rock stars stop partying and actors start making kids’ movies. Vedder kept a more grounded perspective on fatherhood.
“When I had a child, everyone was telling me I was going to see the world through her eyes and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it, hazy images and butterflies were going to look more Technicolor. I kept waiting for that to happen and then thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn’t,” Vedder said.
“I realized that I was getting more angry, that it was the exact opposite, and maybe it’s because of the times and what was happening three years ago and what’s still happening,” Vedder explains. “As a band, we’ve maintained a level of activism as citizens of our country and tried to point out injustice and see if we could get other people to act, but it was based on how we felt as band members and what we thought was wrong. All of a sudden I saw the world as it was her world that they were f*cking with, it was her world and that really pissed me off. So it was a different reaction. It wasn’t the glowy, lovey-dovey, it fueled my anger. Strange.”
Vedder is still interested in reforming the music industry. He’s won the battle against Ticketmaster but now there are new problems facing artists. “Ticketmaster is now gone so there’s something about longevity. It’s nice to outlast something that’s as big and giant and powerful as that,” he notes. “But I think there are a lot of people getting their music without having to pay you. And it’s only $12. I ordered eggs at a little Seattle restaurant and it was $9.50. I’m thinking, ‘You can’t spend two extra bucks for a record that you put your heart and soul into.’ I think the problem is that you’re going to have to charge more for tickets, which is something we’ve always been abhorrent to do. Either that, or you’re going to have to start accepting sponsorships or start selling your music to Viagra commercials, supporting artificial erections.”
Into the Wild is playing in limited release and the soundtrack is now available in stores or iTunes.
