Eddie Vedder tells Bruce Springsteen about ‘Earthling’’s “secret tribute” to Tom Petty

nme.com:

Eddie Vedder has told Bruce Springsteen about the “secret tribute” to Tom Petty on his new solo album, ‘Earthling’.The two rock stars sat down together to talk about politics, musical influences and some of the songs on the Pearl Jam frontman’s new album for Amazon Music.Speaking about the track ‘Long Way’, Springsteen commented that he could hear “the ghost of Tom” in the song. “Somebody acquired for me a Guild four-string tenor [bass] – it almost looks like a Hofner in a way,” Vedder replied. “So I started playing some little things and had my guy record it and then I put drums on it and put some vocals on it and it all happened in an afternoon.

But I didn’t know what the chords were because I’m playing a Tenor – I’m just making shapes and sounds and all that.”He continued to explain that when he gave the track to producer Andrew Watt, he realised the chords were standard ones, like G, C and D. “I thought I was coming up with some really interesting ones that’d never been played before,” he said. “It was very simple chords and that was kind of how Tom Petty would write.”Vedder added: “I got to be fairly close to Tom and maybe subconsciously you start writing songs or you write songs that you need to hear.

We thought we should put some B3 [organ] on it and we know Benmont [Tench] from The Heartbreakers, so we called Benmont and he came down.

I think it was the first time he had pulled the organ out of storage since the last show. It was very, very powerful.”“Wow, I didn’t know that,” Springsteen responded. “It’s a beautiful sort of secret tribute there.” You can watch the whole conversation on Amazon until Sunday (February 13).