“He took out this big knife, put it on the table with a loud thud, looked at us and said, There’s a lot of crazy people out there.” Eddie Vedder on the night Pearl Jam supported Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards
On New Year’s Eve, 1992, Pearl Jam had the opportunity to open a show for Rolling Stones legend Keith Richards, when the guitarist played with his ‘other’ band The X-Pensive Winos, at The Academy in New York. Given that the band’s debut album, Ten, had reached number 2 on the Billboard 200 chart six months earlier, the Seattle quintet no longer really needed to be play second fiddle to anyone in clubs, but the fact that The Rolling Stones were guitarist Mike McCready’s favourite band meant that the fast-rising grunge stars were more than happy to pay their respects.
Back in April, McCready and Eddie Vedder reminisced about the experience during an interview with US broadcasting legend Howard Stern on his SiriusXM show, though the pair’s main memories of the evening seem to have mainly revolved around seeing Richards brandishing a knife backstage.
The subject arose when Stern was asking McCready about the Fender Stratocaster guitar he was playing, which the guitarist revealed that he played for the first time at the December 31, ’92 show with Richards. Talking about hanging out with Richards backstage on the night, Eddie Vedder casually mentioned, “He did have a knife in his hand”, drawing a curious “Whaaaaaat?” from his host.
“He was getting ready in a tiny dressing room,” Vedder explained, “and so he he took off one pair of jeans… took [out] this big knife and kind of put it on the table with a loud thud, and you realised what a big knife it was… and then he put on a new pair of jeans.”
“He saw Mike and I both looking at the knife,” Vedder continued. “He held it up and said, [raspy Keith Richard impression, ‘There’s a lot of crazy people out there’.”
When an amused Stern imagined a scenario where Richards, The Stones’ own ‘Street Fighting Man’ would go out onto the streets of Manhattan and pull his knife on anyone who got in his face, Mike McCready said, “He knew how to handle it, he was very adept with it, from what I recall.”
“I’d feel very safe if I was next to Keith Richards,” Eddie Vedder agreed, adding, after a pause, “as long as we were getting along.”
You can watch the interview below:
Pearl Jam Opened for Keith Richards – YouTube 