Vedder's vocalized anguish seems to strike the raw and hurting nerve of a young generation raised on divorce and dysfunction. Born Edward Mueller, Vedder took his mother's maiden name after she told him, when he was in his teens, that her husband was not his father. His actual father, she said, was a part-time musician whom he'd known only vaguely as a family friend and who had recently died of multiple sclerosis. Those revelations still haunt Vedder, who finds deliverance in rock's cathartic power, though not in its glitz and groupies (he prefers his nine-year relationship with writer Beth Liebling). As for rock's idol-making machinery, he has said, "There should be no messiahs in music." Yet to millions of fans, Vedder is fast becoming just that.
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
