In 2000, Pearl Jam played the Roskilde Festival in Denmark as part of their European tour. During the show the organizers asked the band to stop playing due to crowd concerns, but they didn’t do so at first. As a result, nine people were crushed to death and singer Eddie Vedder has said it was one of the most difficult things that the band has ever had to deal with.
Vedder told Q Magazine, “Disappeared for a year. I had to do some deep soul-searching on my own. I did a solitary process that I felt like I had to go through. I couldn’t go about business as usual because that would’ve been going around the issues. I had to go through them.”
The group even wondered if they should continue after the tragedy. Vedder has thanks Roger Daltry and Pete Townshend for their support.
“The day of and the day after [were the hardest],” he told Q magazine. “You can’t go 30 seconds without thinking about it. After a week, you could maybe go a minute without thinking about it. After a month, you could maybe go three minutes. You were constantly brought back there.”
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