Back in the early 2000s, Pete Townshend and Eddie Vedder hit the news for two different controversies. The Pearl Jam vocalist received backlash because of a stage show involving a George Bush mask, while the Who frontman got accused of pedophilia due to a chain of events.
The uproar against Vedder kicked off at a 2003 concert in Denver where he used the mask as a prop. The singer hung it on his mike stand after he was done wearing it. Some of the audience thought of the action as ‘impaling’ and criticized the band members after the show.
So, the Pear Jam frontman joined an interview with Rolling Stone to talk about the matter around that time. During the chat, the interviewer brought up the accusations directed at Townshend and asked Vedder about his thoughts.
While answering the question, the singer referred to the text the Who member wrote on his website months before his arrest, criticizing child pornography and abuse. He explained:
“He had written a piece called ‘A Different Bomb’ on his Web site; I read it last November. I was so upset by what he described: the access to child pornography, what kind of images are there. The second I heard [of his arrest], I knew what his stand was.”
Then, he referred to Townshend’s portrayal in the media by saying:
“The hard thing was to see the press pin that scarlet letter on him: ‘Rock-star pedophile.’ So many of the benefits we have worked on together had to do with children: orphanages in Chicago, teenage cancer units in London. He doesn’t just show up and play. He does research. To see that turned around – it was sickening. Then he was let off with a caution. Someone gave me a printed fax of it. I didn’t read it in any paper.”
Townshend got arrested after authorities found out he had entered a website posting child pornography using his credit card. The vocalist defended himself by saying he just wanted to do research and expose how child abuse got funded, as he also mentioned in his 2002 writing.
Admitting breaking the law, he later accepted a police caution and ended up on the Sex Offenders Register for five years. Years after this, he talked to the Times and called his past actions ‘insane.’
Still, according to his words to the Daily Mail in 2019, the incident ‘saved his life.’ It helped a cancerous polyp on his bowel to be discovered, as he explained:
“While I was waiting for the police to go through my computers, I decided to have that long-postponed colonoscopy. The doctor showed me the polyp. He said, ‘This would have killed you in six months.’ So it sort of saved my life.”
You can check out a news headline about Pete Townshend’s arrest below and read Eddie Vedder’s view on the matter here.
