Pearl Jam references in Dennis Rodman's book

Ed & Dennis out on the town (77K)	Ed & Dennis celebrating the '96 championship (57K)	shots from the Augusta,ME concert (139K)	Ed in Maui with Dennis (53K)

Being onstage during a live rock performance is a mind-blowing experience. It makes you feel like a supreme being. I know, because late in the summer of 1996 I took the stage during a Pearl Jam performance in Augusta, Maine. It wasn't planned, but it turned out to be one of the most amazing things I've ever done.

I got to know the guys from the band a few years ago, mostly Jeff Ament, the bassist. It was a total thrill for me, because I feet like their music captures my inner spirit. It's powerful, pulsating, passionate, and painful, yet there's a streak of positivity running right up its spine. I mean, you've got a heavy-metal lead guitarist (Mike McCready), a punk-rock rhythm guitarist (Stone Gossard), a wild bassist (Jeff), a no-bullshit drummer (Jack Irons) and Eddie, who has the most amazing voice of all time. Their songs tell a story, and I can always relate to it. Eddie doesn't shy away from pain, and he manages to capture a wide range of emotions. As I said, I listen to all different types of music, but I mostly rock out to Pearl Jam. Their music to me is like heroin to a junkie.

The guys in the band help feed my spirit by sending me special CDs - live recordings, outtakes, demo sessions, and stuff like that. It was really easy to get to know Jeff, because he's just a regular cool dude. If you didn't know who he was, you'd never think he was some big rock star, because he doesn't act like he's hot shit or he needs attention or anything like that. He's a pretty big basketball fan, like most of the guys in the band. Their name used to be Mookie Blaylock - he's a player for the Atlanta Hawks, and I guess they liked his name. Their first album, "Ten," was named because that's Mookie's number.

Eddie was tough to get to know, because he's a really private person who only puts himself out there when he's onstage. Hard as it is to believe, I'm actually very shy, too, so Eddie and I both sort of played it low-key around each other. But in the summer of '95 we started hanging out, and we really hit it off. Eddie's a lot different than I am. He tries to fight his celebrity. He wants things to be the way they were before he hit it big. I think it's a futile struggle, but I respect the hell out of him for the way he tries to live his life. it's tough bringing him around hectic scenes; we usually do better hanging out when it's just the two of us.

But when you get Eddie onstage, he's a natural-born showman, as I found out during that show in Maine. I had just flown back from Aries, France, where I'd been acting in Double Team, a film with Jean-Claude Van Damme and Mickey Rourke. It was my first major acting role, and man, was I wasted - even though I had barely partied over the previous several weeks. I got to New York with my friend, Stacie, and my buddy, Dwight, and we took a private plane up to Maine the next night. We were hanging out backstage during the show and the band was totally rocking. I thought my eardrums were about to explode, and at that point I wouldn't have minded at all. I had a glass of red wine in my hand and I was feeling pretty good about life as I stood there watching Eddie get off. It was late in the show and they were playing, "Alive," and Jeff and Stone were running around the stage, as usual, and Eddie was wailing his lungs off. He got to that part I love - 'Is something wrong? she said. Of course there is...' and I just wished I could be part of it, somehow. This might have been one case where I really did crave the attention - or maybe I just want to be a rock star at heart, like a hell of a lot of other people.

So, when he sang, "WHO ANSWERS? WHO ANSWERS?' it all of a sudden hit me. I was overcome with this rush of energy, and it was like I was possessed by an alien being or a ghost or something - I knew then that I was the one who answers, so I walked out onstage and brought Eddie the red wine. There was no way I could have anticipated the reaction. People were going nuts. I got one of the biggest ovations I've ever received. People were delirious - it was like they wanted to rip my clothes off and just take me, right there. It was one of the most awesome moments of my life. I practically had an orgasm onstage.

The coolest thing about it was the way Eddie reacted. He jumped up onto my back and rode around on me, piggyback style, while he was singing and screaming into the microphone. I should have screamed along with him - it was my big chance - but I was overwhelmed by the moment. So he's riding up there on my back, and now the microphone cord is getting all tangled up around me, and Eddie's just getting crazier and crazier, and then that little madman does a back flip off of me and onto the stage. It was a great move, except the microphone started choking me and I couldn't breathe - so now I was having one of those asphyxiation orgasms, which was cool, but it was still pretty scary. Finally, I managed to untangle the microphone from my neck, and I cruised offstage and back into civilian life.

It's a moment I know I'll never forget, and one I'm able to relive often, because Eddie gave me a tape of the show right after it ended. I didn't have anything to play it on, so he gave me his Walkman, with his initials marked right on it.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, but I'm not willing to settle for once. I've got to find a way to get back to that moment, if it's the last thing I do.

For some dunb-ass reason, I stopped partying. After one of the most reckless, out-of-control social seasons in NBA history, I tried stay in and be a good boy. The first two nights in Seattle, I had gone out with some of the coolest people I know - Eddie Vedder, Jeff Ament, and Stone Gossard from Pearl Jam; Bryne Rich, Cindy Crawford, who was sitting on my lap at one point ... just to name a few.

Eddie and Jeff had been with me in Chicago, too - actually, they were with me for a lot of the playoffs. They would tear up the town with me all night, then have the balls to root for their hometown Sonics, sometimes while sitting in my seats during the games. I respect them for their loyalty and lack of hypocrisy. Besides, if it wasn't for Pearl Jam, my life would be a hell of a lot less fulfilling.

Pearl Jam also stick up for their principles, even if it costs them. They don't do videos because they think it ruins the way people perceive their music. And they lost a shitload of money and got shafted on one of their tours because they went to war against Ticketmaster. God bless them for that. Ticketmaster is the king of the leeches, always adding ridiculous service charges that jack up ticket prices, and the guys thought it was wrong, so they made a stand. I respect everything about those guys. They're prochoice, they value their individuality and their freedom, and they're willing to fight for it.

One of the best places I've found is Crobar, the one in Chicago with the cages and the bondage rack and the lesbian deejay named Psychobitch. I spent a lot of time at Crobar during the 95-96 season and I had my thirty-fifth birthday party there during the playoffs, which was pretty much the ultimate partying experience.

We had just beaten the New York Knicks to close out the series and advance to the Eastern Conference finals against the Orlando Magic. It was May 14, 1996, and it's a good bet that by the end of the night I had downed at least one shot for each of my thirty-five years. And I wasn't even the drunkest person there. Eddie Vedder might have been; one of my friends ended up having to carry him up to his hotel room. The next day Eddie said, "I think I had a really good time. Don't tell anybody." He's a pretty small guy as it is, it probably didn't help that he and I and some other friends went out for sushi after the game and downed about thirty-two bottles of sake before we even left for the party.

Crobar is almost always jam-packed, but on this night it was beyond jam-packed. The live music was incredible. Onstage with the blues-funk band Liquid Soul were Jeff Ament, my buddy from Pearl Jam, and big John Popper, the singer and harmonica player from Blues Traveler. Eddie didn't sing with the band, but he went onstage to lead the whole damn club in singing 'Happy Birthday' to me. He and I sprayed the crowd with beers, and people threw their drinks right back at us until we were soaked. People were throwing up all over themselves, and they didn't give a damn.

Jeff was hysterical that night, talking to everybody, dancing on the bar.

In the summer of 1996, shortly after the completion of the NBA Finals, I took a quick vacation to Maui with Eddie Vedder. This trip really was a trip, because Eddie and I are so much alike, yet we're so different. Eddie tries to hide from his fame, while I flaunt mine, but we're both struggling to be true to ourselves and to have a great time. And on one Hawaiian party night I'll never forget, it all came together in a totally unexpected way.

We had been out messing around on motorcycles and having some fun, and we ended up at a bar called Moose McGillicudy's in Lahaina. There were some people with us, including Eddie's younger brother, Dwight Manley, and my friend Erika, and we were just sitting there having some wine while this bar band was rocking out in the background. All of a sudden, the band started playing 'Go,' the first song on "Vs.", which is Pearl Jam's second album. It's an awesome, fast-paced song that's really hard to sing, and Eddie got this look on his face and said, "they're not singing it right." I could see what he was thinking, but I didn't believe it would actually happen. He looked straight into my eyes and said, "Should we?" I sort of shrugged and said, "That's up to you, bro." He stood up and said, "OK, let's do it," and we walked right up to the stage.

Now, imagine you're some bar band doing a Pearl Jam cover and Eddie Vedder appears onstage. You're gonna piss your pants, and that's exactly what they did. The singer almost died, bro. Everybody in the band was tripping. Eddie grabbed the microphone and started singing, and I was sort of dancing next to him, and the place went absolutely nuts. The band musicians totally raised their game, just like a bunch of playground hoopsters would if Michael Jordan and Larry Bird showed up to play. They started playing harder and better than even they knew they could, and Eddie was getting totally into it, screaming and hollering. And think of the people in the bar. They were like, "This can't be happening." The dance floor was in a frenzy, and the amazing thing was that word spread like herpes. All of a sudden hundreds of people were streaming in from the street - upstairs, downstairs, everywhere - and it was packed. People were jumping up and down and going nuts.

The band ended up playing two more Pearl Jam songs, and Eddie sang his lungs out. Then he and I went to our table and ordered another drink. What made the moment truly amazing was that it was so unlike Eddie to throw himself out there like that. He's usually the guy trying to sneak around in the shadows and avoid getting noticed.

Eddie exists in his own solar system, and I dig that. He doesn't want things to change. He wants things to be the way they were before he was famous. And he gets frustrated, because it can't be that way anymore for him. Everywhere he goes people just freak out, and that's understandable - the guy has moved a lot of people to feel emotions they weren't even in touch with before they heard his music.

We talk about this fame issue all the time. People hang all over me when we're out together, and Eddie obviously gets his share of attention, but he can't deal with it. So he doesn't deal with it. He lies low. When he does go somewhere crowded, he's able to keep a low profile - literally - because he's so small. But when he sees the way I approach things, just going out in public and throwing myself out there, it freaks him out. He says, "It's amazing how you deal with all this." He wonders how the hell I do it.

I tell Eddie he should give in and do what I do, that he might as well just accept it. "just deal with it, bro," I always say to him. At least he can go out and disguise himself. At his concerts, long before the band goes on, he's constantly doing stuff like putting on masks or dressing up like a clown and wading into the audience. Sometimes he'll pass out leaflets just to see how people react. At the show in Augusta, Maine, that I went to in September of 1996 - the one where I ended up bringing him a glass of red wine onstage - he put on this silver suit and a mask and cruised around through the crowd, and then he went up and sang with the opening band, and nobody knew who he was.

The cool thing is that when I was a free agent after the '96 season I talked to the Los Angeles Lakers about signing with them, and Jerry West, their general manager (and also one of the greatest players of all time), thought the whole thing [having a #69 jersey number] was funny as shit. So he had a gold No. 69 Lakers jersey made with my name on it. The Lakers ended up spending all their salary-cap money on Shaquille O'Neal, and I re-signed with the Bulls, but I kept the jersey. A few weeks later Eddie Vedder saw it and thought it was incredibly cool, so I gave it to him, and now I think he has it hanging in his house in Seattle.

last updated: July 1, 1997

Dan's Pearl Jam Page
Group pics: page 1 / page 2 / page 3 / page 4 / B&W 1 / B&W 2
Stone pics / Jeff pics / Mike pics / Jack pics
Ed pics: page 1 / page 2 / page 3 / page 4 / page 5 / page 6 / page 7
page 8 / page 9 / B&W 1 / B&W 2 / B&W 3 / B&W 4
exclusive pics: index / 1996: Toronto & Toledo / Cork & Dublin / 1998: Maui / Denver
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Portland / Boise / Seattle 1 / Seattle 2 / 2002: Showbox 1 / Showbox 2 / Seattle
2003: Yokohama / Tokyo / Nagoya / San Antonio / Houston / New Orleans / Birmingham
West Palm Beach / Tampa / Charlotte / Nashville / Atlanta / Lexington / Champaign / State College
Santa Barbara
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