Earlier this week, Pearl Jam announced they were joining Bruce Springsteen, Ringo Starr and others in protest over the state’s controversial “bathroom bill,” canceling their planned Raleigh, North Carolina concert.
“The HB2 law that was recently passed is a despicable piece of legislation that encourages discrimination against an entire group of American citizens,” the band wrote in a statement explaining their decision. But Monday night, frontman Eddie Vedder elaborated on the band’s decision in a powerful speech in front of Pearl Jam’s Hampton, Virginia crowd, before the band’s first encore.
“We thought we could take the money and give it to them and still play the show, but the reality is there is nothing like the immense power of boycotting and putting a strain,” Vedder said, “and it’s a shame because people are going to affected that don’t deserve it but it could be the way that ultimately is gonna affect change, so again, we just couldn’t find it in ourselves in good conscience to cross a picket line when there was a movement so…”
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“We had to make a real tough call about what we would do about the situation in North Carolina,” he continued. “Because they have a law there that broadly discriminates against a whole group of people. I can’t tell from here if you are booing North Carolina, if you’re booing us for having to decide that we are not gonna play there. I would understand that too.”
Vedder then dedicated a gorgeous cover of Steven Van Zandt’s “I Am a Patriot,” to the “soldiers in the LGBT community.”
“So we apologize to those in Raleigh, we apologize to those who are going to Raleigh, we apologize to the locals who probably believe in the same things that we do,” Vedder said. “They have a reason to be pissed, and we’re pissed off too. But we gotta be pissed off at the right people and get them to change their minds because they made a mistake, a big mistake and they can fix it.”
Read Vedder’s speech in its entirety below:
“We had to make a real tough call about what we would do about the situation in North Carolina. Because they have a law there that broadly discriminates against a whole group of people. And I can’t tell from here if you are booing North Carolina, if you’re booing us for having to decide that we are not gonna play there. I would understand that too.
It was a hard process because we thought we could still play and make things right and we could fortify all the people on the ground working to repeal this despicable law.
We thought we could take the money and give it to them and still play the show, but the reality is there is nothing like the immense power of boycotting and putting a strain and it’s a shame because people are going to affected that don’t deserve it but it could be the way that ultimately is gonna affect change, so again, we just couldn’t find it in ourselves in good conscience to cross a picket line when there was a movement so…
So we apologize to those in Raleigh, we apologize to those who are going to Raleigh, we apologize to the locals who probably believe in the same things that we do. They have a reason to be pissed, and we’re pissed off too. But we gotta be pissed off at the right people and get them to change their minds because they made a mistake, a big mistake and they can fix it.
So tonight we play this one for all the soldiers in the LGBT community.”
