COVER UP: Hey, what’s Eddie Vedder doing...

COVER UP: Hey, what’s Eddie Vedder doing on the cover of Time magazine this week? Didn’t Pearl Jam make a big stink recently about how they weren’t going to do interviews with anybody but Rolling Stone and Spin--at least for the moment--so that they wouldn’t be accused of hype-mongering?

The surprise, readers will learn after turning to the article, is that Pearl Jam turned down all interview requests from Time, whose story is a survey of the alienation and rage in the current alternative-rock scene. Vedder’s lyrics are quoted in the piece and his words are pulled from past interviews with other publications.

And the band’s not happy being on the cover, its manager Kelly Curtis says, and may even retreat further from the media spotlight. Even a tentative interview for Rip magazine to be conducted by “Lollapalooza” mate Al Jourgensen, of Ministry, may now be off.

Christopher John Farley, who wrote the Time cover story, charges the Seattle-based rock group of engaging in its own brand of media manipulation. “We made a decision at Time to not let the subject dictate what we’re going to write about and when,” he says, of the decision to proceed with the story despite the absence of an interview.

“Here’s a band whose lead singer is politically active,” Farley says. “He should be for a free flow of information and should want to talk with people in touch with the music and not just people in his inner circle. I think we did our readers a service.”